Comment by StableAlkyne

I'm a Brit who speaks Swedish, and recently watched the Swedish TV company SVT's documentary "Sweden in the war" (sverige i kriget). I can maybe add some info here just out of personal curiosity on the same subject.

There were basically right wing elements in every European country. Sympathisers. This included Sweden. So that's what OP was getting at in part. Germany was somewhat revered at the time, as an impressive economic and cultural force. There was a lot of cultural overlap, and conversely the Germans respected the heritage and culture of Scandinavia and also of England, which it saw as a Germanic cousin.

The documentary did a good job of balancing the fact that Sweden let the German army and economy use its railways and iron ore for far longer than it should have, right up until it became finally too intolerable to support them in any way (discovery of the reality of the camps). Neutrality therefore is somewhat subjective in that respect.

They had precedent for neutrality, from previous conflicts where no side was favoured, so imo they weren't implicitly supporting the nazi movement, despite plenty of home support. It's a solid strategy from a game theory perspective. No mass bombings, few casualties, wait it out, be the adult in the room. Except they didn't know how bad it would get.

In their favour they allowed thousands of Norwegian resistance fighters to organise safely in Sweden. They offered safe harbour to thousands of Jewish refugees from all neighbouring occupied countries. They protected and supplied Finns too. British operatives somehow managed to work without hindrance on missions to take out German supplies moving through Sweden. It became a neutral safe space for diplomats, refugees and resistance fighters. And this was before they found out the worst of what was going on.

Later they took a stand, blocked German access and were among the first to move in and liberate the camps/offer red cross style support.

Imo it's a very nuanced situation and I'm probably more likely to give the benefit of the doubt at this point. But many Danes and Norwegians were displeased with the neutral stance as they battled to avoid occupation and deportations.

As for Japan, I'd just add that I read recently on the BBC that some 40% or more of the victims of the bombings were Koreans. As second class citizens they had to clean up the bodies and stayed among the radioactive materials far longer than native residents, who could move out to the country with their families. They live on now with intergenerational medical and social issues with barely a nod of recognition.

To think it takes the best part of 100 years for all of this to be public knowledge is testament to how much every participant wants to save face. But at what cost? The legacy of war lives on for centuries, it would seem.