Norway Starts Something

Disorder flared dangerously in Hitler's New Order last week. In Norway, most persistent trouble-maker for the German conquerors, spontaneous outbursts against Nazi rule broke out from Oslo to Narvik.

Disquiet in Oslo reached a crest when 2,000 workers in the Akers shipbuilding yards went on strike. They resented Nazi plundering of milk supplies, "depriving mothers and babies" so that German soldiers in Finland could have their pint a day.

Because of the strike Reich Commissioner Josef Terboven decreed a state of emergency and clamped Oslo under martial law. Oslo's German police chief, Wilhelm Rediess, implemented the declaration by authorizing death penalties, confiscation of property. Oslo was placed under a 7 o'clock curfew, transportation was stopped after that hour, public meetings were prohibited, wireless sets seized, dancing forbidden. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and Salvation Army organizations dissolved.

To baptize the decree in the usual blood bath, Nazis sentenced and shot Viggo Hansteen, chief legal adviser to Norwegian trade unions, and Rolf Vickstroem, secretary of the Transport Union. Four others were sentenced to imprisonment and hard labor.

By no means the first direct action taken by labor in Norway, the strike topped off a long series of incidents. In January a string of German warehouses were fired. In March the main aqueduct in Oslo was cut. The Germans have had repeated trouble keeping the important Bergen-Oslo railroad open. Mysterious fires, destroying German goods, continually break out all over the country.

Reaction to the Oslo unrest quickly set in all over Europe.

> In Paris, after a week of comparative quiet, a Nazi soldier was clubbed as he left a theater. A German officer was shot from behind as he emerged from a Paris subway. Police in La Rochelle raided cafes and restaurants, arrested 1,000 people. Terrorists tried to blow up the Government offices at Limoges. Vichy moaned that "Communists are multiplying incidents all over the country." Joseph Barthelemy, Minister of Justice, proudly announced that 34,000 persons are now in French prisons for "various crimes."

> In The Netherlands a Dutch Nazi was knifed while attending another Nazi's funeral. The town of Enschede was fined 50,000 guilders by the Nazi Commissioner for "committing acts of sabotage."

> In Belgium three were shot for harboring a British aviator. A ten-year-old boy was reported shot for calling a Nazi a "dirty Hun."

> Serbian Chetniks (revolutionaries) and other guerrillas raided Nazi-occupied Yugoslav villages. Four time bombs exploded in Zagreb's central telephone exchange, injuring six Germans and crippling Zagreb's telephone system.

> In Hungary 41 persons were arrested and charged with Communist activity.

All over occupied Europe the food situation was growing worse. Nazi plundering to keep the Wehrmacht fed was felt more than ever by the occupied countries. As the Wehrmacht marches on its stomach, so does anti-Nazi terrorism. It takes food to make the first fight, hunger to make the latter.

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