Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

353 Pages·2020·13.561 MB·English

by  Despina Stratigakos

Hitler’s
Northern
Utopia

Hitler’s
Northern
Utopia
Building the
New Order
in Occupied
Norway
DESPINA STRATIGAKOS
Princeton University Press | Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2020 by Princeton University Press
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Jacket illustrations: (front top) Scenery observed by Adolf Hitler on board
the Deutschland in the Norwegian fjords, April 1934 (detail). Adolf Hitler:
Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers. Altona/Bahrenfeld: Cigaretten-Bilderdienst,
1936; and (front bottom and back): Undated model of Narvik’s reconstruct-
ed center, with obelisks in front of the marching square by the Parteihaus
(detail). Lars Olof Larsson Collection, Kiel.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-691-19821-7
ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-21090-2
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Designed by Chris Crochetière, BW&A Books, Inc.
This book has been composed in Dante, Futura, and Avenir typefaces.
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my father
for lessons on politics and politicians
and on reading between the lines

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Hitler in the Fjords 1
1 Romanticizing the North: German Press Accounts
of Norway under the Nazis 11
2 Norway in the New Order: Infrastructure Building
from Superhighways to Superbabies 37
3 Islands of Germanness: Soldiers’ Homes in Occupied Norway 77
4 The Nazification of Norway’s Towns: Shaping
Urban Life and Environments during Wartime 125
5 A German City in the Fjords: Hitler’s Plans
for New Trondheim 193
Conclusion: Ghosts in the Landscape 223
Notes 237
Works Cited 283
Index 299
Photo Credits 311

Acknowledgments
he germ of this book goes back many years, to a chance encoun-
T
ter in the German Federal Archives in Berlin. While researching
another subject, I came across a file about Hitler’s secret plans to build a
city in occupied Norway. I knew nothing about the Nazis’ building proj-
ects in this northern country and could find little in the history books
to enlighten me. In the long interval between that initial discovery and
the completion of this manuscript, I was joined by many colleagues and
friends in the quest to unravel an archival mystery.
The project was launched at the “Art in Battle” conference held in
Bergen in August 2014, which brought together an international group
of scholars to explore how art was used for propaganda during the Nazi
occupation of Norway. I would like to thank the organizers and partic-
ipants for encouraging me to turn the fragmentary story about archi-
tecture that I presented there into a full-fledged book: Line Daatland,
Terje Emberland, Matthew Feldman, Christian Fuhrmeister, Anita
Kongssund, Gregory Maertz, Dag Solhjell, Erik Tonning, James van
Dyke, and Eirik Vassenden. I am also grateful to Shelley Hornstein,
Paul Jaskot, Barbara Miller Lane, and Clarence B. Sheffield Jr. for their
enthusiasm and support in the project’s exploratory stages.
Over three consecutive summers, from 2015 to 2017, Lars Olof
Larsson opened his collection and home to me in Kiel. His unstint-
ing help with my research has profoundly shaped the book. In Oslo,
Ketil Gjølme Andersen welcomed me with a personal tour of an exhi-
bition he curated on the Organisation Todt and, later, shared his writ-
ings and offered feedback on mine. Mari Lending hosted me in Oslo
and connected me to her professional networks. At the Army Museum
ix