(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
- You must not sleep!
You must not sleep!
Don't think you've just dreamed!
Yesterday I was convicted.
Tonight they have traveled
the scaffold in the yard.
They'll pick me up at five tomorrow!
I shook with frost.
I was wearing clothes.
Outside was sparkling starry weather.
Just a smoldering strip to the east
announced the same as the comfort of the dream:
The day behind the edge of the earth
rose with a shard
of blood and fire,
rose with an anxiety so endless,
that it was as if
the stars themselves froze!
I thought:
Now it's something that happens. -
Our time is over – Europe is burning!
(Excerpt from "Don't Sleep" by Arnulf Øverland)
- On April 9, our big national life lie started in reality, says Major Svein Blindheim. – But the truth of what actually happened in the time before and after the outbreak of war has never come for a day.
These are harsh words, but major Svein Blindheim knows what he's talking about. He is one of the veterans of the fighting in Norway in 1940, a member of the company Linge, chief of staff for Milorg in Greater Oslo. Orientering he presented in 1965, shortly after his parting with the Norwegian NATO defense. He didn't want any more. Said no to continued armor, no to nuclear weapons in the Norwegian defense. Started as a teacher instead.
- Norway was "taken to bed" April 9?
- April 9 was precisely the result of the Norwegian officer corps' remission policy and nasal admiration for Hitler-Germany and all that it stood for, says Blindheim.
Several high-ranking military members stood up to the outbreak of the war as a member NS and other more or less semi-fascist organizations. They received good support from several bourgeois newspapers.
- But the defense was too bad?
- The defense scheme was passed under a civil government and the appropriations increased at such a rapid pace during Nygaardsvold that the military was unable to follow up. The failure in 1940 was a military failure. In terms of crew we were the Germans totally superior. The army command did not discover until April 11 that Norway was at war. The Germans were able to advance just about without opposition anywhere. Fantastic that the Germans could land at Fornebu on April 9 without any attempt to stop them.
- But the war historians give a completely different picture of what happened ...?
- Of course they do. I kept saying that Freud and other psychoanalysts can explain this better than me. Because it is clear that people who fail to these degrees need to hide the truth about themselves. History researchers are the military themselves. Whole sentences found in "civil" history books are taken straight out of the "War History Department's Report". So the colonels have written the story of April 9 as they wish it should have been.
After all, we all want to be heroes – call it self-deception or dreaming. But imagine the situation picture yourself. Here people have become military by profession, and then once in their life you get the chance to practice their profession, and then you fail altogether.
- But the Labor Party's own historians…?
- The Conservatives have always tried to talk about their own failure by making Koht and Nygaardsvold scapegoats. And the amazing thing is that DNA has taken this blame throughout the post-war period. It can have several causes. Perhaps the most important is Norway's accession to NATO.
- And now the dark blue will celebrate April 9?
- Yes, "celebrate" is exactly the word they use. "Celebrate" NATO and our whole post-war policy. This year, as in previous years, we will experience serious bishops and nicely dressed parliamentarians who will lay wreaths on various memorials. We once again hear about the need for NATO, that we were "taken to bed", and then surely the whole procession, which comes in both radio and television with sermon and prayer, ends.
Its kind is a mockery to those who fought for Norway's freedom during World War II. Mockery of our own honest patriots, mockery of Yugoslavia and the Soviet who "won the war" for us. Nor do I find words to characterize the fact that representatives of South Vietnam have laid a wreath on the memorial at Akershus. Our few fallen today are used to income for our NATO policy, but it was really the contrary ideals they fought for while living.
- Why did you become a military professional?
- It wasn't until 1945. I was excited after the peace agreement. We had won, our goal had won. And I went into defense to work on the ideal we had fought for during the war. Eventually I began to realize that the military had not changed. It was still ruled by the Conservatives who apparently had learned nothing. So much has happened in these years, things we would not have thought possible in 1945.
- Such as?
- That we should receive the Hitler generals as our allies. On top of that came the crazy armor race. I started to ask some questions in the military. Why did we just condemn Soviet misdeeds in other countries but never our allies? How can we stand by not stationing nuclear weapons on Norwegian soil, as it is so beautifully called, when this still has no practical significance after the last fifteen years of military technical progress? Far more important is that NATO has our area under complete control and that through our communications and alert facilities we contribute to an actual concentration of nuclear weapons around our territory. Our defense today is based on nuclear weapons. I myself traveled around the country and beach and "played war" with simulated nuclear weapons. I began to realize and took the consequence of this and retired from the military in 1965.
- We may experience another April 9, but not like it in 1945. It will be much worse. Through our NATO membership, we are guaranteed to be drawn in from the first moment should a war come. The men are new, but the faces are the same, ”Svein Blindheim concludes. – Note the 9th of April this year.
Svein Blindheim
Svein Blindheim (1916–2013) was one of the country's most prominent war veterans and post-war officers. Blindheim attended the command school and served as a military sergeant at Terningmoen in 1939. He participated in the hard meeting at Fossum bridge 12-13. April 1940, where 21 fell.In London, he was recruited by Martin Linge to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). On April 17, 1943, he was parachuted with W. Houlder over Buskerud, to instruct and build Milorg in the Oslo and Drammens area. Until the release, Milorg's sabotage groups carried out about 100 actions, well over 75 successful. In 1945-46 Blindheim took the Army War School, and after two years at the German Brigade he became captain of the DK staff before being ordered to the E-service in 1949. In 1953, he trained Finnish agents in Finland and sent them on assignment into the Soviet Union. He applied for a position as a major with the Central Staff of the Home Guard.
In 1956 he was an observer in the Middle East, and in 1958–59 he attended the Army Staff School. Blindheim criticized Norwegian nuclear policy, and after his attitude became publicly known, there was no longer room for him in the Armed Forces. In 1966, upon application, he was granted grace in grace. He studied as well as worked as a teacher, then a lecturer, and in 1974 he finished lecturing with history as a major subject.
Blindheim wrote a number of critical articles and books on the war and the occupation. In 1977 he published Norwegians under Hitler's banner, one of the first research works on the front fighters. In 2006, Blindheim released (then 90) The long journey. A settlement with the war, from his own war experiences, cast a critical look at the established war history's treatment of the start of the Norwegian war during mobilization and the campaign in 1940. The documentary about him, War hero in outrage, was shown at NRK the same year. Blindheim received the War Medal twice: for his efforts in 1940 and in SOE / Kompani Linge. In 1947 he was decorated with the War Cross with swords for his efforts in 1943–45. (source: SNL)
Film War hero in outrage seems to be available at some libraries, but not in the archive of NrkTV.
