Karl Ivan Westman

Karl Ivan Westman (August 5, 1889 – April 24, 1970), Swedish diplomat, 1928–1938 Sweden's Minister in Bern and at the League of Nations, in connection with the Continuation War Sweden's ambassador to Helsinki March 1941 – October 1942, and after World War II Sweden's ambassador to Paris 1947–1956.

Westman had, as the highly intelligent man he was, done a fast career in Sweden's foreign ministry. His analyses of the host countries, and the power play at the League of Nations, were considered outstanding — a judgement that holds also in retrospect. The mission at the League of Nations was considered central to Sweden's foreign policy during the interbellum; and when appointed to Helsinki, that was at a moment when it was considered the most crucial of Sweden's embassies. For a diplomat, he was however also extraordinarily outspoken, often with a significant amount of sarcasm and unveiled criticism.

Karl Ivan Westman was the brother of Karl Gustaf Westman, Sweden's Justice Minister during World War II.

In his youth, Westman had been involved in the Nationalist Activism movement, which provided him both with relevant contacts and a good understanding for contemporary thinking in independent Finland. But he was also critical of its political development, from the bloody aftermath of the Civil War and forth, and particularly suspicious against the fennoman school of thoughts that dominated outside of the Finland-Swedish circles, and what he perceived as their strong anti-Nordic undercurrent.

His outspoken opposition against the host country's increasing cooperation with Nazi Germany, in the run up to and during the Continuation War, led to an unfortunate failure of his mission to Helsinki. His reports to Stockholm were factually correct, but he was unsuited to reestablish a Finnish feeling of trust for the Swedes after the trauma of the Winter War, and what in Finland was widely perceived as Sweden's betrayal; and in Helsinki the suspicion grew that his reports were in fact unfavorable. Most crucially, he never came on speaking terms with Finland's foreign minister Rolf Witting, despite their shared mother tongue. This contributed to the abortion of close intelligence cooperation between the two countries, and resulted among other things in a total failure for the Swedish attempts to improve the relations with the Third Reich be means of some kind of cooperation in Operation Barbarossa — executed as "support for Finland's heroic struggle against Bolshevism" — at the same time intending to ease Finland's emotional dependency on Germany.

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