Ture Nerman - World War II

World War II

On 20 April 1933, a couple of months after Hitler had taken power in Germany, Nerman stood up in the Swedish parliament and demanded that Sweden should grant asylum for all German Jews who would like to come. The issue was taken up for vote, but voted against.

When World War II broke out in 1939 Sweden declared itself neutral, but Ture Nerman was not neutral. During the war, Ture Nerman was best known as the editor of Trots allt! (Despite Everything!), an anti-Nazi paper that caused furor at the German Embassy in Stockholm. Trots allt! also criticized the Swedish government for, out of fear of Hitler, allowing German troop transports through Sweden. At its peak, the weekly paper achieved a circulation of 66,000 in 1942.

The paper borrowed its name from a text by Karl Liebknecht, Trotz alledem!, which he wrote on the day before he was murdered in 1919.

At first the Swedish government didn’t tolerate Trots Allt! since it broke with the neutrality. Many of Nerman's anti-war and anti-Nazi writings of this time were not allowed to be published by the censorship. Ture Nerman was even sentenced to jail for three months in the winter of 1939. But the paper was very popular and a lot of financial help came in from supporters.

One of Nerman's closest collaborators in those days was Israel Holmgren, who also was sentenced to jail.

At the end of 1942, Ture Nerman ran into his former friend Nils Flyg in the streets of Stockholm. Nils Flyg who now had developed into a Nazi supporter. Nerman asked him: “What are you going to do now?” Flyg said: “I’m going to save Sweden – and I’m going to save you too!” Ture Nerman gave him an ironic “Thank you.” They never saw each other again: only a couple of weeks later Nils Flyg died.

On 7 May 1945 Nazi Germany finally surrendered. On 16 May, Ture Nerman went to the liberated Norway together with a group of Norwegian refuges returning from their exile in Sweden. Trots Allt! had been a great supporter of the Norwegian freedom struggle against the Nazi occupation and smuggled in illegal issues of the paper had been were popular amongst the Norwegians.