Jakt på spioner och sabotörer. Ett skånskt perspektiv från andra världskrigets inledning.

Sammanfattning

The Second World War (WW2) started in September 1939, by Germany invading Poland. Soon after, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, followed by the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940, thus Sweden found itself surrounded by war. As Sweden held a policy of neutrality during the war, it had to find ways of gathering information to maintain this policy and secure the country from espionage, unwanted intelligence activities, and sabotage. To do so, old official intelligence services was re-established and new, more secret, services was established. These intelligence services have been studied at a general organisational level, but not on a local level, like county. Skåne is a landscape in the south of Sweden, with borders to all the parties involved in WW2. This study focuses on the upstart of intelligence services in this area during the first six months of 1940, by using available archives. The study aims to describe the local organisation and operations of the intelligence service “Allmänna Säkerhetstjänsten” during this period. The study shows that the local organisation in Skåne was built on resources from the existing police authorities and three persons were sentenced to prison for espionage