Georg Branting

Georg Branting

Georg Branting (21 September 1887 – 6 July 1965) was a Swedish Social Democrat and Olympic fencer. He was the son of Hjalmar Branting and a member of the Riksdag 1932–1961.

In the Spanish Civil War a Scandinavian battalion of the International Brigades was named after him, as a sign of thanks for his vehement support of the Spanish Republic.

Related to the Civil War of Finland 1918 wrote a book translated in 1925 in Finnish as: Oikeudenkäyttö Suomessa, Muutamia asiakirjoja selityksineen.

He competed for Sweden in fencing at the 1908 and 1912 Summer Olympics.

Georg Branting was mentioned as a Soviet informer in de-coded messages published and made public in the mid 1990's when the US government decided to lift the lid on the VENONA project where the USA and United Kingdom, during the 1940's, read thousands of messages to and from Moscow. Branting's code name was "Senator" in the de-coded transcripts - the identification of Branting as a Soviet informer was brought about by the defection of the Petrovs, who worked at the Soviet embassy in Canberra, Australia, in 1954 they were interrogated by the western allies and they claimed that a Soviet source in Sweden had access to the inner circles of the Swedish Social Democrat Party top leadership, this information helped the Swedish police to identify Georg Branting as the informer. Already during the 1930's there were suspicions that Branting was a Soviet informer, the Social Democratic party expelled him from from the party board, officially, due to opposite views on the Spanish civil war but Branting had also been very visible on the international scene where he involved himself, as a lawyer, in high profile radical international causes where he allied himself with known communists e.g. an intimate friend of his was the communist master spy, Otto Katz. Although Branting sat in the Swedish parliament 1932-1961 and for a time in the 1930's also was at the party board, his career stalled due to his alleged Soviet sympathies. Georg Branting tried an international come-back after WWII, in 1947 the Soviet Union nominated him as the new governor for the occupied Italian city of Trieste but the United Kingdom and USA blocked his nomination referring to, officially, his lack of experience