Author(s): Lars BAERENTZEN
Publication name: Romanian Intelligence Studies Review
Publisher name: Mihai Viteazul National Intelligence Academy
Publication type: Journal article
Publication date: June 30, 2021
Pagination:
Issue/ Volume: 25/2021
DOI:
Despina Stratigakos is a professor of architecture at the
university in Buffalo, New York. Her new book, Hitler’s Northern
Utopia1, is an account of Norway during the Second World War. The
book is based on a comprehensive study in the archives and it makes
available many hitherto unknown details. Very thorough notes leave
the reader in no doubt about the sources – and they are, at the same
time, a key to the most recent research both in Norway and
internationally.
The book opens with Hitler’s voyage at sea to Norway in April
1934 on board the pocket-battleship Deutschland in the company of
Admiral Raeder and Colonel-general von Blomberg. The ship entered
the Sogne Fjord at 07.30 am, on April 12, “in exceptionally beautiful
weather” and stopped briefly at Balestrand, where the Emperor
Wilhelm II in the summer of 1913 as a present to Norway erected a
statue of the Viking hero Frithiof. Stratigakos makes use of Norwegian
and German press accounts – and the pictures taken by the
photographer Heinrich Hoffmann – to present a main theme of the
book: Hitler’s personal enthusiasm for Norway as an important centre
of the “Nordic race”.
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