The Aesthetics of Resistance Volume 2

by Peter Weiss

  Hours spent at Rosner’s kitchen table were squeezed between my other commitments. We asked ourselves how all these things that imposed themselves upon us could be systematized, categorized. Digressions were countered with lists, tables; visions were substituted for registers and protocols. We could no longer retreat into a history with which we could do as we pleased; the reports, telegrams, and decrees, the small, gray newspaper images in halftone forced us to engage with what was irrevocably predetermined. The mining landscape of Norberg had become more familiar to us than the arena of today’s events; while the era of half a millennium ago could be interpreted and took on a reality in which we were able to live, we watched our speculations about the immediate present become untenable and collapse time and again. For Rosner, the search for historical comparisons had lost importance, for him, what was happening around us was palpable, he stuck the things that were constantly slipping away from us into boxes, crates, he drew lines connecting the various complexes, plotted relations of magnitude in the muted light of the kitchen, and used figures and concentrations of power to calculate the impending shifts. The sheets he produced contained a reality in which individual names stood for forces in society, in which numbers of shares and economic speculation influenced the movement of troop divisions, fleets, and air force squadrons, in which even an apparently isolated silhouette could be related to remote contexts. Everything on his table was rational. Once deciphered, the rows of figures stated objective facts. Before progressing to larger groupings, he pried open a tiny window onto the internal structure that was held together by the command posts. He described two cells in the remand center on Bergsgatan. Warnke and Verner on mattresses. Each with two police officers holding their arms and legs, while one held their heads down and another poured milk through a glass tube stuck in their nostrils. The two German Communists, members of the exiled Party leadership, had begun a hunger strike because the authorities had rejected their demand to be treated as political refugees. They were suspected of having planned acts of sabotage against ships taking ore to Germany. In their files they were described as ringleaders and terrorists. Half of the nutrient-enriched liquid dribbled out, mixed with the blood from the lacerations in their mucous membranes. The head supervisor of the police station, Paulsson, a specialist in enhanced interrogation with a close relationship with the German secret police, pressured them to provide a confession. Two small torture chambers in the building representing the Swedish state. Two political prisoners, among hundreds of others who, after weeks of fruitless questioning, would be transferred to the camp in Långmora, the prison in Falun, the Kalmar penitentiary. A neutral, democratic state. In the neighboring state to the east, war. Finland had rejected the Soviet offers to regularize their borders. The value the Soviet Union placed on the pact with Germany was demonstrated by their efforts to secure their northeastern border. The Finnish army was under the command of the same individual who twenty years earlier had led the White Guards against the revolutionaries in their own land and against Russia. Mannerheim was backed up by the top brass of the Swedish military, who had joined forces with his men back in the day and were now once again offering their support, disguised as patriotic empathy. At their insistence, and in response to their anticipation that war in the North would be the signal for a German advance into Poland, Finland had bolstered its defensive capabilities. The small state had every right to defend itself in the face of a threat from a major power. Considering that Finland was facing the possibility of becoming a deployment zone for enemy forces, the Soviet Union’s request to lease Hanko and exchange a few parcels of land had been a paltry demand. For the Swedish generals, Finland was an outpost in the battle against the Communist menace. With their actions in early December of thirty-nine, they were the ones who conveyed an appraisal of the German-Soviet agreement that ought to have provoked a response in public opinion that departed from the widespread national intoxication. In their willingness to relieve the burden on Germany, to make a large portion of their military firepower available to Finland, they showed that they were convinced of the untenability of the nonaggression pact. But the intentions of the Swedish and Finnish generals did not assist the Germans in the way they had intended; instead, the war provided the German military leadership with a theater in which the offensive power of the Red Army could be examined without incurring losses themselves. In the first clashes it seemed that the Finnish troops had the advantage over the Soviet soldiers, who were thrown into combat underequipped for winter fighting and with no consideration of losses. The bourgeois, liberal, and Social Democratic press couldn’t get enough of expressing their joy about the instantly recognizable defeat of the invaders. Showering scorn on the proclaimed intention of protecting the Finnish working class. Disdain for the thesis that, following the formation of Kuusinen’s government in exile in Moscow, a situation of civil war had developed in Finland. Because he had published Kuusinen’s program, Lager, the editor in chief of Ny Dag, had been arrested. The advocates of Finnish Lappo-fascism on the other hand were not subject to any censorship, and the leadership of the Swedish army came out in favor of participation in the war without facing any opposition. Here, the squares, with thick outlines, referring to the centers of financial capital. Underneath, the pyramid of the intervention bloc. At the apex, the commander in chief, General Thörnell. Moving down the levels, Admiral Tamm, General Major Rappe, right-hand man of the commander in chief, General Douglas, chief of the Second Army Corps in Norrbotten, General Ehrensvärd, chief of the Defense Staff, Colonel Adlercreutz, chief of the Secret Service, and General Törngren—all former members of the Finnish White Guards. An inserted report from April of this year, when Thörnell and Tamm visited the German dictator for his fiftieth birthday, presenting him with a statuette of Charles XII of Sweden, the great enemy of Russia, as a symbol of their common bond. Lists of numerous officers who had been charged with disseminating propaganda, recruiting volunteers for the Expeditionary Corps, and sourcing and sending out munitions. The line of attack for this activism being issued by the banks and financial monopolies. Connected with the big banks were the corporations, predominantly in the hands of fifteen families. An empire, subject to the stiffest internal competition, held together by a common interest in the maintenance of free enterprise. A reference to the entanglements of the Wallenberg family companies: Jacob Wallenberg on the board of the commission for transactions with Germany; Marcus Wallenberg a member of the Swedish-British chamber of commerce. The two of them controlling the country’s economy. From their private bank, strands running to the major industrial concerns, LM Ericsson, Atlas Copco, Asea, Separator. A thin thread to the boiler room, outlined in red, in which I cart tin about. Hundreds of other affiliated firms. A trembling of powerful names in all branches, from ironworks, chemical combines, matchstick factories, transport companies, through to the West Indian and East Asian Company. Gray boxes swelling with the throngs of hundreds of thousands working for the magnates. Direct channels to the generals. One lot planning, money-grubbing, the others setting up armed defenses. Consultations with General Major Jung, chief of the armed forces, about the relative strength of the militaries, in this instance regarding the relationship with Great Britain. The summoning of Count Douglas in relation to the transport of ball bearings and ore shipments to Germany. Wenner-Gren, a confidant of Krupp, partner in the Bochum steel foundry, in his head office out on the islands of the Bahamas, issuing instructions to Malm, the chair of the board of directors of Handelsbanken. The conspiring of military and industry to found the Finland Committee, to launch a crusade against Communism. Imperceptible voices from the depositories of capital, a little clearer around the employers’ association, gaining resonance among the generals and in the leadership offices of the bourgeois parties, resounding in the conservative education system, the national associations, and hitting full volume in the Party presses. The government was partly bound to the major employers, partly battling for their integrity. An ongoing seesawi
ng of the scales; one moment, out of longstanding tradition, the balance tipping in favor of amity toward the Germans; and then, out of liberal ambitions, toward the Western European powers. Foreign Minister Sandler, Minister of Trade Möller, Defense Minister Sköld, head of the right wing of the Social Democrats for a quarter century, gave their support to the endeavors of the military leadership. Aligned with them, Attorney General Westman, from the Farmers’ League, and the leaders of the Right Party, Bagge and Domö. In the Social Democratic parliamentary caucus as well, the majority in favor of military support for Finland. Rosner’s finger slid from name to name. Dissenting positions were expressed in parliament by Branting and the member of the People’s Party, Andersson i Rasjön, the Social Democratic Finance Minister Wigforss, the Minister of Agriculture Bramstorp, from the Farmers’ League, and the Secretary of State Eriksson, a Social Democrat, and Quensel, an independent. For and against, right across all political formations. From both right and left, the demands to intervene and to maintain neutrality. Per Albin Hansson, leader of the patriarchal assembly, had to maintain the equilibrium. What united the war-minded, regardless of whether they sympathized with National Socialism or were swaddling themselves in the security blanket of Anglophilia, was the hope of crushing the Soviet Union. On the one side, the people who saw Germany as responsible for this; on the other those who wanted to consent to England’s request to march into Finland via northern Sweden. All that was to be decided was which alliance promised the best prospects for the future. In the end though, it was the desire to remain independent that prevailed, to stand by Finland as they saw fit. Thirteenth of December, government reshuffle, wrote Rosner. Hansson remained prime minister. Sandler, who had urged for Swedish troops to be sent to Åland, was replaced by Günther, who, of German extraction, was amenable to Berlin, and was also au fait with the necessary diplomacy of evasion. Möller was named minister of social affairs and minister of police, charged with monitoring the political opposition; Bagge became minister of culture, Domö minister of trade, in order to keep financial affairs under the control of the ultraconservatives. Andersson assumed the office of communications minister, Eriksson the ministry of the economy, while Sköld, Wigforss, Westman, Bramstorp, and Quensel retained their posts. No intervention, but comprehensive military assistance and the smuggling of volunteers. Disappointed that they weren’t allowed to participate in Field Marshal Baron Mannerheim’s war, the Swedish generals emptied their arsenals so they could at least contribute to the victory over the Red Army on a material level. In the absence of personal triumphs on the battlefield, the old commanders fanned the hatred of the Bolsheviks in their own country. Outstanding in this domain was Count Douglas, whose father, as marshal of the realm, had advocated an alliance with Germany during the World War. At Rosner’s, we saw the violence that was gathering together like a clenching fist, ready to rain down upon us; but also the signs of resilience, of the effort to maintain the foundations of democracy. At Brecht’s, we saw the signs of the approaching apocalyptical storm; overlaying the images of the frozen corpses in the Karelian snow, we saw the peasants of the Dalarna, strung up in the chimneys of their smelting huts, bound to the stake, chained by the neck and flogged, we heard the wailing of the women yoked to the plough, the whimpering of abandoned children.