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Nazi Past, With a Side of Lingonberries

New book reveals extent of IKEA founder’s collaboration

by
Marc Tracy
August 24, 2011
(IKEA/Ye Olde Tablet Photoshoppe)
(IKEA/Ye Olde Tablet Photoshoppe)

Anyone who has had the IKEA experience—an eerie, slightly sinister, self-guided tour through pure, perfect bedrooms and bathrooms and kitchens without the taint of human corruption—would be unsurprised to learn that IKEA’s founder, the Swede Ingvar Kamprad, one of the world’s richest people, had slight fascist sympathies as a young man.

But according to a new book, it was much worse: The young Kamprad made contacts with the ultra-right New Swedish Movement during World War Two, and continued to support it and its leader, who had called Hitler “Europe’s savior” and the Jews “an alien element in the Western public body,” even after the war was over.

If Hitler were an IKEA desk, he would be called Føorheürz.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.