Some food for thought,
Helge
Pen Meets Paper
Opinion by Helge Nome
When I grew up during the nineteen
fifties in Norway the main form of entertainment was going to the
movies and I still remember the day in 1956 when the movie “Rock
Around The Clock” with Bill Haley and the Comets was shown in the
main local movie theatre. The teenagers got very exited and blocked
off one a of the main streets in Kristiansand that evening with the
result that the local constabulary had to break up the crowd. An new
era had dawned.
Other childhood memories include
watching countless movies from the war showing Allied action and maps
of how the German forces in Europe were crushed following the D-Day
invasion of France. War movies were the order of the day in the
nineteen fifties and the good guys always won the battles. The issues
were clear cut: Adolph Hitler was trying to conquor the world and it
took all the forces for good in this world to take him out and put
the Germans back in their place.
Since then I have learned a lot of
things that weren't spoken of very much during those heady days. It
came in trickles over the years and I have just recently discovered
that the propaganda movies created by the Germans during the war are
now available for viewing on YouTube. So now, all of a sudden I see
the familiar sight of my cherished and beautiful coastline appearing
through the movie camera lens on a German destroyer entering
Norwegian waters, with her guns pointing towards the land. I have
also seen columns of German soldiers marching up Karl Johan's Gate,
the main street of Oslo where I used to date girls and drink beer in
my youth. I watched movies from both sides of the conflict as Allied
troops tried to retake the city of Narvik after the Germans had
occupied it in order to secure a port for shipments of high quality
iron ore from Kiruna, Sweden. There are even color movies of war
action on YouTube. I also watched countless Norwegians volunteering
for service with the SS (Sturm Staffeln), the ideologically motivated
armed forces of Hitler's regime and it began to dawn on me that
World War II was not a one sided conflict: Europe was solidly divided
over the threat of Bolshevism from the east, and young people from
all over Europe were eager to enlist to help the German Army fight
this danger. And I have come to realize just how biased my perception
of what happened has been as the ghosts from the past come back to
haunt me. Remember, the winner always writes the history books, but
the ghosts never die. And perhaps movies are called that because of
their power to “move” people emotionally.
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