Norwegian Defence and Security Policy: The Struggle for Hearts and Minds in the 1950s

Abstract

Even though the Scandinavian countries had failed to create a common defence union at the end of the 1940s, their governments soon managed to create a confidential propaganda collaboration. This Scandinavian propaganda model was based on social democratic politicians’ use of the media and civil society to gain support for defence policy and to counter Soviet propaganda. In this chapter, we analyse how the Norwegian People and Defence (Folk og Forsvar) and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee (Den norske Atlanterhavskomité) were established, how they influenced public opinion on defence and security policy issues, and how they influenced support for the Norwegian NATO membership in the 1950s. The analysis is contextualized with the corresponding organizations in Sweden and Denmark, in which there was close cooperation, confidential exchange of information on propaganda activities, and the fight against communist espionage and sabotage.

In the wake of World War II, attempts were made to establish a Nordic defence alliance between Norway, Sweden and Denmark, but negotiations broke down in January 1949. Barely two months later, Norway and Denmark joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while Sweden proclaimed its traditional neutrality. In both Norway and Denmark, there was strong opposition to NATO membership, especially among the Communists and on the left wing of the major ruling Social Democratic parties. In Norway, opposition to NATO membership was close to 50 per cent in 1949, and it remained relatively constant throughout the 1950s.¹

This chapter deals with two Norwegian non-governmental organizations, the Norwegian People and Defence (Folk og Forsvar) and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee (Den norske Atlanterhavskomité). The overall research question is: what role did these organizations play in the public debate on Norwegian defence and security policy in the 1950s? To provide answers, we ask three sub-questions: first, how did the Norwegian government and the leadership of the Labour Party contribute to establishing and dominating these organizations? Second, how were the organizations used to influence public opinion? Third, how were journalists and the media used to establish a consensus on defence and security policy issues and support for Norwegian NATO membership? The establishment of the Norwegian organizations is analysed in the light of the corresponding organizations in Sweden and Denmark, the transnational interactions the Scandinavian organizations had with each other, and through the contacts Norwegian journalists established abroad.

In recent years, several studies have been written on propaganda and persuasion in Norway in the period after World War II. These studies have shown that Norway was deeply involved in Western transnational propaganda cooperation that aimed to secure support for Western cooperation at all levels—cultural, economic, political, and military.² While several professional historical studies have been conducted about the voluntary defence organizations in Sweden and Denmark,³ previous scholarship on the Norwegian organizations People and Defence and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee is limited to anniversary publications.⁴

Sources and Methodological Challenges

This study is based on many different sources, including documents from the archives of both People and Defence and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee, public reports, the Defence Commission of 1946,⁵ and coverage of the organizations in the Norwegian media in the 1950s. For People and Defence, there are also annual reports, board minutes, correspondence, internal notes, work plans, and official publications in the organization’s headquarters, in the Norwegian Labour Movement’s Archive and Library, and in the Norwegian National Archive. Not all the archives are organized or catalogued.⁶

Little archival material about the Norwegian Atlantic Committee has survived the many relocations the administration has undergone. There are only scattered remnants of annual reports, random documents, and no board minutes or documentation of the contacts the organization has had with others. However, some of the archive material from People and Defence may shed light on the establishment of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee. The Atlantic Committee’s official magazines and publication series are preserved in the Norwegian National Library.

Propaganda and the Struggle for Public Opinion After World War II

Psychological warfare can be characterized as either black, white, or grey propaganda, as suggested by Jowett and O’Donnell. In black propaganda, the sources are concealed or credited to a false authority and contain lies, fabrications, and/or deceptions. By contrast, white propaganda comes from an identifiable source, and the information tends to be accurate even if it is still intended to convince an audience of the superiority and justice of a particular regime or ideology. Grey propaganda is then something between white and black propaganda, where the source may (or may not) be correctly identified, and the accuracy of some of the information could be uncertain.⁷ The tense international situation after World War II increased the interest in using such propaganda and counterpropaganda on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Cold War triggered the use of psychological warfare amounting to ideological war in peacetime as well as in times without direct military conflicts.⁸

At the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union established and financed so-called front groups which emerged as civilian peace groups in many Western countries, including Scandinavia. In this sense, Soviet propaganda also took place through proxies, where the sender of the message remained hidden.⁹ Soviet propaganda was also transmitted directly via Radio Moscow, which was broadcast in local languages. As a result, the Norwegian authorities closely monitored Soviet radio broadcasts in Norwegian.¹⁰

From 1948, the Americans were committed to extensive cooperation with the British authorities to counter Soviet propaganda.¹¹ They understood that direct propaganda directed at the Scandinavian countries was counterproductive and therefore focused primarily on supporting locally produced material and local senders. Contacts and friendships with local journalists and partners were part of the strategy.¹²

After 1949, the counterpart to Soviet propaganda in Europe was primarily the Atlantic Pact’s Information and Propaganda Organization—Information Service—with offices in Paris. Systematic and in-depth analyses of the communist propaganda activities in separate Western countries were used to strengthen support for the national governments’ countermeasures.¹³ It could include everything from the distribution of information and propaganda material to radio and press institutions, to the support of individuals in opinion-forming activities,¹⁴ as well as calls for the establishment of national associations in support of NATO.

In Norway, the influential party secretary of the ruling Norwegian Labour Party, Haakon Lie, played an important role in the earliest phase of the Cold War campaigns both nationally and internationally. Lie led the Norwegian Trade Union Movement’s educational and propaganda-like activities (Arbeidernes Opplysningsforbund) throughout much of the 1930s.¹⁵ His already established broad international network was expanded during his stay in Britain and the United States during World War II. In the autumn of 1945, long before Great Britain, the United States, or the Norwegian authorities had formulated a propaganda strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, Lie established an informal propaganda collaboration with both the British and American embassies in Oslo. It started with positive representations of the American and British Labour Movements’ war effort, but the critical attitudes towards the Communists and the Soviet Union were gradually sharpened.

The Norwegian campaigns were used to undermine notions of the Soviet Union as an ideal state for the workers. Lie had a close collaboration with the British Labour Party, as well as the British and American Foreign Services. Lie played an active role in the campaign work of the European Cooperation Administration (ECA) and contributed to the fact that Norwegian trade union reports on the Soviet Union and the United States in 1948–1949 were spread as pamphlets internationally. For several years, Lie was an alternate member of the leadership of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), and he cooperated closely with Willy Brandt and Arthur Koestler (Fig. 1).¹⁶ The contributions from both British and American sources were kept hidden when they were reused in Party publications.¹⁷

Fig. 1

Haakon Lie (looking at the speaker Arthur Koestler) at the Congress for Cultural Freedom June 1950 in Berlin. Lie was heading the Norwegian delegation, which included Trygve Bull, Willy Middelfart, and Per Monsen. Per Monsen wrote the speech that Haakon Lie gave at the opening of the conference. Lie was invited by Willy Brandt. Photo from Süd Deutche Zeitung 1950

The Establishment of People and Defence in Norway

People and Defence was established on 26 February 1951, following a proposal from the Defence Commission of 1946. Although Haakon Lie is not mentioned in the sources, the Labour Party was central in the establishment and management of the organization. In December 1950, Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen (Labour Party) appointed a working committee led by the prominent Labour member Arthur Ruud as leader of the Norwegian Sports Confederation. The committee prepared the constitution of the new organization, with Gerhardsen participating in the last of the preparatory meetings.¹⁸

All the proposals from the working committee were adopted by the constituent meeting, where representatives from 65 different civic organizations met, dominated by workers’ organizations. It was decided that People and Defence would be open to professional, economic, and cultural organizations and political youth organizations, which can be defined as civil society. Gerhardsen also gave one of the opening speeches at the constituent meeting. Tor Skjønsberg was elected leader. He was the first leader of the Norwegian Resistance Movement (1941–1944) and was Minister of Shipping in Gerhardsen’s first coalition government after the war. The deputy leader of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisasjonen, LO), Parelius Mentsen, was elected deputy leader of People and Defence. The new board otherwise consisted of representatives from the largest organizations. Arthur Ruud was elected to the board as a representative of the Norwegian Sports Confederation. Many of the board members belonged to the highest-ranking leaders of the Resistance Movement or had spent part of the war in Stockholm or London. The working committee wanted an alternate representative on the board from the Norwegian Press Association. The association only sent one observer and the meeting then decided to give the deputy seat to a representative of the press. No representative of the press was elected at the sub-constitution meeting or later.¹⁹ However, the proposal showed the importance that the initiators attached to the press.

Gunnar Sand was elected the first Secretary General (1951–1962). He had been the leader of the Labour Party’s Youth Organization (AUF) working committee during the war (in Sweden), and the former editor of the very loyal Labour Party newspaper Telemark Arbeideravis. In 1951 he was secretary at the Labour Party’s headquarters in Oslo. He had by then already been actively involved in the surveillance of Norwegian communists.²⁰

When, in their final report, the Norwegian Defence Commission of 1946 proposed establishing an association to promote better relations between the Defence Force and the public, they referred several times to equivalent Scandinavian organizations, the Swedish Central Committee of People and Defence (Centralförbundet Folk och Försvar, CFF) (1940), and the Danish People and Defence (Folk og Værn, FOV) (1941). Denmark’s Folk og Værn was inspired by the Swedish organization when it was established by Danish officers and leading social democrats in 1941. Secretary General Gunnar Sand explained, in a speech to Norwegian officers in 1960, that it was Danish officers who invited the Labour movement to “create an understanding of each other’s terms and views”, just as the Swedish Social Democratic Youth Association also took the initiative for the corresponding Swedish organization.²¹

The leader of the Defence Commission, the Labour Party’s deputy leader, Trygve Bratteli, had been present at a conference in Stockholm on 15–16 May 1939, which led to the establishment of the Swedish CFF. The purpose of the meeting was to clear up misunderstandings between military officers and working-class youth. At the time, Bratteli described the conference in very positive terms to the Norwegian government’s principal organ Arbeiderbladet.²² Other members of the Commission participated in joint meetings with representatives from the Swedish and the Danish organizations.²³ Furthermore, the future Secretary General of the Swedish People and Defence, Gunnar Sand, received detailed information about the organization of the CFF already in November 1950, and he was invited to Stockholm in January 1951.²⁴

Many Swedish objectives were adopted by the Norwegian Defence Commission. It claimed that “a planned defence policy was dependent on positive support from a majority of the people, or preferably from the whole populace”. It also emphasized the effect of the mass media, claiming that the media, the large organizations, and the political parties had a decisive impact on people’s opinions on defence issues. Radio lectures were identified as a particularly important channel for psychological defence preparedness so “that defence issues can receive a broad, factual and current treatment in the press, broadcasting and film”. The commission proposed establishing a civil defence organization, with the major non-political civil society organizations as members, as they had already done in Sweden. In 1949, the recommendation from the Defence Commission was adopted unanimously by the Norwegian parliament, “except dissent from the Communists and a few minor dissents from a few other members.”²⁵

However, no official initiative was taken before Prime Minister Gerhardsen raised the question in Parliament on 15 September 1950. He stated, with reference to the Defence Commission and the Swedish model, that an awareness campaign was not a task for the state authorities. It should be something “individuals from the various civic groups and political wings had to work on together”. Gerhardsen believed that the press, schools, the church, and cultural and youth organizations should also join forces in such a campaign.²⁶ Gerhardsen’s speech must be read in the context of the government’s fight against communism and its threats to democracy. In 1951, all the political parties in parliament supported the establishment of the organization.

General Secretary Gunnar Sand soon recruited the journalist Per Monsen as editor of the new organization’s mouthpiece magazine, Kontakt-Bulletinen. Monsen was one of Haakon Lie’s closest allies in the fight against communism and an important supporter of his brother-in-law, Foreign Minister Lange. Monsen had been the Norwegian press attaché in Berlin until the autumn of 1949, when he returned to the government’s mouthpiece, Arbeiderbladet.²⁷ From 1952, Monsen became political editor of Arbeiderbladet, and he was chairman of the Norwegian Press Association from 1954 to 1958. Monsen was considered by Prime Minister Gerhardsen to be quite hawkish towards the Soviet Union,²⁸ and he didn’t want any discussion on decisions made about Norwegian foreign policy in Arbeiderbladet’s columns.²⁹ Monsen argued for the need for information, especially among young voters. He feared that many would vote for the Communists because of misinformation and communist agitation.³⁰ Kontakt-Bulletinen covered security issues in a broad sense, based on self-produced material, and content from the foreign press, the authorities, and cooperating organizations, but also from concealed sources. The magazine gave a strong defence of the Norwegian military strategy and NATO membership, including harsh criticism of Soviet politics, society, propaganda, intelligence, espionage, and its military strategy. The material from the magazine was used extensively by the Norwegian newspapers, either directly or as background information.³¹ The magazine disclosed very few of its sources.

The organization became a channel for information between the press, politicians, the civil service, and the armed forces. The organization cooperated closely with the Ministry of Defence, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press office, and the different branches of the armed forces. In addition, it helped the Norwegian government, as well as the NATO Information Service in Paris, to disseminate official information material to its members.³² The organization received some income from the membership fee, but the government subsidy was four to five times more than that of the member organizations.³³

The organization received support from an overwhelming proportion of the Labour press, the non-socialist press, and liberal papers. They had close contact with the Norsk rikskringkasting (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK)—the public service broadcaster—even when they did not receive as much airtime as hoped for.³⁴ However, footage from the constituent meeting in 1951 was broadcast, and in December 1952 the state channel broadcast a nearly 40-minute debate programme about the organization with a large number of debate participants. NRK also followed up on topics that People and Defence promoted in the years that followed. Einar Gerhardsen’s speech at the annual meeting in 1956 and that of Minister of Defence Nils Handal in 1957 were broadcast in full, and excerpts from Handal’s speech were broadcast in 1958 and 1959.³⁵ However, it was the Labour Party’s own newspapers that gave the organization’s activities the most attention.³⁶

Following a proposal from Per Monsen,³⁷ People and Defence awarded two press scholarships annually from 1952, following recommendations from the Norwegian Press Association, “for studies of NATO and Norway’s participation in the NATO cooperation”.³⁸ The press grants gave journalists at small newspapers with insufficient resources opportunities to familiarize themselves with various aspects of the NATO cooperation, but they also gave the defence issues a broader journalistic impact geographically. The grant receivers visited NATO’s Northern Command at Kolsås outside Oslo, the military and civilian headquarters in Paris, and other NATO countries.³⁹ People and Defence spent large sums on press grants, but they also received a lot in return in the form of reports, lectures from the trips and a number of positive articles about the NATO cooperation, Norwegian defence policy and about People and Defence (Fig. 2).⁴⁰ The Norwegian Press Association withheld 10 per cent of the scholarship money until the reports from the journalists were submitted.⁴¹

Fig. 2

Newspaper articles written by one of the recipients of People and Defence press scholarship, Kaare Bredesen, published by Oppland Arbeiderblad in November and December 1956. The press scholarship fellows had to sign for the funding through articles and reports in their local newspapers. The newspaper reports in the photo were about American forces in West Germany and West German NATO membership, both important issues in the Norwegian public debate on NATO in the mid-1950s

Following another initiative from Monsen,⁴² People and Defence organized many conferences for journalists in collaboration with the Norwegian Press Association. The conferences were attended by journalists from various types of newspapers, apart from the communist ones.⁴³ The activities often resulted in press coverage about Norwegian defence policy, NATO, and People and Defence.⁴⁴ Several renowned journalists gave lectures to diverse audiences.⁴⁵ All this clearly shows how involved the press and journalists were in the activities of People and Defence.

Criticism of Norwegian defence and foreign policy came primarily from the political left in the Labour Party and from the communists, as well as from peace groups influenced by Soviet propaganda.⁴⁶ Per Monsen and the circle around People and Defence therefore closely followed the activities of both Norwegian communists and peace organizations.⁴⁷ Monsen also used his own newspaper Arbeiderbladet to criticize the Norwegian peace movement.⁴⁸

The trade unions also played a central role in the propaganda work, although there was strong opposition to NATO membership in some parts of the trade union movement, even outside the communist ranks in the Labour Party. In order to curb the debate about the membership of the individual unions, People and Defence decided in 1953 that only national unions should stand as paying members, as was also the case in Sweden.⁴⁹ In addition to referring to freedom, the rule of law and democracy, the struggle against the rhetoric of the peace movements and the communists was a central concern in the work of the organization and the leadership of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions.⁵⁰

An early close collaboration was established between the Scandinavian organizations, which was maintained throughout the 1950s. Annual meetings were arranged between the three secretariats, and joint Scandinavian conferences on defence issues were held. Experiences were shared on surveillance of communists, on military resisters, and on sabotage operations.⁵¹ The Swedish organization had already become part of the anti-communist campaign in Sweden in 1951. This included fighting the Soviet peace propaganda, which was considered a great concern by the Defence leadership.⁵² The Norwegian organization wanted to learn from the Swedish, while the leader of the Danish organization believed that they could not agitate in the same way against communism. In contrast to the Swedish and Norwegian organizations, they were “an officially connected organization”⁵³ and not an association of civilian member organizations. There were also discussions on how to get the state radio broadcasters to be more positive about “defence problems”.⁵⁴

At the secretariat conference in 1952, the Norwegian delegation received information that the Swedish party leaders and the director of the Swedish public service broadcaster Sveriges Radio met weekly to discuss the previous week’s radio programme. In these meetings they made their remarks about programme items that they saw as unfortunate and discussed this with the radio manager.⁵⁵ At the following annual meeting of People and Defence, the organization decided to ask NRK to play an active role in positive information work about the armed forces.⁵⁶ The leader, Tor Skjønsberg, met with Broadcasting Director Kaare Fostervoll to propose establishing a committee consisting of representatives of NRK, the individual branches of the armed forces and People and Defence to discuss how NRK could contribute more positive information about the armed forces. Fostervoll rejected the proposal and he stated that NRK as an institution could not be represented in such a committee, but NRK would always be willing to discuss different proposals to cover defence issues.⁵⁷ The NRK director had a background in the Labour Party and he was Minister of Church and Education in Einar Gerhardsen’s government from 1945 to 1948, but he was also one of the most prominent opponents within the Labour Party against Norwegian NATO membership before Norway joined in 1949.⁵⁸ His views on the NATO issue may explain his rejection of the invitation from People and Defence to establish a joint committee in 1953, but his view on NRK’s formal participation in defence organizations was soon to be challenged.

The Norwegian Atlantic Committee

The Norwegian Atlantic Committee was established on 15 June 1955. The purpose was to promote interest in and understanding of Norwegian and international Atlantic cooperation. The first board of the organization was strongly influenced by top-level politicians and journalists. It consisted of the President of the Norwegian Parliament (Stortingspresident) Nils Langhelle (Labour) as chairman, Party secretary of the Labour Party, Haakon Lie, and foreign news editor Toralv Øksnevad of NRK. Otherwise, the board consisted of the editor of the conservative newspaper Morgenbladet, Birger Kildal, and Øyvind Skard (vice-chairman) as a representative of the Norwegian Employers’ Association. The Chairman of the Atlantic Council was former Secretary General of the United Nations and former Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trygve Lie (Labour). From the beginning, the board represented Norway’s official foreign policy focus. Only two years after the Broadcasting Director had refused to participate in a committee that was to discuss the NRK’s programme content, the foreign news editor joined the board of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee. Øksnevad had a completely different and positive view of NATO compared with Fostervoll. The decision about NRK’s foreign news editor’s board representation must have been pushed forward by the Labour government in consultation with Haakon Lie. It is natural to interpret this as an indication that the director of NRK had given in to political pressure.

Like People and Defence, the Norwegian Atlantic Committee had a board composed of representatives of different political interests, but the activity was more elite-oriented and to a greater extent aimed at those who were working on disseminating information to others: national newspapers, politicians, officials, researchers, and teachers in high schools.⁵⁹ The committee’s aim was to conduct courses, meetings, and publication activities on Atlantic cooperation to promote political and ideological insights, plus cultural, economic, and social tasks within the Atlantic community—as formulated in Article 2 of the Atlantic Treaty.

The external context for the foundation of the organization was a US proposal to establish independent organizations in all NATO countries in order to secure political and public support for the activities and purposes of the defence alliance. The purpose was to counteract both direct and indirect Soviet propaganda. In Norway, the initiative came from the inner circle of Foreign Minister Halvard Lange after the international umbrella organization the Atlantic Treaty Association (ATA) was established in The Hague on 13–19 June 1954. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent Tim Greve as a Norwegian observer to the founding meeting. Greve was Foreign Minister Lange’s personal secretary and belonged to the inner core of the Norwegian foreign policy establishment. In the report from the constituent meeting of the ATA, Greve concluded that an Atlantic Committee should be established in Norway as well and he proposed that People and Defence should be part of the committee. The board of People and Defence concluded that the organization did not want to participate in establishing such a committee or participate in the ATA, as they believed that the organization’s “plans may go beyond the framework of the policy of the Norwegian government and parliament”. The organization nevertheless wanted a non-binding collaboration with a possible Atlantic Committee.⁶⁰ Greve concluded that if Norway was to become a member, a separate organization would therefore have to be established.⁶¹

The Norwegian Atlantic Committee had similarities with the Danish Atlantic Treaty Association (Atlantsammenslutningen, DATA), which was established in December 1950.⁶² There were many prominent Social Democrats in both organizations with close links to the government apparatus and the Social Democratic Parties. Both emphasized the need to convince the population of the connection between membership of the Atlantic Treaty and the struggle for democracy and social development, in which social democrats led an ideological struggle against the communists in the workplace. DATA worked closely with the American embassy throughout the 1950s and 1960s. NATO exhibitions and information campaigns used many of the same concepts as the propaganda campaigns for the Marshall Plan.⁶³ It is possible that the Norwegian Atlantic Committee also had similar links, especially in view of the contacts that board member Haakon Lie had with both the British and American embassies in Oslo.⁶⁴

The financing of the new organization came primarily from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence, but other civilian organizations and the business community also contributed. The largest expenditure items were meetings and conferences and the publishing activities, for which American sources were likely contributors. According to its own statements, the committee emphasized the promotion of information, debates, and the exchange of opinions, in order to promote understanding of Norwegian obligations internationally and to increase the understanding of Western cooperation.⁶⁵

The first event held by the Norwegian Atlantic Committee was a large dinner for the new Commander-in-Chief of NATO in Oslo on 23 March 1956.⁶⁶ Representatives from the Norwegian government and other official authorities were present. On 15 May of the same year, the British Secretary General of NATO gave a lecture in Oslo under the auspices of the Atlantic Committee. Through the first two events, the Atlantic Committee demonstrated that the organization was focused on the military, political, and economic aspects of Atlantic cooperation. The lectures supported the Norwegian government’s foreign policy objectives in NATO cooperation, but the events also showed that the activities of the organization were aimed at the domestic political and economic elite of society.⁶⁷ The information activities were characterized by openness. The events were organized by a civilian organization, but there was little doubt about who the actors were and where the message came from.

In 1957, the Norwegian Atlantic Committee set up prizes for articles and books on Atlantic cooperation that had been published in magazines, the daily or weekly press during the year.⁶⁸ The press paid close attention to the competition, and all prizes were won by Norwegian foreign news journalists and foreign news correspondents.⁶⁹ The two best entries went on to an international competition, organized by the ATA. The organizer probably received a high number of articles published in the daily press across the country, thanks to the very generous prize fund. In addition, the Atlantic Committee promised prizes for dissertations, books, and brochures.⁷⁰

The objectives of both the Atlantic Committee and People and Defence’s activities were based on total defence as a concept. School students and teachers were therefore important target groups. The Teachers’ Union’s high-profile leader, Kaare Norum, sat on the board of both organizations. He belonged to the inner circle of the Resistance Movement (Kretsen) during the war. In March 1959, the organizations collaborated to invite high school students to write essays about Atlantic cooperation. The top three students received free travel to and accommodation in Paris.⁷¹ The Atlantic Committee also organized contact conferences with teachers about schooling and NATO. Teachers heard about the cultural community between the Atlantic countries—and about the school’s role in promoting such a community.⁷² Speakers were taken from the top management in the ministries. This shows the close contact between the school system, the organizations, and the authorities seeking to promote official Norwegian defence and security policy.

The Norwegian Atlantic Committee also collaborated with People and Defence on organizing NATO conferences, and in 1957 they set up a cooperation committee “to coordinate the information work on NATO”. The committee also consisted of representatives from the press services of the Foreign Ministry and the armed forces.⁷³ They quickly arranged a roundtable conference with Foreign Minister Lange (Labour), Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Constitution Committee Arthur Sundt (Liberal), journalist Torolf Elster from Arbeiderbladet and Birger Kildal, who was both foreign correspondent for NRK and editor of the conservative newspaper Morgenbladet.⁷⁴

Conclusion

This chapter has shown how the Norwegian government and the leadership of the Labour Party used its own people to create and dominate a kind of propaganda apparatus during the early stages of the Cold War. It also shows how the government funded the organizations and collaborated with journalists and civil society organizations.

Previous studies have shown that propaganda cooperation with other Western countries was not only forced on Norway from outside, but the result of leading actors in the ruling Labour Party, who both invited and actively contributed to these efforts as early as 1945. And the non-socialist parties left it to the Labour Party to settle scores with the left wing and the communists. The strong man within the Labour Party, Haakon Lie, played a central role in the cooperation with British and American diplomats and the intelligence service. There is reason to believe that he and Einar Gerhardsen made the strategy and the choice of leadership in People and Defence together. Here, Per Monsen played a key role as editor of the magazine Kontakt-Bulletinen and as the person responsible for the information work of People and Defence. Monsen was a journalist and from 1952 political editor of the Labour Party’s main organ Arbeiderbladet, at the same time as he worked actively to create contacts between Norwegian journalists and official representatives of Norwegian Defence and NATO.

The Norwegian Atlantic Committee was also established on the initiative of the Labour government. And it was dominated by the elite of the Labour Party, which included Haakon Lie as a board member. Like People and Defence, the Atlantic Committee directed its activities towards the training of schoolchildren and teachers, along with heavy investment in journalists and in publishing activities. While People and Defence gave their scholarships to journalists in small newspapers, the Atlantic Committee was more concerned with the foreign journalists in the major newspapers.

Both People and Defence and the Atlantic Committee had a close and intimate collaboration with the news departments in the press and the foreign news department of NRK radio, and the Norwegian Press Association, as well as the Norwegian Defence press service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NATO’s Information Service in Paris. At times, it can be difficult to see where one organization ended and the next started. The close relationship between the authorities and the press was thus a continuation of the Norwegian propaganda work abroad from the early twentieth century.⁷⁵ At the same time, the new organizations were strongly inspired by Swedish and Danish organizations.

While Sweden chose to remain outside NATO, the country still had a communication model that the Norwegian Social Democrats almost copied. Denmark had a slightly different model, in which civil society was not as clearly involved, in that their FOV did not rely on member organizations. Nevertheless, there was close informal cooperation between the three organizations, with regular joint meetings and confidential exchange of information on propaganda activities and the fight against communist espionage and sabotage. The three countries were often more similar than different. When the party press system in Norway was re-established after World War II, there was a change in the foreign policy area. After Arbeiderbladet raised the flag on the NATO issue, most Labour Party newspapers promoted foreign policy views in line with the party’s decisions. All five party press organizations and their respective press agencies supported the Norwegian NATO membership, thus helping to establish the basic consensus in Norwegian foreign policy. The left-wing radical newspapers Friheten and Orientering were the exceptions.⁷⁶ Both the Danish and Swedish media systems in the 1950s were similar to the Norwegian system, and trust in the state was high in all these countries.⁷⁷ This was the very precondition for the propaganda work to succeed.

While the Scandinavian countries had failed to create a common Scandinavian defence union, the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish civilian defence organizations managed to create an informal and confidential Scandinavian collaboration on what could be described as propaganda related to defence issues and the fight against communist influence. This Scandinavian propaganda model was based on social democratic politicians’ use of the media and civil society to gain support for defence policy and to counter Soviet propaganda and communist influence, also within the peace movements. Under the guise of being civil non-governmental organizations, People and Defence and the Norwegian Atlantic Committee both functioned as a kind of information agency for the government. They conducted both white and grey propaganda, whereby the sources of information were often concealed.