page_title: Erik Gjems-Onstad
section_title: Decorations, comments
hierarchical_section_title: Erik Gjems-Onstad / Second World War / Decorations, comments
caption_attribution_description: English: Norwegian War Cross
context_page_description: Erik-Ørn Gjems-Onstad, MBE was a Norwegian resistance member, officer, lawyer, sports official, politician, author and anti-immigration activist.
  Gjems-Onstad joined the Norwegian resistance movement after Nazi Germany invaded Norway in 1940. He was arrested in Sweden for his involvement with Norwegian resistance activity in the country in 1941, and was sent to the United Kingdom where he joined the Norwegian Independent Company 1 and received British military training. He was deployed to Norway in 1943 as part of Lark, assigned with establishing radio connection with London. He led Lark in Trøndelag between 1943 and 1945, which constituted the leadership of Milorg in the region. His other activities included to assist with weapons smuggling, prepare the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz and plotting to assassinate Nazi collaborator Ivar Grande. He also founded the Durham organisation for conducting psychological warfare towards the end of the war, and he took part in blowing up railway tracks. Gjems-Onstad's efforts during the Second World War led him to become one of Norway's highest decorated war heroes.
context_section_description: In 1944 Gjems-Onstad was promoted to second lieutenant (fenrik). He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1941, and decorated with the Haakon VII 70th Anniversary Medal in 1942, the St. Olav's Medal With Oak Branch in 1944, the Defence Medal, War Medal 1939–1945, 1939–45 Star and the Norwegian Defence Medal in 1945 and the Norwegian War Cross with Sword in 1947. As such he was one of Norway's highest decorated war heroes. In 1947 he played himself in the documentary film Det grodde fram about the Norwegian resistance movement in Trondheim.
  Gjems-Onstad became critical of the "retracted regional leadership" of the Home Front (hjemmefronten) which he became aware of in late 1944. According to him, he and his fellow resistance members had not even heard of their existence. He sent a wire to London requesting that they should take over what remained of Milorg, rather than remaining passive during the occupation only to step forward as leaders of Milorg when the war was over. He became more critical when he became aware that they had started entering the administration in London and Stockholm, according to him without the necessary experience from practical fieldwork. He was shocked at the recklessness of one of them who arrived at one of their bases in Trondheim, concluding that they "obviously had no idea about how strong the infiltration really was in Trondheim, nor how we worked." The regional leadership that stepped forward after the war was according to Gjems-Onstad not identical with the actual leadership of Lark and Milorg during the war.
  Historians have noted that it was "very surprising" that Erling Gjone stepped forward as the leader of the Home Front in Trøndelag after the German capitulation. He had entered the administration in Stockholm in February 1945, but he had not been contacted whatsoever by Lark. The decision of putting Gjems-Onstad on the sideline in March 1945 led him to become increasingly critical of the leadership in London, which had gradually become more Norwegian than British, and subsequently decayed into what Gjems-Onstad considered to be a lack of professionality. He also questioned Norway's military abilities in a possible future war in Norway, based on post-war developments. According to Gjems-Onstad, what influenced him and his contemporaries to join the resistance was a national feeling that—speaking some 60 years after war—he then considered that was "almost gone."
  Gjems-Onstad deliberated his post-war views on the war in a 2008 ten-minute television special. As he saw it, the Norwegian Labour Party government before the war stood "entirely on the side of the Soviet Union." He pointed to the Soviet Union as the greatest murderer of the war, and considered that nobody had "opened their eyes" to the fact that the Soviet Union was the only country that won territorial gains following the war. While he maintained that the coup headed by Vidkun Quisling was both bad and illegal, he considered that Quisling should be judged softer in light of the situation at the time. He pointed to the government fleeing the country, and what he considered the "pitiful" reaction of Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold. He also noted that while some of the figures in the Quisling regime had acted out far too harshly, some others had tried to maintain Norway's interests against the occupiers; the alternative of letting the Germans run the country completely unopposed under Josef Terboven could in his mind have ended up far worse. Gjems-Onstad said he believed that the treason by Quisling should be compared with the lack of preparations for war by Nygaardsvold and the Labour Party government. Gjems-Onstad also complained that he for unexplained reasons had been kept away from public arrangements related to the Second World War. He said he had not been invited to a single such event. He was also in possession of a large archive of wartime material from the resistance movement in Trøndelag, but said he had not been approached with interest by any public institution.
caption: Gjems-Onstad was awarded the War Cross, Norway's highest decoration, for his efforts in the war.
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