Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945

5. In Defense of a Just State

69 Chapter 5 In Defense of a Just State Assault on the Rule of Law When Hitler could not achieve his optimal political settlement, his compromise was the Commissarial Council, installed by Terboven on 25 September 1940. The Commissarial Council was not a government, because each minister answered to Terboven, but the Reichskommissar banned all other parties and declared that the NS was “the Norwegian people’s only possible way to freedom and independence.” As already noted, ten of the thirteen commissioner ministers were NS members, including the Commissioner Minister of Church and Education. The NS’s immediate aims were to install party members in key state offices, reorganize the bureaucracy, take control of professional and trade organizations, and recruit enough members to convince the Germans that it could form a viable government. The party made reasonable progress toward those ends. By April 1941, it controlled the state agencies, and party membership had increased from 4,202 in August 1940 to 25,914, comparable to the largest parties before the occupation.1 In the trade and professional organizations, however, massive resistance prevented an NS takeover. An essential feature of the “New Age” was secret police to counter political resistance. Terboven used the Gestapo to deal with military and civil resistance, and with German oversight the NS reconstituted the Norwegian State Police as a “political police.” These changes were most obvious in the streets, where the NS paramilitary organization, the Hird, 70 · Resistance intimidated, bullied, and harassed the public. The NS-controlled police did not intervene or were inexplicably absent.2 The disorder in the streets was accompanied by a more fundamental assault on the rule of law in the judiciary. Hitler’s directive (Erlass) to Terboven authorized Terboven to supersede Norwegian civil laws as needed. To make sure he had compliant courts, Terboven established the German Law Court (Deutscher Gerichtshof) and an NS People’s Court (Folkedomstolen) to deal with civil resistance. In both courts, law served politics. The Supreme Court justices had considered resigning on 25 September but decided to wait for a direct challenge to constitutional law.3 That came in mid-November, when the Commissioner Minister of Justice, Sverre Riisnæs, replaced judges and lowered the civil service retirement age from 70 to 65. The Supreme Court considered his actions a threat to their judicial authority and independence and contrary to law, but Riisn æs dismissed their objections. Informed by Terboven that the Supreme Court had no right to judge his or commissioner ministers’ decrees, the justices resigned on 21 December 1940. Church Reprieve Until early 1941, the NS did not pursue an assertive church policy, largely because Ragnar Skancke (1890–1948), Commissioner Minister of Church and Education, had almost no interest in religion. Skancke had been a professor of engineering at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim, joined the NS in 1933, and became the party leader in Trøndelag .4 As Commissioner Minister, he left church affairs to the Director General (ekspedisjonssjef) of the Church Department, Søren Oftenæs, who had worked in the department since 1897 and as director general since 1927. Oftenæs was not an NS supporter, but as a senior civil servant , he could not be dismissed without cause. Declining health finally forced his retirement on 1 February 1941. While searching for a suitable successor, Skancke announced in early October that he would not interfere in the church as long as the church did not interfere in politics.5 Neither Terboven nor Skancke defined “politics ,” and only a month later, Skancke reassured Christians that the state would not repress “faith and the Christian person’s freedom” but in the In Defense of a Just State · 71 same breath demanded that “each one must be a willing servant” in their collective life. It was becoming clear that “politics” meant any words or actions that were not in cooperation with the Germans and the NS state.6 But for a few months, the church was out of the spotlight. The Church’s Prayer of Intercession The church also had a reprieve because Berggrav compromised on an issue that could have split the church at the outset. The Church’s Prayer of Intercession (Kirkebønnen), a prayer for King Haakon, the royal family , the Storting, and the cabinet, was part of the liturgy. In late July, Terboven ordered Berggrav to delete the problematic political references from the prayer in radio services.7 Berggrav replied that the Germans had the right to broadcast...