Norwegians, Fight for Norway
A 1942 recruitment poster from German-occupied Norway (Reichskommissariat Norwegen). The poster venerates Norway’s ancient warrior past, with the ancestral spirit of a Viking depicted beside his modern counterpart in the Norwegian Schutzstaffel (SS). Fascist ideology often draws upon a nation’s history and mythology to inspire its ideological narrative of a national ‘rebirth’. Within this dynamic, the SS is portrayed as the spiritual successor to the ancient warrior tradition of the Norwegian peoples, the imagery of which is mobilized here to encourage its youth to enlist in the organization. The fittingly named 5th SS Panzer Division ‘Wiking’ would come to be formed of Norwegian volunteers, with the unit being noted for its exceptional combat valor on the Eastern Front. In one action, a few panzers of the ‘Wiking’ Division is recorded to have sacrificed itself to hold off the Red Army while remnants of a Belgian Waffen-SS Division made their escape.
The Germans, particularly the SS, recruited widely amongst occupied foreign territories as they came under German control. The esoteric racial doctrine of the SS considered inhabitants of northwesterly Europe a human reservoir of Germanic blood, believing that racial characteristics are tied to the natural environment from where they were derived. The SS claimed that the Germanic peoples were imbued with a certain hardness and combat readiness due to the harsh climate of northern Europe that they evolved to inhabit, making them ideal warriors. Accordingly, SS organizations in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway thus came to collectively be known as the Germanische SS (Germanic SS), distinguishing their populations as pureblooded Aryans.
Reads: Norwegians, Fight for Norway | Sign up in Stortingsgata 12 – Oslo [Address]
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A 1942 recruitment poster from German-occupied Norway (Reichskommissariat Norwegen). The poster venerates Norway’s ancient warrior past, with the ancestral spirit of a Viking depicted beside his modern counterpart in the Norwegian Schutzstaffel (SS). Fascist ideology often draws upon a nation’s history and mythology to inspire its ideological narrative of a national ‘rebirth’. Within this dynamic, the SS is portrayed as the spiritual successor to the ancient warrior tradition of the Norwegian peoples, the imagery of which is mobilized here to encourage its youth to enlist in the organization. The fittingly named 5th SS Panzer Division ‘Wiking’ would come to be formed of Norwegian volunteers, with the unit being noted for its exceptional combat valor on the Eastern Front. In one action, a few panzers of the ‘Wiking’ Division is recorded to have sacrificed itself to hold off the Red Army while remnants of a Belgian Waffen-SS Division made their escape.
The Germans, particularly the SS, recruited widely amongst occupied foreign territories as they came under German control. The esoteric racial doctrine of the SS considered inhabitants of northwesterly Europe a human reservoir of Germanic blood, believing that racial characteristics are tied to the natural environment from where they were derived. The SS claimed that the Germanic peoples were imbued with a certain hardness and combat readiness due to the harsh climate of northern Europe that they evolved to inhabit, making them ideal warriors. Accordingly, SS organizations in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway thus came to collectively be known as the Germanische SS (Germanic SS), distinguishing their populations as pureblooded Aryans.
Reads: Norwegians, Fight for Norway | Sign up in Stortingsgata 12 – Oslo [Address]
