WWII history

Nazi-Occupied Norway Offers a Glimpse of What Hitler Wanted for the Entire World

The German occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945 witnessed a remarkable building campaign to align this northern land with Hitler’s New Order. From gleaming highways and ideal cities to maternity centers for a purified Nordic race, plans to remake Norway into a model “Aryan” society fired the imagination of Nazi leaders.

These projects have a great deal to tell us about how Hitler and his henchmen envisioned the world under the swastika, which they had begun to construct in Norway. As the Greater German Reich expanded and stretched beyond the Arctic Circle, the Nazis wasted no time leaving their mark on the new territories. Their efforts to reshape occupied Norway, including everyday spaces where people lived and worked, give us a preview of the deeply ideological environments Hitler foresaw emerging in the wake of his ultimate victory, even in those nations he considered potential allies.

The Nazis believed that Norwegians were racially (although not culturally) superior to Germans, and Hitler hoped to win them over to his worldview. Rather than deploy the policies of mass extermination and slave labor used in Eastern Europe, he courted them using propaganda and incentives.