Per Engdahl
| Per Engdahl | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Per Claes Sven Edvard Engdahl 25 February 1909 Jönköping |
| Died | 4 May 1994 (aged 85) Malmö |
| Citizenship | Swedish |
| Nationality | Swede |
| Political party | Sweden's Fascist Struggle Organization New Swedish Movement National League of Sweden European Social Movement |
Per Claes Sven Edvard Engdahl (25 February 1909 – 4 May 1994) was a leading Swedish far-right politician. He was the leader of Sveriges Fascistiska Kamporganisation, SFKO (Sweden's Fascist Struggle Organization) during the 1920s.
Born in Jönköping, he came from a conservative family with a strong military tradition. He attended Uppsala University where he studied philosophy.
Engdahl began his political career as an independent whilst a student in Uppsala, advocating a fascist-influenced policy of his own creation which he called nysvenskhet ('new Swedishness'). An attempt was made in 1932 to incorporate his group into the newly formed Nationalsocialistiska folkpartiet of Sven Olov Lindholm (a pro-Nazi party) although Engdahl resisted their overtures.
As an ideology, nysvenskhet supported a strong Swedish nationalism, corporatism, anti-Semitism and anti-communism as well as a cult of personality around Engdahl himself. It placed an emphasis on racial nationalism, advocated the Madagascar Plan, and called for the replacement of the existing Swedish parliament with a corporatist body elected on an occupational franchise. The policy overtly rejected Nazism, instead looking more towards Benito Mussolini for inspiration while also seeking to unify all groups against democracy, whether they were fascist or not. However, he is also 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 Engdahl also 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 Kjellén.
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