Intelligence reporting and crisis: Swedish diplomats’ reporting of intelligence from the Baltic States 1938-1940

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based on a review of the correspondence between Swedish diplomats in the Baltic States and the Swedish Foreign Ministry for the years 1938–1940, the purpose of this article is, firstly, to elaborate a framework for the analysis of intelligence reporting in times of crisis, secondly, to investigate how the Swedish diplomats in the Baltic States went about to report intelligence, and thirdly, to try to reconstruct how the Swedes coped with the volatile conditions characteristic of these years. The article concludes that the period can be divided into four phases, each marked by their respective conditions for intelligence reporting, and that despite shifts to the Swedes’ access to different types of sources, they were still able to compensate for the loss of certain sources – most notably, among the Baltic political and governmental elites – and keep Stockholm updated with developments. Their effort in this regard arguably adds a new dimension to prevailing understandings of Sweden’s interwar Baltic policy.