Per Claes Sven Edvard Engdahl was a leading Swedish far-right politician.
37 Facts About Per Engdahl
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Per Engdahl was a leader of Sveriges Fascistiska Kamporganisation, during the 1930s.
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Per Engdahl led and was involved in various other fascist movements in Sweden and Europe after World War II, though he never had electoral success.
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Per Engdahl influenced the founding of far-right group Bevara Sverige Svenskt, which eventually became the modern political party the Sweden Democrats.
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Per Engdahl has gained posthumous notoriety due to his connections to IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad.
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Per Claes Sven Edvard Engdahl was born in Jonkoping on 25 February 1909.
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Per Engdahl was the son of Major Sven Edvard Engdahl and Karin Hakansson.
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Per Engdahl came from a conservative family with a strong military tradition.
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Per Engdahl obtained a Bachelor's degree in 1930 and a PhD in 1935.
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The Karolinska forbundet published their 1930 yearbook in 1931, and Engdahl wrote a section on King Charles XII in it.
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Per Engdahl argued that Charles XII had a multi-faceted personality and one of the greatest men of all time.
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In 1935, Per Engdahl published a collection of poetry titled "Stormsvept".
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The book defended ongoing purges of German Jews in the administration and universities, with Per Engdahl describing it as "fully motivated" and a "sound reaction against the influence of the Jews on German cultural life".
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Per Engdahl downplayed his support for Nazism in his 1945 book Sweden after the war Swedish: Sverige efter kriget, though he later admitted his support for the Nazi concept of a Volksgemeinschaft.
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Per Engdahl began his political career while still a student in Uppsala.
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Per Engdahl became an admirer of Italian fascism and Benito Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922.
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Per Engdahl advocated a fascist-influenced policy of his own creation which he called nysvenskhet.
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An attempt was made in 1932 to incorporate his group into the newly formed Nation cialistiska folkpartiet of Sven Olov Lindholm although Per Engdahl resisted their overtures.
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Per Engdahl wrote the first published Swedish biography on Mussolini.
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However, he is known to have praised Hitler in comments such as: "Today [23 April 1944], we can only salute Adolf Hitler as God's chosen savior of Europe" Nonetheless Per Engdahl frequently claimed that he followed neither man, arguing that his ideology was purely Swedish in nature, and as such he claimed his inspirations to be Sven Hedin, Adrian Molin and Rudolf Kjellen.
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Per Engdahl founded his own group, Riksforbundet Det nya Sverige, in 1937.
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Per Engdahl visited Germany in 1941, where, according to his memoirs, he was asked if he "wished to become a Swedish Quisling", writing that he would have replied "no", part of his attempts to paint himself as a patriot who would have resisted a Nazi invasion of Sweden.
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In 1942, Per Engdahl visited Norway's fascist leader Vidkun Quisling, and then met Wehrmacht representatives in Finland, leading to his passport being confiscated.
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Per Engdahl was one of the contributors of a Nazi publication, Der Weg, which was published from 1947 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Per Engdahl became a leading figure in the European neo-fascist scene, and was instrumental in setting up the European Social Movement in 1951, hosting the meeting in his home base of Malmo, leading to the organization being known as the Malmo Movement.
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Per Engdahl presented himself as an electoral candidate in Gothenburg in election of 1958 and, although unsuccessful, he captured enough votes to deny the Social Democratic Party the seat.
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Per Engdahl served as part of the journal's five man editorial board alongside Hans Oehler, Paul van Tienen, Erik Laerum and Erich Kern.
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Per Engdahl attracted the support of Holocaust deniers, an issue which historian Bjorn Kumm says Engdahl "wavered" on.
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Per Engdahl expressed support for Israel, viewing Israelis as "great enterprising pioneers of the desert".
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Per Engdahl was interviewed in the 1993 series Blagul nazism, broadcast by Sveriges Television.
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Per Engdahl's death was publicly announced in Sweden two weeks after his funeral.
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In 1979, Per Engdahl inspired the creation of the far-right organization Bevara Sverige Svenskt.
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In post-war Sweden, Per Engdahl emphatically denied that he was or had even been a Nazi, as well as his antisemtism.
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Kumm agreed that Per Engdahl was not a Nazi, but wrote that "he was certainly a fascist".
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The rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center stated that "Anyone who reads history knows that if the Germans had won the war, Engdahl would have been the man to hand over the Jews".
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Per Engdahl donated all of his documents to the Swedish National Archives.
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Per Engdahl stated that he attended Engdahl's meetings from 1945 to 1948, due to them both being fervent anti-communists, but that he left after he found the meetings to be in "pure Nazi style".