NORWAY: The Terror Begins

Last week Heinrich Himmler, the man who had cleaned up Vienna, Warsaw and Paris for Hitler, arrived in Oslo and informed Norway it could hope for no freedom even after a German victory. The Reich was going to use Norway to supply and hydroelectrify greater Germany. The present Nazi garrison (estimated at 300,000) would stay until “reliable” Quisling forces could take its place.

A better traitor than terrorist, Major Vidkun Quisling has been a four-star flop as Nazi Gauleiter of the country he betrayed. Tough-fibred Norwegians, though defeated, have refused to be conquered. The Norsemen’s passive resistance has included sabotage of power plants, attacks on individual Nazis, stealing any Nazi weapons left unguarded. Secret anti-Nazi organizations have flourished and have smuggled in money from sympathetic Sweden, arms from Britain.

When it was ordered that mention of exiled King Haakon be stricken from prayers, Norwegian Lutheran ministers developed the practice of pausing while congregations thunderously filled in the deletion. With other insignia banned, loyal Norsemen now wear in their buttonholes bread-ration cards, still stamped with King Haakon’s arms.

A specialist in systematic terror, Heinrich Himmler last week began, to rectify Vidkun Quisling’s shortcomings. Three Norse operators of a secret radio station were sentenced to death, prison warders were ordered to make things tougher for political prisoners. But Norway still was not scared (see p. 70). From Stockholm came reports that Norway’s ever doughty ministers had read openly from their pulpits a forbidden letter from Norway’s seven bishops, condemning Quisling and the Nazis root and branch (TIME. Feb. 10).