Adapting to FL's stuff: how to incorporate Sweden?

[mpipes]

The problem that looms large; the background FL came up with and the ability of the Soviets to mount an operation into Sweden with a three-front war to contend with strains credibility a bit too far. NATO invading Finland in the original timeline was just detached from reality for me to ever buy into, so I "fixed" it. I won't go into any bashing of the FL background, but having it become a major player strains credibility beyond the breaking point for me.

That said, you have some naval infantry and independent regiments that you can throw in to occupy a strip of the Baltic shore and secure an airfield or two to protect shipping lanes from the USSR to the Polish or other Baltic seaports. Airbases enhance your hand in supporting the German front and intercepting airstrikes from German or Danish bases towards Norway or Kola. Occupying Gotland and Kalmar is about all I see the Soviets realistically having the forces to accomplish, but OK, you can have them trying to capture or actually capturing and holding on to the southern part of the country. Capturing Stockholm does not make any sense to me, but ok every country does dumb things in a war. You can expect the Swedes to fight like hell for it and getting into it is hard and mounting a follow up operation out of it is even harder, and where do you go from there? What are your military goals in the wider context of a NATO war? Probably you just hunker down while Swedish commandos make occupation duty less than boring.

Sweden did not see a need to join NATO for a reason; there was really no credible threat of a Russian invasion. Its too far away from Kola and just far enough away from Germany that at best it would be an afterthought in an invasion of Germany. The real problem for the Soviets was the Baltic, and Sweden was not a solution. They could not get the Baltic Fleet into the Atlantic without having to get through restricted Danish and German waters. Stirring up the Swedes would only complicate that task. The Swedes were far from dumb, and knew quite well that the Soviets would want to avoid yet another country hunting Soviet ships in the Baltic. After all, there is a REASON that Sweden was heavily invested in minelayers and small coastal subs....very, very good coastal sub.