Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945

12. Negotiations?

169 Chapter 12 Negotiations? A Harsher Occupation Just after Christmas 1941 and without the knowledge of the Norwegian government, the British carried out raids and sabotage in Måløy and Reine in the Lofoten islands of northern Norway, leaving 150 German soldiers dead and 98 taken prisoner. The raids shocked Hitler and convinced him the Allies would invade through northern Norway. A month later he declared that Norway was the “fateful area of this war” and diverted another 150,000 soldiers to the country. On 25 March, he received a Wehrmacht report on the need to increase preparedness for an Allied invasion, and on 13 May the Wehrmacht forced 15,000 Norwegian men to begin work on military construction as Hitler continued to build Fortress Norway. Within the country, Terboven met force with force, and April 1942 was a setback for the resistance. On Easter Sunday, he deported 54 leading Norwegians to Sachsenhausen, including Labor Party leader Einar Gerhardsen, the poet Arnulf Øverland, and the University of Oslo’s president (rektor), Didrik Arup Seip. On the west coast, German reprisals brought the traffic of volunteers leaving Norway for the United Kingdom to a standstill. On 15 April, the coastal steamer Skjerstad left Trondheim for the northern town of Kirkenes with 500 teachers forcibly evacuated onboard; another 500 had been sent to the Grini internment camp. The worst reprisal of the occupation came after 26 April, when two Norwegian commandos killed the Bergen Gestapo chief and his assistant 170 · Contesting NS Legitimacy in the fishing village of Tælavåg, just outside Bergen. Terboven personally supervised the razing of the village, deported 71 men to concentration camps in Germany, where 31 died, and interned the women and children. In the wake of Tælavåg, the Gestapo rounded up Milorg units from Bergen to Stavanger to Oslo. In this context, no one could assume that a church accused of taking a “political” stand on Easter Sunday would be exempt from harsher reprisals. Establishing an Autonomous Church Cutting its ties to the state launched the Church of Norway into uncharted waters. The clergy had resigned and no longer accepted state salaries, but they remained in their parishes and continued their ministries. For the rest of April, May, and June, they had no income and did not know who was leading the church. For several weeks the church seemed paralyzed. The reason was a leadership crisis. Because of government restrictions on its members, neither the CCC nor its planned successor, the Church’s Consultative Council, was able to function. In late June, however , restrictions were lifted on all the bishops but Berggrav, and the leadership could begin to reorganize. Dean Johannes Hygen of Oslo was Berggrav’s representative. Ole Hallesby was a member of both the CCC and the Church’s Consultative Council, intended to be the CCC’s successor but too unwieldy to work under the circumstances. Accordingly, in mid-June he took the initiative to convene the bishops and the executive committee of the Church’s Consultative Council to discuss the creation of a new leadership group. The discussions culminated in the formation of the Provisional Church Leadership (PCL).1 The PCL comprised three bishops—Berggrav (represented by Hygen), Maroni, and Hille—and three mission society representatives— Hallesby, Hope, and H. E Wisløff, chair of the Council of Autonomous Organizations. In its first phase, much of the day-to-day responsibility fell on Hallesby.2 On 23 July 1942, a month after its formation, the PCL sent its first message to the congregations. It claimed spiritual victory: over 90 percent of the 738 currently serving pastors had resigned, more were continuing to do so, and parish councils were rallying around their “pastors.” The PCL also insisted that the church was not engaged in politics or attempt- Negotiations? · 171 ing to “explode the state church.” Nor was it establishing “a free folk church” or “free church.” Instead, the fight was for “the church, for the church’s inner nature and most precious right, for its God-given call to proclaim God’s Word and live its distinctive life in the midst of the state.” From now on, said the PCL, the work of the church would be in the church, serving congregations with “Word and sacrament” and not violating established church ordinances more than necessary.3 If the PCL’s view of its mission looked restrictive, a defensive retreat to “the spiritual realm,” it was. After Berggrav’s house arrest...