About the project
Why and to what extend did employees of Norwegian government institutions contribute to the subjugation of their fellow citizens during WWII, with participation in the Holocaust as the worst example? And why did some of them want to and succeed in resisting this? These were the fundamental questions that the HL-Center’s project “Democratic institutions in the face of a Nazi occupying power” (DIMNO) attempted to answer. The picture that gradually emerged through studies of the police, civil service and schools proved highly multifaceted. On the one hand, we cannot understand the choices that were made without acknowledging the harsh realities people living in Nazi-occupied Norway were facing. Any opposition could call down a severe response from the new overlords, although the form that response might take was impossible to predict. Openly refusing to obey an order one did not like entailed, at best, losing one’s job. At worst, one risked being sent to a concentration camp or even executed. This obviously frightened many people and caused them to remain passive.
Even when this dismal situation is taken into account, there was nevertheless a substantial variation in people’s willingness and ability to throw spanners (both large and small) in the works of the new regime. On the other hand we find a small but important group of Nazi activists, who not only carried out their orders enthusiastically, but also took initiatives of their own. These often constituted a significant risk for co-workers and enemies of Nazism they encountered in their work. There is no doubt that both Norwegian and German Nazis wanted a Norwegian state filled with people with such convictions. Yet despite concerted efforts, the fact remained that there were simply too few Nazi supporters in Norway to go round. As a result, there were only a few special units, such as the political police force (Statspolitiet), in which dyed-in-the-wool Nazis dominated. The rest of the government workforce ranged from pure opportunists via pragmatists to actual members of the resistance.
However, it must be emphasised that supporting Nazism as an ideology was not a precondition for employees to carry out Nazi orders. Any open refusal to obey orders was, in most cases, dependent on collective organisation, so that any punitive response would have to encompass everyone – not merely an individual. The alternative was a situation in which the only thing the most courageous achieved by refusing an order was to lose their own job, without this helping those the protest was intended to help. Without a determined, collective willingness and ability to support each other and punish disloyalty, there was always someone who was too opportunistic, pragmatic or, quite simply, too afraid to refuse to obey an order. This became clearly evident when comparing the various sectors and institutions the project examined. The police force was quickly divided and cowed. That this was not inevitable was shown by an examination of political prisoners in the Stuffhof concentration camp, which succeeded in forming just such an effective collective front that rejected the Nazi demands. For their part, Norway’s teachers managed to build up a formidable underground organisation. When the attempt was made to Nazify the country's schools in the spring of 1942, it was met by a near unison counterprotest. In the government ministries, too, we see how important the collective was to “stiffen up” less politically motivated or weak-willed colleagues. Where such solidarity did not exist, or where it was weakened through staff replacements or stronger controls, the ability to resist effectively was also undermined.
Although truly effective resistance depended on almost complete collective organisation and action, this did not mean that people in sectors where this did not exist spinelessly carried out whatever they had been told to do. While nominally carrying out an order, there were many ways it could be done. There were plenty of opportunities for foot-dragging or sabotage that could be exploited by opponents of the new regime. In some cases, such as when police officers gave advance warning of arrests that they themselves may be about to carry out, this could mean the difference between life and death.
Finally, the DIMNO project placed the findings from Norway in a European context, with particular focus on the country that is most comparable: The Netherlands. This has highlighted what was specific to Norway and what was the consequence of more general tendencies. For example, while the teachers’ organisation was a peculiarly Norwegian phenomenon, the reactions of the police in Norway and the Netherlands were very similar.
In brief, the DIMNO project’s findings have helped to show the role that individuals and groups can play in a totalitarian system. The revelation of both the limitations and opportunities that people have is extremely important to remember when assessing the past. It is also a historic warning about the possibility of standing up to injustice today.
Some sub-projects remain ongoing. A research project (the Battle for the Schools) and a doctoral project (a comparative study of three Norwegian police stations) were due for completion in 2018, and a final part was completed in 2019.
Final report to the Research Council of Norway (in Norwegian)
Steering committee
Project manager: Odd-Bjørn Fure
Project coordinator: Øystein Hetland
Researcher-initiated projects
Nicola K. Karcher: The Battle for the Schools
This research project studied the attempt to impose ideological uniformity on the Norwegian schools sector and map out the civil struggle against Nazification. Several questions arise in this connection: To what extent did Nasjonal Samling (NS), Norway’s domestic national socialist party, act on its own initiative and how did its dependence on the German occupation authorities manifest itself in relation to the party's Nazification efforts? Could this be considered a kind of emancipation attempt on the part of NS? Did the party represent an independent ideological construct that made it “necessary” to impose uniformity on the Norwegian schools system? Or was it primarily a strategic move intended to strengthen the party's own position vis-à-vis the Reichskommissariat, the civilian occupation regime established by Nazi Germany? Did an active ideological exchange with German players, such as the SS or Hitler-Jugend, play a role? Did these organisations act as a source of inspiration or was NS purely a mouthpiece for ideas the party was fed from Germany?
On the other hand, the study of the grassroots reaction to this attempt has been crucial for the project. This includes the vital question of why the Nazification attempt failed and what form opposition to it took. For example, how was the active civil resistance initiated? Who took the initiative? Which teachers, headteachers or parents played a decisive role? In other words: Who were the key players, how did they act and what was their motivation? How did communication within the grassroots action take place? Which regions or local communities were especially important for the development of an anti-Nazification attitude? What role did parents play as private individuals and how did they organise themselves?
Terje Emberland: Norwegian police in the Stuffhof concentration camp
During WWII, 271 “unreliable” Norwegian police officers were sent to a re-education camp for Germanic peoples at Stutthof, a concentration camp complex in northern Poland. It was a fiasco. The police officers managed what had not previously been achieved – to form a unified front against the Nazification effort. The Stutthof episode represents a contrast to the extremely mixed picture painted by the Norwegian police force’s actions during the war, and may in some ways have served to whitewash the entire force. Stutthof also illustrates both the SS's unrealistic plans for Norway in general and the Norwegian police in particular, as well as the internal conflicts within the SS itself and between the SS and Reichskommissar Joseph Terboven, who oversaw the German civilian administration in Norway.
The project has documented the process leading up to the officers’ incarceration at Stutthof, and the nature and contents of their detention. It has also examined the subsequent history – the impact of this event on how the police were viewed both during and after the post-war prosecution and punishment of those accused of collaboration with the enemy.
Terje Emberland: Norwegian and German police before the war
The Nazi takeover in Germany did not cause the Norwegian police to turn their backs on their German counterparts. The Norwegian police force was initially influenced by the German police and the practical and organisational partnership between them increased in the inter-war period. Study tours to Germany were common, and Norwegian police officers even visited German concentration camps.
This project sought to explore institutional and personal links between the Norwegian and German police forces in the years between 1933 and 1940. An assessment was made of what these links indicated with regard to attitudes and sympathies within the Norwegian police force, and the importance of these in explaining the Norwegian police force’s response to its reorganisation after Germany's invasion.
Doctoral theses
Kjetil Simonsen: Collaboration and resistance in three Norwegian government ministries
The main objective of this project was to investigate the extent to which it was possible to transform Norway’s pre-war civil administration, nominally based on political neutrality, into a politicised bureaucratic system that expected civil servants to work actively to turn Norway into a national socialist society. A key aspect was to look at how far pre-war employees were willing to adapt themselves in the face of the new political demands. Could the government ministries be “Nazified” with their existing workforces, or was the recruitment of convinced national socialists required? The existing ministerial structures have similarly been examined on the same basis – was it possible to use the old organisational forms to implement Nazi policies? Or was it necessary to create entirely new institutions and entities that conformed to national socialist ideas and concepts of what a government administration should look like? And finally – what consequences did the answers to these questions have on the people who came into contact with the government administration?
Øystein Hetland: Comparative study of three Norwegian police stations
By means of a detailed analysis, the project sought to answer several hitherto unresolved questions relating to the role of the Norwegian police during WWII. The main question is the extent to which Norway’s pre-war police force allowed itself to be transformed into an obedient or even willing enforcer of Nazi policies. How far was the average Norwegian policeman willing to go? When did he decide that enough was enough? How great was the willingness to engage in active resistance to the occupiers and the NS regime at the individual police stations? Were resistance and subversion in various forms so widespread that the Nazi authorities were forced to install politically reliable individuals in order to secure a police force they could trust?
Master’s theses
Ane I. Støen: The Ministry of Justice during the German occupation of Norway 1940–1945 (Completed)
The thesis examined three issues:
- the extent to which the organisational structure and workforce at the Norwegian Ministry of Justice were Nazified
- how Nazification affected the division of labour and case administration within the Ministry, as well as the political significance these internal changes had
- how the Ministry’s civil servants responded to the Nazification efforts and the policies implemented by the NS regime and occupying power in pursuit of social change
One of the key points in the thesis was the meaningless of talking about the complicity of the “Norwegian bureaucracy” en bloc in the implementation of the new order and the persecution of the Jews, due to the partial nature of Nazification, division of labour and complex patterns of action on the part of the civil servants working in the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry's civil servants must be differentiated and grouped together in order to obtain a realistic picture of who contributed to the policies’ execution, who were passive and who worked against them.
The analysis shows that the Ministry of Justice was partly, but not fundamentally, Nazified during the occupation. This was achieved through the establishment of new NS institutions, which were disconnected from all previous practices and operated in a different way to the traditional departments and offices, and through the appointment of NS members and sympathisers to senior and junior positions. Furthermore, a clear link was also demonstrated between the political penetration and the way the Ministry operated. After the Office of the Minister of Justice was established in the spring of 1941 as a new NS institution, and as an increasing number of senior and junior positions in the traditional departments (the Administrative Department, Prison Board and Law Department) were filled with NS members, whole areas of policy and individual matters of political significance or related to political matters were diverted to the Nazified parts of the Ministry. This diversion was politically significant because it changed the terms and conditions underpinning the implementation of the NS regime and the occupying power’s policies. The barriers to an outcome that did not correspond to the regime’s political goals were eliminated.
On the other hand, the transfer must be ascribed to Sverre Riisnæs who, as the minister in charge, wished to place administrative matters in the hands of people who were willing to take political considerations. However, it was also due to the reluctance of the Ministry of Justice’s other civil servants to handle such matters. It has been shown that few of the Ministry’s non-NS civil servants were involved in voluntary collaboration. Because the NS regime had limited opportunities to exercise force against this group, without causing efficiency and capacity problems, there were also few instances of forced collaboration. The dominant form for interaction was pragmatic collaboration. This type of collaboration – which constituted a form of voluntary cooperation but characterised by the person clearly distancing themselves from the political project of the NS regime and occupying powers – was often undertaken in conjunction with acts of civil resistance.
Jo S. Refseth: The police and the past
This thesis sought to study how the police handled their difficult double role after the war. The police force's own post-war literature was reviewed, and the way the war was portrayed and interpreted was analysed. Analysing which players’ voices were heard, which events were discussed and whether certain topics were more ore less systematically avoided formed a key aspect of this work.