Perfecting the art of stealing : Nazi exploitation and industrial collaboration in occupied Western Europe

Abstract

In October 1941, the Norwegian minister of Culture and Popular Enlightenment, Gulbrand Lunde, gave a lecture in Königsberg, Germany, on the Norwegian contribution to the future development of the European economy. As a convinced National Socialist, Lunde professed to see contours of a new and happier continent taking shape. To this Europe, Norway would contribute its fish, its hydropower, iron ore, copper, nickel and molybdenum, but would also mobilize its racial abilities as a part of the Germanic brotherhood. Lunde suggested that if Norway could be won for these ideas, the peaceful re-construction of a new Europe would be ensured. The speech encapsulates the competing rationales that gave shape to the German occupation of Norway, i.e. the exploitation of its natural resources for German purposes, its integration into a European-wide economic system, but also the necessity of making the Norwegian people work towards a future dominated by Nazi Germany.