Sweden was not directly attacked during World War II. It was, however, subject to British and German naval blockades and accidental bombings from the Soviets on some cities (e.g. Strängnäs), which led to problems with the supply of food and fuels.
Sweden declared its neutrality in September 1939. However, after the German occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, Sweden was less well placed to resist German pressure to relax its neutral stance.
If Germany should decide to invade Sweden, the result would indeed be a costly victory for Hitler because of Germany8s great dependence on exports of Swedish iron ore. Thus the Swedes had in their economy their best weapon against German attack.
At the time of the German attack, Denmark and Norway were neutral. Germany still attacked the countries because it feared that Great Britain and France planned to occupy Norway. With Denmark's access to the Baltic Sea in German hands, Swedish iron ore could be transported undisturbed to Germany.
Sweden, during the Second World War, declared an official policy of 'non-belligerency,' meaning that the nation itself was unattached to either the Allied Powers or the Axis Powers. Since the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden had attempted to maintain this policy of neutrality.
During World War I and World War II, Switzerland maintained armed neutrality, and was not invaded by its neighbors, in part because of its topography, much of which is mountainous. Germany was a threat and Switzerland built a powerful defense.
As part of the British Empire, Australia was among the first nations to declare war on Nazi Germany and between 1939 and 1945 nearly one million Australian men and women served in what was going to be the Second World War.
In fact, Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany during the second world war not to prevent Soviet conquest but to win back territories lost to the USSR as a result of the winter war of 1939-40. The peace treaty that ended the war in March 1940 left Finnish independence intact.
Finland was aligned with the Germans but was not formally an Axis member. Yet the country was a signatory of the Anti-Comintern Pact. The German troops were primarily stationed in northern Finland. The Finnish Army advanced deep into the Soviet territory in the Continuation War (1941–1944).
The 1940 Nazi invasion plan, Operation Tannenbaum, was not executed, and SS Oberst Hermann Bohme's 1943 memorandum warned that an invasion of Switzerland would be too costly because every man was armed and trained to shoot.
Spain was nominally neutral during World War II, though under General Franco's far-right Nationalist regime it was politically aligned with Nazi Germany. Spain did not actually join the Axis side but it collaborated with the Nazis in many areas.
When, in September 1939, Germany attacked Poland and both France and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, Sweden declared itself a neutral country in regard to this escalating situation.
German troops invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, planning to capture the King and the Government in order to force the country to surrender. However, the Royal Family, the Government and most members of the Storting were able to flee before the occupying forces reached Oslo.
It imported oil from the Soviet Union until the German invasion of that country in June 1941 and from Hungary and Romania (25 percent of its annual requirements by 1944) after April 1941 when these two countries became German allies prior to the Soviet invasion.
The reasons for Irish neutrality during the Second World War are widely accepted: that any attempt to take an overtly pro-British line might have resulted in a replay of the Civil War; that Southern Ireland could make little material contribution to the Allied effort, while engagement without adequate defence would ...
The dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden was the result of a conflict over the question of a separate Norwegian consular service.
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral. For most of the war, the country was a protectorate and then an occupied territory of Germany. The decision to occupy Denmark was taken in Berlin on 17 December 1939.
Ireland did not join the war, but declared neutrality. Indeed the world war, in Ireland, was not referred to as a war at all, but as 'The Emergency'. In staying neutral, despite British and latterly American pleas to join the war, Ireland, under Eamon de Valera, successfully asserted the independence of the new state.
With the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, Norway again declared itself neutral.
Soviet views
The Finns had undertaken military provocation and the Soviets could no longer hold to nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviets did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad.
Finland participated in the Second World War initially in a defensive war against the Soviet Union, followed by another battle against the Soviet Union acting in concert with Nazi Germany and then finally fighting alongside the Allies against Germany.
Italy wanted to gain the territory of Turkey and Africa but they didn't get what they wanted at end of WWI. Also, they were unhappy with the treaty of Versailles, they thought that injustice had been done to them. So it joined the side of Japan and Germany to get its territories back.
The German soldiers feared and respected the skills of the Australians.
These stereotypes served to conflate Nikkei-Australians with the soldiers in the Japanese military that Australia witnessed during wartime, who were regarded as “subhuman beast[s]” and “vermin” (Saunders 1994, 325–27).
And the German learned to fear Australians, because they were reckless, ruthless - and revengeful. During the Third Battle of Ypres, autumn 1917, the ANZAC's (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) met the Germans on high ground, in front of Polygon Wood.