As is probably well know to the Teeming Millions, the Nobel Peace Prizes have always been awarded by five Norwegian judges.
In 1935, a German pacifist journalist named Carl von Ossietzky exposed Hitler’s secret rearmament. The Norwegian judges recognized this by selecting von Ossietzky to receive the Peace Prize for that year; the Nazis responded by throwing the journalist into a concentration camp, where he died from tuberculousis. 
And when the Nazis invaded Norway, they arrested the judges who had chosen Ossietzky. :mad:
A famous Norwegian writer named Knut Hamsun had won a Nobel Prize in literature for his book Hunger. After the Quislingites took over Norway, Hamsun sided with the invaders. Norwegians were so outraged by the writer’s treason that they shipped copies of his books back to his home town–forcing the little post office in the town to hire temporary employees to handle the flood of Hamsun’s books. I know Quisling hismelf was executed; I have no idea what happened to Hamsun.
There’s a book by Richard Rhodes about the making of the atomic bomb which includes specific descriptions of Norwegian sabotage attempts of the heavy water factory in Norway (largest or only one in the world). Germany’s atomic bomb research required heavy water as a medium unlike the U.S.A. which used graphite.
Hamsun was forced to undergo a psychiatric examination, which concluded that Hamsun had “permanently impaired mental faculties”. He had to pay a ruinous sum to the Norwegian government to compensate for the moral support he gave to the Germans. He spent the rest of his life in house arrest at his country estate Nørholm where he died in 1952. He wrote his last book, Paa giengrodde Stier (“On Overgrown Paths”) in 1949, where he harshly criticizes the physiatrists and the judges, and more or less proves that he is not mentally ill.
In later years, Hamsun has been somewhat redeemed, it has been said that he probably didn’t understand what the Nazis were up to. He even asked Hitler to release the Norwegians (including the Norwegian Jews) from the concentration camps, which enraged Hitler. Hamsun was probably not a Nazi himself, he let his love for the German culture and history, combined with his hatred of the English, cloud his judgement.
Tom, it sure doesn’t bode well for Hamsun–who was 86 at the end of World War II–that he had supported the Germans in World War I as well; and he claimed that in the Second World War, the real enemy was Britain. (Try telling that to survivors of the Blitz!) I really wonder how ‘ignorant’–in the sense of lacking in proper judgment–Hamsun was, considering that he was a savvy enough writer to qualify for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I got the item about angry Norwegians returning copies of Hamsun’s books to him, from Try and Stop Me, by Bennett Cerf, 1944; pp. 346-47. The picture on Page 347 by illustrator Carl Rose shows a man stuffing a copy of the book Hunger down the throat of another man, presumably Hamsun, lying on his back on the floor, with a swastika brassard on his arm–and on the wall there is a picture of Hitler with the message in German ,An meinem lieben Freund, Knut–Adolf Hitler." (“to my dear friend…”)
As far as I know, you are right about the returned books (my history books has the same story). My assessment about whether Hamsun was a Nazi or not is based more or less exclusively on books written in the last two decades or so, and the authors are probably more distanced from the War than the people who (justifiably) felt betrayed by him.
Hamsun’s wife, OTOH, was an active member of the Norwegian Nazi Party.
I recall an Olympic figure-skating announcer saying that the sport was rarely practiced in Norway, even now, ever since Sonja Henie showed herself to be a Nazi sympathizer. FWIW, that is.
It might be interesting to know if Hamsun is still read by many Norwegians, despite his fame.
The nazi rumour started when she gave a nazi salute and said heil Hitler in the 1936 Olympics(I think Hitler was there). This was probarbly more to be liked by the audience then political but it wasn’t popular in Norway at the time and wasn’t forgotten. It didn’t help that she moved to the US and (IIRC) when asked to help Norway after the German invasion she answered that she was american and said no. She became an american citizen in 1941 and helped the american war effort.
But I don’t think figure-skating died in Norway because of that, it was never very popular.
Hamsun is still read by many in Norway, it is also usual to read some of his books in school.
That doesn’t say much for her, Tom.
That is quite a lot more serious than the fact that Mary Todd’s brother was a surgeon in the Confederate Army when Lincoln was president. When was the Norwegian Nazi party organized?
There’s a grain of truth in Hamsun’s allegations that Britain was an enemy. Prior to the German invasion the some British leaders suggested the possibility of occupying Norway. Winston Churchill was among the Conservatives who supported moving troops into the region to help Finland fight the Soviets. Sweden and Norway refused permission for the British to move troops through their countries, and the British and French considered the idea of doing it anyway.
Once Finland surrendered, Churchill still advocated mining Norwegan territorial waters, and apparently the British prepared an expeditionary force to support that operation should the Norwegians protest. That might help explain how they managed to deploy a brigade in Narvik less than a week after the German invasion.
Hitler’s directive which kicked off planning for the operation suggests that he thought the British intended to occupy Norway and/or Sweden, but he’s not the most trustworthy source. Admiral Erich Raeder expressed an interest in Norwegian bases in October of 1939.
Britain and later the United States actually did occupy Iceland shortly thereafter. I don’t know how much consultation they had with Iceland of the Danish government-in-exile before they did it.
I certainly don’t want to come across as some sort of crazy-ass Nazi, but there does seem to be some evidence that an invasion of Norway was eyeballed by both the Germans and the British.
Some individual Norwegians volunteered for the SS:
If I had to guess, I would think that most did so to get out of boring lives, rather than from any devotion to the Nazi ideal.
Nasjonal Samling (National Union) was founded in 1933 and actually had several representatives in the Norwegian parliament even before the war. (Not exactly a shining element of our political history). In April 1940, on the same day as the invasion of Norway, Quisling seized power and NS became the only legal political party in Norway. The king and the real government fled to England and led the Norwegian forces from there.
Membership in NS became mandatory for some groups, such as law enforcement and teachers. Those who didn’t agree were imprisoned. Because of this, several of those listed as members probably wasn’t Nazis and was given lighter sentences at the end of the war (The government in exile made NS membership illegal).
For more about Quisling himself, there is a Wikipedia site, which also includes some history.
Norwegians joined SS for three main reasons:
Some were nazis
Some wanted to help Finland ( and may have been promised that they would fight in Finland but I can’t remeber right now, I know some fought for Finland but most ended up in SS Viking and fought for the Germans)
Some wanted to fight communism thinking that communism was more dangerous then nazism.
SS Viking was a frontline unit and AFAIK did not directly take part in the holocaust but were probarbly no better then any German or Russian unit on the eastern front in following the rules of war. Most if not all volunteers knew nothing about the holocaust when they joined.
NS never had a representative in the parlament.
He is right, I was wrong. I stand corrected. I thought they had representatives because Quisling was part of a government before the war (Minister of Defense), but he was a member of a different party (“The Farmers’ Party”) at that time. This was, of course, before NS was founded.