ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the crisis of democracy that occurred in both Europe and the United States from 1933 to 1945, when many of the world’s democracies succumbed to dictatorship. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, both Norway and the United States emphasized their roles as advocates for democracy as Norwegian and American voices stressed the need to protect Nordic democracy. Once Norway was occupied, these voices shifted the emphasis by noting how Norway remained a steadfast ally against fascism and a loyal, democratic ally of the United States. Both wartime Norwegian and American voices told how Norway’s love of democracy and its deep democratic culture served as weapons in the struggle to resist Germany’s attempt to Nazify Norway into the new world order. President Franklin Roosevelt validated these sentiments in his famous “Look to Norway” speech in 1942. Meanwhile, a Minnesota congressman reflected at the end of the war that wartime Norway had been “the arsenal of the spirit of freedom, liberty, and democracy”.
