Legal purge in Norway after World War II

Several thousand Norwegians and foreign citizens were tried and convicted for crimes committed in Scandinavia during World War II.

Capital punishment was reinstated as an option, prison sentences with hard labor were approved, higher upper limits for financial penalties introduced, and a controversial, new measure known as "loss of public confidence" (Norwegian: tap av almenn tillit) adopted, which would effectively deprive those convicted of various civil privileges.

Crimes defined in these decrees notably included membership of Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian fascist party that collaborated with the Nazis.

[2] In autumn 1940 the Nazi-supporting Norwegian fascist party, Nasjonal Samling, was declared as the only legal political organization in Norway.

Anything that aided or encouraged the German occupation of Norway was to be considered in principle an act of treason; this included membership of Nasjonal Samling.

[a] Norway's exiled government also considered it to be a criminal act to assist the Nazi regime through economic support and commercial activities.

The Norwegian government-in-exile assembled this force because it viewed the avoidance of lynching or other extrajudicial punishment of former members of the Nazi regime as being of paramount importance.

Nevertheless, during the summer of 1945, there was a fierce debate reported in Norwegian newspapers about the prosecution and punishment of war criminals and traitors.

[3] Former wartime resistance leader Sven Arntzen was made acting chief barrister of the Norwegian Prosecuting Authority.