Autumn 1944 Adolf Hitler ordered a forced evacuation of North Norway: Troms and Finnmark. Buildings to be burned, cattle slaughtered and infrastructure destroyed. 50 000 inhabitants were to be evacuated. Half of them disobeyed the order, not all of them survived the winter 1944-1945 under miserable conditions.
Asbjørn Jaklin describes personal, political and military sides of Hitler’s “Scorched-earth” tactics in North Norway.
Why did the Russian Army withdraw from Finnmark? How could the responsible German offiser, Lothar Rendulic, avoid a sentence during the war trial in Nürnberg? And how did ordinary people deal with “Scorched-earth”? Jaklin delivers the answers.
Asbjørn Jaklin
Anita Arntzen
Asbjørn Jaklin (b. 1956) is a bestselling, highly acknowledged non-fiction author from Norway. During the last decade he has specialized on war- and postwar history, stories with a strong narrative drive and a thorough and reliable research. His previous publications include titles such as “A history of Northern Norway”, “The Northern Front”, “Ice Front. The cold war in the north”. His books have been translated into several languages. For “The Northern Front” he gained a nomination to the Brage Prize for best Norwegian non-fiction book in 2006.
With his planned quality crime series set in Tromsø and Northern Norway, he aims to reach a new and broader readership while he continues to cherish readers who enjoy his history writing. His suspense fiction will show the drama and tensions that always envelop this rough and vulnerable region of the north, both in our time and in times of war, cold and “hot”.
