Asbjørn Sunde - the most dangerous man in the resistance

Many believe the most active resistence groups were pro-British and pro-US. That wasn't the case in Norway and I suspect the same can be said about a number of countries. One of the most active was Asbjørn Sunde (1909-1985). He joined the merchant navy aged fifteen and later tried to join the navy as an NCO, but his unwillingness to obey the officers and his far left politics ended in him getting blacklisted. He became a communist and joined the communist party in 1932. He also became a good boxer and bought a Packard Cabriolet 1936 from lottery winnings, a very un-Norwegian and "capitalist" car.
Like many other communists back then he volunteered to fight i the Spanish civil war (1936-39). At first he was an ambulance driver, but later became a saboteur working behind enemy lines. His commander was Alexander Orlov, the NKVD rezident (station chief) in Spain. Most of us know the NKVD better under the cold war name KGB. Orlov was probably the model for the character "Felbing" in Ernest Hemingway's novel "For whom the bells tolls". Sunde's job was the same as the main character Robert Jordan, blowing up bridges and trains and other important targets. Orlov orchetrated the smugling of the Spanish national bank's gold to the Soviet Union when it the republicans lost the war with Franco, something Orlov was awarded the Order of Lenin for. But when he was ordered to return to the USSR the purges of NKVD were in full force. Orlov knew that people who had been abroad and met foreigners were highly suspect in Stalin's Soviet Union, making himself a likely target for the purge. He decided to defect to the US and became an anti-communist.
From the movie "For whom the bells tolls"

Asbjørn Sunde returned to Norway, but remained in contact with the NKVD. He became the leader of the Oslo branch of the Wollweber Group, a NKVD organisation that sabotaged ships from fascist countries that visited harbours in Northern Europe. It was named after their leader, Ernst Wollweber, who later became the chief of the feared East German secret police Stasi. The Foreign inteligence branch (HVA) was headed in the same time period by Markus Wolf, who probably was the model for John le Carre's mysterious spymaster "Karla". The Wolweber organisation was dormant while nazi Germany and the USSR were "allies" 1939-41, but when Germany attacked the Soviet union in 41 they were re-activated and Sunde became the leader of the whole Norwegian branch.
The communists had a ready-made resistance organisation with several men with exeprience from Spain and the Wollweber Group.
That's why they could start an effective resistance before MILORG, the resistance organisation loyal to the Norwegian exile government in London. MILORG was also much more carefull, even hesitant in ordering sabotage attacks because nazis killed civilian hostages as reprisals for sabotage attacks. Sunde's group had the typical communist disregard for human life and carried out attacks regardless.
Asbjørn Sunde used the cover name "Osvald" and his unit became known as the Osvald Group. He trained new members in their bases in cabins in the forrests and mountains. Sunde himself later mentioned 39 sabotage missions his organisation was responsible for, and he took part personally in many of them. An SOE agent who worked in Norway assessed the total number to be around 200, making the Ovald Group the most active and successful sabotage unit by far in Norway during the war.

The group worked with MILORG, SOE and other resitance organisations.
Unlike the UK-backed MILORG, the Osvald Group hardly got any support from the USSR. It was hard to supply guns, explosives and other help from Soviet-held territory. Asbjørn Sunde's solutions were unconventional. They started robbing banks to get cash, always leaving behind reciepts with promises to return the money after the war. The group also assassinated key nazis for MILORG, in effect becoming assassins for money. After the war Sunde described one assassination where he and a commerade broke in to a nazi's apartment while the record player was playing show tunes. He describes how his friend puked while Sunde stabbed the traitor.
"Osvald" became known as a very brave, but emotionally cold person. Once he took his wife and his little boy to a mountain lake to teach him to swim. To familiarize the child with being under water he held him under until he almost drowned time after time while his mother stood on the shore, screaming and pleading Asbjørn to stop. On another occation a group member returned to them after a a period in German captivity. Sunde felt the man looked too healthy, since the few group members who had returned alive from prison had been far more barely alive. He simply wasn't "tortured enough". Sunde decided the Gestapo must have managed to turned the man early in the "questioning" and he was now a double agent. Sunde's wife remembers her husband, the suspect and a third group member walking into the forrest. Later a shot was heard and Asbjørn and the other man returned without the torture victim. He had been executed.
In spite of the strict security measures their bases were discovered by German forces several times. The resistance fighters and their families had to shoot themselves free in small battles with dozens of fighters and machine guns on both sides. The Osvald Group suffered horrible losses during the war and many were tortured to death after being captured. In 1944 a deal was made between Britain and the UK on one side and the Soviets on the other that Soviet controlled resistance groups in what became western Europe had to demobilise since the Western powers feared with good reason that these groups could be used by the USSR after the war against democratically elected governments. Asbjørn Sunde followed the orders from Moscow as usual.
After the war Asbjørn Sunde wrote the book "Men in darkness". It's a good read, obviously written by a cold, brave and violent man. He didn't use the real names of anyone other than himself. The SOE agent Gunnar "Number 24" Sønsteby got him a job and he got a medal that everyone who contributed in the war effort got, but as the cold war became colder life got hard for Sunde and his fellow communist resistance fighters. They got little recognition for their sacrifises and bravery during the war. Jobs were hard to find and they felt they were under surveilance by the security sevice. They probably were under police surveilance. Aabjørn Sunde certainly was, and he knew it. He was far too exoerienced not to notice his "shadows" and he amused himself by shaking them off. Norwegian police was not much of a challenge for a man used to dodging Gestapo for years. This was a bad move, since he acted suspiciously and the police susupected him of still working for the Soviets. He was the most obvious person in the country to be a Soviet spy, so many belived he couldn't be a spy for that very reason.
Asbjørn sitting nearest to the camera at the 1954 espionage trial.

Sunde was arrested and charged with being a Soviet spy in 1954. The chief of the secret sevice was a former friend from the war. Asbjørn Bryhn had been a member of the organisation called A2, the police group to be exact. Sunde once borrowed uniforms from Bryhn and the police group to break a Osvald Group member from prison. The testemony of a KGB defector and other facts proves Sunde really spied for the Soviets , but not on a high level. It wasn't like he could get any Security clearances with his background. He stayed in prison for five years and then he was released for medical reasons. Asbjørn Sunde lived a quiet life until he died in 1985. He never came out of the darkeness.
Last edited by Number24 (14th Dec 2020 16:35)