Post War
The post-war authorities banned the party and prosecuted its members as collaborators. Nearly 50,000 were brought to trial, approximately half of whom received jail penalties. The authorities executed Quisling for treason as well as a few other high-profile NS members, and prominent German officials in Norway, for war crimes. The sentences' legality has been questioned, however, as Norway did not have peacetime capital punishment, and the Norwegian constitution at the time stipulated that capital punishment for war crimes had to be carried out during actual wartime.
Another issue of post-war treatment has been the ongoing Hamsun debate in Norway. The internationally renowned author Knut Hamsun, though never a member, was a well-known sympathiser. After the war Hamsun was, however, deemed mentally unfit to stand trial, and many feel that the issue of his links to the party has never been properly resolved. Hamsun's status as a Nobel Prize laureate and probably the best-known Norwegian author next to Henrik Ibsen, also results in his ties to NS being a touchy subject, as many feel the valuation of Hamsun's literature should not be marred by constant debate about whether or not he was a fascist.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Read more about this topic: Nasjonal Samling
Famous quotes containing the words post and/or war:
“My business is stanching blood and feeding fainting men; my post the open field between the bullet and the hospital. I sometimes discuss the application of a compress or a wisp of hay under a broken limb, but not the bearing and merits of a political movement. I make gruel—not speeches; I write letters home for wounded soldiers, not political addresses.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)