It was the occupying power that was behind the efforts of forced labourers, but Norwegian interests were also involved. When Norsk Hydro, together with its German allies, built light metal factories and power plants in Telemark, around 25% of the workforce were forced labourers. The facilities represented great value for Hydro after the war. The German-owned company Nordag used forced laborers in Årdal, a facility which after the war was used to build Årdal Verk.

Forced labor is a marginal topic in Norwegian historical research.² We know approximately how many forced laborers were in the country, where most of them came from, and a good deal about the treatment they received. However, key issues remain unexplored, especially the economic significance of forced labor. The question was neglected in the first attempts to calculate the economic effects of the occupation and has not been addressed since.³ The economic treason settlement after the war also showed that Norwegian companies made large profits during the occupation. There is therefore reason to address the question. How important was this labor force in realizing the Germans' plans in Norway? How was the effort organized? What role did Norwegian economic interests play in the exploitation of the forced laborers?

Based on the hypothesis that forced labor had economic significance, the project will study the activities of Organization Todt (OT), which, alongside the Wehrmacht, was the central agency for the recruitment, organization and distribution of forced labour. At its peak, OT employed close to 30,000 forced laborers in Norway.

OT was established in 1938 as a paramilitary task force responsible for major construction projects. The organization was named after engineer Fritz Todt, who led OT until 1942. Before the war, OT built fortifications in Germany. Later, the area of ​​responsibility was extended to the occupied countries.

At the start, OT used voluntary labour, but later in the war became increasingly dependent on various types of forced labour. The term forced labor was admittedly not used at the time, but is the collective term used by historians afterwards. It was partly about political prisoners and concentration camp prisoners, but the vast majority were prisoners of war and forcibly mobilized civilians, so-called Fremdarbeitern. Most were taken from the occupied areas in the east, but many also in the west. At its peak, the OT workforce numbered one million men, most of whom were forced laborers. The operation was coordinated from Berlin, but there were regional task forces all over the occupied area, including in Kiev and Paris. In 1942, Einsatzgruppe Wiking was established in Oslo with responsibility for Norway, Denmark and Finland. ⁴

When operations in Norway became particularly extensive, it was due to Hitler's assessment of the country's geopolitical role. He was long convinced that the Norwegian coast was a likely landing place for an allied invasion force and therefore ordered the construction of Festung Norwegen. This project, together with the construction of roads, railways, airports, power stations and industrial facilities, meant that OT quickly established itself as Norway's largest builder. OT was a power factor with influence over the economic input factors, not least labour.

At the National Archives, the archive has been lying unorganized for 65 years after the OT, but has now finally been made available for research.⁵ The source material will not only shed new light on important aspects of Norway's occupation history, but also enable Norwegian contributions to international research on the political economy of forced labor during World War II. The purpose is to uncover the extent, characteristics and economic significance of forced labor. Not least, it will be investigated to what extent, why, and in what way Norwegian actors used forced labor.

The project will attract international interest solely because of the OT archive's unique source material. It will include researchers who currently manage the international research front within the subject area, and thus could join the research front. It will adopt a comparative and transnational perspective and thus seek to avoid the 'methodological nationalism' that has recently been directed at Norwegian historical research.

The project has extra relevance because the intensified "Krieg der Erinnerung" in Europe after the turn of the millennium (Welzer 2007). This concerns how the Second World War should be interpreted, and has confronted national basic narratives characterized by patriotic memory (Lagrou 2000) with more transnational and universalist perspectives. An expression of this tendency in Norway is that Norwegian participation in the extermination of Jews and in the war of extermination on the Eastern Front has been subject to historical research.

New knowledge and new perspectives have partly taken on a corrective function vis-à-vis Norway's heroizing basic narrative about the occupation - about Norwegian will to resist in the face of Nazism's supremacy. In particular, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and minority views (the HL Center) and the Falstad Center have had an important function in this respect. Second only to the deportations of Jews, it is the fate of the foreign forced laborers that creates the clearest connection between Norway and the extermination policy of the Nazi regime.

Since it is still an open question what role Norwegian actors played in the exploitation of the forced labourers, the project is the first attempt to address the participation of Norwegians in the crimes. The project is therefore also suitable for challenging the national narrative. Precisely because new research-based knowledge can help correct this, the project includes a communication component in collaboration with the HL Center and the Falstad Centre.

The majority of those who perished on Norwegian soil during the occupation were not Norwegians, but foreign prisoners of war and forced labour. The project will provide a better understanding of the fate of the foreign forced labourers, and will connect to the didactic commemorative project Zwangsarbeit 1939-1945. Erinnerungen und Geschichte. ⁶

That forced laborers were also victims of a racist extermination policy is most clearly demonstrated by the program Vernichtung durch Arbeit.⁷ Forced labor was part of the Nuremberg trials and Albert Speer, who led the OT between 1942 and 1945, was held responsible for his involvement. However, it was a long time before historians became interested in the phenomenon.

Ulrich Herbert (1985) established forced labor as an empirical field of research in the 1980s. He documented through several works how important forced labor was for the German war economy, which would probably have collapsed in the early phase of the war without 10-12 million foreign workers.⁸ Forced labor is now being explored from many perspectives. There are studies of forced labor under the auspices of the SS and a large number of books that show how forced laborers were used in the German armaments industry, often at the company level.⁹ Research has also received impetus from the debate about Germany's legal responsibility for forced laborers. The debate culminated in the scheme that, from 2000, allows former forced laborers to receive compensation.¹⁰ All of this has contributed to forced labor now being part of German awareness of the Second World War.¹¹ In 2001, Herbert was able to determine that research in the field had experienced an explosive development. However, he called for analyses of forced labor outside Germany and also for close studies of OT's activities.¹²

Herbert's research agenda has been partially followed up. There is reason to highlight the research efforts on forced labor in Austria¹³ and the Soviet Union.¹⁴ While historians have gradually begun to assess forced labor in a European¹⁵ and transnational¹⁶ perspective, research-based knowledge of the OT's forced labor efforts is still a desideratum. The occasionally apologetic book by Franz Seidler still provides the most comprehensive presentation of the OT.¹⁷ There have been a couple of studies that open up for comparative analyses of the OT's use of forced labor. Scott Soo (2007) has studied the OT's activities in Bordeaux. Fabian Lemmes (2009, 2010) has recently studied the OT's activities in Italy and France, including the OT's use of forced labor in collaboration with local businesses. In Denmark, too, OT's forced labor has become a research topic. Steen Andersen's (2005) study of the Danish construction industry addresses the topic, which he is now following up in a project on the OT's use of forced labor in Denmark.¹⁸

Neither the activities of the OT in Norway in general, nor the organization's specific responsibility for the use of forced labor, have been investigated by Norwegian historians. Larger, comprehensive analyses of forced labor in an economic context are also not available. Overall, economic occupation research is poorly developed in Norway. As pointed out by Harald Espeli (2010), this stands in stark contrast to the situation in Denmark. In Norway, the field is characterized by the contributions of the Briton Alan Milward and the German Robert Bohn. Milward (1972) is a pioneering work, but is based on a problematic notion that there was a distinct fascist model of economic organization. In contrast to Milward, Bohn (2000) seeks to account for the practical policy of the occupying power. Both works will be points of orientation for the planned project, but Bohn's work is most relevant in that it touches on the formation of the OT and the use of forced labor.¹⁹ Norwegian economic historians have sporadically dealt with forced labor. Helge Ryggvik (2004) shows in his study of the railway company how forced labour was a prerequisite for the development of the Nordlandsbanen. Ketil Gjølme Andersen (2005) analyses Norsk Hydro's participation in the German light metal programme and shows how the company's Norwegian management sought to secure the project from forced labour. But forced labour has generally been neglected in more recent works as well. For example, Hans Otto Frøland (2008) has studied the aluminium industry during the occupation, but has not discussed the significance of forced labour. Espeli also overlooks labour in a recent overview article on German-Norwegian relations in the economic field.²⁰

Outside of economic history, however, there are research contributions on forced labor. Birgit Kock's master's thesis (1988) sheds light on the fate of Soviet, Polish and Yugoslav prisoners of war in Norway. Many of these were put to work for the OT. More relevant, however, is the Polish Emilia Denkiewicz-Scepaniak's article (1997) on the efforts of Polish prisoners of war and forced laborers in Norwegian OT. This perspective is followed up by the Russian Panikar Marina, who has investigated the OT's use of Soviet prisoners of war in Norway.²¹ There are two Norwegian contributions that specifically deal with the Soviet prisoners of war, who were the largest group of prisoners in Norway in terms of numbers. One is Einar Steffenaks' book (2008), but the most comprehensive is Marianne Soleim's doctoral dissertation (2004). Solheim shows that the prisoners of war were brought to Norway to work, but at the same time emphasizes that forced labor cannot be understood exhaustively from an economic logic; ideological ideas must also be taken into account.²² At the Falstad Center, Trond Risto Nilssen is working on an article about the Yugoslav prisoners of war in Norway and their efforts to obtain compensation payments.²³ The most recent contributions are the unpublished master's theses of Michael Stokke (2008) and Anders Lervold (2010). Stokke compares the working and living conditions of civilian French and Soviet forced laborers and touches on the relationship between OT and Norwegian companies. Lervold shows how OT played an increasingly important role in Nordag, not least as a supplier of forced laborers.

While OT workers were already represented in Norway in 1940 via the Reichsarbeitsdienst, for example in the construction of submarine bunkers in Trondheim, Einsatzgruppe Wiking was only established in April 1942. Wiking was then one of OT's seven task groups in Europe. The task forces were divided into regional Oberbauleitungen, which controlled various local Bauleitungen, which in turn controlled various Baustellen. Willi Henne, who had been in OT since 1938, became head of Wiking and later also Generalbevollmächtigter für die Bauwirtschaft in Norway. Just before OT created Wiking, Fritz Sauckel became Generalbevollmächtigter für den Arbeitseinsatz in German-controlled Europe. The position followed the Nazi regime's general decision in October 1941 to introduce forced labor on a large scale. Forced labor took hold from then on, also in Norway. Sauckel was sentenced to death in Nuremberg in 1946.

A unique source in the OT archive in Oslo is the central register of all forced labourers associated with OT in Norway. It consists of 15 metres of index cards, printed on the individual worker and arranged by country of origin.²⁴ The cards provide information on, among other things, gender, age, occupation, nationality and the time of enlistment in OT. The fact that this type of register was often destroyed in 1945 gives the Norwegian material great research value. Random samples show that most of the designations that were in use in Germany were also used in Norway. The workers were classified as Fremdarbeiter, Ostarbeiter, Kriegsgefangene, Häftlinge, etc.²⁵ The classification was important for the status and rights of the workers, and is thus in itself important knowledge for posterity.²⁶ The register provides an opportunity to uncover the demographic composition of the prisoner group, but also more qualitative social-historical and economic analyses. It is crucial for the overall project effort that this register material is analysed early. Funded as a pilot project by NTNU, the project management has initiated work to study this material both quantitatively and qualitatively. The work will be continued through subproject 2.

Although the project's goal is to establish knowledge about the economic significance of forced labor, it will have to establish a clear institutional perspective. Wiking must be understood in light of decision-making processes in both Norway and Germany. How was the extensive activity organized? Which individuals were central and how were the overall decisions made? What was the relationship with other power structures within the German occupation government? The research shows that the picture is complex. Wiking was not formally part of Terboven's Reichskommissariat, but directly subordinate to the Ministry of Armaments in Berlin, led by Todt and then Speer. In addition to deriving its authority from here, the Norwegian OT was also equipped with powers directly from Hitler. How did such institutional guidelines contribute to defining the OT's power base in this country? To what extent, for example, was the OT in Oslo able to mobilize support players in Berlin to strengthen its position vis-à-vis decision-makers in Norway? Analyzing the OT system's place within the Third Reich's polycratic power apparatus will therefore constitute an important part of the project. This institutional perspective emerges most clearly in subprojects 1 and 6. Subproject 6 will particularly concentrate on how the central decisions in Berlin were communicated into the Norwegian OT system and the Norwegian organization's place in relation to the other Einsatzgruppen.

OT's relationship with the Reichskommissariat and the Wehrmacht in Norway must be studied in particular detail. As Bohn and Soleim have shown, OT quickly came to challenge both of these bodies.²⁷ OT's institutionally defined dual role must also be studied: on the one hand, OT provided forced laborers for projects under the auspices of other government agencies, on the other hand, OT itself was among the largest purchasers of this labor. This meant that the organization both cooperated with and competed with actors who used forced laborers. In the case of Nordag, the company with primary responsibility for developing the war-critical aluminum industry and which began using forced laborers as early as the spring of 1943, OT took over the daily management of the company. Mapping OT's role in the tug-of-war for labor in the Norwegian war economy will be central to the project. As Herbert has emphasized, this type of knowledge can also make valuable contributions to understanding OT's functioning.²⁸ The issue is addressed most clearly in subprojects 1 and 4.

Companies that used forced laborers were invoiced by OT, which then transferred the amount to Germany. A central issue will be to establish criteria for assessing the economic significance of forced labour. From being part of a market-based pre-war economy, Norwegian companies during the occupation became part of a political economy where input factors were distributed centrally. How did the business world adapt to the availability of large amounts of cheap labor in the form of 140,000 forced laborers at a time when the civilian labor market tightened? What attitudes did the business community have towards using the workforce and what incentives worked for using it? Sub-projects 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 all provide the opportunity to generate new knowledge. It is also important to examine the income that forced labor generated for OT. OT's overall operating finances will be dealt with in sub-project 1.

The practical organization of forced labor at the middle level is best studied through an analysis of the construction industry. OT often engaged German contractors who in turn engaged Norwegian companies for smaller, limited contracts. The German construction industry created great profit opportunities for the construction industry. The construction industry has never been systematically investigated, but it is known that the industry collaborated closely with the occupying power and that forced laborers were used. This is also evident from sources in the OT archive.²⁹ How were the forced laborers distributed between the German and Norwegian companies? How were the responsibilities and financial transactions between the parties arranged? How were the construction and civil engineering industries mobilized for or involved in OT's projects? How were decisions made in the Norwegian companies? How much was the result of coercion and how much of voluntariness? Was it difficult to withdraw from a collaboration that had been established before forced labor became relevant, or was the contract entered into to extract maximum profit so that moral concerns were pushed aside? Such issues will be discussed explicitly in subprojects 3 and 6. The latter discusses the extent to which forced labor became part of the legal settlement after the war. Under subproject 9, master's students will study selected entrepreneurial companies in the Trondheim region, where the number increased sharply during the occupation.

Norway was the only Western European country with an import surplus in the clearing account with Germany. In addition, Germany made significant German investments in Norway outside of clearing. The forced labor entailed a massive transfer of labour. At the same time, the place of forced labor in the clearing accounts is unclear. Although it is difficult to quantify the total contribution of forced laborers to the national economy, a problematization of the question will be fruitful. This can be done based on the estimates of Aukrust and Bjerve in Hva virgen kostet Norge (1945). In that context, the importance of labor for various sectors will have to be assessed. It will also be interesting to discuss the extent to which the forced laborers affected the wage level in the labor market, which seems to have become less tight precisely from 1942. These macro questions will be dealt with in sub-project 10.

1 Brochmann and Tjelmeland 2003: 12.
2 Cf. “New perspectives on occupation history”, Theme issue, HIFO-nytt, no. 2, 2008.
3 Aukrust and Bjerve 1945.
4 Soo 2007, Seidler 1987.
5 Informed by Vebjørn Elvebakk, who has been responsible for organizing the OT archive.
6 Cf. www.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/index.html. The project is a collaboration between the Freie Universität Berlin, the Deutsches Museum and the Stiftung Erinnerung-Verantwortung-Zukunft.
7 Cf. the discussion in Soleim 2004: 9-12.
8 The book is available in English translation, Herbert 1997.
9 Siegfried 1988, Billstein 2000, Nicosia 2004. The latest contribution is Heusler et al 2010.
10 Stiftung Erinnerung-Verantwortung-Zukunft. Cf. Eizenstatt 2003, Spilitis 2003.
11 Barwig 1998.
12 Cf. Schmidt: 2001: 409-411.
13 Freund, Perz and Spoerer 2004.
14 Poljan 2006, Poljan 2007.
15 Spoerer 2001.
16 Seidel and Tenfelde 2007.
17 Seidler 1987.
18 Andersen 2005.
19 Cf. Bohn 2000: 179-182, 376-380.
20 Espeli 2010.
21 Cf. Also Marina 2010.
22 Soleim 2004: 426-427, the thesis was published in 2009.
23 Rissto Nilsen's source material is partly from Falstad prison camp and partly surveys conducted by British forces in 1945-46.
24 "Einsatz von Kriegsgefangene", register, OT archive, National Archives, Oslo.
25 The term forced labor was not used at the time, but is the historians' collective term in retrospect.
26 Prisoners of war belonged to a category that was initially protected by international law, but Soviet prisoners were nevertheless not granted this status until towards the end of the war.
27 Bohn 2000: 180, Soleim 2004: 179-233, 429.
28 Cf. Schmidt 2001: 411.
29 Cf. also Ellingsen 1993.
30 Support for stays abroad will be applied for at a later date.

Allen, Michael Thad 2002, The Business of Genocide. The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps.
Andersen, Ketil Gjølme 2005, Flagship in foreign ownership. Hydro 1905-1945.
Andersen, Steen 2003, Denmark in the Greater German Space. Danish economic adaptation to Germany's New Order of Europe.
——— 2005: They made Denmark bigger ... Danish entrepreneurs in crisis and war 1919-1947.
Aukrust, Odd and Petter Jakob Bjerve 1945, What the war cost Norway.
Barwig, Klaus ed. 1998, Entschädigung für NS-Zwangsarbeit. Legal, historical and political aspects.
Billstein, Reinhold et al 2000, Working for the enemy: Ford, General Motors and Forced Labor in Germany during the second World War.
Bohn, Robert 2000, Reichskommissariat Norwegen. Nationalsozialistiche Neuordnung und Kriegswirtschaft.
Brochmann, Grete and Hallvard Tjelmeland 2003, In the Age of Globalization, 1940-2000.
Denkiewicz-Szczepaniak, Emilia 1997, "Polish OT Forced Laborers and Prisoners of War in Norway during the Second World War", Historisk Tidsskrift, no. 2, 1997: 268-28.
Ellingsen, Dag 1993, The War Profiteers and the Legal Settlement.
Espeli, Harald 2010, The Economic Relations between Germany and Norway - with a Side View of Denmark, in Hans Fredrik Dahl et al (eds), Danish Conditions-Norwegian Conditions. Differences and Similarities under German Occupation 1940-45
Freund, Florian, Bertrand Perz and Mark Spoerer 2004, Forced Laborers and Forced Laborers in the Territory of the Republic of Austria 1939-1945. Publications of the Austrian Historikerkommission.
Frøland, Hans Otto 2008, From the German Four-Year Plan to the Norwegian State Industry, in Henden, Johan et al (eds.) 2008, Globalization over a Century. Norwegian Aluminium Industry 1908-2008.
Frøland, Hans Otto and Jan Thomas Kobberrød, “The Norwegian Contribution to Göring's Megalomania. Norway's Aluminium Industry during World War II”, Cahiers d'histoire de l'aluminium 42-43, 2009: 131-148.
Herbert, Ulrich 2000, “Forced Laborers in the Third Reich: An Overview”, International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 58, 2000: 192-218.
Herbert, Ulrich 1997, Hitler's foreign workers. Enforced foreign labor in Germany under the Third Reich.
Heusler, Andreas et al 2010 (Hg), Rüstung, Kriegswirtschaft und Zwangsarbeit im 'Dritten Reich'
Lagrou, Peter 2000, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation. Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965
Lemmes, Fabian 2009, Arbeiten für das Reich. Die Organization Todt in Frankreich und Italien, 1940-1945, PhD dissertation European University Institute.
Lemmes, Fabian 2010, Organization Todt in Frankreich und Italien, in Heusler et al 2010: 219-252.
Lervold, Anders 2010, A/S Nordag 1941-1945, master's thesis NTNU.
Lund, Joachim 2004, "Denmark and the European New Order, 1940-1942", in Contemporary European History, Vol. 13, No. 3: 305-321.
Lund, Joachim 2005, Hitler's Pantry. Denmark and the European Reorganization 1940-43.
Lund, Joachim 2006 (ed.), Working for the New Order. European business under German domination 1939 -1945.
Marina, Panikar 2010, Comparative perspective on Soviet prisoners of war in Norway and foreign prisoners of war in the European north during the second world war, in Marianne Soleim (ed.), Prisoners of War and Forced Labour-Histories of War and Occupation.
Milward, Alan 1972, The Facist Economy of Norway.
Nicosia, Francis R. and Jonathan Huener 2004, Business and Industry in Nazi Germany.
Pavel Poljan 2006 (ed.), Obrečennye pogibnut. Sud'ba sovetskich voennoplennych - evreev vo Vtoroj mirovoj vojne. Vospominanija i dokumenty.
Pavel, Poljan 2007 (ed.), Skvoz' dve vojny, skvoz' dva archipelago. Vospominanija sovetskich voennoplennych i ostovcev.
Ryggvik, Helge and Jon Gullowsen 2004, Railways in Norway 1854-2004. New times and old tracks 1940-2004.
Schmidt, Ulf 2001, “Discussing Slave Laborers in Nazi Germany: Topography of Research or Politics of Memory”, German History, Vol. 19, No. 3: 408-417.
Schulte, Jan Erik 2001, Zwangsarbeit und Vernichtung: Das Wirtschaftsimperium der SS.
Seidler, Franz Wilhelm 1987, Die Organization Todt. Bauen für Staat und Wehrmacht 1938 -1945.
Siegfried, Klaus-Jörg 1988, Das Leben der Zwangsarbeiter im Volkswagenwerk 1939-1945.
Soleim, Marianne 2004, Soviet war prisoners in Norway 1941-1945: Numbers, organization and repatriation.
Soo, Scott 2007, “Ambiguoties at Work: Spanish Republican Exiles and the Organisation Todt in Occupied Bordeaux.” Modern and Contemporary France, Vol.15, No. 4: 457-477.
Spoerer, Mark 2001, Forced labor under the swastika. Foreign war prisoners, war prisoners and prisoners in the German Reich and occupied Europe 1939-1945.
Steffenak, Einar 2008, Russian prisoners: Soviet war prisoners in Norway and their fate.
Stokke, Michael 2008, Soviet and French civilian forced laborers in Norway 1942-1945. A comparison of working and living conditions, master's thesis, University of Bergen.
Welzer, Harald (Hg.) 2007, The War of Memory. Holocaust, Collaboration und Widerstand im europäischen Gedäcthnis.