ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

42 / 60

ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
international relations. On the very first day of the Nazi occupation of Norway, Vikun
Quisling, the leader of National Unity, led an initially unsuccessful coup against the Norwegian
government. Sometime later, though, National Unity became the single party and the main
instrument of Norwegian collaboration. It was during one of these phases that the Nazis gave
the Norwegian authorities some scope for manoeuvre and political independence with which
to construct a regime under occupation. When the opportunity arose at the end of 1942,
Reichkommissar Terboven announced the transfer of power to Quisling, who was appointed
President-Minister of an ‘autonomous government’.
When Quisling was appointed to this position his intentions, according to one of his
biographers, were threefold: ‘to conclude peace with Germany, introduce a corporatist state
and summon a Council of the Kingdom’ Corporatism had been a part of National Unity’s
programme since the 1930s, calling for the organization of a corporatist chamber that would
unite workers and employers under the same umbrella. While its proposals to reverse
parliamentarianism were vaguer than those of other fascist movements, National Unity was
in agreement with all other Scandinavian fascist parties, which ‘wholeheartedly opted for
corporatist ideas’.
Social corporatism under National Unity rule was given its first push with the creation of the
Office for Corporations within the Ministry of the Interior in 1941. Almost all voluntary
associations were to be registered ‘in order to become corporate members of the state’
This process to institutionalize a ‘labour corporation’ faced a strong and partially unexpected
resistance from organized interests, with even civil servants, fearing the domination of the
state apparatus by the party, expressing their discontent to the Germans
Quisling’s plan was quite clear as it was implemented: the creation of autonomous, legalized
guilds (corporations) ‘along Italian lines’. The organization of guilds licenced by the state
and the new basis for a national assembly to replace the old parliament was the realization of
the new order’s authoritarian representation. Only the state-organized guilds were
represented. A memo from the interior ministry detailed the number of representatives to be
sent by each corporatist body, noting that members of the single party ‘would be required to
act as delegates’. In total, there were 120 representatives from the 13 corporations, of which
six had been established by the spring of 1942. This advisory corporatist parliament, the
Riksting, consisted of two chambers: the Næringsting (Economic Chamber) and the Kulturting
(Cultural Chamber).
40