Schwedentrunk: Add It To The Bucket

What happens when an invading army wants your money, but you refuse to tell them where you hid it?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan travel back to the chaos of the Thirty Years’ War and explore one of the most infamous tortures associated with the conflict, the Schwedentrunk, or “Swedish Drink.”

We’ll take a quick trip through the Thirty Years’ War, from the Defenestration of Prague and the religious conflicts that set Europe on fire to the Swedish intervention and the brutal occupation of German territories. With armies desperate for supplies and poorly paid soldiers looking for ways to supplement their income, civilian villages became easy targets.

And when people refused to hand over their valuables, soldiers allegedly had a particularly disgusting solution. Victims were restrained and forced to swallow enormous quantities of foul liquid, sometimes described as containing manure, urine, mud, and other filthy substances. In some accounts, the torture went even further, with pressure or blows to the stomach intended to make the experience even more agonizing.

But there’s a problem. How much of the Schwedentrunk actually happened, and how much was wartime propaganda designed to make the Swedish armies look even more barbaric? We’ll dig into the surviving accounts, including descriptions from writers who lived through the Thirty Years’ War, and examine why this bizarre torture became such a lasting part of German historical memory.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring their own particular brand of disgusting humor to an episode where “Swedish Drink” is definitely not something you want served at happy hour.

If you’re interested in the Thirty Years’ War, Swedish history, German history, medieval and early modern torture, the Holy Roman Empire, the Defenestration of Prague, wartime atrocities, historical torture, and the strange ways propaganda can turn horrific stories into legend, this episode is one hell of a stomachache.

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