ABSTRACT

Although the Nordic countries have a reputation for tolerance and social democracy, they were not immune to fascism which spread across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This book offers the first comprehensive history of anti-fascism in the Nordic Countries. Through a number of case studies on anti-fascism in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of contentious politics in the Nordic Countries and to our broader knowledge of European fascism and anti-fascism. The case studies concentrate on the different manifestations of resistance to fascism and Nazism in the interwar era as well as some of the postwar variants. The book will be of considerable interest to scholars of anti-fascism as well as researchers of Nordic and Scandinavian history and politics.

chapter |17 pages

Introduction

part II|54 pages

Anti-fascist youth activism and militant resistance

chapter 5|22 pages

Three arrows against the swastika

Militant social democracy and the radical opposition to fascism in Denmark, 1932–1934

chapter 7|19 pages

‘Boycott the Nazi Flag’

The anti-fascism of the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers

part III|74 pages

Cultural fronts and anti-fascist intellectuals

chapter 8|17 pages

Anti-fascist race biology

Gunnar Dahlberg and the long farewell to the Nordic ‘master race’

chapter 10|14 pages

Intellectuals ready to fight

Anti-fascist cultural fronts in Scandinavia, 1935–1939

chapter 11|17 pages

Fighting for peace

The Workers’ Stage, popular front and Spanish aid in 1930s Finland *

chapter 12|13 pages

The last ‘Münzenberg empire’

The transnational networks of Die Zukunft in the Nordic Countries, 1938–1940 1

part IV|54 pages

Post-war anti-fascisms

chapter 13|19 pages

Framing anti-fascism in the Cold War

The Socialist Youth International and Franco’s regime after the Second World War

chapter 15|17 pages

Challenging fascist spatial claims

The struggle over the 30 November marches in southern Sweden

chapter |6 pages

Afterword