Johan Bernhard Hjort

Johan Bernhard Hjort — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Early life and career

Hjort began studying law and graduated in 1919 with a cand.jur., equivalent to a master's degree. Shortly after graduating, Hjort was employed by the law firm Bredal, Fougner and Schjødt, which at the time was one of Oslo's leading firms. After a year, he was asked to leave in order to gain more experience as a temporary judge. Hjort then worked for a year in Aker before joining the Union of Norwegian Cities (Norges Byforbund, now KS) as a legal consultant.

Following the First World War, Norway experienced significant economic troubles. Through his position at the Union of Norwegian Cities, Hjort gained in-depth knowledge of the poor finances of the municipalities and the state. Together with his friend Trygve Hoff (later editor of Farmand), Hjort prepared an alternative state budget in 1923 to improve the budget overview. As a result, he was eventually tasked with an investigation assignment for Johan Egeberg Mellbye in the Farmers' Party and a position as an advisor for the Lykke government under Finance Minister Fredrik Ludvig Konow.

As Hjort prepared his economic reports, focused on the state's poor finances and the politicians' inability to balance the budget deficit, his confidence in the existing non-socialist parties weakened. In 1927, Hjort joined the Fatherland League and was elected to the Aker county council for the Conservative Party. In the 1930 parliamentary elections, Hjort campaigned for a non-socialist victory, and attacking revolutionary aspects of the Labour Party. Responding to an article by Edvard Bull Sr. (Labor Party politician and later Foreign Minister) in the journal Vor Verden, Hjort argued that one could not give power to an admitted revolutionary party even if it won the election, as this would be tantamount to "bolshevism by parliamentary means" ("bolsjevismen ad parlamentarisk vei").

Though the non-socialists won the election in 1930, the economic crisis (now global in the form of the Great Depression) was becoming increasingly serious and unemployment was rising. In the spring of 1931, this led to a major lockout by employers. The crisis and what Hjort perceived as a weak response from the establishment parties lead him towards the more radical right-wing.

In 1932, Hjort was admitted as a partner in Harald Nørregaard's law firm, which was subsequently renamed Nørregaard & Hjort. Nørregaard was regarded as one of Norway's leading supreme court lawyers of his time. Hjort's biographer, Ivo de Figueiredo, writes: "In Nørregaard he found a role model. The elderly lawyer was known for his eloquence in court. It was said of him that he dominated the courtroom with his presence, and that his warm voice wrapped itself around the Court of Appeal like velvet." Nørregaard died after six years of partnership in 1938. Nørregaard and Hjort had a somewhat distant family relationship - Nørregaard's grandmother was married to Hjort's great-grandfather.

Beginning

Hjort was in contact with a circle of concerned establishment figures, to which Vidkun Quisling had also been invited. From the spring of 1930, they met for dinner at Frederik Prytz's house at Hafrsfjordsgaten 7. In May 1931, Quisling was appointed Minister of Defense in Peder L. Kolstad's government, formed by the Farmers' Party. During the throne speech in April 1932, Quisling gave a speech in the Storting in which he accused the two socialist parties (the Labor Party, DNA, and the Communist Party of Norway, NKP) of treasonous connections with the Soviet Union. The circle around Prytz attempted to use the speech to promote Quisling's political position and weaken the socialist parties.

In May 1932, the circle from Hafrsfjordsgate formed an informal group called "Polkom"; from Hjort's office, this group worked to exploit Quisling's accusations and information against the two socialist parties. This marked the start of Hjort's period of close collaboration with Quisling. Polkom's work was aimed at getting the non-socialist parties to declare DNA and NKP illegal, as they aimed to overthrow the system. During the summer and fall, Hjort developed a plan, based on constitutional theory, for a coup d'état carried out by the government against the Storting. Under this plan, parliamentarism was to be abolished and the threat from the socialists neutralized.

Hjort's basis for taking such drastic action was his sense of crisis. As Hjort saw it, the plan was constitutionally legitimate, and he saw a unifying anti-socialist leader in Vidkun Quisling. To showcase the constitutional legality of the coup d'état plan, Hjort referred to 1814, 1884 and 1905; three major years in Norwegian political history. However, the success of the plan depended on broad support, and to ensure this, a meeting was held on 26 October 1932 at the home of landowner Carl Otto Løvenskiold at Bærums Verk.

Present at this meeting were the leaders of various non-socialist parties and organizations. The meeting later became known as the "Wednesday meeting". Hjort introduced and presented the plan, but it was negatively received by the old Conservative prime minister Jens Bratlie, and it also led to prominent supporter Johan Throne Holst (noteworthy industrialist and CEO of Freia) withdrawing. Over the course of the fall and winter, the plan collapsed as Quisling and new Prime Minister Jens Hundseid clashed over the pacifist Captain Kullmann in what became known as the "Kullmann case". This was the first blow to Hjort's faith in Quisling.

Founding of Nasjonal Samling

Jens Hundseid's government fell in March 1933, and Polkom – in which Hjort played a central role – explored the possibility of a broad non-socialist coalition that would include the Farmers' Party, the Fatherland League, and others. However, a lack of interest in this front meant that on 17 May, in the newspaper Tidens Tegn, Quisling presented a program for a separate party, Nasjonal Samling. As de facto deputy leader of the new party, Hjort threw himself into the election campaign for the 1933 general election, in which his wife Anna Cathrine also participated.

The newly founded party did not get any MPs. Hjort lamented Quisling's leadership style, which he felt was unclear and amateurish. In the spring of 1934, NS made a new attempt at non-socialist cooperation, led by Hjort. However, these negotiations were unsuccessful, and in March 1935 the Labor Party formed a government with the support of the Farmers' Party.

In addition to his legal practice, Hjort continued to work organizationally for NS. He also investigated how laws and the Constitution must be amended to meet "the demands of the new era". He also put forward a proposal in the spring of 1935 to reintroduce the "Jew clause" (a historical ban excluding Jews from Norway) in the Constitution. Despite the fact that Hjort was a co-founder and de facto deputy leader of NS, his ideas about the organization of the state were in theory within the limits of democracy. Hjort was also not a supporter of a planned economy, and he distanced himself from German National Socialism.

In March 1935, Hjort took over the leadership of Hirden, who partly acted as security guards at NS meetings, but whose primary task was to discipline and educate its members. Hirden was modeled after the German Sturmabteilung (SA). With his Prussian background, sergeant training from the Armed Forces and natural authority, Hjort was made for the role. Hirden was the activist core of NS, with a couple hundred members. At a meeting in Gjøvik on Ascension Day 1936, Hjort addressed several thousand attendees and opened with "Countrymen, traitors, monkeys and others". The meeting ended in chaos and street fighting, the so-called Torgslaget.

German invasion

On 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Norway. Hjort was a conscripted sergeant and reported for duty, but like so many others, he was told to wait. In the evening, he heard his former colleague Vidkun Quisling declare on the radio that a new national government had taken over. Greatly provoked, Hjort contacted other pro-German Norwegians: Victor Mogens, Per Imerslund, Albert Wiesener, Otto Sverdrup Engelschiøn and Hans S. Jacobsen. Hjort's plan was to contact the Germans to stop Quisling's coup attempt.

On 14 April, the Administrative Council was established, and Quisling's coup attempt had failed. During the spring, Hjort began working to help and release the Norwegian prisoners of war. By the end of May 1940, 11,000 Norwegian prisoners of war had been released. However, the work came at a price, as the officers had to swear an oath not to take up arms against the occupying forces. Hjort was later criticized for this, and a number of officers, led by Otto Ruge, chose captivity instead. Hjort was also an active writer in Tidens Tegn. He was most outspoken in Ragnarok, where he wrote that one had to be optimistic and build the country; as "then both Norway's independence and a friendly relationship with our kindred people in the south will come as a matter of course."

In the unclear situation after the invasion, Hjort was well suited as a middleman as he was both a respected Supreme Court lawyer and fluent in German. Hjort also dealt with finding work for the released prisoners and with insurance settlements after the fighting through the War Injury Insurance Fund. During the summer of 1940, Hjort was constantly involved in the various negotiations between the German and Norwegian sides. These culminated in Terboven's proposal for a Riksråd. Hjort was open to a position on this council, but withdrew when Terboven demanded that NS be represented.

As late as August 1940, Hjort attempted to bring the major parties together, and he had meetings with representatives of the Conservative Party, the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Farmers' Party. He was not alone in his desire to make the best of the situation. Einar Gerhardsen had similar ideas, but they were quickly torpedoed by the Germans when Terboven declared on 25 September that Nasjonal Samling was Norway's only legal political party.

Imprisonment

With clear lines drawn after Terboven's speech, Hjort withdrew from party politics for the last time and devoted all his time to law. With his knowledge of German affairs, he was a resource for other Norwegian lawyers. There were many cases when Norwegian resistance fighters needed defence counsel. It was a legal voyage through increasingly troubled waters; the Supreme Court was dismissed, and the occupation forces were constantly pushing for lawyers to adapt to the new conditions. He also held lectures in the German-controlled Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, alongside individuals like Albert Wiesener, Jonas Lie, and Ranik Halle.

In January 1941, the Norwegian Bar Association was pressured to include an article in the Norwegian Legal Gazette on "The development of constitutional law in Norway" by Rudolf Schiedermair, Terboven's legal adviser. Hjort took it upon himself to write a response with the assistance of other Norwegian lawyers and Frede Castberg. Hjort's response was diplomatic in form, but nevertheless ruthless when Hjort concluded that the Germans had violated international law by their conduct during the occupation, and that Quisling had committed a coup d'état.

Hjort must have known what such public criticism of the occupying forces would lead to, and he was arrested on 21 October 1941. Hjort was first detained at Møllergata 19 (Oslo's main police station at the time) and then transferred to the Grini prison camp in December 1941. The time in solitary confinement at Møllergata 19 was a difficult period for Hjort, but the community at Grini with many acquaintances made his imprisonment easier. In fact, many of the most important of the Norwegian social elite were at Grini. After the liberation, it was seen as a badge of honor to have been imprisoned there. From then on, Johan Bernhard Hjort was definitely considered to have been on "the right side" of the war.

In Germany, his brothers-in-law tried to get him released, and Rüdiger was allowed to meet Terboven in November 1941. But the German Reichskommissar was outraged and stated: "The pig sits down and writes an article" (German: "Das Schwein setzt sich nieder und schreibt einen Artikel".) Hjort's attempts to speak out against the occupation forces were not taken kindly. At the same time, his arrest was also linked to his brother-in-law Johan Holst's escape to Sweden.

On 6 February 1942, Hjort was sent to Germany on the prison ship "Donau" and placed in the prison at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Hjort's brother-in-law Rüdiger approached Himmler, and the SS commander was open to an agreement that resulted in Hjort being released, but having to stay in Germany with his family until the end of the war.

In May, Rüdiger was allowed to meet Hjort to explain the conditions, but Hjort's family in Norway, Anna Cathrine and the six children were reluctant to settle in Germany.

Anna Cathrine Hjort was allowed to meet her husband in Berlin, but she and the children were equally dismissive. There were rumors and many people believed that Hjort was now willing to cooperate with the occupiers. Hjort was released, but in so-called civilian internment. Rüdiger got him a job as a legal consultant in the oil company Continentale Oehl Gesellschaft in Berlin. By October, after strong German pressure, the family had given in and settled on the Gross Kreutz estate in the village of the same name 20 km west of Potsdam. The estate was owned by Hjort's cousin Bodo von der Marwitz.

Resistance work

While they were in their "open captivity" as civilian internees in Germany, the Hjort family tried to make the best of the situation. In consultation with the Norwegian seaman priests in Hamburg, Arne Berge and Conrad Vogt-Svendsen, their daughter Wanda took the initiative to visit Norwegian prisoners. She began with a visit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Prison camps were visited, and the prisoners were given parcels, and messages and names were smuggled out.

The first prisoner Wanda visited was Didrik Arup Seip, who was eventually released and interned on the same terms as Hjort. He moved with his family to the Gross Kreutz estate near Potsdam, where Hjort and his family also lived and joined in the work for the prisoners.

From January 1944, the family established contact with the Norwegian diplomat Niels Christian Ditleff in Stockholm. Through Swedish diplomatic channels, they sent him around 50 reports with lists of names. Seip and his children were the leaders in this prisoner work, but Hjort himself also became involved as a defender of Norwegian prisoners in Germany. Among the prisoners he assisted were members of the Wollweber group.

On 26 October 1944, Ditleff received a memo from Hjort requesting that the Norwegian prisoners be taken to Sweden, and shortly afterwards Ditleff sent a memo reporting German plans to liquidate all prisoners before the end of the war. These notes were crucial to the Swedish rescue operation known as the White Buses. It is estimated that this operation saved 15,345 prisoners from death in concentration and prisoner camps; of these, 7,795 were Scandinavian. In particular, 423 Danish Jews were saved from the Theresienstadt concentration camp inside German-occupied territory of Czechoslovakia, contributing significantly to the fact that the casualties among Danish Jews during the Holocaust were among the lowest of the occupied countries of Europe.

In February 1945, Folke Bernadotte came to Berlin to meet German leaders, including Himmler. This initiative was intended to rescue the Scandinavian prisoners, and Bernadotte also met with the circle from Gross Kreutz. Hjort and Vogt-Svendsen had made sketches of the camps and a note on how the collection of the prisoners in Neuengamme could be done in practical terms, and Bernadotte used this as a basis for his action.

By the end of April, most of the Norwegian prisoners had been transported home, but Johan Bernhard Hjort and his son Helge remained at Gross Kreutz. They would not leave Germany until the last Norwegian prisoners were out. There were still 1,100 Norwegian officers left; Hjort had already met them in February and promised General Ruge to act as liaison until the prisoners could be sent home. The Hjort family's overview of the Norwegian prisoners was the basis for the repatriation office in Hamburg (under the leadership of Bulukin) to pick up General Ruge and other Norwegian officers from Luckenwalde around 12 May 1945. The Norwegian officers were transferred from Schildberg to Luckenwalde in February 1945. Luckenwalde was captured by Soviet forces in April 1945 and General Ruge was sent to Moscow.

Liberation and purge

Soviet forces reached Gross Kreutz at the end of April or beginning of May. The German farm manager was beaten to death by the Eastern European forced laborers on the estate. After Germany's capitulation, the Soviet forces decided that the Norwegian officers should be sent home via Murmansk, but Hjort and other Norwegians found the prisoners and ensured that they were sent directly home to Norway. In early June, Hjort himself was back in Norway after almost three years in Germany.

The return home was hardly exactly what Johan Bernhard Hjort had imagined. The period after liberation proved to be difficult for him. Despite his great efforts on behalf of Norwegian prisoners, his own imprisonment and his defiant article in the Norwegian Legal Gazette, many people were still skeptical about other aspects of his past. Hjort's actions up until 25 September 1940 could be interpreted as an attempt to find a third way, between Quisling's treason and the London government's resistance to the German occupiers. The mood after the liberation was not sympathetic, and several of his supporters from 1940 were convicted in the treason trial. Hjort vigorously defended himself against accusations of a lack of "national attitude". He wrote about the articles from 1940 that they had to be seen in the light of the special situation.

Because of his past in the NS and his connection to the administrative council, he had to withdraw from a proposed position in the bar association. Hjort's friend Gustav Heiberg was appointed chairman of the "Commission of Inquiry of 1945" (Norwegian: Undersøkelseskommisjonen av 1945), and Hjort asked Heiberg for a statement in his favor. Heiberg first acknowledged Hjort's work for the resistance, but then wrote about the election in the lawyers' association:

"As far as you are concerned, it would be enough for me not to vote for you that you had been a member of NS as late as 1937 and that you had still been so German-oriented (by which I do not mean odious) in the early days of the war as your statements in Tidens Tegn indicated." (Norwegian: "For deres vedkommende vilde det for meg være nok til ikke å stemme på Dem at De overhodet hadde vært medlem av NS såpass sent som i 1937 og at De endnu i krigens første tid hadde vært såpass tyskorientert (dermed mener jeg ikke odiøst) som Deres uttalelser i Tidens Tegn gav uttrykk for.")

Johan Bernhard Hjort was not convicted, but on the contrary was given full redress by the Lawyers' Association. But something remained: His actions before the war and in 1940. As late as 1954, he spoke out in Verdens Gang, where he wrote about his past in NS: "Is it not written somewhere that there should be greater joy over one sinner who repents than over many who never had the need for repentance?". In his view of the settlement, Hjort was in line with Johannes Andenæs and the newspaper Morgenbladet in what became known as the "silk front".

Johan Bernhard Hjort

Johan Bernhard Hjort

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Family and background

Early life and career

Involvement with Nasjonal Samling

Beginning

Founding of Nasjonal Samling

Internal struggle and break with NS

Prelude to war

German invasion

Imprisonment

Resistance work

Liberation and purge

Post-war career