The Swedish banker who helped the Spanish Republicans

When discussing the Spanish Civil War, the support received by the Nationalist side is often mentioned, notably the financing provided by the Mallorcan magnate Joan March Ordinas, who, with his own capital or that of others, guaranteed Franco sufficient resources to win the war; or the support of the American company Texaco in terms of oil. Less well-known is the international economic aid received by the Republican side, and in this respect, one name stands out: that of the Swedish banker Olof Aschberg, forgotten by history, but a key figure in global geopolitics for many decades.

Long before the Spanish Civil War, in 1912, Aschberg was already an activist for the labor movement, so his first business venture was creating a bank for unions and cooperatives, which he called Nya Banken, Swedish for New Bank. A few years later, during the final stages of World War I, he used this bank to facilitate capital transfers from the German Empire to Lenin's Bolsheviks, a circumstance that was not well received by the Allied forces. This discomfort eventually led to the bank changing its name to Svensk Ekonomiebolaget (Swedish Financial Company) to minimize its past. Incidentally, his support for the Soviets, dating back to the Russian Revolution, gave him free rein to conduct all kinds of business in the USSR during the 1920s. One consequence of this freedom of movement was that Aschberg had access to numerous works of art from Tsarist Russia, which ended up in his personal collection and also in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm.

By the early 1920s, the Swedish banker already considered himself an agent of internationalism, and thus began shifting his base of business. The first step was moving from Stockholm to Berlin, where in 1922 he founded the Garantie und Kreditbank für den Osten (Guarantee and Credit Bank for the East), an entity of the short-lived Weimar Republic specializing in doing business with the Soviets. Simultaneously, he was appointed chairman of the board of directors of the Russian Commercial Bank, the first bank established after the revolution, which largely dedicated itself to exchanging Tsarist treasures in the West for foreign currency. By this time, he was known in the West as "The Red Banker."

Around 1926, he took another leap, leaving Berlin and Moscow to settle in France, near Paris. The Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933 transformed the French capital into a strategic location for continuing his plans, which now included the fight against Nazism. In addition to his political activity, he played a prominent role as a patron of the arts, offering financial support to the Scandinavian artists who frequented his Parisian mansion. During these years, he founded a club called the Circle of Nations, which brought together French intellectuals, social leaders—from the labor movement to politics—and renowned scientists, including the Curie couple and Nobel laureate Jean-Baptiste Perrin. He also became a shareholder in the celebrated French film production company Pathé Frères. And in 1936, the Spanish Civil War erupted, with Sweden declaring itself non-interventionist (joining twenty-six other nations in the Non-Intervention Committee established in London). This decision did not prevent Aschberg from becoming involved. Although many questions remain about this part of the story, it seems to be an established fact that Aschberg provided financial resources to the Republican army and also created a shelter for refugee children in his own mansion.

Just after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 put him in danger, not only because of his political activism but also because he was Jewish. For this reason, he moved again and settled in New York. This would be the final stage of a career that would end in his native Stockholm once the sound of gunfire had fallen silent. Over the following years, he gradually withdrew from banking. Given Aschberg's close ties with the USSR, it's not surprising that his name occasionally appears in American intelligence documents labeled as a possible Soviet agent infiltrated in the West.