Suicide and Aftermath
On 1 December 1942, General Fleischer was ordered to the position of Military Attaché to Washington D.C. This was another obvious humiliation, since usually officers of the ranks of Major or Lieutenant-Colonel served in this role. Being too much for him to swallow, he shot himself with his own gun through the heart on 19 December 1942. He was found by his adjutant Lieutenant Richard Brinck-Johnsen who brought the urn with the General's ashes to London in a Liberator aircraft. In London Brinck-Johnsen was ordered to keep the circumstances of Fleischer's death secret. Only in 1995 did Brinck-Johnsen speak out, stating that in his opinion Fleischer had taken his own life in sorrow of being set aside and not being needed by anyone.
Still disputed today, it is thought that one of the reason for sending him to Canada was that he favoured a series of coastal raids against Norway to hamper German use of the occupied nation. Fleischer also wanted to build substantial army forces abroad and employ them in active operations against the German occupying forces in Norway, something that was in direct conflict with the more passive strategy favoured by Cabinet Nygaardsvold. The prevailing view in the rest of the Cabinet was to build air and naval forces that could be used directly with Allied forces, as they feared such raids would provoke the Germans into severe punitive actions against the local populace, such as they did after the Telavåg incident.
When General Fleischer's ashes were brought back to Norway after the war, the Labour cabinet denied him a state funeral. Despite the presence of the King, the Crown Prince, and representatives of all other parts of Norwegian society, no representatives of the cabinet or the Labour Party attended. When a monument to his honour was raised in Harstad at the headquarters of the 6th Division, which was also attended by the King, the same lack of respect was shown by the cabinet and the Labour Party.
Harstad (Gen. Fleischers gate), Bodø (General Fleischers gate) and Bardufoss (General Fleischers veg) all have streets named after the general.
Read more about this topic: Carl Gustav Fleischer, Military Career
Famous quotes containing the words suicide and/or aftermath:
“Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The aftermath of joy is not usually more joy.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)