Eine Sache, die ich an meinem Geschichtsunterricht hasste, war die Abwesenheit Norwegens in den Lehrbüchern und Diskussionen über den Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neben dem Lesen von Kommentaren von "Historiker" Ich möchte von den echten Menschen Norwegens hören, wie das Leben in dieser Zeit war.
Wenn Sie Verwandte oder Geschichten haben, die Sie erzählen können, lassen Sie es mich bitte wissen!
https://i.redd.it/8dlc7lg8xsrg1.jpeg
Von batukaming
30 Kommentare
What I’ve heard apart from the resistance work, things went along kind of like normal. There were rations though, hard to get enough supplies. I believe people for instance held pigs in the city, for food.
Scary if you were in the same area as Henry oliver Rinnan
Pretty much how it was before the occupation unless you were in the resistance.
My grandfather used to tell me it wasn’t really that bad (he was a child though so will likely have been oblivious) he did however get run over by a German truck and broke both his legs, the German infantry drove to the local hospital straight away and he made a full recovery. He did tell me after the war he was playing in a local park and found a K98 rifle buried in the mud, took it to his older brother who was in the norwegian army and got chastised by him, turned out it was still loaded, he marched them down to Stavanger harbour and threw it into the water, its probablly still down there over by the ferry terminal.
For being occupied, it wasn’t that bad for most people. Norwegian were not seen as an enemy race, an culture wise, we weren’t too different from them. German was the lingua franca in Norway before the war.
It was war and occupation, plus minority prosecution, and all the bad stuff that went on in the third reich, so it was pretty bad. But compared to places like Poland, or USSR, it was more a society full of restrictions, and very strict rules, rather then sheer terror.
People mostly had food, and was left alone.
Depends on what part of Norway and when. Northern part of Norway, mainly Finnmark were totally burned down and destroyed in the end parts of the war.. other parts of norway didn’t experienced that much of the war just carried on with their life. For the german soldiers in ww2, coming to norway was like holiday.. many of them finding norwegian girlfriends, learning to ski and other stuff.. you can find a several picture of it in the [digitalmuseum-site](https://digitaltmuseum.no/search?topic=%22Tysk+soldat%22). (pictures in link are of german soldiers in norway.. as we say in norway … picture tells more than thousand words). Keep in mind that norway were initially neutral in ww2 and many people then than today lived ruraly probably knowing not that much caring or knowing about stuff on the internantional arena.
Those experiencing the worst stuff here might probably have been the POW from places like Yugoslavia, Sovietunion and other places.. their fate was brutale. POWs captured in the balkans or in during barbarossa etc. were sent to built roads/railways and other stuff in norway almost working to death many of them. You can see a picture in [this article](https://www.nrk.no/trondelag/jugoslaviske-krigsfangers-historie-1.8273876) about them..
My father’s parents lived in Bergen, second largest city in Norway. They had shortages and lack of food. Nazis took everything for themselves. Nazis built military fortified installations next to civilian infrastructure like schools and residential buildings so when the allied bombed those they bombed us.
My grandfather on my mother’s side sailed in the merchant fleet so he spent the war in Britain when he was not on a ship in the Atlantic being hunted by nazi submarines. Insanely lucky man. The ships he was on got torpedoed three times, each time he was on shoreleave and survived.
My wife’s grandparents lived in the countryside outside of Bergen. And they were used to starving. Not much of interest where they lived so they grew potatoes and did fishing and lived off the land as they had always done.
Apparently in 1944, Edvard Munch died holed up in his flat in Oslo surrounded by his works, terrified.
He had been touted as an exemplar of Aryan artistry, but he wanted nothing to do with them. Poor guy.
I asked the old folks.
We were very very suspicious of other people. One could not know who was a nazi and would turn you in. We all kept very quiet.
The germans came to the farm and made records, so they could come back and confiscate the produce later. We hid away as much as we could, one time we hid some of the the calves in the silo.
They wanted to know tho owned the fishing boat. We told them the truth it was gunnar’s boat and gave them the address to the graveyard where he lies. The rouse kept fish on our table.
Eli was a nurse, she was forced to tend to wounded enemies. She remembered treating one officer and one private in particular.
«They would share the food when i did not look, the officers got better foodrations. I watered down the morphine for their surgeries. I was so angry with them.»
I can of course not speak on behalf of anyone (as I was not alive(I am in my 20’s), but I will share what I have been told from my great grandmother (she is still alive). Some she told me from her own experience as a child, some is what she was told by her family later in life. I am busy right now, but I want to and will write about it here when I have time😊
In a strange way, we came out of it with less debt (I wonder why aswell) and healthier. Apparently we are a lot of fish.
My late grandfather’s age was in the latter half of the single digits when the nazis occupied Norway, and according to him daily life went on pretty much as usual. That said, he did hate Germany until his last day, so I have a feeling there were things he learned after the fact and/or things he didn’t want to talk about.
Aside from him, I also remember older people from the area around his village talking about this and that person during the war, and which people they remembered being „a little striped“ (a low-level collaborator) and one of them suddenly exclaiming with utter venom in her voice „On the contrary, <name I don’t remember> was a goddamn *Quisling*!“
Mostly boring, with some drama from time to time. My grandfather lived in Tretten. His direct experiences with the nazis were when they came to seize their farm animals.
He had to eat bark bread and could forget about any luxuries such as coffee or tobacco. He heard about people being arrested and tortured/killed, but no one talked about who were in the resistance. When the war was coming to a halt, a nazi informant was shot and killed in front of his wife, who never told the authorities who had killed him. A «tyskertøs» reported her husband to the nazis, who interned and tortured him, while she spent the rest of the war in a relationship with a German officer. After the war, she went back into relationship with her husband.
They were busy with getting by with what little they had, and stay away from trouble, as internment of someone wouldn’t just affect themselves but also their family, who relied on them.
My grandpa was a very strict and serious man. Listening to his wise words truly vaccinated me against Nazism.
My family in Trondheim and Frosta has some stories. Too many to recount here in detail but they range from resistance (there was a bombing at the nazi office), to survival (borrowing clothes to steal petrol and supplies), to Mr Churchill’s Easter eggs (depth charges dropped on Easter Sunday into fjord waters to target a German sub stationed nearby), to compassion for the teenage soldiers who were stationed in their homes (they were basically home sick teenager soldiers given a heavy task).
My grandfather had a general store back then.
He mostly complained about how hard it was to get goods, and how hard it was to get fuel for the fishing boats.
There wasn’t much specific to complain about, anyway. War is war, and it sucks for everyone, but it sucked significantly less here than in other places. There was one incident where a German soldier shot someone over a misunderstanding, but that soldier got transferred away right quick. No idea what happened to him, but hopefully they sent him somewhere he got to meet other trigger happy soldiers. There wasn’t much to bomb, so they just didn’t. Nobody could really escape anywhere, so the garrison wasn’t very big.
Since the fisheries were pretty good here, nobody really went hungry. The Germans paid well enough for what they took. Or perhaps they were cheap, but people weren’t used to seeing much money at the time, but they thought it was good enough payment to not complain.
Some Englishmen came and took the Germans away at the end of the war, and that was that.
Probably cold
Many cities was bombed and destroyed. Many ships were bombed and sank. People who resisted were sent to camps where they were tortured and also killed by the nazis. Food were rationed. The north of Troms and Finnmark were burnt down in 1944. My uncle was in the navy and was killed when the ship was bombed, 23 years old. Another uncle attended the D-day in Normandie and was shot, but survived. 770 jews was deported to concentration camps. It was the «state police», norwegians who did it, on command from the nazis. After that they stole all the belongings and homes of the jews. Norway had a nazi government during the war, and Vidkun Quisling proclaimed himself the leader.
Towns that was bombed:
Kirkenes: Was one of the most bombed cities in Europe, with over 300 bombing raids from Soviet aircraft.
Bodø: Was subjected to heavy German bombing in May 1940, which left large parts of the city in ruins.
Namsos: Was hit hard by German air raids in April 1940, and large parts of the wooden buildings burned down.
Kristiansund: Was subjected to extensive German bombing early in the war, which resulted in great destruction.
Steinkjer: Large parts of the city were destroyed by German bombing in April 1940.
Molde: Was bombed in April 1940 when the city served as a residence for the Norwegian government and the king.
Elverum: Was bombed by German aircraft on April 11, 1940.
Bergen: Exposed to both Allied bombing raids (including against Laksevåg in 1944 and 1945) and accidental explosions.
Oslo: Bombed on several occasions, including Victoria Terrace in 1945.
Narvik: Fierce fighting and bombing during the Battle of Narvik in 1940.
Source: forsvaretsforum
I highly recommend reading Norway’s War by Ferguson.
My grandmother was like 6yrs old when the occupation started. Her and her 8 sibling and parents lived in a rather small home for the size of the family out in the contryside close to sweden along the coast. Despite being so many they only had 3 beds in the house, one of them being in the livingroom by an outside door they no longer used. At some point a group of german soldiers came up to the house and knocked on that door as it was the most obvious door from the road. It scared the living crap out of everyone who was sitting on the bed at the time. Her father went out the back door and around the house to greet the soldiers. They were looking for houses to take for themselves and other soldiers to live in. He invited them inside and apparently they thankfully decided after seeing a family of 11 sharing 3 beds that they would leave the house alone.
During the next few years she and her friends would go up to passing soldiers and ask for chocolates, they usually got some aswell. Apparently the german chocolate was better than the norwegian one…
She had at other times seen some bombers flying overhead towards the bigger city that was closest aswell as towards the coastal fortifications that were in her area.
I wish i had gotten more stories out of her while her memory was still strong, now the dementia has taken over sadly.
My mom was 5 years old when the war started, and my grandfather was active in the resistance, so I heard many stories.
My grandfather was also a fisherman so they had more food than most. The cattle and other animals on the farm were reserved for the Nazis though. But the absence of food and things was a constant.
Coz my mom was a kid, she needed new shoes as she grew, and that was hard to come by. Even the materials for shoes. A friend of the family was a cobbler, so managed to make shoes out of fish leather. Not very durable.
She would also often tell me of one birthday, when she got a new jacket. Very proud of something new, she wore it to school that day. Walking home it was raining, and the jacket just … dissolved. Turns out it was made of paper material.
My grandfather was also chair of the commission for the poor in his town, so I heard a lot about their struggle to give the poor and old food. The Nazis wouldn’t allocate food for them, so my grandfather had to raise it in donations from the community. He also forged the numbers of food in stock so they could steal from the Germans that way. On a regular basis he would then gather the food, and row it across the fjord in the dead of night to where the poorhouse was. If they were caught they would have been arrested.
Also, at some point in the war the allies/Norwegians abroad started bombing German bases in Norway. Consequently the German troops were quartered in private homes. Our family farm was one of those. Tanks were stored in the barn, and the Nazis basically took over the house, leaving the family of 5 with only one room. That experience was very traumatizing for my mom, as from that point onward she dealt with the occupying force every day.
My (German) grandfather was stationed in Norway for about a year. He was a motorcycle driver somewhere in western Norway and had very positive memories in general. He said multiple times Norwegians tried to buy the motorcycle from him and kids wanted to ride in the side wagon. (which he was not allowed to say yes to)
In general he really liked the place and MUCH preferred it to Africa, where he was then later deployed.
My grandfather was in prison for most of it and my grandmother smuggled cash for the resistance in my uncle’s stroller.
Sadly none of them liked to talk about it and neither are alive today but i don’t get the impression they found it very enjoyable.
I dont have too much time right now but i can share some short stories my grandpa told me.
He lived on a farm where parts of it ended up being used by german soldiers and they obviously had no choice when the soldiers said „we need to use this building“ etc. My grandpa was a teenager during the war so plenty of the soldiers where not that much older. He talked about them mostly behaving nice and respectful but some of them were known to be angry or authoritative.
One story were about my grandpa and some friends laughing loudly while going past some soldiers and at least one of the soldiers thought they were laughing and making jokes on the soldiers expense, they ended up putting my grandpa against the barn wall and aiming rifles against him, they obviously did not shoot but they locked him in an attic until the next morning as punishment for laughing. My grandpa said he did not remember if he actually had made a joke about the Germans but he said it was quite likely that he did haha.
Generally for my grandpa life on a farm during the occupation was not to bad, food was not really a issue because there were a lot of bartering going on even though getting some food from shops were harder. My granpa actually grew tobacco and foraged items to trade and since tobacco was harder to buy (i think) he did decent with that. Even though there were soldiers stationed in the village and in his family’s farm (for some duration at least) it was probably easier to pretend life was going as normal on the country side.
The „generational“ trauma was still something that affected him towards the end of his life, he was very afraid of the worlds direction towards conflict because he had seen first hand what war did (he was stationed in Berlin in 1946 as part of the peace keeping force) and i also believe there were stories about the occupation he did not want to talk about (even when some of the stories he shared were quite extreme, like the put up against the wall for laughing)
My grandmother was a teenager at the time. They lived in southern Norway, and were occupied. The Nazis were living in their house alongside the family. My grandmother never really talked about it, the only thing she would say was that the soldiers were very polite. Eventually her parents decided it would be safer for her if she left. She got on a ship and came to America by herself at 18 years old.
It probably varied from place to place and what type of soldiers you got.
I’ll just say that my grandmother was afraid of Germans her entire life. She got visibly upset if she heard German spoken around her.
Hard but not hardest among occupied countries.
It was not fun
My family in the centre of Bergen were heavily impacted. My great great grandma was tortured by the nazis because they were looking for her sons. My grandmother and her siblings were moved to family in the countryside for protection.
My other family from the countryside around Bergen said life was pretty normal, except for the Nazis in the streets. They were poor farmers, so they were already struggling.
My mother was a little girl during the war, in one of the bigger cities. There was never quite enough food. Everybody were extremely skinny, after the war she was tol by the doctor to dink cream to gain some fat on her body.
On her way to school she would pass a prison camp for Russian prisoners of war. There was a hand sticking out under the fence, and she would place her packed lunch in it every day. The hand would give back little carved wooden birds or toys made from woodchips. I still have some of the birds.
One day as she gave away her lunch, the gate opened and a huge German shepard dog charged out and attacked her. The German guard who followed it called it back when he saw that it was just a little girl. But my mother is afraid of dogs to this day.
One night the nazis charged their apartment and arrested my grandfather. My grandmother couldn’t get out of bed, because she had thrown her clothes on top of the illegal radio when she went to bed.
My grandfather was released after a few days, but his best friend was shot.
My husband’s mother lived on a farm that was occupied by the Germans.
Everybody refused to talk about it after the war. Even when asked. We can only speculate.
My parents were in their teens in Norway during the war. They rarely talked about it. Mostly it was the general hardship around shortages in certain foodstuffs and supplies that they recalled. It was oppressive and disturbing and never far away. It set Norwegians against Norwegians which was a bitter pill.