, 18 December 1914:
Haakon VII of Norway, Gustaf V, and
Christian X of Denmark and Gustaf V during the opening of the ferry between Sassnitz and Trelleborg When he ascended the throne, Gustaf V was, at least on paper, a
near-autocrat. The
1809 Instrument of Government made the King both head of state and head of government, and ministers were solely responsible to him. However, his father had been forced to accept a government chosen by the majority in Parliament in 1905. Since then, prime ministers had been
de facto required to have the confidence of the Riksdag to stay in office. Early in his reign, in 1910, Gustaf V refused to grant clemency to the convicted murderer
Johan Alfred Ander, who thus became the last person to be executed in Sweden. At first Gustaf V seemed to be willing to accept
parliamentary rule. After the
Liberals won a massive landslide victory in 1911, Gustaf appointed Liberal leader
Karl Staaff as Prime Minister. However, during the run-up to World War I, the elites objected to Staaff's defence policy. In February 1914,
a large crowd of farmers gathered at the royal palace and demanded that the country's defences be strengthened. In his reply, the so-called
Courtyard Speech—which was actually written by explorer
Sven Hedin, an ardent conservative—Gustaf promised to strengthen the country's defences. Staaff was outraged, telling the King that parliamentary rule called for the Crown to stay out of partisan politics. He was also angered that he had not been consulted in advance of the speech. However, Gustaf retorted that he still had the right to "communicate freely with the Swedish people". The Staaff government resigned in protest, and Gustaf appointed a government of civil servants headed by
Hjalmar Hammarskjöld (father of future UN Secretary-General
Dag Hammarskjöld) in its place. , the
2nd President of the Republic of Finland, pass an honour guard in 1925 in
Stockholm , 1937/38 The 1917 elections showed a heavy gain for the Liberals and
Social Democrats, who between them held a decisive majority. Despite this, Gustaf initially tried to appoint a Conservative government headed by
Johan Widén. However, Widén was unable to attract enough support for a coalition. It was now apparent that Gustaf could no longer appoint a government entirely of his own choosing, nor could he keep a government in office against the will of Parliament. With no choice but to appoint a Liberal as prime minister, he appointed a Liberal-Social Democratic coalition government headed by Staaff's successor as Liberal leader,
Nils Edén. The Edén government promptly arrogated most of the king's political powers to itself and enacted numerous reforms, most notably the institution of complete (male and female) universal suffrage in 1918–1919. While Gustaf still formally appointed the ministers, they now had to have the confidence of Parliament. He was now also bound to act on the ministers' advice. Although the provision in the Instrument of Government stating that "the King alone shall govern the realm" remained unchanged, the king was now bound by convention to exercise his powers through the ministers. Thus, for all intents and purposes, the ministers did the actual governing. While ministers were already legally responsible to the Riksdag under the Instrument of Government, it was now understood that they were politically responsible to the Riksdag as well. Gustaf accepted his reduced role, and reigned for the rest of his life as a model limited constitutional monarch. Parliamentarianism had become a
de facto reality in Sweden, even if it would not be formalised until 1974, when a new Instrument of Government stripped the monarchy of even nominal political power. Gustaf V was considered to have German sympathies during World War I. His political stance during the war was highly influenced by his wife, who felt a strong connection to her German homeland. On 18 December 1914, he sponsored a meeting in
Malmö with the other two kings of Scandinavia to demonstrate unity. Another of Gustaf V's objectives was to dispel suspicions that he wanted to bring Sweden into the war on Germany's side. Although effectively stripped of political power, Gustaf was not completely without influence. In 1938, for instance, he personally summoned the German ambassador to Sweden and told him that if Hitler attacked
Czechoslovakia over its refusal to give up the
Sudetenland, it would trigger a world war that Germany would almost certainly lose. Additionally, his long reign gave him great
moral authority as a symbol of the nation's unity. ==Nazi connections==