[Bill Murray]

Wow, so many questions all at once.

You are of course right about identifying Patton but skipped one of the other questions. Patton went to Sweden in 1912 as a member of the US Olympic team. It has been too long since I read the stuff about it but I know he was a keen fitness buff and a world class horseman so it was probably in one of these two areas that he competed in.

As to the nickel ore question, I will leave it to Stellan to tell the larger story but I can assure you that Sweden supplied Germany rather a lot of things, particularly in the earlier years of WW II.
I have two excellent books, "Petsamo Trafiken" and "Tysk Trafiken" which detail the very large effort on the part of The Swedish Transport Association (loose translation) to organize hauling by truck all sorts of goods and such to Petsamo as well as other locations in Finland. One item I remember was the transporting of pre-fabricated huts or houses for German Forces stationed in Finland.

Having said that, and not wanting to defend Sweden for it is not necessary in my mind, rather a lot of "neutral" countries supplied goods to both sides , including our own country prior to Dec 7 1941. Sometimes you do what you have to do to survive and not be occupied or attacked.

As you are an historian, I am sure that you are aware that virtually every high ranking officer regardless of branch of service has lobbied with the Department of Defense and the various Presidents since ~1950 to discourage them from engaging in combat in Asia. As well, the current crop of flag rank officers almost to a man were against the invasion of Iraq for rather similar reasons and have proven to at least have been correct in their assessment that it would not be a cakewalk. It is one thing to knock out an army and leave and quite another to occupy a country like Iraq or any country in Asia.

Got to run for now but I would like to keep the dialogue going, this is fascinating stuff to me too.
Bill