German anti-Versailles propaganda in Swedish newspapers 1919-1939

The project examines the activities of German actors in placing articles with propaganda content in Swedish newspapers during the period 1919-1939. The main object of study is the "Aufklärungsausschuss Hamburg-Bremen" at the Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg, which mainly distributed articles to the foreign press, including the Swedish. This 'information committee' was itself part of the German nationalist anti-Versailles movement. The central intermediary in Sweden was the journalist Paul Grassmann, who after 1933 became press attaché at the German legation in Stockholm. This also identifies an interesting continuity between interwar and Third Reich propaganda. Based on archive material in Hamburg, Stockholm and Berlin, the project will investigate how newspaper articles were conveyed to the Swedish press, which newspapers published these articles, and what image of the world in general, and Germany in particular, the German propaganda sought to spread in Sweden. This is possible because at least some of the records relating to the Aufklärungsausschuss Hamburg-Bremen have survived the war, and because Paul Grassmann's heirs have recently made his personal archive available at the National Archives in Stockholm.