The events on Arnøy deserve to be far better known. I've nver written a book never been north of Tromsø and I don't even qualify as an amateur historian. I asked for a book on the subject, but the library could only find a 128-page book from another library.Someone more qualified than me should write the definitive book on the Arnøy tragedy. Honestly it should be a TV-series or movie.
I've seen these before; but then the U-2 is only second to the SR-71 in my 'Whoah' list of planes and these photographs are NEVER going to get tired, are they? Magnificent and it must be a unique experience for the aircrews of these fantastic machines!
Apologies if you've seen this, Kim Philby, of course, the former UK-SIS Officer who was a Soviet Intelligence Officer before he even joined the Service. Traitor or hero? Largely, perhaps a point of view thing...
It's easy to think that young beautiful blondes working as spies in extremely dangerous circumstances belong in the world of fiction, and perhaps especially the world of James Bond. But these women exist in the real world, and Anne-Sofie Østvedt was an example of this. In1940 she was a 20 year old chemistry student at Oslo university, one of very few women studying the natural sciences. When nazi Germany invaded in april she quickly decided to join the resistance. With a few friends she started a secret underground newspaper and distributed it around the city. Here a re a couple of pages from the newspaper:
In 1941 one of the male students contacted Anne-Sofie and asked her if she wanted to be a courier for the resistance, and she immediately accepted. She carried secret and illegal information and messages around the city, and to get past the check points she often hid the papers in her bra the or taped it to her stomach. It turned out her looks was an advantage. The guards wanted to treat a young beauty like gentlemen, and being a natural platinum blonde she looked even younger than she was. Many saw her as just a girl who wasn't a threat to anyone.
She also had missions going into neutral Sweden smugling people and information. Some men who were older than her disliked putting their lives in the hands of "a girl", but they were soon persuaded by her professionalism. But the Gestapo found out about her in late 1942 and turned up at her apartment to arrest her. Anne -Sofie shared the apartment with her sister, and the sister opened the door and the Gestapo asked "fraulein Østvedt" she immediately realized what was happening. Her Anne-Sofie was involved in the resistance and now she was in serious trouble! The sister quickly decided to sacrifice herself for her sister and said she was Anne-Sofie and presented Anne Sofie as herself. Anne -Sofie walked away while her brave sister was taken away by the Gestapo for questioning. She managed to hide her true name until Anne-Sofie had changed her identity When the Gestapo understood she wasn't Anne-Sofie the sister was sent to a prison camp.
Grini prison camp where the sister was sent.
Anne-Sofie visited a hairdresser and became a brunette. She also got rid of her favourite clothes and started wearing clothes she didn't like to change her appearance. She also told her family that she was escaping to Sweden and kept sending them letters posted in Sweden for the rest of the war.
Here is her old look and two border region resident passes neede to get to and from Sweden, both under fake identities:
Anne- Sofie entered a fake marriage to Øistein Strømnes, a student of genetics and a hig-ranking member of the organisation XU, the intelligence organisation Anne-Sofie was a member of too. Anne Sofie was a part of the highly secretive leadership of XU from 1943. About half of the XU leaders were women, highly unusual in resistance organisations and other generally at the time. When the leader of XU got killed Øistein Strømnes became the top leader and the 23 year old Anne -Sofie became his second in command. The organisation covered the whole country and was perhaps the most effective intelligence organisation in occupied Norway. XU specialized in knowing everything about German air bases, coastal fortresses, AA batteries and other bases. They pretty much knew the names and whereabouts of every German in Norway. About 500 pages full of secret information was sent from XU agents to Stockholm in Sweden and on to MI6 in London every day from 1951 to 1945, and much of this information went via Strømsnes and Østrem. XU sent classified information about the V1 and V2 rockets in the personal plane of Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian nazi leader. When Quisling sent a "get well soon" letter to Hitler after the assassination attempt in 1944, XU read the letter before the Führer!
When the leader of XU was killed Øystein became the new leader of the whole organisation and Anne-Sofie was his second in command. She had several aliases, included "Aslak". Aslak is a man's name and few knew the second in command was a young woman. Aliases were always used , and face masks were often used to hide people's true identity. During meetings Anne-Sofie often stayed in the bathroom listening in. One knock from her ment "agreed" and two knocks was "disagree", They moved into a villa that was rebuilt to be a resistance headquarters with hidden rooms and compartments. The couple worked round the clock, always with a suicide pill on them and firebombs close by to destroy all evidence and end their lives if the house was raided by the nazis. Anne-Sofie was a pasifist and never carried a gun. She was even against assassinations of nazi torturers and informers. It can also be argued that if she got into a situation where she had to shoot she was unlikely to get away anyway, and she absolutely couldn't allow herself to be caught alive by the enemy.
One time she was on the tram she discovered she was standing next to her father! She looked away and got of on the next stop. Anne-Sofie was in charge of staying in contact with key people in other resistance organisations, including Gunnar "Number 24" Sønsteby. He was a Special Operations Executive agent, leader of the legendary sabotage unit known as the Oslo Gang and liaison between the British SOE and the Norwegian military resistance MIlorg. Long after the war Sønsteby said "Anne-Sofie and I were very useful to each other".
The duo of silent, intelligent professionals stayed in charge of XU until the war ended. Øistein and Anne-Sofie studied at Berkley in California and then married for real. But as soon as the war was over all XU agents had to sign non-disclosure agreements. Their wartime service and even the organisation they worked for never existed. The extreme pressure and risk of working as a spy in occupied territory for four years affected her physical health, but she worked in science for many years.
Øistein Strømsnes
The existence of XU and the service of the agents stayed top secret until 1988 when the they were released from non-disclosure agreement by the Minister of Defence. By that time Øystein Strømsnes and many of his agents were dead by then. Many of the agents joined the nazi party under orders of the XU to get hold of information. After the war they were charged with treason and seen as traitors for the rest of their lives, but they still didn't talk. Part of the reason for this secrecy was probably the idea of former XU agents being a covert reserve of spies in case of a Soviet occupation during the cold war. Anne-Sofie lived until 2009 and gave a few interviews. She refused any medals she was offered. In an interview she said: "i was never afraid of death, only breaking under torture".
Absolutely! Imagine opening the door and the Gestapo is there asking for your sister who's in the apartment. Not only does she realize the sister is in the resistance, but she decides to selflessly lie and take her place. All within seconds and not revealing anything with any gestures or facial expressions. Amazing!
I'd like to say that all these stories about the Norwegian resistance doesn't mean I think "we" won the war or anything. When i find stories from abroad I usually post links because others have told the story better and in English. The stories from Norway often don't exist in English, so I read from the sources and write it in English myself. Other members are of course encouraged to do the same.
As I've mentioned before I can make anything about Norway, and this is no different. The German sub that went to Florida landed the agents right next to the summer house of crown princesses Märtha of Norway. She was in exile with her two children, one of them the current king Harald. The three royals were very close to FDR and even lived in the White House for a while. The crown princess and the president were so close (even though both were married at the time) some thought they were having an affair. Among the people who believed this was Roald Dahl who was a MI6 agent posted in Washington DC at the time.
WRT Eddie Chapman, here's a fascinating documentary on his wartime career. He finished his 'service' in Nazi occupied Norway. I part-based a literary character of mine on him.
Mossad's assassination of the leader of Iran's nuclear program was very complicated and included a remote controlled gun, AI and face recognition software. the man who pulled the trigger was 1600 km away! I think this could be a topic in a future Bond movie, with this sort of technology up against one man putting his life on the line to shoot a man face-to-face.
Good stuff - you could see her played by Chloe Grace Moretz from Kick Ass though I guess she'd be too old now.
My view of WWII is dictated by movies, which has an unfair slant - little or nothing on what Russia did to repel the Nazis once they turned their attention to the East, one would forget they lost 20 million while I think all-in British casualties were less than 700,000, largely because most of the war they were on the outskirts, in Africa as an army, or in commando raids - of course they only really got going in June 44, not having been invaded. So I don't know much about Norway's role in the war, save the film they themselves deride - The Heroes of Telemark. There was a better, native movie about that, wasn't there?
I don't know if her sister had to think fast when the Gestapo called - maybe she had an idea she was in the Resistance already? It's strange, because at the end of the war you'd think these heroes would be exulted or would claim some credit but why would they? Old habits of secrecy die hard and for some the war is never over - you don't want enemies to emerge from the shadows to settle old scores. You'd have not much to gain and potentially everything to lose.
There's a Norwegian-French movie from 1948 titled "Operation Swallow: The battle for heavy water". This movie was made only three years after the war, and several of the real saboteurs play themselves. To quote one of the professional actors in an interview years later: "We taught the saboteurs acting and they taught us sabotage". Link (English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzU1hTNZgg
Then there is the mini-series "The heavy water war" from 2015. Both the movie and the mini-series are far closer to what really happened than "Heroes of Telemark" is. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Ry2K4yNE&t=4s
He was. I know a Norwegian nazi joined a group of people in the nearest town from here who were going to the UK on a small fishing vessel. His plan was to spy for Germany in Britain. We know there was a "spy school" in Oslo where he was most likely trained. Eddie Chapman also got some training there. German patrols at sea and in the air were ordered to let the boat through and they reached Britain safely. The man also got through MI5's questioning and investigation all refugees were subjected to, but he was unable to be of use for Germany because his radio didn't work. He joined the Norwegian brigade in Scotland for the rest of the war and was never prosecuted.
Some fishing boats of the type that was sometimes used to escape to Britain:
The commander of Norway's military intelligence service couldn't just see parts of NTTD's PTS getting filmed from his office window, he also warns that Russia's military intelligence GRU uses Russian criminal gangs in NATO countries for sabotage. Makes deniability easier I guess. This is sort of the opposite of what often happens in Bond movies where criminal organizations to use governments for their own ends. As far as I know nothing has been proven yet, but the railway between Narvik in northern Norway and Kiruna in Swedish Lapland sure derails a lot lately.
The underwater fiber optics cable between mainland Norway and the Svalbard islands was also somehow cut clean off, so was the cable to Evenes , where the air force has their forward base for our F-35's.
I wasn't sure where to post this - either here or in the Cover-Up thread, but the odd thing about this story is there is no cover-up - it's in plain sight. As it relates to World War II I will post it here. I mentioned on the Last Book Read thread I'd been reading Primo Levi's acclaimed The Periodic Table, a kind of memoir by the Italian chemist, each chapter given to an element, used a pretext for an anecdote that takes place against the backdrop of the Nazi takeover of Europe.
In the penultimate chapter, Levi has a chance encounter with one of the personnel he interacted with at Auschwitz, many years after the event. Now, when I read this in a book review I assumed we have Levi as a dispensing chemist and a customer comes in - he's not that kind of chemist, he's more industrial, analysing substances used by major firms for mass consumerism, that kind of thing. The element in this case was varnish, which seemed to be faulty.
It came from 'W, a large and respectable German company, one of the large segments into which, after the war, the Allies had dismembered the omnipotent IG-Farben: people like this, before admitting their guilt, threw on the scales all the weight of their prestige and all their ability at wearing you down.'
In other words, this is one of the firms that supplied the ingredients for the gassing of Jews, that simply rebranded itself and continued to function as a respectable firm! The next paragraph details the firm's response to the complaint - the usual misdirection and reluctance to admit anything, the bad faith many a UK citizen will endure when putting in a complaint to a State body such as Surrey County Council or any so-called regulator.
Anyway, the author then gets a letter from a man called Müller and somehow realises it's one of the men in authority he met in his laboratory at Aushwitz - he doesn't give dates but one can guess that he encountered this fellow again around 1964, about 20 years after. What follows in his subsequent letters between Levi and Müller and is an astonishing study of how many Germans practiced a kind of self-deception about what was going on there, sort of knowing enough to keep schtum and not rock the boat, but not knowing so much that any individual would bear any actual full responsibility or feel some kind of revulsion that might have consequences.
It is a sort of Schrödinger's Cat of the psyche - both knowing, and not knowing.
The punch-line of the tale, if I can use that word, is that Levi prepares a more confrontational letter for Müller but is deterred from sending it by an unexpected phone call from him, where he sounds agitated and suggests they meet. Within a week he is told by his wife that Müller unexpectedly died. The implication is that he committed suicide. Later, when you read up on the author, we find he committee suicide too, though his sudden death - via a fall - is open to question.
Today, things being how they are, my first inctinct is to think, hmm, was this murder in both cases then? After all, the author reveals that those at the firm adopted a more conciliatory approach to Levi's problem after he contacted Müller to query if indeed he was his superior at Auschwitz. It just seems that every suicide linked to a controversial, State-led bit of scandal must be seen as suspect, now. But there are instances where German citizens reacted in this way - on the liberation of one death camp, the Allies forced the town's mayor and his wife - and others - to tour the camp, to confront what had been going on there. They went home and killed themselves.
I think most Germans in WWII had a pretty good idea what was done to the Jews, but they didn't know thw details and didn't want to either. When it comes to people murdering nazis after the warwe know elements of the Jewish Brigade were involved in this. It also looks like Jews in Australia who fought as partisans in eastern Europe killed nazi war criminals for years after 1945.
Comments
Thank you! 😀
The events on Arnøy deserve to be far better known. I've nver written a book never been north of Tromsø and I don't even qualify as an amateur historian. I asked for a book on the subject, but the library could only find a 128-page book from another library.Someone more qualified than me should write the definitive book on the Arnøy tragedy. Honestly it should be a TV-series or movie.
@Number24
Partisans in the Arctic...excellent story telling.
This would make for a gripping WW 2 movie.
Keep up the great work Number 24.
'The spy and her dog who endangered D-Day' by Ben Macintyre
'After her pet Babs died, double agent Lily Sergeyev threatened to betray the allies but one shrewd woman called her bluff'.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I've seen these before; but then the U-2 is only second to the SR-71 in my 'Whoah' list of planes and these photographs are NEVER going to get tired, are they? Magnificent and it must be a unique experience for the aircrews of these fantastic machines!
Apologies if you've seen this, Kim Philby, of course, the former UK-SIS Officer who was a Soviet Intelligence Officer before he even joined the Service. Traitor or hero? Largely, perhaps a point of view thing...
Makarov PB: Silenced KGB "Wet Work" Pistol
See Commander Fleming's detailed instructions to 30 assault Unit for the allied landings in Normandie. Thanks to Marker for finding the story!
'
Yes, thanks @Marker!
It's an interesting slice of history.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
The blonde spy head
It's easy to think that young beautiful blondes working as spies in extremely dangerous circumstances belong in the world of fiction, and perhaps especially the world of James Bond. But these women exist in the real world, and Anne-Sofie Østvedt was an example of this. In1940 she was a 20 year old chemistry student at Oslo university, one of very few women studying the natural sciences. When nazi Germany invaded in april she quickly decided to join the resistance. With a few friends she started a secret underground newspaper and distributed it around the city. Here a re a couple of pages from the newspaper:
In 1941 one of the male students contacted Anne-Sofie and asked her if she wanted to be a courier for the resistance, and she immediately accepted. She carried secret and illegal information and messages around the city, and to get past the check points she often hid the papers in her bra the or taped it to her stomach. It turned out her looks was an advantage. The guards wanted to treat a young beauty like gentlemen, and being a natural platinum blonde she looked even younger than she was. Many saw her as just a girl who wasn't a threat to anyone.
She also had missions going into neutral Sweden smugling people and information. Some men who were older than her disliked putting their lives in the hands of "a girl", but they were soon persuaded by her professionalism. But the Gestapo found out about her in late 1942 and turned up at her apartment to arrest her. Anne -Sofie shared the apartment with her sister, and the sister opened the door and the Gestapo asked "fraulein Østvedt" she immediately realized what was happening. Her Anne-Sofie was involved in the resistance and now she was in serious trouble! The sister quickly decided to sacrifice herself for her sister and said she was Anne-Sofie and presented Anne Sofie as herself. Anne -Sofie walked away while her brave sister was taken away by the Gestapo for questioning. She managed to hide her true name until Anne-Sofie had changed her identity When the Gestapo understood she wasn't Anne-Sofie the sister was sent to a prison camp.
Grini prison camp where the sister was sent.
Anne-Sofie visited a hairdresser and became a brunette. She also got rid of her favourite clothes and started wearing clothes she didn't like to change her appearance. She also told her family that she was escaping to Sweden and kept sending them letters posted in Sweden for the rest of the war.
Here is her old look and two border region resident passes neede to get to and from Sweden, both under fake identities:
Anne- Sofie entered a fake marriage to Øistein Strømnes, a student of genetics and a hig-ranking member of the organisation XU, the intelligence organisation Anne-Sofie was a member of too. Anne Sofie was a part of the highly secretive leadership of XU from 1943. About half of the XU leaders were women, highly unusual in resistance organisations and other generally at the time. When the leader of XU got killed Øistein Strømnes became the top leader and the 23 year old Anne -Sofie became his second in command. The organisation covered the whole country and was perhaps the most effective intelligence organisation in occupied Norway. XU specialized in knowing everything about German air bases, coastal fortresses, AA batteries and other bases. They pretty much knew the names and whereabouts of every German in Norway. About 500 pages full of secret information was sent from XU agents to Stockholm in Sweden and on to MI6 in London every day from 1951 to 1945, and much of this information went via Strømsnes and Østrem. XU sent classified information about the V1 and V2 rockets in the personal plane of Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian nazi leader. When Quisling sent a "get well soon" letter to Hitler after the assassination attempt in 1944, XU read the letter before the Führer!
When the leader of XU was killed Øystein became the new leader of the whole organisation and Anne-Sofie was his second in command. She had several aliases, included "Aslak". Aslak is a man's name and few knew the second in command was a young woman. Aliases were always used , and face masks were often used to hide people's true identity. During meetings Anne-Sofie often stayed in the bathroom listening in. One knock from her ment "agreed" and two knocks was "disagree", They moved into a villa that was rebuilt to be a resistance headquarters with hidden rooms and compartments. The couple worked round the clock, always with a suicide pill on them and firebombs close by to destroy all evidence and end their lives if the house was raided by the nazis. Anne-Sofie was a pasifist and never carried a gun. She was even against assassinations of nazi torturers and informers. It can also be argued that if she got into a situation where she had to shoot she was unlikely to get away anyway, and she absolutely couldn't allow herself to be caught alive by the enemy.
One time she was on the tram she discovered she was standing next to her father! She looked away and got of on the next stop. Anne-Sofie was in charge of staying in contact with key people in other resistance organisations, including Gunnar "Number 24" Sønsteby. He was a Special Operations Executive agent, leader of the legendary sabotage unit known as the Oslo Gang and liaison between the British SOE and the Norwegian military resistance MIlorg. Long after the war Sønsteby said "Anne-Sofie and I were very useful to each other".
The duo of silent, intelligent professionals stayed in charge of XU until the war ended. Øistein and Anne-Sofie studied at Berkley in California and then married for real. But as soon as the war was over all XU agents had to sign non-disclosure agreements. Their wartime service and even the organisation they worked for never existed. The extreme pressure and risk of working as a spy in occupied territory for four years affected her physical health, but she worked in science for many years.
Øistein Strømsnes
The existence of XU and the service of the agents stayed top secret until 1988 when the they were released from non-disclosure agreement by the Minister of Defence. By that time Øystein Strømsnes and many of his agents were dead by then. Many of the agents joined the nazi party under orders of the XU to get hold of information. After the war they were charged with treason and seen as traitors for the rest of their lives, but they still didn't talk. Part of the reason for this secrecy was probably the idea of former XU agents being a covert reserve of spies in case of a Soviet occupation during the cold war. Anne-Sofie lived until 2009 and gave a few interviews. She refused any medals she was offered. In an interview she said: "i was never afraid of death, only breaking under torture".
That's fascinating, and praise to her brave sister.
Absolutely! Imagine opening the door and the Gestapo is there asking for your sister who's in the apartment. Not only does she realize the sister is in the resistance, but she decides to selflessly lie and take her place. All within seconds and not revealing anything with any gestures or facial expressions. Amazing!
I'd like to say that all these stories about the Norwegian resistance doesn't mean I think "we" won the war or anything. When i find stories from abroad I usually post links because others have told the story better and in English. The stories from Norway often don't exist in English, so I read from the sources and write it in English myself. Other members are of course encouraged to do the same.
Verrrry interesting 😁
Seriously, though, these stories are compelling.
Thank you @Number24 for an excellent account of Ms. Anne-Sofie Østvedt's service during WW2.
Keep up the great work.
I posted something about this over in the literature section but I thought it interesting enough to post here too.
Not many people will have heard of Eddie Chapman but he was a very interesting character.
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/history/world-war-ii/eddie-chapman-agent-zigzag
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Thanks!
Nazi Saboteurs USA - Three Missions Landed By U-Boat!
As I've mentioned before I can make anything about Norway, and this is no different. The German sub that went to Florida landed the agents right next to the summer house of crown princesses Märtha of Norway. She was in exile with her two children, one of them the current king Harald. The three royals were very close to FDR and even lived in the White House for a while. The crown princess and the president were so close (even though both were married at the time) some thought they were having an affair. Among the people who believed this was Roald Dahl who was a MI6 agent posted in Washington DC at the time.
The crown princess and FDR
WRT Eddie Chapman, here's a fascinating documentary on his wartime career. He finished his 'service' in Nazi occupied Norway. I part-based a literary character of mine on him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X58aVnCnnzQ
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Mossad's assassination of the leader of Iran's nuclear program was very complicated and included a remote controlled gun, AI and face recognition software. the man who pulled the trigger was 1600 km away! I think this could be a topic in a future Bond movie, with this sort of technology up against one man putting his life on the line to shoot a man face-to-face.
From Fakhrizadeh's funeral.
Good stuff - you could see her played by Chloe Grace Moretz from Kick Ass though I guess she'd be too old now.
My view of WWII is dictated by movies, which has an unfair slant - little or nothing on what Russia did to repel the Nazis once they turned their attention to the East, one would forget they lost 20 million while I think all-in British casualties were less than 700,000, largely because most of the war they were on the outskirts, in Africa as an army, or in commando raids - of course they only really got going in June 44, not having been invaded. So I don't know much about Norway's role in the war, save the film they themselves deride - The Heroes of Telemark. There was a better, native movie about that, wasn't there?
I don't know if her sister had to think fast when the Gestapo called - maybe she had an idea she was in the Resistance already? It's strange, because at the end of the war you'd think these heroes would be exulted or would claim some credit but why would they? Old habits of secrecy die hard and for some the war is never over - you don't want enemies to emerge from the shadows to settle old scores. You'd have not much to gain and potentially everything to lose.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
There's a Norwegian-French movie from 1948 titled "Operation Swallow: The battle for heavy water". This movie was made only three years after the war, and several of the real saboteurs play themselves. To quote one of the professional actors in an interview years later: "We taught the saboteurs acting and they taught us sabotage". Link (English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzU1hTNZgg
Then there is the mini-series "The heavy water war" from 2015. Both the movie and the mini-series are far closer to what really happened than "Heroes of Telemark" is. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K3Ry2K4yNE&t=4s
The Welrod II assassination pistol. filmed somewhere in south-east Norway judging by the background chatter.
About German WWII spies parachuting in Britain:
Thanks, N24. This Josef Jacobs chap is interesting.
He was. I know a Norwegian nazi joined a group of people in the nearest town from here who were going to the UK on a small fishing vessel. His plan was to spy for Germany in Britain. We know there was a "spy school" in Oslo where he was most likely trained. Eddie Chapman also got some training there. German patrols at sea and in the air were ordered to let the boat through and they reached Britain safely. The man also got through MI5's questioning and investigation all refugees were subjected to, but he was unable to be of use for Germany because his radio didn't work. He joined the Norwegian brigade in Scotland for the rest of the war and was never prosecuted.
Some fishing boats of the type that was sometimes used to escape to Britain:
The commander of Norway's military intelligence service couldn't just see parts of NTTD's PTS getting filmed from his office window, he also warns that Russia's military intelligence GRU uses Russian criminal gangs in NATO countries for sabotage. Makes deniability easier I guess. This is sort of the opposite of what often happens in Bond movies where criminal organizations to use governments for their own ends. As far as I know nothing has been proven yet, but the railway between Narvik in northern Norway and Kiruna in Swedish Lapland sure derails a lot lately.
The underwater fiber optics cable between mainland Norway and the Svalbard islands was also somehow cut clean off, so was the cable to Evenes , where the air force has their forward base for our F-35's.
I wasn't sure where to post this - either here or in the Cover-Up thread, but the odd thing about this story is there is no cover-up - it's in plain sight. As it relates to World War II I will post it here. I mentioned on the Last Book Read thread I'd been reading Primo Levi's acclaimed The Periodic Table, a kind of memoir by the Italian chemist, each chapter given to an element, used a pretext for an anecdote that takes place against the backdrop of the Nazi takeover of Europe.
In the penultimate chapter, Levi has a chance encounter with one of the personnel he interacted with at Auschwitz, many years after the event. Now, when I read this in a book review I assumed we have Levi as a dispensing chemist and a customer comes in - he's not that kind of chemist, he's more industrial, analysing substances used by major firms for mass consumerism, that kind of thing. The element in this case was varnish, which seemed to be faulty.
It came from 'W, a large and respectable German company, one of the large segments into which, after the war, the Allies had dismembered the omnipotent IG-Farben: people like this, before admitting their guilt, threw on the scales all the weight of their prestige and all their ability at wearing you down.'
In other words, this is one of the firms that supplied the ingredients for the gassing of Jews, that simply rebranded itself and continued to function as a respectable firm! The next paragraph details the firm's response to the complaint - the usual misdirection and reluctance to admit anything, the bad faith many a UK citizen will endure when putting in a complaint to a State body such as Surrey County Council or any so-called regulator.
Anyway, the author then gets a letter from a man called Müller and somehow realises it's one of the men in authority he met in his laboratory at Aushwitz - he doesn't give dates but one can guess that he encountered this fellow again around 1964, about 20 years after. What follows in his subsequent letters between Levi and Müller and is an astonishing study of how many Germans practiced a kind of self-deception about what was going on there, sort of knowing enough to keep schtum and not rock the boat, but not knowing so much that any individual would bear any actual full responsibility or feel some kind of revulsion that might have consequences.
It is a sort of Schrödinger's Cat of the psyche - both knowing, and not knowing.
The punch-line of the tale, if I can use that word, is that Levi prepares a more confrontational letter for Müller but is deterred from sending it by an unexpected phone call from him, where he sounds agitated and suggests they meet. Within a week he is told by his wife that Müller unexpectedly died. The implication is that he committed suicide. Later, when you read up on the author, we find he committee suicide too, though his sudden death - via a fall - is open to question.
Today, things being how they are, my first inctinct is to think, hmm, was this murder in both cases then? After all, the author reveals that those at the firm adopted a more conciliatory approach to Levi's problem after he contacted Müller to query if indeed he was his superior at Auschwitz. It just seems that every suicide linked to a controversial, State-led bit of scandal must be seen as suspect, now. But there are instances where German citizens reacted in this way - on the liberation of one death camp, the Allies forced the town's mayor and his wife - and others - to tour the camp, to confront what had been going on there. They went home and killed themselves.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I think most Germans in WWII had a pretty good idea what was done to the Jews, but they didn't know thw details and didn't want to either. When it comes to people murdering nazis after the warwe know elements of the Jewish Brigade were involved in this. It also looks like Jews in Australia who fought as partisans in eastern Europe killed nazi war criminals for years after 1945.