Swedish iron-ore industry during World War II

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sweden's iron ore fed the Nazi war machine from the first day of the conflict to nearly the last. Grand Admiral Raeder, head of the German navy, stated the dependency plainly. He declared it would be "utterly impossible to make war" if Germany could not secure ore supplies from Sweden. Between 1933 and 1943, Sweden accounted for 43 percent of all iron ore Germany imported. Domestic German mines supplied 28.2 percent. France contributed 12.9 percent. Germany's own ore was low-grade and had to be blended with high-quality foreign material before it could produce workable steel. In the final peacetime year, Germany took in 22 million tons of iron ore from all sources. Sweden supplied 9 million of those tons. Seven million came from the mines of Kiruna and Gällivare in Lapland. Two million more came from the central ore fields northwest of Stockholm. Both sides understood what was at stake. The Allies needed to cut the supply. Germany needed to protect it. Sweden needed to stay alive. One man in the British government had been pushing for military action to break the trade since the first days of the war.

• 2. The Two Routes

  ›

  Each year from May to November, ships loaded at Luleå and steamed south through the Gulf of Bothnia. Their destination was a string of German Baltic ports: Lübeck, Swinemünde, and Stettin. An alternate port at Oxelösund, south of Stockholm, served the central Swedish ore fields. But the Gulf of Bothnia froze over in winter, and Oxelösund itself closed each year from January to March. When all the Eastern ports were in operation, they could supply only about 8 million tons per year, already less than prewar import levels.

  When the Gulf of Bothnia froze each winter, the ore moved onto a far longer path. Rail lines carried it westward across the mountains to Narvik, a Norwegian port above the Arctic Circle that remained ice-free all year. From Narvik, specially built ore ships entered a natural seaway unlike anything in more southerly waters. Immediately off Norway's western coast runs the Skjærgård, a continuous chain of roughly 50,000 glacially formed skerries, sea stacks, and rocks. Between this rocky fringe and the mainland lay a sheltered corridor stretching 1,600 kilometers from North Cape to Stavanger. Churchill named it the Norwegian Corridor. Inside it, ships could sail in Norwegian territorial waters, beyond the reach of Royal Navy patrols.

  At the southernmost point of the Corridor, German ore captains faced a choice on every voyage. One option was to follow the Skjærgård through the Kattegat and into the Baltic, reaching Lübeck and Stettin. That route stayed near German naval protection and Luftwaffe air cover. It also required hauling very heavy, bulky ore overland on Germany's already overburdened railways. The other option was to leave the Skjærgård and dash across the Skagerrak, the channel north of the Danish Jutland peninsula. Ships could then run south along the Danish coast to Hamburg and Bremen. From there, the ore traveled the efficient inland waterways of the Ruhr and the Rhineland. That second route was the preferred one, despite exposing ships to Allied submarines and Contraband Control destroyers. A number of German ships were sunk making that crossing.

  During the first nine months of the war, Germany sank large numbers of neutral ships through unrestricted submarine warfare, causing considerable loss of life. The Allies restrained their own blockade enforcement, fearing that too strict an approach would push neutral nations toward Germany. Project Catherine was the codename Britain had already given to its plan to force the ore trade to a stop by direct naval action.

• 3. Churchill's Campaign

  ›

  On the 16th of December 1939, Winston Churchill sent a formal memorandum to the British cabinet. He described the Norwegian ore traffic as "a major offensive operation of the war." He argued that no other measure offered so good a chance of abridging the waste and destruction of the conflict. Churchill served as First Lord of the Admiralty. He had already prepared an earlier scheme to break the trade by sending a British fleet directly into the Baltic. That plan, Project Catherine, was drawn up by Admiral of the Fleet William Boyle. Events overtook it, and it was canceled.

  The British Foreign Office raised a precedent from 1915 that complicated the discussion. That year, Britain had formally apologized to Norway after Royal Navy warships seized a German steamer inside the three-mile neutral limit. A delicate negotiation over chartering the entire Norwegian merchant fleet was also underway. Infringing on Norwegian territorial waters again risked jeopardizing both. Cabinet colleagues agreed with Churchill in principle but decided against the immediate use of mines.

  A crisis in February 1940 put the neutrality question in sharp relief. A German tanker named the Altmark was carrying 299 British prisoners of war homeward through the Norwegian Corridor. British aircraft spotted the vessel on the 14th of February. Churchill gave personal orders to pursue it. On the evening of the 16th-17th, sailors from the destroyer HMS Cossack boarded the Altmark in the Jøssingfjorden and freed all 299 prisoners. Norway lodged a formal protest. London held firm.

  On the 21st of March 1940, the British submarine HMS Ursula intercepted a German iron ore ship running from Narvik. HMS Ursula sank her eight miles off the Danish coast. The crew were all rescued. In the following days, several more German ships were sunk at the entrance to the Baltic. Berlin ordered its entire ore fleet into port. On the 28th of March, the Supreme War Council met in London to discuss intensifying the economic war. On the 3rd of April, the War Cabinet authorized the mining of the Skjærgård. On the morning of the 8th of April, British forces carried out Operation Wilfred and informed the Norwegian authorities of their intentions. Only one minefield was actually laid, in the mouth of Vestfjord leading directly to Narvik. By that morning, Germany's invasion of Norway was already underway.

• 4. Norway Falls

  ›

  On the 9th of April 1940, German forces began landing at Stavanger, Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen, and Narvik. Norway had received warnings from Allied and neutral sources about the imminent invasion. Despite those warnings, the Norwegians were caught largely unprepared. British and French forces landed considerable numbers of troops at Narvik on the 14th of April and fought fierce naval engagements off the coast. Further Allied landings took place between the 18th and the 23rd of April in what became known as the Battle of Narvik. The Germans had taken too firm a hold. The Norwegian government surrendered on the 9th of June 1940.

  The battles around Narvik left the port largely destroyed. Ships anchored there were sunk. The ore railway crossed the significant Norddal Bridge, which had been rigged for demolition before the war. An attempt to blow it up on the 14th of April failed for lack of expertise and explosives. The damage was repaired quickly, and the bridge carried ore traffic throughout the rest of the war. By 1940, annual production at Kiruna had fallen to 3 million tons from its 1937 peak. The decline stemmed partly from the destruction at Narvik and partly from the sinking of cargo ships in the harbor.

  Germany's occupation of Norway was complete by June 1940, and pressure on Sweden immediately shifted to its railway network. Germany asked Sweden to allow unarmed German troops to travel to and from Norway by rail. Sweden agreed. An accord on the transit traffic was signed on the 8th of July 1940. The ore shipments continued. Swedish naval vessels escorted German ore carriers through the Baltic. Swedish ships transported the ore directly. The view from Washington and London hardened considerably.

  On the 24th of November 1944, a Soviet submarine sank the Swedish passenger liner Hansa, killing 84 people, including children. Soviet submarines had been targeting iron ore ships in the Baltic since the Soviet Union entered the war. By that same year, transport of ore through the port of Luleå had ended entirely. To keep workers employed through declining production, the mining company LKAB assigned them to extract waste rock. Some were permitted to retire early with pensions.

• 5. Sweden's Impossible Position

  ›

  Erik Boheman, Sweden's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs throughout the war, gave a frank accounting of why his country had survived as a neutral. He cited luck, the way the war itself developed, the Swedish people's determination to resist invasion, and some degree of diplomatic skill. He was describing a situation that rarely offered clean choices.

  The governments in Washington and London believed Sweden had gone too far in collaborating with the Nazi regime. The specific grievances were concrete. Sweden had allowed German troops to transit its railway. Swedish ships had transported the ore. Swedish naval vessels had escorted German ore carriers through the Baltic. American military planners were appalled. The Allied assessment was direct: without the Swedish ore, Germany's war effort would grind to a halt.

  Sweden was simultaneously cut off from most Western imports. The Allied blockade of Europe and Germany's counter-blockade of the Baltic left only bare minimum commodities, such as oil, reaching Sweden from the West. Many Swedish mariners depended on trade with Germany for their livelihoods. The country faced pressure from both directions. After America joined the Allied economic war effort in early 1942, that pressure on Sweden intensified sharply. The most concentrated effort to break Sweden's trade links with Germany was still ahead. It would focus not on iron ore directly but on ball bearings.

• 6. The Pressure Builds

  ›

  In the last half of 1943 and early 1944, the United States led a concentrated bombing campaign against ball bearing production in Germany. The aim was to cripple a critical industrial chokepoint. German countermeasures blunted the results: factories dispersed and production shifted. By September 1943, the Allies had reached a trade agreement with Sweden to halt ball bearing exports to Germany. That agreement contained a significant gap. It imposed no restrictions on exports of the high-quality steel used to manufacture ball bearings. Sweden continued to ship that steel, largely offsetting any decline in the export of finished bearings.

  At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in October 1943, the Soviet Union proposed that Sweden take a more active role in the war. Soviet representatives suggested allowing Allied air bases on Swedish territory. Churchill believed the conflict could be brought to an earlier end if Sweden entered on the Allied side. He also pointed to Turkey, which supplied Germany with chromite ore, as a country whose intervention could open additional fronts against Hitler. Neither Sweden nor Turkey declared war.

  Sweden moved by degrees instead. Swedish officials agreed to cancel transit of German military material and troops across Swedish territory. They agreed to reduce iron ore exports, end naval escort of German ships in the Baltic, and cut back ball bearing exports. In exchange, Britain and the United States relaxed the blockade to allow Sweden to import rubber and oil. Diplomatic pressure, combined with Germany's deteriorating position after defeats at El Alamein, Stalingrad, and Kursk, finally persuaded Sweden. The trade ended by November 1944. The postwar recovery of northern Sweden's ore industry lay almost two years ahead.

• 7. After the War

  ›

  In the autumn of 1946, the first postwar shipments of Swedish iron ore left for England. That same year, LKAB signed a contract with Bethlehem Steel. By the early 1950s, annual ore production had returned to the levels of the best years of the 1930s.