The Swedish secret service kept an eye on Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad during World War II, because according to the service, he was “a very active Nazi”.

This became known on Wednesday when a new book by investigative journalist Elisabeth Åsbrink was published. Åsbrink works for the Swedish national broadcaster SVT. She discovered a personal report from the Swedish intelligence service dated 6 July 1943. It states that the then 17-year-old Kamprad very actively recruited new members for the fascist organization New Sweden and the Nazi Lindholms movement/SSS, of which he would also be a part.

According to experts, the Lindholm movement was highly anti-Semitic and authoritarian. She is compared to the German Nazi party NSDAP. Ikea founder Kamprad admitted his Nazi sympathies in the 1990s, but called it nothing more than “a short-lived childhood sin”. | © 2011 Marcel Burger for ANP News Agency (original published in Dutch on 24 August 2011)