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Eric von Rosen had made himself known as a pioneer in Swedish aeronautics after his crossing the Baltic Sea during the Finnish War of Freedom in 1918. Later on he sometimes used aeroplanes for transports in Sweden and abroad. This was the case the 21st of February 1920, when he had been in Stockholm and needed urgently to go to Rockelstad. The trains were all cancelled due to bad weather, so the Count went to the small airfield in Stockholm. The Swedish pilots were unwilling to head out in the snowstorm that late, but a German former fighter-pilot, Hermann Göring, was available.

Eric and Göring flew through the snow-storm towards Rockelstad; they flew low along the railway until they reached Sparreholm, where they turned south across the lake and landed on the ice below Rockelstad. They tied the plane to the steamboat jetty and the two freezing men went in to heat up in front of the fireplace in the Hall. Countess Mary’s sister, Carin von Kantzow, was visiting this weekend, and when she came down the stairs Göring immediately fell in love.

When Carin and Göring started seeing each other in Stockholm it caused a scandal in the high-society, for Carin was married and had a young child. The pair moved to Germany later that year, where Göring soon leaned about a group of revolutionaries in Munich; Hitler and his henchmen, who had started with demonstrations on the streets.

Göring soon travelled to Hitler, who welcomed the national war hero into the party. Göring became a trophy that the [Fascists] could use to gain popularity with the masses. His noble background and social talent also made him the perfect ambassador for the [Fascists] among the upper classes.

Carin and Göring’s romantic love-story was soon exploited by Goebbels massive machinery of propaganda, and the couple was toured around the nation to boost popularity. Carin, who became the First Lady of the [German Fascists], was especially celebrated. But she did not live to see the atrocities committed in the [nineteen thirties], for she died of a weak heart in 1931, before Hitler gained power.

But even after death she remained a mascot of the [Fascists], who had a booklet printed to commemorate their Swedish Saint, in a gigantic edition. Göring even had a room in his Berlin flat arranged as a shrine to Carin. During the thirties Göring maintained close connections with his Swedish relatives, and the Count and Countess often went on visits to Germany.

Eric became something of an unofficial diplomat in the relationship between the Reich and Sweden. When the Swedish government out of a fear for diplomatic complications could not receive a high-ranking [German Fascist], they asked von Rosen to be the host. In Sweden the Count's pro-German opinion was well known, but he did not actively spread [Fascist] propaganda in the country, nor did he have a rôle in any of the national [fascist] parties.

After Hitler’s invasion of Denmark and Norway, Eric von Rosen wrote in the press to calm the Swedish people. He maintained that Göring’s strong love for the country was a guarantee that it would not be invaded. But privately Eric could not accept that the brother-peoples had been attacked, and when Hitler started his crusade against the Soviet Union, he understood that Hitler was a megalomaniac, and that Germany was to lose the war. Towards the end of the war he renounced Hitler and Göring altogether.

About the Swastika

Eric von Rosen found swastikas on a Viking rune-stone on Gotland, where he went through high-school. This seemed to him a typical Viking symbol, and as such it held great appeal to the nationalistic young Count. The Vikings used the swastika as a symbol of light and happiness. When Eric was preparing for his first expedition, the one to South America in 1901, he had swastikas painted on his crates and luggage, to separate them from those of the other participants. This way of choosing for oneself a personal emblem or token of luck, was common and fashionable at that time. During his travels among the descendants of the Inca in Bolivia, he was surprised to see how often their textiles were adorned with swastikas, and realised that this was a universal symbol that had been used by many cultures all over the world.

When he started rebuilding at Rockelstad the next year, he used the symbol as a decorative element everywhere in the house. They are easily spotted in the ceiling of the Great Hall, where they are painted green on a red background. The Hall was finished in 1903. When he planned his spectacular hunting-lodge in 1910, the architect Tengbom was commissioned to design a group of furniture in Old Nordic style, decorated with carved swastikas.

The aeroplane that von Rosen bought in 1918, to support the Finnish fight for independence was painted with large blue and white swastikas on its wings before it was delivered to General Mannerheim. The symbol then became the emblem of the Finnish Air Force and remained so until sometime during World War II.

It seems like a strange coincidence that Hermann Göring came to Rockelstad before he met Hitler or even heard of the Nazi movement. Could Göring, who apparently took a great deal of interest in Eric’s personal symbol of luck, have brought the swastika from Rockelstad to the movement in Munich?

We are not of that opinion. The background of the [Fascist] cross is probably a different one, where some sources claim that it emanated from DAP (Deutsche Arbeiter Partei) and later NSDAP — With all the distastefulness it thereafter is associated with.

Several individuals who have researched in Hitler’s notes claim to have found sketches of swastikas from as early as 1919. And besides, swastikas were quite abundant in Germany from the late 19th century on; it had been used by the nationalistic Volkes-movement as well as a logo for several companies, e.g. ASEA.

There are also several differences between the von Rosen sign and the [Third Reich’s] swastika. Von Rosen usually placed his sun-crosses in a circle, so that the arms of the cross are curved and it forms a circle itself. The [Third Reich’s] swastika is tilted so that it stands diagonally, and it has straight arms even when it is confined by a circular field.

I would exercise caution concerning the claim that Eric von Rosen already predicted in the summer of 1941 that the Third Reich was to lose the war — a prediction that few Westerners shared that year. Quoting Thomas Lundén’s ‘Swedish geography and the time spirit 1933–45 — Resistance, subordination, or tergiversation?’:

Ymer 1941, 301–303, includes the speech by Count E. v. Rosen to Field Marshal C.G. Mannerheim of Finland on Vega day, April 24, 1941, on the awarding of the Hedin medal for his scientific production: It is a speech strictly related to Mannerheim’s anthropological findings. von Rosen’s speech is remarkable in concentrating on Mannerheim’s fairly insignificant research. There is only a short reference to Mannerheim’s political rôle defending “that the Scandinavian and Finnish tribes are not… thrown under foreign rule.”

It should be unsurprising that this bourgeois fascist indulged in antisemitism as early as the 1920s. From Henrik Rosengren’s “‘A Wagner for the Jews’: Moses Pergament, Richard Wagner and anti-Semitism in Swedish cultural life in the interwar period”:

Sv. Dagbl. [Svenska Dagbladet] […] did not hesitate to print an anti-Semitic and race-scientific essay written by the ethnographer and explorer Eric von Rosen, published on 28 January 1929. Von Rosen dwelt on the supposed dangers of Jewish influence, and claimed that regardless of a Jew’s intelligence, he could almost never understand the ‘Germanic spirit’.⁵⁰ The professedly scientific approach adopted by von Rosen apparently entitled him to publication in SvD. His article was based on the same type of anti-Semitic opinion held by Wagner and his followers.