Halldis Neegaard Østbye: Propaganda Leader in the NS Women's Organization, National Leader of Kvinnehirden (1935-1940) and Head of NS's Press and Propaganda office in Oslo (1935-1940)

Background

Halldis Neegaard was born on the large farm Neegård in Stor-Elvdal in a group of ten siblings. In 1910, the mother took the youngest children with her and moved to Oslo. The father went to Canada a little later. Halldis was placed with relatives in Ålesund, but left them after a while and then traveled to his mother and grandmother in Oslo. In Oslo, she was active in the Farmer Youth Association.

After completing commercial high school, Østbye entered working life as a clerk. From 1924 to 1927 she worked as a secretary in the financial magazine Økonomisk Revy.

She was active in skiing and became a driving force for women to compete. After a stay in Switzerland, she became interested in alpine sports and sought to promote this for women in Norway. In 1931, she was among the initiators of the Ladies' Ski Club and was elected the association's first leader. She advocated for women to wear trousers because it improved performance. She represented Norway in competitions internationally.

In 1927 she married the ski manufacturer Peter Østbye. In the winter they lived in the house at Lillevann, while the summers were spent in Petershall by the Oslofjord. The nephews Odd and Gunnar went there in the summer holidays, and after their mother's death they moved to the couple Østbye, who had no children of their own.

Nasjonal Samling 

Østbye joined the Nasjonal Samling (NS) in 1933. After a short time she belonged to the party's inner circle and became party leader Vidkun Quisling's confidant. Østbye regarded Quisling as Norway's savior in the fight against communists and Jews. Østbye and her husband became social friends of Quisling and his wife Maria. She managed a car that Quisling used during the election campaign in 1933. At the same time she was Quisling's secretary.

In 1934, Østbye became propaganda leader in the National Women's Organization. In 1935, she was appointed head of NS's press and propaganda office in Oslo. In 1938, Østbye wrote The Jewish Problem and its Solution, under the pseudonym Irene Sverd, in which she claimed that the solution to the "Jewish problem" for Norway was to deny Jews access to the kingdom, ban mixed marriages and "excrete all harmful Jewish elements". The book came out in new editions in 1942 and in 1943. Østbye helped make the Nasjonal Samling anti-Semitic.

She was the NS leadership's feminist, loyal to Quisling from 1933, but embittered at being barred from central positions because she was a woman; the women's kvinnehird's leader and editor of the party newspaper Fritt Folk, but as a woman excluded from important positions at the outbreak of war.

During the war

Neegård Østbye was central to the Nasjonal Samling until 1940, but did not retain the same position during the occupation. During the years 1940–1942, Østbye was stripped of all posts. She lost her position as editor of Fritt Folk and her position as leader of Kvinnehirden. Gulbrand Lunde took over the propaganda department in May 1940. In the winter of 1944, Østbye returned to a formal position as head of the newly established Anti-Communist Institute (AKI), which was placed under the Ministry of Culture. Østbye led study circles and gave speeches, and wrote the propaganda writings. When Adolf Hitler's death became known, she wrote in Aftenposten (3 May 1945) that Hitler like Jesus died as a martyr.

It is unclear why she lost her position at the beginning of the occupation. One explanation is that she was a woman, another explanation is that she was too radical for NS with, among other things, her intense anti-Semitism.

Østbye was active as a writer. She wrote the Book on Quisling, England's voice, the Quisling case and the collection of quotes Quisling has said in four volumes. She also started the history of the Nasjonal Samling, which came out in one volume before the war ended. In 1941 she published the propaganda publication Jødenes krig. In March 1942, she also organized the anti-communist exhibition Bolshevism in practice.

The antisemite

One of her advice to Quisling was that one should proceed carefully to solve the "Jewish question". Such "measures" had to be carried out "as quietly as possible, and in stages", she believed, just as one should "not mistreat a beaten enemy, but that if necessary he should be shot quickly and mercilessly". On what was happening on the Eastern Front: "The way in which the Jews are treated in Russia is partly such that I think the Nordic race degrades itself by it." Østbye was concerned that "a certain humanity should be shown when this can happen without harm to our people". Østbye still believed that one measure was urgent, the Aryan law (which did not materialize), so that "all further racial mixing can be stopped" as well as "the Jewish influence by driving the Jews out of public positions".

It is unclear what was the origin of the hatred of Jews in Østbye. A possible explanation is bad experiences in childhood and the cultivation of "the pure", she wanted to purify the world.

After the war

In December 1948, her case came up before the Oslo District Court. Particular attention was directed to the letter she wrote to Quisling on 7 October 1942 about measures against the Jews in Norway (the Norwegian Jews were deported to Auschwitz a few weeks later in the autumn). In the letter, she advocated that the Jewish problem had to be solved without sentimentality and, in the same way as animals, according to Østbye, they had to be killed quickly and painlessly. In the trial, she claimed that the letter was misunderstood and that it concerned Jewish partisans, while Jews in general should be deported to their own state - the court rejected this as excuses. On 22 December 1948, she was sentenced to seven years of forced labour. The verdict came on the basis of positions in the party, outcomes against the Jews and cases of whistleblowing.

Before she was summoned to serve her sentence, she had changed her name and traveled abroad with a false passport. The plan was to go to Canada, but she ended up in Spain via Tangier and Ireland, where the plans were changed, and the family went home to Norway instead. The wish was to start a new life in Spain with her husband and foster son. The foster son became seriously ill, so they traveled back to Norway. She was charged with escaping with a false passport and received a five-month suspended sentence. Østbye began serving the national fraud sentence. She was released from prison in 1953 after a pardon. She stuck to her worldview until her death in a psychiatric hospital in 1983. Østbye's ski factory went bankrupt and he had a claim for damages so that the family was financially ruined.

In 2017, Kilden Teater in Kristiansand staged a performance about Østbye's life.

"It is obvious that when the country's own citizens are sucked out, tortured, flayed, mocked and looked down upon by a foreign immigrant people, who take possession of the country in such a challenging way as is the Jew's way, then eventually there is a discharge. We experience bloody programs. Of course, this cannot be thought of as a solution to the Jewish problem either." 

- Halldis N. Østbye (under the pseudonym Irene Sverd) in The Jewish Problem - and its solution (1938)