The Norwegian SS-volunteers, however, took part in regular German army large-scale operations and saw fighting at a “professional” and brutal level, completely incomparable to the halfhearted and hopeless disorganised resistance offered by the Norwegian regular army when opposing the invading Germans.

Point is, the Norwegians who participated in total war as experienced on the Continent were mainly those fighting for Hitler.

Not exactly what they teach us in school, yet so it was.

Most of Milorg’s work was concentrated around military intelligence. Military operations such as sabotage were expressivly forbidden. They were thought to have too little strategic effect compared to the costs.

In 1942 they Gestapo made progress against Milorg and thousands of people were arrested. But they recovered and in 1943 there were 30.000 members.

The allied forces had during the war discuraged sabotage but they changed their mind after the invasion in Normandie after seeing the contributions of the French resistance.

In 1944 the ban on military operations were lifted and Milorg got the order to stop the Germans as much as possible in their retreat back to the continent. In late 1944/45 equipment for 30 – 40.000 troops were airdropped over Norway and 200 instructors were flown in.

A number of operations were executed, mainly against roads, bridges and railroads.

In May 1945 Milorg took control over key points in Norway, such as harbours, communications, etc to stop sabotage from the retrating troops. They took public building and made way for the return of the goverment.

A few days later when the allied forces arrived Norway would mostly appear to be a nation in peace with Milorg troops patroling and upholding law and order. About 40.000 Milorg troops took part in retaking Norway.

There were also other fractions, such as The Linge Company and some communist groups that did not see themselves bound by the ban on sabotage and performed some actions. These were, however, limited in scope.

As for what your post really was about, the norwegians that joined the German forces:

As I have read they did that mainly to fight communism. Communism was seen as a great danger by many at that time.

After the war “frontkjemperene” (“The Front fighters”) were given sentences on several years by the courts. They were convicted on treason and most trials took a few hours, at the most a day. Several was sentenced to life imprisonment but the longest time served was 11 years.

http://www.utal.net is a site that is about the Norwegian front fighters.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=17215

According to Alnæs, as late as October 1942, they did not even permit the killing of any German soldiers EVEN IN SELF-DEFENSE.

For example, the leadership of Milorg sent a telegram to the authorities in London 14th of October which said, “Vennligst instuer folk dere sender hit, for eksempel våpeninstruktrører, om de ikke må drepe tyskere, selv ikke i selvforsvar, da dette ville lede til represalier her. Vi følger selv denne linje, f.eks. ved eksport.”

When some communist partisans or others in Norway killed some Germans, Milorg had a fit and sometimes apparently blamed the British, sending complaints to London. For example, October 1943 a troop transport was blown up between Drammen and Hokksund, and several Germans were killed. Milorg condemned the “use of such methods” The Germans arrested some people, executed five.

Things got more violent later on, but from what I have read so far, Milorg isn’t exactly a sterling example of an armed resistance, even if they played an important role in various ways.

Anyways, my point is not to belittle the Norwegian resistance, even if I suspect that Norway, like most European countries, often spends a disproportionate amount of time glorifying what were sometimes marginal resistance efforts in periods of occupation that were broadly tolerated, if reluctantly so.

As for fighting communism, you are again right, Bolshevists were the “dark forces” that Sverre is referring to (which I removed in the … of his quote for effect). The thing is, Bolshevism and Communist has always been the boogie man of fascist movements and the Eastern front was the only important front during the time of the major recruiting in Norway. Especially in Europe, where you could not, like the Japanese and Chinese, argue that White imperialism was the enemy, Communism and the Red peril was, next to the specter of evil Jews, the easiest enemy to use in your propaganda (of course, a Jewish lead Communist movement made for the best bogie man).

Siri