Economic consequences of the German occupation of Norway, 1940-1945

Abstract

Since the liberation of German occupation 1940-45 an important national narrative has been the far-reaching exploitation and destruction of the Norwegian economy by the occupant. The scholarly basis for this narrative was a book written by Odd Aukrust and Petter Jacob Bjerke in 1945. The narrative formed an important basis for the Norwegian variant of economic reconstruction following liberation and has also dominated historiography. However Aukrust and Bjerve’s presentation of the bleak situation in 1945 was exaggerated and is, historically speaking, untenable. Another conclusion is that the German occupation initiated a twenty-year period in which the Norwegian economy was less open and exposed to internal and external competition than in any other period subsequent to Norway entering the liberal age of free trade and free international capital transactions in the middle of the nineteenth century.