The treason trials after 1945 were shaped by Norway’s particular experience of German occupation. The central importance of Nasjonal Samling to German Nazification efforts in Norway meant that those planning for a post-war reckoning soon focused their attention on how to criminalise the actions of party members. This chapter outlines the course of the Norwegian occupation, including the manifold actions on the part of Norwegian citizens that would later give rise to punishment. It details how the exile government in London and the resistance forces in Norway jointly prepared the legal groundwork for the post-war reckoning. In doing so, this chapter highlights the reasoning behind the introduction of the extraordinary legal provisions that would both determine the course of the trials and cause significant controversy after the war.

This conclusion briefly summarises the main findings of the book. It emphasises that the aim of the book is not to assess the trials from a legal or moral standpoint, but rather to seek to understand what drove different actors at different stages of their implementation. In doing so, the conclusion argues that while the Norwegian post-war reckoning was largely contained in legal form, this did not make the process of coming to terms with the past any easier or less controversial than comparable processes seen in other European countries.

By 1948, the trials had far exceeded estimates for their original time frame. This chapter looks at the effects the growing distance from the occupation had on court practice and the broader administration of the trials. It highlights how the unexpectedly long duration of the trials confronted the Ministry of Justice and the Director of Public Prosecutions with two specific challenges: firstly, it emerged that verdicts had been handed down unevenly over time; secondly, broader attitudes towards the trials in civil society had by now changed perceptibly. At the same time, the authorities in charge of the trials had a number of reservations against changing their legal parameters, as they were concerned for their long-term legacy should they be softened. This fundamental tension, along with the decision not to prosecute a number of wartime crimes such as economic collaboration, defined the later stages of the trials.

In assessing the challenges faced by the legal apparatus at the outset of the trials, this chapter demonstrates how the political promises for a swift handling of the trials were jeopardised by the limited capacity of the institutions entrusted with administering them, generating a whole new set of political and institutional tensions. These tensions were in turn compounded by the difficulties faced by the judiciary in interpreting the provisions adopted during the war and applying them to the situation on the ground. In addition, this chapter looks at three distinct groups to whose opposition to different aspects of the trials the Ministry of Justice and the Director of Public Prosecutions had to respond to during the remainder of 1945: industrial workers, jurists and opposition politicians. Within months of the liberation, this chapter shows, the trials that were meant to unite the liberated nation had become a politically contested topic.

This chapter looks at the ways how, from 1948 onwards, the meaning of the trials changed in light of the broader Cold War context internationally and intensifying criticism domestically. Administratively, the trials were coming to an end. They had, from the perspective of the public authorities, succeeded in their original purposes of securing inner peace and stability during the early months following the liberation. Yet, from 1948 onwards, they became acutely relevant in light of the new political threats and challenges the Norwegian state faced, at the same time as the authorities sought to defend their legacy in light of mounting criticism from some sentenced collaborators and public intellectuals. This chapter therefore argues that the final stages of the trials assumed a renewed demonstrative dimension as the government sought to reassert its administrative and interpretative authority over the trials in a changed political context.

This chapter analyses the ways in which the government sought to respond to the mounting administrative and political pressures on the treason trials in 1946 and 1947 and how the courts adjudicated on a wide range of offences, gradually producing a vast corpus of verdicts against the backdrop of a rapidly changing political climate. By this stage, the legal apparatus was struggling with the workload and the trials were being subjected to increasing social and political scrutiny, with many groups now cautioning that the trials were too harsh. These pressures, coupled with the need for legal consistency, produced an enormous dilemma for the authorities in charge. The complex balancing act between legal consistency and political and societal change, this chapter argues, reflected how the initial consensus around the trials was beginning to collapse.

This chapter analyses the political and social dynamics that unfolded in Norway following the country’s liberation on 8 May 1945 and how these shaped the contours of the treason trials in the long term. At the political level, it demonstrates, the early consensus between the returning exile government and the resistance forces in Norway on the topic of the trials was a key reason as to why they were largely implemented according to plan. At the social level, the swift commencement of the trials satisfied a strong public demand and was deemed a requirement for securing a peaceful transition period. The final section of the chapter details the public pressure felt by representatives of the Norwegian Parliament (Storting) in July 1945 as they debated and passed some of the basic instruments of the trials, most notably an act approving of the use of the death penalty.

This final chapter relates the Norwegian treason trials to comparable processes in both Eastern and Western Europe following the Second World War. In contextualising the Norwegian trials, the chapter looks in particular at events in Denmark, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Lands, Poland, Italy and Hungary. In its analysis, the chapter identifies four key aspects of the Norwegian trials that help mark them out as distinctive within a wider European context: 1) the considerable planning capacities enjoyed by the exile government; 2) the relative absence of extrajudicial violence upon liberation; 3) the unparalleled scope of the trials; and 4) the strong focus placed by the Norwegian authorities on the trials’ legality. The more fundamental tensions and challenges that Norway experienced as a result of occupation and collaboration were shared across Europe, however.

This introduction sets out the aims and approach of the book. Following an introduction to the Norwegian post-war reckoning and a review of the existing literature on the topic, it argues that only an analysis of the full time span of the trials can uncover their complex dynamics and the changing positions of their key actors over time. The introduction then sets out the analytical framework of the book, which is to explore the – at times competing – legal and political rationales of the trials in face of a rapidly changing political and social climate.