Milk Strike (Norway)

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The milk strike (Norwegian "milking strike") was a spontaneous strike by workers in Oslo in September 1941 during the occupation of Norway by the German Reich .

The strike was initially triggered by the deteriorating food supply under the German occupation . When, on Monday, September 8, 1941, the milk that had been distributed to the workers in the factories was no longer available, the workers in many factories spontaneously went home.

On September 9, the next day, around 25,000 workers in Oslo went on strike. About a month earlier, the German administrator of Norway, Reich Commissioner Josef Terboven , announced that strikes would lead to the declaration of a state of emergency and the application of martial law .

In view of the big strike, the German occupying power struck quickly and arrested the local chairman of the union Rolf Wickstrøm and the lawyer (and de facto head of the Norwegian unions) Harald Viggo Hansteen . Both were examples sentenced to death , and on September 10, 1941 executed . Ludvik Buland , Josef Larsson and Harry Vestli were also sentenced to death, but the death sentences were in lifelong prison converted. However, Buland and Vestli later died in German captivity after being deported.

For the trade union federation AFL (today: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge ) the milk strike was the reason to let its legal leadership go underground , whereupon the still officially existing trade union federation was taken over by the fascist Norwegian Nasjonal Samling . Among other things, the incumbent chairman Jens Tangen was deposed and replaced by the Nazi man Odd Fossum .

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