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130 Chapter 10 In Defense of the Young The NS Youth Laws The principles at stake in the Nidaros Cathedral incident were enough to justify the resignation of the bishops. Whether it contained enough drama to also mobilize public support is unknown, because within a week the NS launched another initiative that quickly overshadowed it. Quisling’s vision for Norway was of a corporate state: trades and professions would be organized into corporations based on the leadership principle and each corporation would have representation in the National Assembly (Riksting), which would replace the Storting and advise the national leader. The authority vested in the leader would guarantee that national interests governed politics, and the leadership principle meant leaders would be held accountable. Quisling set 1 May 1942 for the National Assembly’s inaugural meeting. In the meantime, he started his revolution on 5 February 1942 by issuing two laws. The National Youth Service Law (Lov om nasjonal ungdomstjeneste) mandated that boys and girls, “for the sake of their national upbringing and to serve their people and fatherland,” were to enroll in the NS Youth Corps, effective 1 March.1 The Youth Corps was the NS’s organization for 10 to 18-year-olds, an imitation of Germany’s Hitler Youth. A complementary law (Lov om Norges Lærersamband) established Norway’s Teacher Association and authorized the Minister President to appoint its leader to serve as a liaison between teachers and state authorities. All elementary and secondary school teachers had to In Defense of the Young · 131 join the association, and the law imposed penalties for refusing. Skancke was personally keen to see teachers at the forefront of the national youth service, and once implemented he was to administer the program.2 Quisling staked his political future on these two laws, because he thought that their success was crucial to the rest of his agenda of a National Assembly, a peace treaty with Germany, and, with that, national independence.3 If he could fulfill his agenda, Quisling thought he would have political legitimacy as the people’s prophetic savior, the true patriotic leader who had secured Norwegian sovereignty within the new European order. “An Order of Creation” On the day Quisling published the new laws, Berggrav was eluding police attention as a “patient” in Lovisenberg Hospital. Realizing that the significance of the laws far outweighed the cathedral incident, he signed out of the hospital, drafted a protest, conferred with the CCC, and sent the draft to the bishops. If the bishops agreed with the letter, they were to reply with a telegram stating: “Understood about the baptism issue.”4 On Sunday, 14 February 1942, Berggrav sent the bishops’ letter to Skancke. The bishops’ opening sentence stated the premise of their argument: “The foundational relationship between parents and children is an order of creation, a God-determined relationship that endures unbreakable and sacred for all homes.” For that reason, the right and responsibility of the home was “unconditional and indissoluble.” To deny parents the right and responsibility to raise their own children was to violate the parents’ “sacred” rights and force them into “the most extreme act of conscience.” Such was the case with compulsory youth service. The bishops also asserted the right of the church and schools to protest. Parents had voluntarily baptized their children, which obligated them to raise their children in the Christian faith, and the school law’s first article stated that schools were to provide children with “a Christian and moral upbringing .” School and church thus stood with parents in recognition of their mutual obligation.5 The bishops’ protest “spread like a light through the land,” probably because it was the first to articulate the issues at stake and justify the right to resist. The BBC also broadcast a reading of it several times. The 132 · Resistance bishops were thus instrumental in mobilizing church, school, and parents into a united front against the National Youth Service Law.6 Skancke addressed his reply to Berggrav personally, as if the protest merely expressed the bishop’s personal opinion.7 He conceded that parents were responsible for raising children in cooperation with church and school, and he used Luther’s explanation of the Fourth Commandment to subsume the obedience children owed parents to the obedience parents owed the state, leaving the state with primary authority over children. The state was also an order of creation, and God as Father had instituted the state so that parental responsibility would be exercised...

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