During the Second World War, the neutral country of Sweden became a sanctuary for military personnel trying to evade capture from enemy forces. Those who managed to safely reach Swedish borders were placed in internment camps, which were managed by the Internment Section commanded by Folke Bernadotte. The prisoner of war camps in Sweden were located outside small towns and communities across the country. Some of these prisoners of war would spend most of the war in Swedish internment and become very familiar with Swedish society.
The aim of this thesis is to explain how prisoners of war were treated by the Internment Section and how geopolitical interests were reflected in the treatment of prisoners of war. The source material that forms the foundation of this research is the Internment Section's incoming and outgoing communiqués between 1940 and 1945. The theoretical framework for this thesis stems from Erving Goffman's theory of total institutions. Goffman's theory has then been used to examine the source material according to nine factors: Organization, Rules, and Housing; Diet and Material Needs; Censorship and Social Interactions; Daily Life, Welfare, and Leisure; Work; Education; Healthcare and Pastoral Care; Conflict, Crime, and Punishments. Using Goffman's theory and the nine factors will show how geopolitical interests granted internees from certain countries preferential treatment.
The result of this study shows that allied prisoners of war had a much larger degree of freedom and privileges than their counterparts from Germany and the Soviet Union. While prisoners of war from Germany and the Soviet Union lived in camps surrounded by barbed wire and had limited opportunities and freedom, allied prisoners of war from 1943 lived in accommodations outside the internment camps, had access to education, and had very few restrictions on their movement and freedoms. These privileges bestowed upon the allied prisoners of war were part of a plan by the Internment Section to garner Sweden goodwill in the years after the war. The allied prisoners of war in Sweden made a big impression on the local communities, they spent their nights in bars and dance halls with the locals and participated in other local events. The results of this thesis will grant insight of how varied the experiences of POWs can be, and how these experiences were formed by geopolitical interests.