Hitler's Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

Written by Despina Stratigakos

Narrated by Suzanne Toren

The fascinating untold story of how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model “Aryan” society in Norway during World War II

Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model “Aryan” society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler’s Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire?one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings.

Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler’s Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway’s Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme?a German cultural capital and naval base?remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance.

A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler’s Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been?a world colonized under the swastika.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705003824

Reviews for Hitler's Northern Utopia

[Patrick Wynne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is incredible how thoughtful the Nazi architects, engineers and leaders were in their efforts. Equally enlightening how much German military leaders cared for mothers and German women's dignity.

One cannot help but imagine the world filled with men of chivalrous and moral natures had the Nazis won.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in history.

[shrike58 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Perhaps I esteem this book just a little too much but, at this stage of my reading career, It's hard for anyone to tell me something new about the Hitlerian regime from basically any angle, but Prof. Stratigakos did so. The particular stroke of imagination here is how Stratigakos manages to illuminate the Nazi mindset and policy through the building types that were particular to their endeavor. These range from the outfitting of the "Lebensborn" natalist centers, through official buildings, to the concepts for the rebuilding of Norway's damaged cities, up to what would have been the crowning effort of the German colonization (there is no other appropriate word), the construction of a whole new German city to go with the planned naval base to be located at Trondheim.The author also deals with the flip side of the coin, in examining what the experience of occupation meant for Norway, such as the various flavors of collaboration, what Himmler's coveting of Norway's precious genetic heritage meant in practice, the post-war acts of retribution, and the continuing influence of the occupation on Norway's towns and infrastructure.I can't recommend this book enough, though it is probably not the first book you want to start with relating to Nazi occupation and social policy.

[064-699196 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I found this book fascinating as I learned more about the far-reaching Nazi plan to promote a superior race by invading Norway, attempting to establish close ties with Norway's "Nordic" people whom they regarded as "pure" ( blond hair, blue eyes, sturdy build, good-looking) and promoting a new generation of people of Germanic/Nordic people to be inculcated in "Germanic" ways ( and of course subjugated to the Nazi regime). I highly recommend this interesting book!