The active support of some Norwegian women for the German occupiers of their country during World War II. When one speaks about collaboration in an occupied country, one at first has to specify what this term really means. Is political and ideological conviction a necessary criterion for regarding certain ways of acting as collaboration? Or is this necessarily to be assumed when people do paid work for the occupation authorities and thereby contribute to the functioning of its rule? Even sexual relations between occupying soldiers and indigenous women are often stigmatized as collaboration. This section will not solve these definitional problems. Instead, it only deals with the most obvious case of collaboration, that is, the participation in the political movement or party supporting the regime of occupation. In the case of Norway the fascist party Nasjonal Samling (National Gathering) was allowed to build a government and thereby was given a certain degree of power by the Germans.
Nasjonal Samling was, like all fascist movements in Europe, built on the Fuhrer principle, an authoritarian hierarchy with its founder and leader Vidkun Quisling at the top. Influential positions in the Nasjonal Samling could only be attained by those who were completely obedient to Quisling’s political visions and plans. The higher positions of the party and the government it formed in 1942 were held exclusively by men.
Quisling’s ideas about the power relations in his party mirrored his vision for the organization of the whole society. His ideal was a strictly hierarchical and elitist society based on professions and social strata. His authoritarian principles were also patriarchal, as the leaders always should be outstanding men, followed and obeyed by the folk, which, of course, included women. But even if women were by definition excluded from the centers of power, the fascist’s social vision also had a certain attraction for women, as they were offered a positive identification as bearers of the nation’s biological and cultural or symbolic reproduction.
In 1933 when the Nasjonal Samling party was founded, a women’s organization, Nasjonal Samlings Kvinneorganisasjon (NSK) was also organized. It was led by Vidkun Quisling’s wife, Maria. In the beginning, members of NSK were mainly recruited among Maria Quisling’s friends but soon the organization grew and a third of NSK’s members were women. Especially toward the end of the war, when more and more members resigned from the party, the proportion of women was still rising. This can be explained by the fact that many men who were members of Nasjonal Samling sooner or later involved their female relatives in the NSK.
The NSK had its own propaganda section, which published the women’s magazine Heim og &tt (Home and Kin). In particular it published articles dealing with keeping a household and home economics. The propaganda of the NKS was directed toward the average Norwegian housewife. It transmitted the Nasjonal Sam-ling’s ideological program and its ideas about women’s duties in the ideal Germanized Norway. In addition to these traditional female concerns there also existed a paramilitary organization, the Kvinnekorps (Women’s Corps).
The paradox of the fascist women’s organizations in Norway is the fact that they involved female activists in professional work and personal contributions to the political struggle, which fascism ideologically denied to women.
