Christian Günther

Christian Ernst Günther (5 December 1886 – 6 March 1966) was Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Hansson III Cabinet. The unity government was formed after the Soviet attack on Finland in November 1939, the Winter War, and it was dissolved on 31 July 1945.

Günther, whose father had been Swedish diplomat and whose grandfather briefly had been prime minister, had entered the civil service at the age of 30. He was eight years later transferred to the Foreign Ministry from the position as personal secretary of Prime Ministers Hjalmar Branting and Rickard Sandler. In the Foreign Ministry, he advanced in the 1930s to the position immediately beneath Foreign Minister Rickard Sandler, as ''Under-secretary of State for Foreign Affairs'' and then was Accredited as ambassador to Norway, where he intended to stay until retirement.

Günther's main achievement was to defend Sweden's neutrality during the Second World War, which made his country escape the fate of the occupied Norway and the defeated Finland. The dominant historiography for decades after the war ignored the Holocaust and used what it called the "small state realist" argument that neutrality and co-operation with Germany were necessary for survival since Germany was vastly more powerful. Concessions were limited and made only if the threat was too great, neutrality was bent but not broken, national unity was paramount and Sweden had the neutral right of trading with Germany. Swedish iron was needed by Germany, which had nothing to gain and much iron to lose by an invasion.

Sweden was run by a unity government, which included all major parties in the Riksdag. Provided by Wikipedia