The Popular Front was short-lived. In the autumn of 1939 the Soviet Union and the Comintern changed course again. Stalin entered into a Non-aggression Pact with Hitler. The Communist parties were ordered to abandon their anti-Fascist popular front policies in favour of policies which would not damage Soviet-German relations as enshrined in the pact. In the struggle between the Western powers and Hitler they were to be neutral. When the world war broke out, they were to agitate against supporting the armed forces of the combatants, because according to the Comintern this was an imperialist war and not in the interests of the working classes. They must attack social democrats and conservatives who supported Great Britain's and France's war on Germany. The shock of this political about-turn penetrated deep into Communist Party ranks, causing very heated debate and loss of membership.(102) Allowing some time for adjustment, however, the Communist parties followed the directives from the Kremlin.

During this period of adjustment, Furubotn attracts international attention with his analysis of what Communists were referring to as the imperialist war between England, France and Germany. It was not that he criticised the pact, which in terms of great power politics he saw as a shrewd Soviet move. His ``deviation'' was different: whereas the official Comintern analysis was that all imperialist wars were unjust and had to be opposed by the working class, Furubotn referred to the classical Leninist analysis which divided imperialist wars into two categories, unjust wars of conquest and just wars of liberation.(103) When one country took another by force, the war was unjust and had to be opposed by the working class in the offending country. However, for the occupied country, it was a just war of liberation which the working class had to support. This gives us a glimpse of Furubotn's heresy at this stage: the significant departure from the official Comintern analysis(104) illustrates Furubotn's independence of thought. The Russians had ``erased'' Lenin's ``just wars'' and expounded Leninism as if he only meant ``unjust'' wars. Furubotn was the only European Communist leader to uphold Lenin's old and ``out of date'' distinction, even if he received support 14 days later from one of the most outstanding NKP-leader in Oslo, the editor of the party daily, Henry W. Kristiansen. In Furubotn's formulations lay the makings of an ideological platform for resistance in the event of German occupation, an ideological opening of a kind the Comintern leadership could not tolerate. A meeting of the enlarged Central Committee of the NKP in November 1939 made it clear that Furubotn's position was a deviating one. At the same meeting, the NKP Chairman Adam Egede-Nissen attacked Furubotn.(105) The focal point of his attack was the 17th of May celebration in Western Norway in 1939: Furubotn was accused of having diverted the main thrust of the party's slogan for the day towards class cooperation and nationalism. It is not unlikely that these criticisms were occasioned by Furubotn's remarks on the imperialist war and Henry W. Kristiansen's support in this regard, which made it important for the supreme leadership to isolate him.

Germany invaded and occupied Norway in 1940. The official NKP line was to adhere to the pact policy from the year before, to criticise the Nygaardsvold Government for its armed resistance, and to try and prevent anything which might be viewed as an attack on the occupying forces. Criticism of the domestic Fascist party, Nasjonal Samling, on the other hand, was in order. In these respects, the NKP was in line with the Comintern parties in other Western European countries. How far party members throughout the country remained loyal is another matter. The Troms branch of the NKP stood out with an appeal for support for the government's struggle.(106)