Einsatzgruppe trial

The 1998 Einsatzgruppe trial ended without a court finding that the group had initiated plans for terrorist strikes. Its outcome left a sharp distinction between the violent rhetoric circulating in nationalist circles and evidence sufficient to prove that rhetoric had become an operational campaign.

Background and Arrests

The case followed a police raid on the neo-Nazi group known as the Einsatzgruppe. On the night of April 8, 1997, five young men were arrested at Hemnes, a small community 60–70 kilometers from Oslo. The arrests became national news, and investigators uncovered further information about the group over the next three days. By 1997, the book observes, figures such as Varg Vikernes appeared to be providing motivational inspiration to people in the revolutionary right, beyond merely sharing slogans and symbols.

The Group and the Allegations

Henrik Lunde estimated that the Einsatzgruppe’s hard core consisted of four or five people, with perhaps fifteen to twenty others at its periphery. Those numbers fluctuated: some peripheral associates, including younger boys, might be drawn into disruptive actions such as interrupting a meeting of the Israel Mission in Stavanger. Lunde distinguished that sort of activity from the much more serious examples of violence and weapons theft he described. The distinction matters to the trial: the existence of radical talk and peripheral participation did not, by itself, establish that the group had initiated terrorist action.

Court Outcome and Unresolved Questions

When the case came to trial in 1998, the charges against the Einsatzgruppe were dropped because the court could not produce concrete evidence of actual plans for terrorist strikes. Some of the accused nationalists later brought counter-lawsuits against the state, alleging wrongful imprisonment. The proceedings therefore resolved the evidentiary question before the court, but not the broader question of the group’s intentions: the book says it is impossible to know for certain whether its members were prepared, materially or psychologically, to move from rhetoric into sustained violent conflict. It concludes that the intensity of such rhetoric in some nationalist circles was nevertheless unmistakable.