THE SPY WITHOUT A COUNTRY

This is the story of Sweden's greatest known spy, who was caught and sentenced for life in 1963. Colonel Stig Wennerstrom was, at one point, acting as Swedish Air Attache while selling Russian secrets to the Americans, American secrets to the Russians, and finding it difficult to peddle Swedish secrets. He spied actively for fourteen years. Though a military man, he was constantly attached to diplomatic posts in Moscow, Washington and Stockholm because of his mastery of languages and because his Air Force thought him an incompetent pilot. Wennerstrom was a product of the Swedish officer corps which modeled itself on Prussian lines, and this resulted in his disaffection for the way Sweden was treating its officers. He was not a Communist, a capitalist or even a Swedish socialist, but saw himself as something of an internationalist who was keeping the Great Powers in balance. The author is a journalist and personal acquaintance of Wennerstrom, but the analysis suffers from undue reiteration.