Paradoxically, Communists, who had long denounced nationalism, quickly shifted their rhetoric to align with post-war nationalist sentiment when appealing to the population. In Eastern Europe, this led to a strange blend of theoretical internationalism and a staunchly nationalist agenda, all while remaining fully subservient to the Soviet Union.

The patriotic resistance narrative took root in Norway soon after liberation, continuously sustained by autobiographies of resistance members and testimonies from victims of Nazi persecution. This narrative quickly permeated popular culture. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that this monopoly began to be challenged, as scholars and the media started to take Norwegian Nazis more seriously. However, since the 1990s, multiple blind and grey zones have increasingly come to light.

Military honours for the Nazis? In a Silesian municipality, Czech soldiers pay tribute to the fallen locals, the vast majority of whom served in the Wehrmacht. The question of whether this commemoration can be seen as a gesture of respect for Nazis remains a contentious issue to this day. However, the fallen soldiers are increasingly remembered with sadness, seen as victims of a tragic war.

Muzeum Hlučínska: Located in the Silesian region of Hlučín, this museum has dedicated itself to the systematic recording and processing of family memories. Through years of diligent work, it has illuminated the unique identity and complex histories of the local inhabitants, highlighting their stories not only at the regional level but also on a national scale.

Long-ignored and suppressed topics are finally being uncovered and brought to light in academic research. Scholars at NTNU in Trondheim have begun to explore the blind and grey zones of the occupation. Five years of occupation imply far more complex relationships with the enemy than the patriotic resistance narrative suggests. While this narrative is not entirely false, the project indicates that Norwegian society was much more involved in Germany’s war effort than previously acknowledged.

BLIND SPOTS? GREY ZONES AND POLITICAL SILENCE

In the post-war period, national narratives in countries previously occupied by Nazi Germany often portrayed a unified resistance against the occupiers. To preserve the integrity of these resistance narratives, potentially disruptive elements were silenced or marginalized. Research programs, museums, and other institutional „gatekeepers“ were established to ensure the narrative’s continuity. As a result, significant historical blind spots emerged, omitting details that did not fit the heroic narrative, and obscuring the complex grey areas between active resistance and collaboration. One of the most inconvenient contradictions was the service of many compatriots in the enemy’s Wehrmacht. Their experiences were silenced, while they themselves retreated into private life. Accusations of collaboration loomed over them as a latent threat, pressuring families and communities to conform to the dominant resistance narrative.

The narratives of national unity persisted largely unchallenged throughout the long post-war decades. Its core idea of unified resistance was adaptable to various political ideologies and served the interests of regimes on both sides of the Iron Curtain until the end of the Cold War. However, political détente alone did not prompt change; it was the generational shift that marked a turning point. As the Second World War gradually lost its central role in shaping the identity of states and their citizens, the narrative began to diversify. Universal human rights increasingly replaced national resistance heroism as the dominant moral framework, though Russia experienced a reversal in the 2000s. Previously hidden blind spots and grey areas in the historical record were progressively brought to light.

Norway’s resistance narrative centred on both military and civilian efforts, depicting the national struggle of an exploited and suffering people against an evil intruder with the ideology of Nazism. While not entirely untrue, the narrative contained numerous blind spots and exhibited gender bias. It largely overlooked events beyond Norway’s borders, except for the government in exile and its military forces. The occupiers were seen as a monolithic entity, commonly referred to as „the Germans,“ though often symbolized by the Gestapo’s atrocities. National traitors were portrayed as a homogenous group of miserable unpatriotic quislings, reinforcing a simplistic, black-and-white view of the conflict. This left little room for the complex grey zones of pragmatic adaptation that characterized the population’s experience during the five-year occupation. Over time, the narrative took on a national-mythical quality in Norway’s culture of memory, shaped by consensus. It cast the struggle as a clear battle between good and evil, with courageous suffering and sacrifice bolstering national unity. Today, this narrative still functions as a collective tradition in popular culture.

As in other countries, a significant shift in Norway’s historical narrative did not fully materialize until the 1990s, though a younger generation had begun addressing its biases and exploring its blind and grey zones as early as the 1970s. Their aim was to understand the mindset and motivations of the “outsiders”: political traitors and those who enlisted to fight for or fell in love with the enemy. They also focused on Norwegians‘ practical adaptation to the occupation in everyday life, work, and business. However, throughout the 1980s, the dominant narrative continued to overshadow these efforts. It was only from the 1990s onward that academic research began to actively and more thoroughly investigate these blind spots, systematically uncovering the nuances within the grey zones. As a result, new insights have emerged, revealing the extent to which Norway was integrated into Nazi Germany’s political, ideological, and economic machinery.

This evolving knowledge also includes the approximately 130,000 foreign citizens who were subjected to forced labour, building infrastructure that proved crucial for Norway’s postwar reconstruction but had been largely omitted from the traditional narrative. Neglected resistance groups, such as female and communist freedom fighters, were finally given recognition. The re-evaluation extended to merchant sailors and to the partisans from the Finnmark province, whose contributions had, respectively, had been marginalised and silenced. The Norwegian state officially apologized to these groups for having overlooked their roles. Apologies were also extended to those on the other side of the conflict, including women who had engaged in relationships with German soldiers and the children fathered by Germans, both of whom faced mistreatment in the postwar years.

The most striking insight gained from exploring Norway’s blind and grey zones concerns the country’s role in the Holocaust. While the resistance narrative acknowledged the genocide of Norwegian Jews, it emphasized the efforts of the resistance movement in helping Jews flee to Sweden. It is now established that Norwegian police and government agencies contributed to the deportation of Jews to German extermination camps and that Jewish property was not only seized by quislings but also by „good“ Norwegians.

It is research into these blind and grey zones of war and occupation that is the focus of the current Grey Zones Project at the university in Trondheim (NTNU). This exhibition, focused on the forced service of foreign citizens in the Wehrmacht, thus aims to shed light on one of those many blind spots or grey zones of simplified post-war narratives. It does not seek to discredit the dominant resistance narrative as false. Instead, the exhibition invites the audience to use the benefit of historical distance to re-examine the events of the Second World War with fresh perspectives. This period not only forms a key part of the national histories of European states but also serves as a foundational pillar of contemporary Europe’s ideological and identity frameworks.