35 Facts About Olof Palme

Olof Palme left office after failing to form a government after the 1976 general election, which ended 40 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democratic Party.

Olof Palme faced a second defeat in 1979, but he returned as prime minister after electoral victories in 1982 and 1985, and served until his death.

Olof Palme was a pivotal and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics from the 1960s onward.

Olof Palme was steadfast in his non-alignment policy towards the superpowers, accompanied by support for numerous liberation movements following decolonization including, most controversially, economic and vocal support for a number of Third World governments.

Olof Palme was the first Western head of government to visit Cuba after its revolution, giving a speech in Santiago praising contemporary Cuban revolutionaries.

Sven Olof Joachim Palme was born on 30 January 1927 into an upper class, conservative Lutheran family in the Ostermalm district of Stockholm.

The progenitor of the Olof Palme family was skipper Olof Palme Lydert of Ystad of either Dutch or German ancestry.

One branch of the family, of which Olof Palme was part, and which became more affluent, relocated to Kalmar; that branch is related to several other prominent Swedish families such as the Kreugers, von Sydows and the Wallenbergs.

Olof Palme's father, Gunnar Palme, was a businessman, son of Sven Theodore Palme and Swedish-speaking Finnish Baroness Hanna Maria von Born-Sarvilahti.

Olof Palme studied at Sigtunaskolan Humanistiska Laroverket, one of Sweden's few residential high schools, and passed the university entrance examination with high marks at the age of 17.

Olof Palme was called up into the Army in January 1945 and did his compulsory military service at Svea Artillery Regiment between 1945 and 1947, becoming in 1956 a reserve officer with the rank of Captain in the Artillery.

Olof Palme wrote his senior honour thesis on the United Auto Workers union, led at the time by Walter Reuther.

In later years, Olof Palme regularly remarked during his many subsequent American visits, that the United States had made him a socialist, a remark that often has caused confusion.

Olof Palme attributed his becoming a social democrat to three major influences:.

In 1956, Olof Palme married children's psychologist Lisbeth Beck-Friis, and together they had three sons: Joakim, Marten, and Mattias Olof Palme.

In 1953, Palme was recruited by social democratic prime minister Tage Erlander to work as his personal secretary, becoming the first of Erlander's large personal staff, a group of young aides such as Ingvar Carlsson and Bengt K A Johansson, a group that became known as "the boys".

Olof Palme was a member of the Worker's Educational Association.

The protests culminated with the occupation of the Student Union Building in Stockholm; Olof Palme came there and tried to comfort the students, urging them to use democratic methods for the pursuit of their cause.

On 21 February 1968, Olof Palme participated in a protest in Stockholm against US involvement in the war in Vietnam together with the North Vietnamese ambassador to the Soviet Union, Nguyen Tho Chan.

When party leader Tage Erlander stepped down in 1969, Olof Palme was elected as the new leader by the Social Democratic party congress and asked by king Gustaf VI Adolf to form a government and succeed Erlander as Prime Minister.

Olof Palme was later asked when Erlander first hinted to him that he wanted him to succeed him.

Olof Palme was very popular among the left, but harshly detested by liberals and conservatives.

The Olof Palme cabinet continued to govern the country, but several times they had to draw lots to decide on some issues, although most important issues were decided through a consensus agreement.

The Olof Palme cabinet was active in the field of education, introducing such reforms as a system of loans and benefits for students, regional universities, and preschool for all children.

In 1968, Olof Palme was a driving force behind the release of the documentary Dom kallar oss mods.

The controversial film, depicting two social outcasts, was scheduled to be released in an edited form but Olof Palme thought the material was too socially important to be cut.

An outspoken supporter of gender equality, Olof Palme sparked interest for women's rights issues by attending a World Women's Conference in Mexico.

Olof Palme made a feminist speech called "The Emancipation of Man" at a meeting of the Woman's National Democratic Club on 8 June 1970; this speech was later published in 1972.

Olof Palme advocated for nuclear energy to move away from fossil fuels in his speech during the Stockholm Conference in 1972.

All of this ensured that Olof Palme had many opponents as well as many friends abroad.

On 23 December 1972, Olof Palme made a speech on Swedish national radio where he compared the ongoing US bombings of Hanoi to historical atrocities, namely the bombing of Guernica, the massacres of Oradour-sur-Glane, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice and Sharpeville, and the extermination of Jews and other groups at Treblinka.

Political violence was little-known in Sweden at the time, and Olof Palme often went about without a bodyguard.

Olof Palme was pronounced dead on arrival at the Sabbatsberg Hospital at 00:06 CET.

Olof Palme took over the leadership of the Social Democratic Party, which he held until 1996.

On 10 June 2020, Swedish prosecutors stated publicly that they knew who had killed Olof Palme and named Stig Engstrom, known as "Skandia Man", as the assassin.