During the war, thousands of Norwegians volunteered for the Gestapo or the Norwegian State Police to give tips on compatriots who had in various ways opposed the Norwegian occupying power or the Norwegian NS government.

Many were cited for active resistance work, and a discreet tip to the secret police could trigger arrest and severe torture – which was often followed up with more arrests. Finally, the death sentences followed.

Wondered in

The informants were likely to be ordinary people who, for some reason, thought that in this way they should serve the Nazi assailants. Some operated quickly and also received payment for their pig streaks.

Click here to subscribe to the newsletter from Norwegian debate

In front of their surroundings, they liked to appear as inveterate resistance fighters, and managed to get into the various groups – where they got information about who the bosses were and a whole range of other things that could be life-threatening in German hands.

As groups were broken up, those responsible tortured and executed or sent to concentration camps, the demand came that the traitors had to stop by tangible means.

The marriage

A safe with many of the home front’s deepest secrets has been – well guarded – at Norway’s home front museum in Oslo for decades. Even the long-time director Arnfinn Moland was cautious about intervening with information when he conducted research on precisely the liquidations that took place from 1942 to 1945.

But when Eirik Veum applied for access, he got the thumbs up. In addition to essential information from the “gift box”, the authors have also tracked down relevant information in the National Archives, among others.

Grotesque details and descriptions of how over 80 Norwegians – including six women plus five Germans – had to play with their lives, make for depressing reading.

Veum goes through many liquidations, and clearly shows that many were beaten to death, strangled or shot on grounds that in peacetime would not be sufficient to be found guilty by a court.

But that time it was the Home Front’s top management – ​​preferably with the approval of the Norwegian government in London – who made the decisions.

However, the material that Veum has leaked shows that it was not uncommon for liquidations to take place, where permission was only given afterwards – and not always at a higher level than the local or regional management.

War heroes against identification

The debate surrounding the liquidations rolled over the country in at least two rounds in the 90s. Arnfinn Moland demonstrated so many concrete errors in Egil Ulateig’s original book on the theme that the publisher chose to withdraw it. A corrected version was also stopped.

Veum makes no secret of the fact that he uses Moland’s book as a starting point for his work – and says that Moland has actually participated actively in the new investigations.

During the huge debates, Gunnar Sønsteby and several other war heroes also joined in the exchange of words, and fired sharply at both those who tried to bring out the stories of what happened – and also wanted to reveal the names of those who committed murder in the name of the resistance movement.

They unanimously explained that those who had been killed at the time had been imposed a lifelong duty of secrecy and that they also deserved anonymity for this form of resistance work.

Among the comrades in the resistance group, those who carried out liquidations went by the name “rat hunters”.

Flammable

Eirik Veum makes no secret of the fact that this is still a combustible topic outside of the country. When he called around Norwegian small towns to check out information about people whose names he found in the archives, he was often met with a wall of silence.

The descendants of those liquidated still have little desire to have new rounds of exposure of the family’s disgrace. And the grandson of those who were killed does not want this to become a topic either.

The author has also received several reactions to the description of how individual silencers were killed. The murders were to take place in such a way that those around them were not aware of what was going on – so that afterwards it would be possible to escape unseen.

“Silent killing” often took place with a knife or gun fitted with a silencer, if the victims were not simply strangled or beaten to death with an empty beer bottle.

Dig into the røysa

If the conditions were right for the corpses to disappear for good, they were, for example, buried in a rock pile or dumped in the sea.

Even after the end of the war, it was difficult for those left behind to get anything concrete about what had happened – and where the remains had gone. If individual cases were brought forward for investigation or investigation, they almost always ended up being closed and put away.

With Eirik Veum’s obviously thorough source hunting, it is also documented on the old Nazis in all the years after the war drive and campaign of lies surrounding the liquidations. The purpose was to demonstrate that liquidations are contrary to international law.

Read more comments from Asbjørn Svarstad

But the former NS people and their «Folk og Land» also presented claims about killing methods which put both the perpetrators and the resistance movement in a negative light.

With Veum’s book, we know e.g. that the liquidated Raymond Colberg was not mistreated and castrated at all before it was dismembered, put in a sack and dumped in the Oslofjord – as was repeatedly portrayed in the Nazi magazine over the years.

Colberg, on the other hand, was among other things responsible for the formation of a resistance group in Sandefjord and the subsequent execution of several members. The former big-time smuggler Johannes Sigfred “Gulosten” Andersen shot the man twice in the head before the dead body was dumped in Akerselva.

The traffic chief and the royal heir

The story had its grotesque aftermath when “Gulosten’s” wife ended up at Grini, convicted of a few petty thefts. There she managed to admit to fellow prisoners that she had helped to liquidate Colberg.

The result was that the other three accomplices – apart from “Gulosten”, who was in England – were identified, convicted – and all four executed.

Eirik Veum has also found new information about the much talked about liquidation of Knut Knutsen Fiane (49). He was a keen NS man who was “traffic manager” in the Telegrafverket and thus the one who was responsible for all telephone traffic in Oslo municipality.

In 1943, the home front had received information that he was collaborating with the Gestapo – and there was great anxiety that Fiane would be able to reveal how the people of the resistance movement were actually able to intercept most of the traffic between, for example, German and Norwegian police.

Those who eavesdropped on conversations could also early identify potential informants who turned to the Gestapo or the State Police to provide information. Therefore, it would be a disaster if this scheme were revealed.

Tough task

Afterwards, it was often claimed – differently in Folk og Land – that his job had nothing to do with him being shot down by several shots when Knut Knutsen Fiane walked past the tram stop at Majorstuveien 18 on the morning of 21 September 1944.

The rumors would have it that those who shot took the time to secure a document folder that Fiane had with him. It must have contained information that he – in his capacity as a member of the «Investigation Commission of 1943» – the day before they had been in Copenhagen and retrieved from ordinary closed archives.

These are Nettavisen’s columnists

A report from German coroners must have concluded that Queen Maud – who died in 1938 – had never had a child. Not she, but one of the queen’s sisters, was Crown Prince Olav’s carnal mother. The heir to the throne was therefore – according to the NS people’s logic – not at all entitled to inherit the throne of Norway.

Eirik Veum points out that it must have been a tough task to live off defenseless people – and in such a way that the person in question has no opportunity to defend himself. He describes the details of such a bloody enterprise, and has no doubt that the memories have probably robbed many of the night’s sleep.

Current debate

But, as the author wrote above this commentator, it was war and tough times. In peacetime, it may be difficult to imagine the use of such brutal methods. The alternative, however, was to let dangerous whistleblowers continue their deadly business and cost the lives of several good Norwegians.

With the war in Ukraine as a backdrop, the debate about liquidations will surely come up again. We read almost daily about Russian-friendly traitors who lose their lives in a brutal way.

When the car with a local official flies into the air, these days it is not characterized as a “liquidation” – although we prefer to use this very term for similar events in our own recent history.

Read more from Norwegian debate

Everyone is dead

And those who liquidated? Eirik Veum identifies the perpetrators in the cases where he has allowed himself to unravel the names.

A couple of them had as many as eight liquidations on their conscience. The majority were either killed in a shootout with Germans or captured and executed.

Few of the survivors made military careers, but slipped into civilian life. Some of them did well in business. But others were haunted by the memories and/or succumbed to various forms of abuse.

No one received awards for completing liquidations.

– They are all dead now, notes Eirik Veum.