Rebuilding the Swedish Empire

[Arilou]

Well logically the Torneå valley should belong to Finland and Åland to Sweden, but yeah.. Who needs logic in border drawing?

Traditionally the finnish/swedish border was actually at Kemi, rather than Torneå, insofar as there actual was a border.

 

[Arilou]

I was recently reading about Russian war planning in the years leading up to 1914, and it's interesting that they took seriously the idea that if a war broke out against Germany and Austria-Hungary, Sweden might well ally with the Germans. In their plans an entire army was deployed around St Petersburg in order to defend against an amphibious landing in the Gulf of Finland or the Baltic States.

While Sweden was diplomatically pro-german in WWI, there was, AFAIK, pretty much never any serious debate about joining the war actively. (and all three scandinavian countries had declared neutrality at the outset)

Partially I suspect becuase the internal situtation was fraught enough as it was.

 

[Arilou]

Sweden could have joined the Russia bashing before/after Brest-Litovsk, they could have tried to seize Finland.

Too late at that point. They might have set up some scion of the Royal family as King of Finland, but annexation was pretty much out of the question at that point. Scandinavism pretty much died in the 1870's.

 

[Semper Victor]

I was recently reading about Russian war planning in the years leading up to 1914, and it's interesting that they took seriously the idea that if a war broke out against Germany and Austria-Hungary, Sweden might well ally with the Germans. In their plans an entire army was deployed around St Petersburg in order to defend against an amphibious landing in the Gulf of Finland or the Baltic States.

The pre-1914 Russian war plans tended to be quite picturesque. General Yuri N.Danilov even drafted a plan once against a combined attack against Russia by Sweden, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, Persia, China and Japan. As a contemporary Russian officer commented, "he only forgot to add the Martians" :rofl: