page_title: Halvdan Koht
section_title: Political legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Halvdan Koht / Political career / Political legacy
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Professor Kohts vei (venstre) og Gamle Drammensvei (høyre). Lysaker i Bærum.
context_page_description: Halvdan Koht was a Norwegian historian and politician representing the Labour Party.
  Born in the north of Norway to a fairly distinguished family, he soon became interested in politics and history. Starting his political career in the Liberal Party, he switched to the Labour Party around the turn of the 20th century. He represented that party in the Bærum municipal council for parts of the interwar period. He was never elected a member of Parliament, but served nonetheless as Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1935 to 1940, as part of the government-in-exile following Germany's invasion of Norway. In the latter capacity he sought to preserve Norway's neutrality in the Second World War, a decision that garnered him political infamy. Growing discontentment with Koht's political decisions ultimately led to his exit from the cabinet. After the war, however, he returned to his academic career track and wrote major works in the 1950s and 1960s.
  As an academic he was a professor of history at the Royal Frederick University from 1910 to 1935, having become a research fellow in 1900 and docent in 1908. Among many honors, he held an honorary degree at the University of Oxford.
context_section_description: Trygve Lie, who after the war had become the first Secretary-General of the United Nations, characterised Koht in his memoirs as an expert on foreign affairs, but introverted. He had relatively little contact with other politicians, kept to himself to study in peace, and spent much time on his extensive writing. Koht reportedly preferred to solve a problem by himself instead of involving co-workers and employees, even the experts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His way of thinking was logical and rational, but he allegedly nurtured an "exaggerated belief in paragraphs" and a "dogmatic belief in international law", and wrongly thought that other countries would obey formal regulations at most times. Koht had few or no alternatives to his neutrality policy, and in many ways he based his entire career in foreign affairs on that policy. Trygve Lie claimed that before the Second World War, the neutrality policy had "become a religion" for Koht.
  Koht's role in the weak and unorganised defense against Operation Weserübung was debated during and after the occupation. After the World War, a commission named Undersøkelseskommisjonen av 1945 ("Scrutiny Commission of 1945") was set to scrutinise the actions of the Norwegian government in 1940. It concluded with a partial criticism of Koht's dispositions. After receiving Undersøkelseskommisjonen's analysis, Koht volunteered to undergo an Impeachment trial. The Parliament of Norway did not find it necessary, and no such trial took place.
  Since Koht lived in Lysaker, Bærum Municipality wanted to honor him by naming a street after him. When the street was named in 1967, Koht was still controversial. The street was therefore named Professor Kohts vei ("Professor Koht's Road") to emphasise his academic, rather than his political career.
caption: Professor Kohts vei (lit. "Professor Koht's street") in Bærum was named after Halvdan Koht in 1967.
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