A review of "Gåtan Nils Flyg" by Håkan Blomqvist
Nils Flyg (1891-1943) was a
Swedish Communist and left-socialist leader who became a fascist and Nazi German
sympathizer during his last years. Flyg's Herostratic fame survived for decades
after his passing, and I actually wrote a high school essay about the man circa
1987. It seems Håkan Blomqvist did me one better. He has written an entire book
on Flyg! If that's not enough, Blomqvist was once the national secretary of a
small leftist group spouting the same name as Flyg's organization,
Socialistiska Partiet. That's hard to beat, although I admit that
"Socialist Party" is a common enough name on the left...
Blomqvist's book is only available in Swedish. It's title can be translated both "The riddle of Nils Flyg and (his relation to) Nazism" or "The mysterious Nils Flyg and (the ideology of) Nazism". Blomqvist worked on the manuscript on an on-off basis for about 30 years (!), making the book somewhat uneven in terms of style. Some sections are written in a flowery and quasi-poetic language, others are as tedious as leftist conference resolutions, and one section sounds like a detective story (which Third Reich operative met Flyg when and where).
I don't think Blomqvist ever cracks the riddle of the mysterious Nils Flyg, but this may be due to his perspective, which sees Flyg's life and eventual fate as a tragedy and cautionary tale. His evolution towards fascism then becomes incomprehensible. Others have been more scathing, and looked upon Flyg as a base opportunist, who sold himself to the Nazi devil for thirty pieces of German Reichsmark. Although I don't like Flyg (I support the Allies), it would be interesting to read an analysis of Flyg by somebody who takes his ideological metamorphosis seriously, and analyzes it in its own right. What if, God forbid, Flyg actually *believed* in fascism as an ideological alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism?
That being said, Blomqvist does give the reader interesting bits and pieces of the puzzle. He points out that fascism had an ostensibly "leftist" wing, that even Hitler sometimes spouted "socialist" rhetoric and created a "welfare state" for German workers, that Flyg wasn't the only Communist or socialist who evolved in a fascist direction (Blomqvist mentions Doriot, Déat, Mosley and De Man), and that even Social Democrats and left-socialists collaborated with the Nazis during their occupations of Norway and Denmark, neighboring nations to Sweden. So did the Communists during the Hitler-Stalin pact. Flyg's trajectory from traditional socialism to less traditional "national socialism" may have been all his own, but it nevertheless does fit a broader context.
As a Trotskyist, Blomqvist also points to the failure of anti-Stalinist socialism at the hands of Stalinism, fascism and fascist-appeasing "democratic" capitalism. Many people, not just on the left, hoped or feared that liberal democracy was on the way out, to be replaced by some kind of authoritarian system. This might have affected Flyg, the former believer in anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialism, to change his perspective in favor of a more "realistic" one. I also get the impression from Blomqvist's study that Flyg was a hard boiled party man and ideologue, not only during his Communist period but even after his break with orthodox Communism, when he headed the independent Socialist Party. Perhaps his authoritarian and dogmatic outlook, coupled with a desire to smash the existing system, made it easier for him to transition to fascism, when the old options seemed outdated? A more common explanation to Flyg's pro-Nazi turn, also present in Blomqvist's book, is that the Socialist Party had become a small sect by the late 1930's, making it ripe for some pretty strange political gyrations (and an eager receiver of foreign funds from guess-who). The Socialist Party's most well known leader apart from Flyg, Karl Kilbom, had always been more "soft" and left the party in 1937, a split which irreparably damaged it. Another leading party member, Albin Ström, broke with Flyg a few years later. Many Socialist Party members followed Kilbom or Ström, while many others were demoralized by the constant factional fighting. Having lost most of its base in the traditional socialist and labor movements, it was "logical" for the Flyg faction to look for greener pastures elsewhere...
There was even a kind of "continuity" between Flyg's sectarian version of anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialism and his later fascism. The Flyg group campaigned vigorously against the League of Nations, the Soviet Union and the People's Front, and just as vigorously in support of Swedish neutrality while nevertheless aiding Finland during the Winter War. As a fascist, Flyg more or less kept these positions, while turning them "inside out", viewing them from a fascist perspective rather than a socialist one. Flyg apparently never declared himself to be a Nazi or even a fascist, insisting to his very last day that he was a socialist in the classical sense of the term. This sometimes led to absurd contradictions, as when one of Flyg's followers shouted "Long live communism" to a startled right-wing audience at an anti-Communist rally organized by Flyg's own party, or when Flyg commented one of Hitler's attacks on Stalin's "Bolshevism" by saying that, of course, Stalinism isn't true Bolshevism... Flyg insisted on calling his ideology "nationell socialism" rather than "nationalsocialism", the latter being the Nazi designation. (In English, I suppose he would have been a "national socialist" rather than a "National Socialist").
Flyg developed a theory, according to which Nazi Germany, while of course not being truly socialist, nevertheless was anti-capitalist in a muddled, contradictory fashion. The Nazi conquests are therefore objectively progressive and should be supported by all true socialists. After a Nazi victory, the contradictions within Nazism will come to a head, when workers demand more socialist measures from the Nazis. These contradictions will eventually lead to a revolutionary situation, during which the Nazis will be swept away (!) by the revolutionary proletariat, and true socialism once again will come to the fore. Support to Nazi Germany is therefore a clever tactic, rather than abject class treason. It's interesting to compare these (surreal) speculations with similar claims about the "objectively progressive" character of Stalinism (Sam Marcy) or American Cold War imperialism (Max Schachtman). Another parallel that suggests itself is the line of the German Communist Party during the "Third Period": after Hitler, us! This led the Communists to support a Nazi-initiated referendum in Prussia in 1931. There is also a parallel to "National Bolshevism" (the Russian Bolshevik Radek, hatching revolutionary conspiracies in Germany, dabbled in it during the chaotic years after World War I) or the theory of "proletarian nations" according to which Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union (pariah nations after World War I) are somehow "progressive" in comparison to Britain, France or the United States, which are "bourgeois nations" dominating the world.
Of course, not even the honest convictions of Nils Flyg (if indeed they were honest) can save the man from being branded a traitor. He took money from Nazi German sources to finance the party newspaper Folkets Dagblad, probably visited Berlin at one point, held secret meetings with Swedish generals plotting a coup against the Social Democratic government and spread vulgar anti-Semitic and anti-Traveller propaganda. It's interesting to note that Flyg, an able organizer and talented speaker, tried to make his "Socialist Party" hegemonic in the Swedish Nazi milieu, not without some success. Many Nazis joined Flyg's party, or deferred to it (and him). When Flyg died in 1943, the new chairman Agaton Blom promptly transformed the "Socialist Party" into a Nazi outfit pure and simple, dropping Flyg's curious philosophy about support to the Reich being merely a super-cunning tactic. Somewhat comically, Blom still kept the hammer as party symbol, now claiming that it wasn't the hammer of the socialist working class, but the Norse god Thor's hammer smashing plutocracy and Jewry! Had Flyg not died prematurely due to heart trouble, his fate during a Nazi invasion of Sweden might have been, shall we say, interesting...
Blomqvist's book about Nils Flyg isn't just a political treatise, but also a biography about the man behind the headlines. From a lowly working class background, he was ambitious, hard working and clever, but also a notorious womanizer and something of a bon vivant. Above all, he was a born leader and loved being in the limelight. His faithful but often neglected wife Elsa stood beside him until the bitter end, another unfortunate example of how even socialists reproduce patriarchal structures back stage. Other details also stand out. As a former Communist, Flyg used to be a personal friend of Otto Kuusinen, the Finnish Communist who was appointed by Stalin to head the (failed) Soviet puppet government of Finland in 1939. Of course, by that time, his friendship with Flyg was long gone, Flyg campaigning for military aid to Finland against Stalin. More weirdly, Blomqvist claims that Flyg was a childhood friend of Per Engdahl, the founder of the fascist New Swedish Movement! Another peculiar fact is that the only objective obituary after Flyg's death was written by anti-Nazi firebrand Ture Nerman, another estranged friend (and ex-Communist)...
As already noted, author Håkan Blomqvist never really solves the mystery of Nils Flyg (or Nils Flüg, as his detractors called him - the "ü" being a typical German vowel), but I think his book might nevertheless become the "classical" study of the would-be Quisling of Sweden. The text of "Gåtan Nils Flyg och nazismen" is available free on the web, but without the photo material, so procuring the actual book (provided you understand Swedish!) might nevertheless be a good idea.
Final point. There are actually two Swedish authors named Håkan Blomqvist. The book under review was penned by the leftist historian, previously the leader of the Trotskyist Socialist Party (unrelated to Flyg's group of the same name). The other guy is an ex-Anthroposophist and UFO-logist, mostly known for exposing the "Hylozoiks", a Nazi sect probably too bizarre even for Volksgenosse Flyg...
Blomqvist's book is only available in Swedish. It's title can be translated both "The riddle of Nils Flyg and (his relation to) Nazism" or "The mysterious Nils Flyg and (the ideology of) Nazism". Blomqvist worked on the manuscript on an on-off basis for about 30 years (!), making the book somewhat uneven in terms of style. Some sections are written in a flowery and quasi-poetic language, others are as tedious as leftist conference resolutions, and one section sounds like a detective story (which Third Reich operative met Flyg when and where).
I don't think Blomqvist ever cracks the riddle of the mysterious Nils Flyg, but this may be due to his perspective, which sees Flyg's life and eventual fate as a tragedy and cautionary tale. His evolution towards fascism then becomes incomprehensible. Others have been more scathing, and looked upon Flyg as a base opportunist, who sold himself to the Nazi devil for thirty pieces of German Reichsmark. Although I don't like Flyg (I support the Allies), it would be interesting to read an analysis of Flyg by somebody who takes his ideological metamorphosis seriously, and analyzes it in its own right. What if, God forbid, Flyg actually *believed* in fascism as an ideological alternative to both capitalism and Stalinism?
That being said, Blomqvist does give the reader interesting bits and pieces of the puzzle. He points out that fascism had an ostensibly "leftist" wing, that even Hitler sometimes spouted "socialist" rhetoric and created a "welfare state" for German workers, that Flyg wasn't the only Communist or socialist who evolved in a fascist direction (Blomqvist mentions Doriot, Déat, Mosley and De Man), and that even Social Democrats and left-socialists collaborated with the Nazis during their occupations of Norway and Denmark, neighboring nations to Sweden. So did the Communists during the Hitler-Stalin pact. Flyg's trajectory from traditional socialism to less traditional "national socialism" may have been all his own, but it nevertheless does fit a broader context.
As a Trotskyist, Blomqvist also points to the failure of anti-Stalinist socialism at the hands of Stalinism, fascism and fascist-appeasing "democratic" capitalism. Many people, not just on the left, hoped or feared that liberal democracy was on the way out, to be replaced by some kind of authoritarian system. This might have affected Flyg, the former believer in anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialism, to change his perspective in favor of a more "realistic" one. I also get the impression from Blomqvist's study that Flyg was a hard boiled party man and ideologue, not only during his Communist period but even after his break with orthodox Communism, when he headed the independent Socialist Party. Perhaps his authoritarian and dogmatic outlook, coupled with a desire to smash the existing system, made it easier for him to transition to fascism, when the old options seemed outdated? A more common explanation to Flyg's pro-Nazi turn, also present in Blomqvist's book, is that the Socialist Party had become a small sect by the late 1930's, making it ripe for some pretty strange political gyrations (and an eager receiver of foreign funds from guess-who). The Socialist Party's most well known leader apart from Flyg, Karl Kilbom, had always been more "soft" and left the party in 1937, a split which irreparably damaged it. Another leading party member, Albin Ström, broke with Flyg a few years later. Many Socialist Party members followed Kilbom or Ström, while many others were demoralized by the constant factional fighting. Having lost most of its base in the traditional socialist and labor movements, it was "logical" for the Flyg faction to look for greener pastures elsewhere...
There was even a kind of "continuity" between Flyg's sectarian version of anti-Stalinist revolutionary socialism and his later fascism. The Flyg group campaigned vigorously against the League of Nations, the Soviet Union and the People's Front, and just as vigorously in support of Swedish neutrality while nevertheless aiding Finland during the Winter War. As a fascist, Flyg more or less kept these positions, while turning them "inside out", viewing them from a fascist perspective rather than a socialist one. Flyg apparently never declared himself to be a Nazi or even a fascist, insisting to his very last day that he was a socialist in the classical sense of the term. This sometimes led to absurd contradictions, as when one of Flyg's followers shouted "Long live communism" to a startled right-wing audience at an anti-Communist rally organized by Flyg's own party, or when Flyg commented one of Hitler's attacks on Stalin's "Bolshevism" by saying that, of course, Stalinism isn't true Bolshevism... Flyg insisted on calling his ideology "nationell socialism" rather than "nationalsocialism", the latter being the Nazi designation. (In English, I suppose he would have been a "national socialist" rather than a "National Socialist").
Flyg developed a theory, according to which Nazi Germany, while of course not being truly socialist, nevertheless was anti-capitalist in a muddled, contradictory fashion. The Nazi conquests are therefore objectively progressive and should be supported by all true socialists. After a Nazi victory, the contradictions within Nazism will come to a head, when workers demand more socialist measures from the Nazis. These contradictions will eventually lead to a revolutionary situation, during which the Nazis will be swept away (!) by the revolutionary proletariat, and true socialism once again will come to the fore. Support to Nazi Germany is therefore a clever tactic, rather than abject class treason. It's interesting to compare these (surreal) speculations with similar claims about the "objectively progressive" character of Stalinism (Sam Marcy) or American Cold War imperialism (Max Schachtman). Another parallel that suggests itself is the line of the German Communist Party during the "Third Period": after Hitler, us! This led the Communists to support a Nazi-initiated referendum in Prussia in 1931. There is also a parallel to "National Bolshevism" (the Russian Bolshevik Radek, hatching revolutionary conspiracies in Germany, dabbled in it during the chaotic years after World War I) or the theory of "proletarian nations" according to which Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union (pariah nations after World War I) are somehow "progressive" in comparison to Britain, France or the United States, which are "bourgeois nations" dominating the world.
Of course, not even the honest convictions of Nils Flyg (if indeed they were honest) can save the man from being branded a traitor. He took money from Nazi German sources to finance the party newspaper Folkets Dagblad, probably visited Berlin at one point, held secret meetings with Swedish generals plotting a coup against the Social Democratic government and spread vulgar anti-Semitic and anti-Traveller propaganda. It's interesting to note that Flyg, an able organizer and talented speaker, tried to make his "Socialist Party" hegemonic in the Swedish Nazi milieu, not without some success. Many Nazis joined Flyg's party, or deferred to it (and him). When Flyg died in 1943, the new chairman Agaton Blom promptly transformed the "Socialist Party" into a Nazi outfit pure and simple, dropping Flyg's curious philosophy about support to the Reich being merely a super-cunning tactic. Somewhat comically, Blom still kept the hammer as party symbol, now claiming that it wasn't the hammer of the socialist working class, but the Norse god Thor's hammer smashing plutocracy and Jewry! Had Flyg not died prematurely due to heart trouble, his fate during a Nazi invasion of Sweden might have been, shall we say, interesting...
Blomqvist's book about Nils Flyg isn't just a political treatise, but also a biography about the man behind the headlines. From a lowly working class background, he was ambitious, hard working and clever, but also a notorious womanizer and something of a bon vivant. Above all, he was a born leader and loved being in the limelight. His faithful but often neglected wife Elsa stood beside him until the bitter end, another unfortunate example of how even socialists reproduce patriarchal structures back stage. Other details also stand out. As a former Communist, Flyg used to be a personal friend of Otto Kuusinen, the Finnish Communist who was appointed by Stalin to head the (failed) Soviet puppet government of Finland in 1939. Of course, by that time, his friendship with Flyg was long gone, Flyg campaigning for military aid to Finland against Stalin. More weirdly, Blomqvist claims that Flyg was a childhood friend of Per Engdahl, the founder of the fascist New Swedish Movement! Another peculiar fact is that the only objective obituary after Flyg's death was written by anti-Nazi firebrand Ture Nerman, another estranged friend (and ex-Communist)...
As already noted, author Håkan Blomqvist never really solves the mystery of Nils Flyg (or Nils Flüg, as his detractors called him - the "ü" being a typical German vowel), but I think his book might nevertheless become the "classical" study of the would-be Quisling of Sweden. The text of "Gåtan Nils Flyg och nazismen" is available free on the web, but without the photo material, so procuring the actual book (provided you understand Swedish!) might nevertheless be a good idea.
Final point. There are actually two Swedish authors named Håkan Blomqvist. The book under review was penned by the leftist historian, previously the leader of the Trotskyist Socialist Party (unrelated to Flyg's group of the same name). The other guy is an ex-Anthroposophist and UFO-logist, mostly known for exposing the "Hylozoiks", a Nazi sect probably too bizarre even for Volksgenosse Flyg...
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