Carl Joachim Hambro (5 January 1885 – 15 December 1964) was a Norwegian journalist, author and leading politician representing the Conservative Party.
He was actively engaged in international affairs, including work with the League of Nations (1939–1940), delegate to the UN General Assembly (1945–1956) and member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee (1940–1963).
The family member Calmer Joachim Hambro (1747–1806) relocated to Copenhagen in the late 18th century, and became a businessman.
Another son (and Joseph's brother) Edvard Isaach Hambro (1782–1865) moved to Bergen, Norway where he became a merchant in the early 19th century.
While studying, he took many excursions, working as translator, literary critic, part-time teacher and even participant on the research vessel Michael Sars.
British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour met with the Norwegian ambassador in the UK, and demanded that Knudsen's Cabinet either deplore Morgenbladet's statements or prosecute Hambro legally.
He reacted strongly against the antimilitaristic policies of the socialists in Norway, and called for reactions against those who spread such "contamination" in print.
[7] In 1918, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, Hambro suggested that the revolutionary socialist press be met with harsher regulations.
He wrote in Morgenbladet: "Perhaps our authorities should be more attentive towards the socially subversive agitation long practiced by our socialist leaders in writing and speech".
[8] On the other hand, he also criticized cases of actual censorship directed towards the workers' movement, among others during the secret military expedition to quell calamities in Rjukan in May 1914.
He was the vice chairman of Det Nye Teater from 1928 to 1932, a board member of Morgenbladet from 1921 to 1933 as well as of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture.
[3] He was nominated as the party's candidate in Uranienborg as a compromise candidate between the agrarian-conservative wing of Jens Bratlie and the liberal wing of Fredrik Stang, Nils Yngvar Ustvedt and Edvard Hagerup Bull (Bratlie, Stang and Ustvedt were former MPs from Uranienborg).
He was a member of Parliament from 1919 to 1957; amounting to ten consecutive terms in total (the 1940 election was called off because of World War II).
[13] He had originally voted against Norway's accession to the League of Nations, as one of only three representatives from his party to do so, citing that the Versailles Treaty did not create decent grounds for such an international organization.
[2] As president of the Odelsting in 1956, Hambro spoke out against the repeal of the Jesuit clause, which had banned them from the country since 1814: It must be remembered that neither Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, Rexism in Belgium led by Degrelle, the Catholics' favorite disciple, Petain's movement in France, Franco's movement in Spain would have been possible without the support and active collaboration of the Jesuits.
[2] He famously invited the Oxford Group's founder, Frank Buchman, and a large party of Oxford Group members to Norway in 1934 where they led a massive campaign for "a Christian revolution" leading to a kind of "national awakening" credited with strengthening Norwegian spirit of resistance during World War II.
Learning from what had happened to Czechoslovakia in 1938, Hambro was prepared, and with only six hours advance notice, he managed to organize the escape of King Haakon and his royal family, the government, prominent members of Parliament and the gold reserves of the Bank of Norway.
[17] In the days after the invasion, Hambro worked actively from Sweden's capital Stockholm to correct the image the American journalist Leland Stowe had portrayed of the situation in Norway.
While in Sweden, Hambro also was instrumental in organizing the fledgling Norwegian underground resistance movement via telephone.