We are delighted to announce that NORFAS-researcher Gustaf Forsell, Uppsala University, successfully defended his PhD thesis “Blodet och korset: tankefigurer i kristen nationalsocialism i Sverige, 1925–1945” on 19 January 2024. The opponent was Professor Stefanie von Schnurbein, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
The aim of the thesis is to outline continuity and change in how national socialists in Sweden incorporated ideas of Christianity into their political project to establish a national socialist state. By focusing on the magazine The Nation, the political parties the Swedish National Socialist Party and the National Socialist Workers’ Party/Swedish Socialist Coalition, the organization the Manhem Society and the priests Ernst Ålander and Nils Hannerz, the thesis argues that Christian national socialism was a current within the Swedish national socialist landscape, showcasing a variety of conceptions pertaining to race, culture, society, history and theology. The actors’ ideas of Christianity were part of their political aspirations to reinforce a supreme but lost past by desiring a pervasive revolutionary national and racial revival.