PROF. HAUGEN DENIES STOWE'S STORY OF NORWEGIAN '5TH COLUMN'
Haugen, Prof. Einar
Prof. Haugen Denies Stowe's Story of Norwegian '5th Column' U. Man Says Norway Knew She Could Not Resist Nazis' Drive Complete Text of Address at 17th of May Observance Here Reveals Reasons for...
...How many days did well-armed Holland last...
...It need not have been more than one man, Major Quisling, supported by German parachute troops...
...Her merchant marine became the greatest, per capita, of any nation in the xorld...
...His proof that there was treachery is as follows...
...Einar Haugen...
...Stowe's general conclusion is that "Oslo's formidable sea defenses had been renedered almost as useless as an air rifle—through bribery, treachery, and betrayal...
...Let us dedicate ourselves to the maintenance of this ideal in America...
...One letter from Trondheim describes Apr...
...Of the six army divisions that Norway could mobilize, four are reported to have been destroyed either as dead, wounded, or prisoners...
...Even the big business men, who normally might be attracted by Nazi propaganda, were too closely tied to English trade to be sympathetic to Germany...
...His story is confirmed by the investigations of the Norwegian government, and also by dispatches and letters coming out of Norway in the last weeks...
...What good would a jeer do in the midst of a tornado...
...We knew that the Nazi party had polled less than 2 per cent of the voters in the last ejection, and that their leader was a subject tor general ridicule...
...Those lines were built with the blood and sweat of the Norwegian people through a hundred years...
...Now that these waves closed over them, there was little they could do but wait and hQpe for the best...
...After four days in Oslo, he managed to escape across the border to Sweden and there he telegraphed to America a story that has been reprinted in most American newspapers...
...It speaks through the ringing words of Norway's greatest living author...
...and he described the actions of the Norwegians in Oslo after the occupation in such a way that one would think the Norwegians were completely indifferent to what was happening...
...Their spirit flamed brightly among those hundred men who held out at the fort of Hegra until the British had come and gone—their ammunition used up, starving for days...
...These people who laughingly went on drinking cocktails in Norway's hour of distress were not the serious-eyed men and women whow we had seen as recently as at the crisis of Munich a year and a half ago...
...Says Strategy KesponslDie Norway misfigured...
...He tells us that he talked to a soldier who had been stationed at Horten...
...Some may ask why the Norwegians and the other neutrals did not call in Great Britain and get her help in time...
...It is a gigantic, mechanized Industry, where the engineers count for more than the infantry...
...But why should one hiss the hurricane that blows his home away...
...Our task here must be to help in every way possible, both for the sake of our love of Norway and because of our admiration for the people that now risks total destruction...
...In the words of another New York Times correspondent, Harold Callender, "The outstanding mistake of Scandinavia was that it imagined it lived in a world as civilized as itself...
...Perhaps they lived in a fool's paradise...
...We stand as outposts of an ideal of life and government that is being trampled under foot in our ancestral land...
...In the weeks that have passed it has been possible to clarify the picture and show that many of his conclusions were hasty...
...No Test of Manhood The problem of heroism and cowardice becomes an entirely new one under conditions of modern warfare...
...But none of these facts justifies the charge of cowardice or treason levelled against the Norwegian people...
...Traitors played a minor role in the downfall of Norway...
...It may have been a bluff, but it was one that Norway was not prepared to call, for there had been no war tension, no expectation of necessity for defense, and no general mobiliaziton...
...He writes with amazemen...
...She was wiped out from the number of nations for four centuries and still survived...
...A letter from Halden speaks of the event as "this cruel thing than that has come upon us" and calls it "an evivl dream...
...Much less publicity has been given to the other side of the story, which was presented by one of America's most distinguished w-ar correspondents, Otto Tolischus, of the New York Times, now in Stockholm...
...We have sat glued to the radio, we have scanned the newspapers, hoping against hope that some effective resistance might be offered to the invaders...
...After the incredible successes of the German war machine against the French and British both in Norway and in the Low Countries, people will perhaps be less ready to call it treason when the Norwegian commanders gave up a hopeless cause...
...Why, may we ask, has Norway deserved to be restored...
...That is the explanation of the "daze" which Stowe found so perplexing...
...He was a man without influence...
...Conclusions Were "Hasty" We felt that there must be some error in Stowe's story, for thj» Norwegian people he described was not the one we had known...
...At present all we can do is to gather funds for immediate and future relief...
...To speak of individual heroism today is like speaking of the executive ability of a factory piece worker...
...There are people in this country who are only too ready to call out "coward" and "traitor" from their comfortable arm chairs by the radio...
...indeed, an Italian might jump up and down in the streets and shout under such circumstances, but a Norwegian would grieve and take his troubles standing up...
...First because they were unprepared to meet the weapons of modern warfare, and second because they were taken completely off their guard...
...At Munich Great Britain capitulated once more to the demands of Hitler and gave him free of charge one of the most civilized and democratic states of Europe...
...Why, then, did it happen...
...May 17 is Norwegian Independence day.—EDITOR'S NOTE] By PROF...
...In 1936 her exports were valued at $130 000.000, which was still not enough to pay for imports valued at $230,000,000...
...She was caught in the meshes of a strategy whose equal in cynical heartlessness the world has rarely seen...
...They were, as Edvard Hambro put it in a speech here last fall, suspicious of all the great powers...
...He writes that "the last of the German troops went by without a single jeer or hiss, without a single tear noticeable on any Norwegian face...
...A national committee hu...
...She passed through nearly 10 years of hunger and suffering during the Napoleonic wars and came out of It as a free nation for the first time in modern history...
...At Tronheim the Germans sailed In under conditions of very poor visibility, and accompanied by Norwegian fishing vessels on which the fort could not fire without shooting its own people...
...Norway's fleet is still intact, and whatever markets she may lose during the war she has a good chance cf winning back when it is ail over...
...At Narvik the German soldiers were landed from an 11,000-ton whaler sailing under the American flag...
...There was more general satisfaction with the policy of the government than in most democratic countries...
...At the time the Norwegian leader, C. J. Hambro, warned his countrymen and the world of what this meant to the future of small nations...
...The truth is that German power was such that they were able to land two troopships in spite of continual fire from the forts...
...It was evident in the refusal of Norway's king to leave her soil while there was still a foot of it unconquered, even though at the age of 70 he was forced to flee through trackless wilderness harried by enemy bombs...
...We need not go Into the damage that has been done to Norwegian economic and cultural life further than we have already done...
...Furthermore we knew that the temper of the people was overwhelmingly opposed to the Nazi mentality...
...Through the civil war *n Spain Norway sympathized with the Loyalists and gave them all possible aid, but Great Britain sabotaged the legal government and allowed the fascists to take .Spain...
...Oslo contained only a few hundred unarmed policemen...
...That they were caught off their guard is not surprising, for they lay so far off the beaten path of European warfare that they had a good chance of escaping this time fs they did in 1914...
...perhaps some will even repudiate their own past...
...One wonders what they would be doing if bombs were dropping around them...
...In America ine Norwegians have shown their deep sympathy for the plight of their countrymen by instituting prompt and energetic action for Norwegian relief...
...The man with a machine gun, or a tank, or a bomber is not a hero, he Is just a cog in a great war machine, which mows down every hope and beauty and aspiration In Its way, until it meets another war machine that can cope with it...
...What have these three million people done to show that they are able to bear the burdens of a free nation...
...They tell us that Norwegians helped to lay the plans that took Norway by surprise...
...Vfany Norwegians will be discouraged: they will say that their leaders were following the wrong tack...
...Norwegians are starving in many places, they need medical aid, they need shelter and clothing...
...The Finns had been arming feverishly for 20 years, and they had months in which to get their defenses ready for the great struggle...
...Always Had to Fight Norway has always had to fight for her existence and her people have always been ready to dig in and work for the future...
...They tell us that the Germans would not have gotten in if many Norwegians had not favored their entry...
...Blames Nazi Cleverness On point after point he shows that the real cause of the Norwegian tragedy was the diabolical cleverness of the German strategy, which turned to account those very qualities of the Norwegians for which they are most admired, their peacefulness, their democracy, their high civilization...
...But I cannot recall that I have ever seen so many truly sorrowful and distressed faces as I have this last month...
...Sigrid Undset, who immediately volunteered her services to the government and issued an appeal to her countrymen: "We have not given the world reason to believe that we are a cowardly people, even though our smallness and our location have compelled us to he an unwarlike people...
...Is it any wonder that Norway was caught unaware, when England, who was righting the greatest war in her history and had a vital stake in Norway, was asleep at the switch...
...Many a quiet tear has been dropped...
...The celebration was sponsored by Idun lodge of the Sons of Norway and was attended by nearly 300...
...Stowe claims that 100 German marines captured the naval base at Horten almost without a fight...
...The admiral's name was H. Djesen, a member of the Labor party and above suspicion of any disloyalty...
...perhaps they should have turned their country into an armed fort, with an unhappy, underfed population inside it...
...The real courage and strength of the Norwegian people was shown in those tragic days when they rallied in the interior, though they were deprived of their air bases, their ammunition, their supplies...
...Through her waterfalls electric power was made available to three-fourths of her population...
...In relation to Norway the phrases "fifth column" and "the Trojan horse" which the newspapers love to throw around have little meaning...
...Tolischus has proved his competence by just being awarded the Pulitzer prize for this year for nis war correspondences...
...Yet from his own story we iearn that machine and anti-aircraft guns fhred at the German planes for several hours on the morning of the 9th...
...He compares the Norwegians to the hatives of an African village, among whom European conquerors have paraded in and taken over...
...Within the last generation, 50.000 new homestead* were opened up for cultivation, subsidized by the government...
...Yet he expressed not the least doubt about his own competence...
...One of the hardest blows to Norwegian national feeling these weeks has been the story that has circulated in the American press about Norwegian traitors...
...But the truth is that there were no mines there, so they could hardly have been disconnected...
...All the towns of Osterdalen and Gudbrandsdalen and of the north Tronheim area were severely bombed, and most of them completely destroyed...
...The deficit was made up by the earnings of her great merchant fleet...
...It is not strange that these were ineffective when we realize that Oslo had no adequate defenses against air raids...
...he ever ends his hurried and misleading article with the boastful statement that "this is the most important newspaper dispatch I have ever had occasion to write...
...he was full of praise for the many advances in special legislation made by the Labor government...
...But the actions of Great Britain through these crucial years have not been such as to reassure any neutral that her help would really be forthcoming...
...By utilizing all the openings left by the great powers, Norway had been able to sustain a population 31/2 times as big as the one she had in 1800...
...again no effective support was forthcoming from the Allies...
...Actually very few of these held any important positions...
...aside from the confusion that some of his false orders may have caused, his damage was slight...
...She had done this by hard work and careful management...
...The substance of it was that Norway was lost becau.se of Norwegian traitors...
...However much they might prefer the British mode of life, they could not be conient with promises from Great Britain...
...We must have money ready to help them as soon as the channels are opened...
...It was the conviction of Norwegian leaders that such money would have been wasted, for no small nation could possibly have been competed with the great ones...
...when they gathered their scattered forces and contested the German possession of Norway foot by foot...
...It would give the lie to those proud traditions that have borne Norway's struggle for freedom through the centuries...
...When Finland was attacked, Norway gave her every aid short of military action that she could...
...We can not be sure just what role was played by the false orders said to have been sent out, nor just how many people were Involved in these...
...He was disappointed in his expectation of dramatic scenes...
...Stowe says that the army was full of Quisling appointees that had not been removed...
...Yet, in the course of the past centuries, Norway had built up a civilization equal to that of other west European countries and in some respects superior...
...This Is not the first time that Norway has lost her sovereignty...
...No government is so good that there will not be dissatisfied individuals...
...they were men who knew what modern warfare was like, and they knew that a single-handed fight against the Germans was merely to sacrifice live uselessly...
...Stowe says that Oslo was seized without a hand being lifted...
...He has pieced the story together from better sources than those available to Stowe, and his conclusion is that internal treason play a secondary role in Norway...
...But less than 3 per cent of their soil is cultivated...
...EINAR HAUGEN vy/E Americans of Norwegian stock have never gathered W to celebrate the 17th of May under such tragic circumstances as in this year of 1940...
...I am more than willing to grant that there are still many unexplained mysteries in the German occupation of Norway...
...Their hearts might bleed, but their hands were pi.ralyzed...
...If one were to believe Leland Stowe, one would conclude that the great majority of Norwegians were either stupidly unable to understand what was going on, or else that they were quite indifferent to the fate of their country...
...If this were true, it would suggest that the disaster was her own fault and that she deserved no aid from us...
...Events have shown that they are right...
...Trade Necessary 8ixty per cent of the grain on which Norwegians lived had to come from abroad, most of it from countries she cannot now reach, like Canada, Argentina, and the United States...
...When the tragic blow fell on Norway, there happened to be in Oslo an American correspondent named Iceland Stowe, representing the Chicago Daily News...
...It was because the Norwegians realized this fact only too well .that they remained passive in the face of the approaching danger...
...we have not voiced our indignation in loud and inflammatory words...
...In the field of human relations ardent and sincere idealists were working cut the best solutions available...
...Pearson arid Allen In their Washington column have stated that there were many sympathizers of Nazi Germany in the upper crust of Norway...
...No Mines There, Claim Stowe claims that some traitor had disconnected the electrical mines at Oscarsborg, the narrowest place in the fjord...
...So they were ordered on shore, while the two other ships opened fire very effectively and sank a battleship and a submarine...
...During the 19th century, the Norwegians struggled valiantly within a union with Sweden to maintain and extend her independence...
...It will be my pleasant task this evening to reassure those whose heads have been bowed in shame over these reports...
...The possibilities of Norwegian existence lay in a delicate balance between the various economic aspects of life...
...Cites Many Advantages Forests were being carefully conserved and school children were planting three million new trees annually...
...Stowe could not understand this...
...But in the whole article he does not present one scrap of evidence to prove the charge of bribery...
...Prom these and other countries now out of her reach came large quantities of raw materials urgently needed In the life of her people, such as fertilizer, feed, oil, iron, coal gasoline...
...But when they have to flght, they have done so, and she greets "with sad and bitter pride our soldiers who today are fighting for the honor and freedom of our country...
...Stowe claims that the Germans expected no resistance at the forts of Oscarsborg, and that this was the reasons the Norwegians were able to sink the Blucher...
...But the truth is that the decision to stop firing came after consultation with the Norwegian admiral at Oslo, who realized that one ship sunk was not enough to stop a German armada...
...The German occupation has disturbed r.hls balance, on which all human life In Norway was based...
...They live amid lakes and glaciers and mountains that are among the most picturesque in the world...
...they were without Influence...
...Norway is not a nation that can shut itself up and live alone...
...The Norwegian officers who gave the orders to...
...But it is a well-known fact that there were fewer Nazis in Norway than in Sweden or Denmark, and than in this country...
...The grit of the Norwegian people is not easily destroyed...
...stop firing were not traitors...
...their expressions of emotions are restrained, almost shamefaced, but their emotions arc no less real and sincere for that...
...Through all these centuries, she declares, Norwegian courage has been applied to the rescue of life, not to the destruction of life...
...In 1905 the Norwegian parliament voted a dissolution of the union and was ready to back its decision with force...
...Municipal slum clearance and housing projects and an excellent school system made the standard of civilized living in Norway a model for many other countries...
...How could he possibly learn the truth during those four hectic days, with all news censored, with communication disrupted...
...Stowe makes much of the intrigues of Quisling and his men...
...been created, which commands the respect of all by the integrity and ability of Its members...
...Of course it is true that in every country there will be die-hards who would rathe, see their country overthrown than lose some of their own privileges...
...Modern war Is not a test of manhood...
...but how could the private be expected to know just why the commander had given the orders he did...
...at what he calls "the seeming apathy of tens of thousands of men and women...
...only the commandants of Narvik and Kongsvlnger have been cited for removal by the Norwegian government...
...We may also take it for granted that Norway was saturated with German spies in the form of consuls, travelling-salesmen, and tourists...
...Every person with an Income below $1,500 was enrolled in a compulsory health insurance scheme, while employes were protected by a recent unemployment Insurance act...
...We recalled that in 1824 a small, but determined band of leading Norwegians met and declared the Independence of Norway In the face of the hostility of every great power in Europe...
...The German commander then issued an ultimatum to the fort that the town would be bombarded if it did not cease firing within 10 minutes...
...As one who has known Norwegians from childhood, and who spent half a year in Oslo only a year ago, I can assert that this is a colossal example of a foreigner's failure to understand Norwegian psychology...
...Perhaps they should have turned their little surplus into guns instead of into health insurance...
...We can -11 recall having heard C. J. Hambro, a leader of the conservative party, when he spoke in Madison a couple of years ago...
...More than thr.t, how could Leland Stowe, a stranger in the country, unfamiliar with its language, undertsand the actions and the psychology of a people after having spent exactly four days there...
...This amounted to 50,000 men...
...head of the university department of Scandinavian languages and literature, at the annual "Syttende Mai" cele-brat ion last Friday at the Marine club...
...But we also knew that they were not cowards, but a strong, hardy people whose accomplishments as sailors, hunters, fishermen, skiers, and explorers proved that they had moral and physical stamina...
...It was exemplified in those three bus drivers who plunged themselves and their buses crowded with German soldiers over a precipice...
...Meanwhile we must not forget to be grateful that we can be here, calling to mind a holiday of independence which is forbidden in its native land...
...While present conditions last she cannot Import the things she needs and cannot export the goods to pay for them...
...but they were not happy about it...
...Already letters have been smuggled out of the country which reflect their real feelings...
...We must make our fellow citizens in this country realize the urgent and desperate need that besets Norway...
...For over a month our hearts have bled at seeing our ancestral land turned into a flaming battlefield by the great powers of Europe through no fault of her own...
...There were fewer traitors in Norway than in most other countries, including our own...
...Could Only Wait, Hope During recent years they trembled between fear and nope, knowing full well that modern warfare had already taken the decision of their country's future out of their hands...
...It was a fighting literature, with such names as Ibsen, Bjornson, and Sigrid Undset among its internationally famous representatives...
...Two-thirds of her exports went to countries she cannot reach...
...We knew that the strongest party was the Labor party, which had opposed fascist aggression at every turn, from Manchuria and Ethiopia to Spain and Czecho-Slovakia...
...Perhaps they were mistaken...
...So the Norwegians knew that their only hope of safety lay in offending neither side...
...It is easy to criticize now the military policy followed during the years after the last war...
...The driving urge behind all these improvements found its expression in a literature that was free and nntrammeled, and full of social consciousness...
...At Bergen the forts fired for an hour until the hopelessness of the struggle became apparent...
...The liberal movement will be ruthlessly crushed under German domination, and even if they are driven out, much of Norway's advance will be washed away...
...We hope warmly and ardently for the liberation of Norway, and we look forward to the day when Norway will again be the land of which we have dreamt so often, and with whose fate our feelings are forever involved...
...Life and property have been destroyed and great values have been lost...
...But his supporters were not only few li number...
...Capital and labor were gradually coming to an understanding...
...The truth, according to Tolischus, is that two of the four vessels lying there had nothing but raw recruits on board, who knew nothing about fighting as yet...
...He claims that three warships off the naval base at Horten got orders not to fire, and that only the Olaf Trygvason fired, because it had just put in for repairs and had not gotten these treasonable orders...
...9 as a "day of the most dismal despair...
...We have not been moved to hold mass demonstrations...
...Haugen Denies Stowe's Story of Norwegian '5th Column' U. Man Says Norway Knew She Could Not Resist Nazis' Drive Complete Text of Address at 17th of May Observance Here Reveals Reasons for Disagreement [The Progressive prints this week a complete copy of the address on "Norway and the War," delivered by Prof...
...The destruction of air fields, railroads, bridges, roads, and lines of communication generally was tragic in a country so vast and thinly populated...
...The sad thing for all of us in this story is the fact that this whole culture was built on so slender and delicate a -foundation, one that could be so easily upset...
...We have felt the sharp and cruel pangs of blasted hopes, of the crash of high ideals, of the severance of our dearest ties...
...It shows how one who was a stranger to the people could see all that happened and yet fail to understand what he saw...
...We all knew that the Norwegians were not prepared for war: that for years only 10 per cent of the national budget had gone to defense...
...And it Is clear that the Germans did not value Quisling's help very highly, for within a couple of days they removed him, and he has not since been heard of...
...Stowe calls the seizure of Oslo by parachute troops in the number of only 1,500 "one of the greatest military bluffs of modern times...
...Stowe quotes with approval a comment made by an Italian...
...Says Story Unbelievable This story seemed on the face of It unbelievable...
...But I still believe that Norway and the Norwegians will survive...
...No one can fairly compare Norway's situation to that of Finland...
...Under the circumstances, the officers saw no other course than to surrender...
...For years these people had sat listening with anxious hearts to the radio that brought the waves of Armageddon closer and closer to them...
...He did not realize that Norwegians do not believe in making a spectacle of themselves in public...
...when help did come, it was ineffectual and tragically destructive to Norway...
...Producers and consumers were also organizing to their mutual advantage, while state regulation prevented unfair trade practices, price cutting, and private monopolies...
...And until they do, we owe Norway the benefit of the doubt...
...The rest, according to Stowe, were Nazi sympathizers who were glad to see Norway taken...
Vol. 10 • June 1940 • No. 22
