Cold War Period (1945–1990)

This period was characterized with a growing interest in transnational cooperation and networking, which naturally existed also before the Second World War but became more salient because of the politically marginalized positions of the right-wing extremist groups in their home countries. The cooperation included, besides ideological and cultural exchange, more practical elements arising from joint events and publications to, for example, mutually used propaganda designs. This also partly reflects the other important element in the Cold War period’s right-wing extremist activism, which was often more focused on metapolitics, that is, on cultural activism and propaganda instead of direct political influencing (see Kotonen, 2022).

Transnational networks reached Norway and Denmark, too, with individual activists sometimes playing an important role within these networks. Varying historical experiences and events also affected the evolution of the right-wing extremist scenes. In officially neutral Sweden, the effects of Hitler’s legacy differed from those countries that were either occupied or were brothers in arms with Germany. For understanding the current cross-border cooperation, the Cold War period can be seen as an, to some extent, essential research topic because many of the networks that still exist, had, to certain extent, their roots in that period. To take just one example, NMR has counted the Swedish Nordiska Rikspartiet (Nordic Reich Party), which was founded in 1956 and active at times in all Nordic countries, among its most important predecessors. Organized RWE movements formed by post-Second World War generations, typically small neo-Nazi groups, started to re-emerge during the 1970s in Finland, Denmark, and Norway. Both in ideology and practice, these groups were more open to international influences than the nationally oriented, more conservative groups.

In Denmark, the postwar reorganization of the right-wing extremists appeared burdensome because the ideology itself was largely stigmatized in Danish society, and many of the supporters and members of the RWE parties were also condemned in courts as traitors. DNSAP, the only national socialist party in Denmark with representation in parliament, was not, despite such demands, banned after the war, as it disintegrated by itself. Loose national socialist networks remained, and the remnants of the party continued its existence under the leadership of Svend Salicath until the early 1980s. In the early 1960s, the party had, according to information given to the police by the party leader, around 25 members (Heiberg, 2009).

The National Socialist Movement of Denmark (Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Bevægelse, DNSB), founded in its current format in 1991, considering itself a successor of the DNSAP. However, already in the early 1970s, Povl Riis-Knudsen had founded an organization to replace the DNSAP of Salicath, which also used name DNSB. Many of the neo-Nazis active in the 1970s represented a kind of a second generation. Riis-Knudsen, for example, was the son of a SS officer.

The new activist cadre also started to create international links, occasionally combined with some pan-Nordic ideas. Riis-Knudsen also acted as a leader of the World Union of National Socialist (WUNS), with which also Salicath previously had contacts. WUNS was an international, cross-Atlantic umbrella group for neo-Nazis, founded in 1962 by Colin Jordan from the UK and George Lincoln Rockwell from the USA. The Danish contacts also benefited the foreign activists as the material, which was illegal in Germany, was produced in Denmark and could be easily smuggled there across the border.

Besides continuing ideological work and spreading leaflets and propaganda, by the 1980s, the Danish national socialists became more visible in the streets. The membership figures started to slowly rise, although staying in marginal numbers, and the DNSB expanded its organization to some new cities. During the Cold War period, the Danish national socialists did not participate in national elections. In 1989, however, a small splinter group of DNSB, Partiet De Nationale, took part in municipal election, gaining less than 100 votes.

After the Second World War, in the Paris Peace Treaty, Finland committed to ban the existing fascist organizations and prevent founding new ones. The Finnish government followed these commitments by banning most of the organizations, and several former leaders of national socialist and other right-wing organizations were also arrested or placed under surveillance. Because of these circumstances, RWE was very limited, and activism was mostly clandestine. Characteristic to the activism and organizations during the Cold War period was also that they were mostly short lived and sporadic, and there was no clear continuum between organizations or forms of activism.

Right after the war, however, there were already a handful of groups founded mostly by schoolboys inspired, for example, by the semimythical German resistance groups; these schoolboys collected guns and shared propaganda. The security police, in the hands of the communists after 1945, saw these groups as a breach of the peace treaty, and their activism also gave communists a handy propaganda tool against right-wing political groups because many of the schoolboys were also members of the Youth League of the National Coalition Party. These groups disappeared within few years, and the activism did not continue.

Few former activists and leaders of, for example, national socialist groups tried to continue limited activism during the 1950s, when the imminent fear of Soviet occupation started to vanish and, during the so-called “thaw,” the Soviet system also appeared to change into a less aggressive direction after the death of Stalin. With open activism still being impossible in Finland, former activists, mostly Swedish-speaking Finns, revitalized their contacts abroad, especially in Sweden. These connections, however, were discontinued when the activists retired.

Post-Second World War generations started limited activism during the early 1960s, founding groups imitating the far-right organizations of the 1930s, such as the Lapua movement and Patriotic People’s Front. Some of the groups, led by schoolboys and students, had clear-cut fascist programs and were keenly followed by the security police. Typical for the period was that these groups disappeared when the organizers grew up, and no new groups appeared to continue their work.

More visible and organized activism appeared only during the 1970s when a few neo-Nazi organizations were founded by the Finns, and one Swedish group, Nordiska Rikspartiet (NRP) also landed in Finland. As a leader and founder of one neo-Nazi party called Patriotic People’s Front (Isänmaallinen Kansanrintama), occultist and photographer Pekka Siitoin dominated the field from the mid-1970s until the mid-1980s.

The end of the Second World War did not only mark the breakdown of the collaboration regime in Norway. National socialism in general was discredited in the overwhelming part of Norwegian society. However, this did not necessarily mean a total end to the dissemination of extreme right ideas or activities promoted by some organizations. Certainly, fascist groups had never been many or politically very successful in Norway, but this did not hinder them from making attempts to rebuild and restructure their organizations after 1945. Working in close cooperation and having an ideological exchange with their “Nordic brothers” was probably an important aspect of their political agenda. At the same time, the social exclusion and political and juridically persecution of members of Nasjonal Samling made it far more difficult to restart political far-right activities in Norway than, for example, Sweden. Especially the first period after 1945 was characterized by the so-called treason trials against collaborators, most of them members of Nasjonal Samling and Norwegian SS volunteers. Accordingly, veteran groups spent most of their efforts restoring their social and political credibility. Their status as a traitor to the nation played a central role in their self-perception.

Very few studies existed on these groups and their Nordic cooperation. An example of early postwar activities can be seen in the magazine Folk og Land (People and Land), edited by former members of Nasjonal Samling. This group also tried, in cooperation with Nordiska Rikspartiet (Nordic Reich Party, NRP), to establish a common Nordic organization under the name Nordisk Samling (Nordic Unity). Several Norwegian fascists participated in a “Nordic” meeting in Copenhagen in 1947, organized by Per Engdahl and Nysvenska Rörelsen (New Swedish Movement, NSR). In 1951, Norwegian fascists also participated in a similar meeting in Malmö, which was the starting point for Engdahl’s Malmö movement, officially called the European Social Movement. However, we know very little about the role of Norwegians in this movement and their political activities in general. An exception is the earlier cooperation between Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian fascists in helping collaborators from Denmark and Norway to exile, which has been partly investigated.

Organized ultra-nationalism re-emerged in Norway in early 1970s, partly as a far-right backlash against the radical left mobilization and partly because of the mainstreaming of the Conservative party, which held office between 1965 and 1971. The main goal was to establish a political party that could represent the interests of the Nazis. As a result, Norsk Front (NF) was founded in 1975, headed by the media-savvy leader Erik Blücher. The party had approximately 1,400 members. The key issue was no longer the legal purge in Norway after the Second World War but rather the fight against communism. The party’s predecessors were the youth organization Nasjonal Ungdomsfylking and smaller groups mobilizing against communism, such as Anti-kommunistisk allianse. The activists were younger than before, and many of them had a more bourgeoisie background. Initially, the milieu mainly mobilized at the universities but eventually adopted a more violent strategy. In the late 1970s, activists affiliated to or inspired by NF carried out several severe attacks against “enemies,” most notably those associated with the left, including a left-wing bookstore in Tromsø and trade unionist march on May 1. The trials following these events resulted in the dissolution of NF in 1979. The group was replaced by Nasjonalt Folkeparti, but this party was also heavily affected by the fact that several of its key party activists were sentenced to prison for bombs, vandalism, and other criminal acts in 1985.

In the years immediately following the Second World War, the Lindholm movement dwindled until the party was disbanded in 1950. Of the pure national socialist parties of the interwar period, only various small local groups remained. The Swedish National Association and New Swedish Movement ceased to function as political parties and transformed themselves into idea unions, which mainly conducted their political activities in the form of metapolitics. They downplayed anti-Semitism and antidemocracy in favor of anticommunism, which was considered more politically viable during the Cold War. In 1956, however, the Nordic Reich Party was founded, which was the mediating link between the interwar national socialist parties and contemporary ones. The party existed during the years 1956 to 2009. The NRP had, except for the period 1975–1978 (when Oredsson’s wife Vera was party leader), Göran Assar Oredsson as the party leader. For most of its existence, the party came to operate in a political vacuum.

During the first half of the 1980s, the NRP was again able to note some successes. The party had its premises in the Stockholm suburb of Årsta. During the first half of the 1980s, parts of the party became more violently radicalized, and in the mid-1980s, several members, sympathizers, and officials were convicted for serious violent crimes. After the trials, much of the focus on the party disappeared, both in the mass media and, among potential activists and sympathizers, in favor of the new groups created in the wake of the lawsuits. The trials against the NRP members and sympathizers followed a period characterized by the search for new forms of organization and a new ideological base. The American strategies and ideas, especially the white power subculture, were making their entrance and mixed with the domestic tradition of European national socialism. The thoughts of the holy “race war” and the view of themselves as part of an “international resistance movement against the Jewish occupying power” began to take hold.

The Cold War period has been the most understudied period in all countries included in this literature review. This applies both to the general overviews of the period, as well as pan-Nordic aspects within literature. There have been more comprehensive studies on the situation in Sweden and Finland, though these have been made by individual researchers, and no ongoing research projects exist. The focus of the Cold War period historiography in general has been more on the East–West relations and on how the tensions between two superpowers affected domestic politics. In these studies as well, right-wing extremists occasionally may have played a minor role because they were, for example, active in building transnational anticommunist networks.

The research into Danish fascism after 1945 has been sparse. Primarily, the reorganization during the years of 1945–2022 of the extreme right was conducted by veterans of the Nazi milieu present during the Second World War. There was never a prohibition of having joined a Nazi party, but many of those who were punished in the judicial reckoning after the occupation were former members of the DNSAP. Consequently, many of the early postwar Nazi groups appeared to be veteran support or aid communities.

The most important examination of Danish fascism after the war appeared in a volume of the comprehensive report by the commission of enquiry into the Police Intelligence Service (PET) published in 2009; the aim was not charting right-wing activities, but the intelligence service’s surveillance, for which reason a Nordic dimension was generally nonexistent. It is mentioned, however, that in the 1960s, the Danish Nazis had some liaisons with Sweden (report by the commission of enquiry, see Heiberg, 2009).

A journalistic examination of the Nazi escape network organized after the Second World War includes a transnational dimension concerning a support structure set up in Sweden, Spain, and Argentina., This, however, did due to the journalistic methods not live up to basic academic standards (Foged & Krüger 1985).

In 2020 and 2022, the prominent Danish national socialist Povl H. Riis-Knudsen published his memoirs, covering the years 1949–1977. The volumes offered insights into the Danish national socialist scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Knudsen’s memoirs are of general interest because he played a prominent role in the international national socialist milieu in the 1970s (Riis-Knudsen, 2020, 2021). 

The Cold War period for RWE in Finland has come under scholarly scrutiny only recently, and the research is still quite scarce. The lack of research can be explained, at least partly, by the general understanding that there was nothing much to research and no active groups were known besides the notorious Pekka Siitoin and his parties (cf. Kullberg, 2011; Kestilä, 2006; Pekonen, 1999). During the period, there were no scholarly studies dealing with the topic, and only a few contemporary left-wing pamphlets have analyzed the RWE in any more detail. Besides leftist literature, the earliest period, which entailed activism by the schoolboys right after the war, has been mentioned in a few contemporary articles and books by conservative writers.

New research material, especially the opening of the security police archives for researchers, has somewhat changed the picture, though there are still not many active researchers studying the RWE of the period. The only scholarly study delving deeper into the evolution of the scene after the Second World War was Kotonen’s monograph covering the entire Cold War period. Mari Kalliala’s work covered the later period, focusing especially on the activities of Pekka Siitoin. In addition, Kotonen’s (2022) recent article focused internationalization and Nordic connections of the Finnish movement. The literature focusing on Cold War period conservative anticommunism with occasional links to RWE groups also provided some insights into the salience of the Nordic connections and ideas (Vesikansa, 2011).

In Swedish or other Nordic academic literature Finnish Cold War period groups or activists have been barely mentioned. Only exception has been the studies by Heléne Lööw (2004), in which activism of certain Finnish neo-Nazis living in Sweden have been analyzed, and one particular activist of Finnish origin active in Sweden, Nils Mandell, has also been interviewed for studies by Jeffrey Kaplan (2002; Kaplan & Weinberg, 1998). In these studies, though, the Finnish activists have been analyzed as part of the Swedish or international milieu.

The official histories of the Finnish security police, Suojelupoliisi, which is called colloquially Supo, have had a countering Soviet influence and espionage as their main focus, though they also include few remarks regarding RWE as well (Simola, 2009; Simola & Sirviö, 1999).

Regarding the Cold War period, the years up to 1973 must be considered the most understudied, with a clear need for research on the re-establishment of Nordic fascist and radical right networks, their ideological exchange, and their joint political activities. Especially the milieu of NS veterans and their Nordic cooperation in the first two decades after the end of the Second World War needs further investigation.

Because of the nature of the Nazi escape networks after the war, there exist two studies on Norwegian national socialist escapees. Both Anne Kristin Furuseth’s (2013) book on the subject and master’s student Eirk Øien’s (2019) research employed a transnational and entangled perspective, showing a close cooperation between Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes, as well as other Nazi milieus and networks across Europe and Latin America. In this respect, these studies constituted a positive exception to the dominant methodological nationalism.

Two master’s theses, finalized in the 2010s, dealt with fascist and far-right ideology in the Cold War period. Although Espen Olavsson Hårseth (2010) covered the establishment of the journal Folk og Land by former members of Nasjonal Samling, Lars Preus (2014) discussed the ideological development of Norwegian neo-Nazism in 1967 (see also Hårseth, 2017). Both these partly refer to contacts with other like-minded Scandinavian groups but do not have a transnational or entangled approach as such.

This is also the case regarding Kjetil Simonsen’s (2020) research article that analyzed anti-Semitism on the Norwegian far right. Even though Simonsen partly discussed the inspiration stemming from like-minded organizations in other Scandinavian countries, he did not further employ a transnational or entangled perspective.

Until today, the most comprehensive treatment on the emergence of the far right in Norway during the immediate postwar period can be seen in a monograph written by journalist Per Bangsund and published in 1984. Here, postwar fascism and far-right extremism in Norway was perceived—although not comprehensively investigated—as a part of a transnational network, where organizations and individuals in Sweden played the seminal role. Even though this monograph has been well researched, it lacked source references and therefor lacked reliability and did not live up to academic standards.

In other words, the lack of research on inter-Nordic fascist and far-right networks from the end of the war and up to the early 1970s is remarkable: there exists no academic and systematic study investigating neo-Nazi networks, ideological exchange, and activities as a Scandinavian-Nordic phenomenon.

In our analysis, we have identified 11 Swedish studies touching on the Cold War period. None of these studies specifically concerned Nordic cooperation between different fascist or national socialist groups. However, this does not necessarily mean that this was not addressed in any form in the current studies. The period 1945 to 1990 has been, like in other Nordic countries, heavily under-researched. This is probably related to the collapse of the milieu after 1945, when, in many countries, it was banned and, in others, was pushed to the extreme political margins. There is a large research gap here, which somewhat has affected the understanding of the movements born during the 1990s. Part of the history is simply missing.

However, one major work focused on Swedish national socialism and fascism from 1945 to 1979. The study by Lööw concerned the continued development of the Swedish National Association and New Sweden Movement, as well as the above-mentioned Nordic Reich Party. In connection with the NRP, which had the ambition of becoming a Nordic party, Nordic cooperation is also raised to some extent (Lööw, 2004). Some research concerned international networks and right-wing extremists within the so-called “stay-behind organizations” during the Cold War (Deland, 2010).

The first academic work in Sweden concerning the skinhead culture of the 1980s in Stockholm was a sociological study by Julio Ferrer (1983), after which several reports and journalistic works were published. Some research starting from the 1980s and early 1990s regarding the so-called 30th November celebrations in Lund and Stockholm can be found (see, e.g., Brink Pinto & Priers, 2013; Lööw, 1998; Lundström, 1995). The 30th November celebration went by the name of the Nordic riot night because activists from all over the Nordic countries in both the white power world and antiracist side participated. This also emphasized the importance of the common rituals and gatherings for the pan-Nordic cooperation of the extreme right milieu.

The studies of the Cold War period have been historical and mostly based on archival sources, though the material has become richer when approaching the 1980s and regarding its inclusion of ethnographic elements. This turn into a richer pool of research appeared because of the rising youth subcultures, which also had a strong transnational aspect (see, e.g., Kotonen, 2022; Lööw, 1998). Thematically, the prevailing approach has been organizational and biographical. Youth culture, especially the skinhead movement, became more salient issue only in the 1990s, when it was growingly seen also as a societal problem.

The focus of studies concerning Finland has typically been either on organizations or individuals, occasionally with an emphasis on the intellectual history and conceptual history of nationalism (Kotonen, 2017). Case studies on the Cold War period Finnish RWE have especially focused on neo-Nazi leader Pekka Siitoin (Kalliala, 1999, 2015; Kotonen, 2015). Along with these studies, brief discussions of societal and political responses (Kotonen, 2018) and state measures (Kotonen, 2020) are available. The primary data collection method has been archival research. No studies have used interviews as a data collection method, with the exception of Mari Kalliala’s case studies on Pekka Siitoin. Additionally, the studies have used newspaper sources and material produced by the right-wing extremist organizations. In her studies, Kalliala (1999) has additionally analyzed Siitoin using the cultic milieu as a framework to discuss his politics, along with the effect of his politics in unpolitical space. The occult ideas of Siitoin have also been a target of one popular publication (Häkkinen & Iitti, 2015).

The security police archives in different Nordic countries have been a central source for many studies. Most of the scholarly research focusing on the Cold War period RWE in Finland used security police (Supo) archives as their primary source. Scholars have also extensively used the archives of Pekka Siitoin, a collection which was donated to the National Library of Finland after his death in 2003 and opened for researchers during the 2010s. Additionally, the archives of certain Swedish far-right leaders Rütger Essen and Per Engdahl, stored in the National Archives in Stockholm, have been used (Kotonen, 2017, 2018).

Norwegian scholars largely showed no or only very little interest in the establishment and re-establishment of fascism and neo-Nazism in Norway and their ideological perspectives. The research focused on two themes: Ideology (Simonsen, Hårset, and Preus) and the escape of collaborators from legal persecution (Furuseth and Øien). Of the six studies, we have listed in our overview, four are master’s theses that have been finalized in the last decade. Two of them have a transnational and Nordic approach. This is an interesting start into a research field that needs further investigation.

The Swedish studies on the subjects were overwhelmingly historical studies based on archival materials such as movement, private, and police archives. The primary data collection method has been archival research, with occasional utilization of interview material, field studies, and analysis of the movement literature, newspapers, and magazines. With the rise of the right-wing extremist subcultures in the 1980s, music recordings and other related items were included as a part of research material (see Lööw, 1998). It should be emphasized that very little material from the movements themselves was preserved in some public archives. The material preserved mainly applied to the Swedish National Association and New Sweden movement.

Denmark had the most comprehensive and, more or less, also only study on the Cold War period study, one commissioned by the Police Intelligence Service (PET). In the study, the used research material consisted largely of their own archives, as well as other police archives, which have not been accessible in a similar manner to the other researchers. The likewise scarce Finnish literature also included two edited volumes produced by Finnish Security Intelligence Service, which also used their own archival sources and briefly charted RWE among other issues (Simola, 2009; Simola & Sirviö, 1999).

The number of researchers studying this period has been very limited. In Finland, the only active researcher focusing on the Cold War period was Tommi Kotonen, publishing most of the scholarly articles and books dealing, to some extent, with the pan-Nordic aspects of the RWE. In Norway, as well as in Denmark, there have been no active researchers focusing on this period. There are no ongoing research projects in Sweden about the period either. The NORFAS anthology (Karcher & Lundström, 2022) nevertheless included chapters focusing on or discussing in more limited manner the Cold War period.

Because research on Nordic RWE during the Cold War period has also generally been relatively scarce and conducted by only few scholars, it is not surprising to notice that the pan-Nordic aspects were almost nonexistent in research. This is also because of the fact that the focus of the milieu was generally on anticommunism, and “Nordic” phantasies regarding, for example, race theories were often nonexistent until the 1970s. Most of the studies analyzed here have scrutinized the pan-Nordic aspect only in passing, and in most cases, they did not go beyond describing existing networks, let alone studying entangled history.

Of the Finnish studies, although, for example, Kotonen’s studies stressed the importance of the contacts with Swedish activists for the evolution of the Finnish scene, the approach was not pan-Nordic and the analysis was made from the Finnish perspective. In a similar manner, Kalliala’s studies also explored Siitoin’s international networks, including the Nordic ones, without taking them as a special theme or analyzing their importance. In the most detail, the pan-Nordic aspect was present in Kotonen’s monograph (2018), which especially described the activities of the Nordiska Rikspartiet beyond Finnish borders.

In Sweden, and in addition to the above-mentioned studies concerning the 30th November riots and the Nordic Reich Party, there has been some research concerning the Nordic Reich Party’s role in the international organization WUNS (Simonelli, 2002). Thus, there has been a large gap in the research here. This can also be applied to Denmark and Norway. None of the studies mentioned in this review used an entangled or transnational method, and the period has been understudied and characterized by a general lack of in-depth studies.