I am glad you want to continue to engage. I will just like to comment a bit on the German occupation of Norway as my earlier remark was probably a bit cryptic.

The Germans were obviously not there for a good reason. They tried to Nazify the country. All teachers got arrested for refusing indoctrinate Norwegian children into little Nazis.

Every time there was any resistance they shot and killed random Norwegian civilians as punishment. My grandmothers brother was in a German prison colony. Torture was widespread and they created the largest Nazi Lebensborn program in the world to breed the perfect Aryan race.

There was almost 400 000 German soldiers in Norway when we only had a population of 3 million. That means about 13% of the population were German soldiers. That is pretty much our whole immigrant population today.

So their presence was certainly felt in things like resource and food shortage. So I am not suggesting they were somehow a benevolent force.

However, a lot of what we did during and after WW2 never got covered with full honesty. Resistance fighters didn't always kill the right people or do the right things. But after liberation it was taboo to talk about that.

We treated women who had been with German soldiers terrible. Their children even worse. Half-German children growing up after WW2 often got treated as if they were mentally retarded or morally defective. It wasn't their fault that their father was a German soldier.

My mother didn't know that a German was a human being until she had become an adult. In childhood she was used to hearing grown ups speak of Germans as if they were some sort of vicious animal. Akin to a wolf. The hatred towards all things German lingered for a very long time. I even felt it when I grew up in the 1980s. A German couldn't do anything without people interpreting in some way or another as some inherent German desire to dominate, expand and command. One might as well have called them orcs.

But it wasn't just Norway. You could feel it everywhere in Europe. Danes are not so good in other Scandinavian language. If they by accident thought you were German instead of Norwegian you could really feel a radically different treatment. It is really noticeable. Once a Dane realize you are Norwegian, you get the most warm welcome and treatment. If they think you are German you get the cold shoulder.

But our reaction and treatment of Germans or half-Germans afterwards is not the primary issue I had in mind. Many things were also about simply exaggerating how badly they run the country. The Germans actually did a great number of good infrastructure projects while they occupied Norway. Those things usually are not mentioned. We do very well know that they burned down all of Northern Norway though in a scorched Earth tactic against advancing Soviet troops.

There was people living in mines, boats, tents and what not afterwards. We have stories of children who got born in mines back then. I cannot judge the anger people who lived through that feel against the Germans, but I don't think we can hold onto that kind of hatred and anger for generations.

Germany must be given credit for having turned around. At present I often have more faith in Germany as a leader of the liberal order than the US. There is perhaps some value to knowing the darkness in your own hearth and being on guard against it. Americans, it seems to me, often take it for granted that they will always play the role of the hero.