Content area
Full Text
Arne Hassing. Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945. New Directions in Scandinavian Studies series. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013. Pp. xix + 384.
The Norwegian Lutheran Church's support for the resistance movement was critically important during the German occupation. As Arne Hassing shows in his long-awaited study, the Church provided the large majority of Norwegians with the certitude that they were right in opposing Vidkun Quisling's Nasjonal Samling (National Union-NS) movement. The Church contributed an invaluable moral dimension to the campaign against Nazification.
Because Norwegian religious resistance received recognition abroad for its effectiveness, Hassing's book is welcome from a transnational perspective. It fills a void that previously existed by the absence of scholarly English-language literature on kirkekampen (the church struggle). In Norway, on the other hand, many books and articles have appeared that examine aspects of the subject minutely, but Hassing's intent was broader: to write "the first critical book-length history of the church's resistance to Nazism" (p. xii). His study therefore meets a special need.
Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway is in part intended to be a companion volume to Torleiv Austad's collection of major documents: Kirkelig motstand: Dokumenter fra den norske kirkekamp under okkupasjonen 1940-45 med innledninger og kommentarer (Church Resistance: Documents from the Norwegian Church Struggle during the Occupation, 1940-45, with Introductions and Commentaries) (Høyskoleforlaget, 2005). Hassing therefore cross-references his citations with documents in Austad's compilation. These form, however, only a portion of the source material used by the author, who has carried out the most extensive archival research on kirkeka mpen to date. He visited not only Norwegian archives but also collections in Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. He acquired an equally good command of secondary sources in Norwegian, English, Swedish, and German. Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway is consequently useful for anyone interested in the occupation, from readers lacking knowledge of Norwegian to advanced researchers who can utilize references to Austad's collection.
The book is organized into seven parts, the first and last dealing with the Church prior to and after the war, while the five main sections cover the Church's evolving position during the occupation. In Part I, Hassing sets the scene by examining the strengths and weaknesses of the Norwegian...