Historian Stephen Kotkin has penned an important new essay expanding on the phenomenon of junk history. This is Kotkin’s term for reductionist or plainly wrong interpretations of historical events—“the history that everyone ‘knows’ and cites or recites but has little or no basis in empirical reality”—, which would be inconsequential if they were “not marshaled in policy debates as justification for action, up to launching wars”. Alas, they frequently are.

The emblematic example, as Kotkin has remarked previously, is Neville Chamberlain at Munich in 1938:

Everything is Munich… It turns out not everything is Munich. It turns out Munich wasn’t even Munich when you get down into the nitty-gritty details.

Another example of junk history is what many otherwise well-informed observers think they know about Sweden’s conduct during World War II and the Cold War, crystallized by Aaron MacLean’s comments during a recent discussion I had with him on the School of War podcast:

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The new issue of Aspects of History magazine includes a cracking review of The Stay Behinds, written by Paul Burke, who interviewed me a few weeks ago and is also the chief book critic at Spybrary. He observes, quite rightly:

The American-Anglocentric view of the Cold War as ‘our’ confrontation with the Soviet Union undervalues the very real and much closer antagonism and threat the Nordic nations faced from Russia.

Against this background, Burke positions my book as a contribution that—in “simple elegant prose”—widens our understanding of the Cold War.

If you are someone who thinks the Cold War is about Britain and America and Russia this [The Stay Behinds] might open your eyes to how ‘live’ the threat, the possibility of war, was for those nations on the front line.

A very interesting perspective, one that I hadn’t thought of myself. But that only goes to show how books are often smarter than their authors.

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The Free Press podcast School of War hosts some of the best conversations around on military history and current affairs. I was honoured to join Aaron MacLean as only the second Swede on the show, after Supreme Commander Michael Claesson.

This was a more wide-ranging discussion than most of my previous podcast appearances about The Stay Behinds, so I’m sharing the show notes here.

03:13 The Soviet Threat

08:00 Was Sweden Neutral?

15:52 Sweden in World War II

20:10 Sweden’s Military Might

20:50 Building the Resistance

25:11 Legalizing a Secret Army

28:35 Soviet Invasion Plans

33:05 The Resistance Leaders

37:09 Is Europe Prepared?

41:09 Was NATO a Mistake?

42:41 The Case for Deterrence

44:29 Preparing for Defeat

It is the honour of a lifetime—twice over—to receive a cracking review of The Stay Behinds in my favourite magazine, The Spectator, by one of my favourite authors, the intelligence historian and spy novelist Alan Judd. He writes:

It took Wennström a great deal of research to put this detailed, thoughtful and unique account together.

The review comes on the heels of Toby Harnden’s rave review for SpyTalk and Mark Lardas’s review in the US Epoch Times. The staunchly anti-communist newspaper writes:

“The Stay Behinds” is a fascinating book. Wennström does an excellent job of drawing together a diverse set of sources to provide a coherent picture of a deliberately obscure organization. The book offers insight into an often-neglected aspect of politics and warfare.

For the Swedish weekly Fokus, I have written about Germany’s recent spy scandal, in which August Hanning, the former head of its intelligence service, the BND, has been accused of treason and espionage.

Much of the story will be familiar to international readers, but the conclusion might be worth quoting here in translation:

With his private consultancy and a seat on the board of the failed Latvian bank PNK Banka—which also counted former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen among its directors—August Hanning is also emblematic of a growing, potentially problematic class of people: former senior digures in politics, government, the police and intelligence services who have detached themselves from their national contexts and make a living as a kind of globe-trotting salesmen of security expertise and geopolitical analysis. Such individuals […] have grown accustomed to a life funded by banks and consulting firms, and may be tempted to exploit both old co…

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I launched this newsletter in spring 2026 and am pleased to report that over 100 subscribers, as well as a growing number of followers, have joined me. One post on the fallacies of Ukraine’s Gripen deal even turned into a major news story that affected the manufacturer Saab’s stock price. Today, I’m introducing a few changes that will allow me to devote more time to writing my dispatches and essays on intelligence history and European security.

Newly published notebook posts will remain open for everyone to read, while the full archive and future long reads will be for paying readers’ eyes only. A recent example is my essay on how the CIA ignored vital Swedish intelligence during the Cuban missile crisis.

For paying readers interested in my research on European stay-behinds during the Cold War, I have launched a chat in the Substack app where I will answer your questions.

I can promise interesting posts ahead as my historical research expands into new areas and a couple of fiction proje…

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I had a great time discussing The Stay Behinds with the lovely Krystel von Kumberg, host of the Eye Spy podcast and a PhD student in Russian History at Stanford University. Listen to our conversation here.

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I had a great time joining SpyCast, the official podcast of Washington’s International Spy Museum, to discuss The Stay Behinds with the museum’s historian, Dr. Mark Jacobson. Do listen to my episode here.

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A first US review of The Stay Behinds has come in, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Intelligence heavy-hitter Toby Harnden writes in SpyTalk:

With meticulous precision, author Johan Wennström has pieced together an important chapter of Cold War history, melding archival research and interviews to produce an account in which every fact is backed up. The result is a dense, but fascinating read that is all the more riveting because it’s true. It never loses sight of the human element, treating readers to a rich cast of ordinary heroes.

And more:

Wennström … has done a real service to espionage history.

Harnden, a former Sunday Times US correspondent, has extensive experience of investigating the secret world—and knows what he’s talking about.

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In UnHerd this morning, I offer my take on Sweden’s uncertain election outcome:

Voters do not seem convinced that Sweden’s restoration is complete, or that the Social Democrats can yet be fully trusted again. Despite keeping their distance in public, the perception that they would ultimately have to rely on the former Communists – this time tainted by their association with antisemitic, Hamas-aligned elements – may explain why, if they form a new government, they will be limping into it.

Luckily, very little is at stake in not-very-polarized Sweden, where at least 80 percent of parliament now supports the country’s Nato membership, as well as tougher sentencing for criminals to preserve the successful trend of beating back violence driven by mass immigration.

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London

My new book, The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians, is finally being released this week in the US and UK, and I have now encountered it in the wild, i.e., the book shop, for the first time. On Tuesday evening, I gave a presentation of the book to a small but interested crowd in Waterstones Gower Street and left a stack of signed copies behind.

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Note: This is an adapted extract from my new book, The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians, published this week by Osprey/Bloomsbury. It is a digression from the book’s main story that also stands on its own.

For London readers, I will be presenting the book at Waterstones Gower Street on Tuesday, 8 September at 6pm. Tickets are available here.

— Johan

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It was a huge honour to come on Shane Whaley’s Spybrary podcast, dedicated to all things spy in fiction and nonfiction. One of the more fun interviews I’ve done so far, also touching on the influence of fiction on my writing.

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Washington, DC

Greetings from the historic Dupont Circle district; my base this week as I walk around Washington, in Kandahar-style heat, promoting my book, The Stay Behinds.

On Wednesday I visited the International Spy Museum, where I recorded an episode of its SpyCast podcast in conversation with historian Mark Jacobson. I arrived completely disheveled, but managed, I hope, to make sense.

The museum itself is a treasure trove for history buffs, containing countless famous tradecraft artefacts. My personal favourite was the ice pick used to assassinate Trotsky in Mexico.

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My book, The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians, will be published by Bloomsbury next month. This week I began a book tour that includes stops in London and Washington, DC—but starts in Zoomland.

From my home study, I spoke yesterday with Paul Burke, host of the SpyMasters podcast. You can listen to the episode here.

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