Furubotn's assessments in 1945 and 1971 of what the organisational line would have implied for the NKP do not look unreasonable today. Both camps were intoxicated by dreams of a union and blind to the fact that there were no real foundations for an early union at the top of either party.

The Møllersen report

Since the end of the war Norwegian discussion of the breakdown in the merger negotiations has given great prominence to the question of who was to blame, with the Labour Party view given predominance. The Communists gave themselves away, so it was said, when they published the Møllersen report; they had ``gambled irresponsibly ... in order to harm the Norwegian Labour Party in its preparations for the elections and its organisational structure''.(36) Labour devoted considerable energy to invalidating the report. At the 1946 congress of the Federation of Trade Unions it was ``condemned'', with a majority claiming that it was false.(37) Arbeiderbladet wrote that the allegations in the Møllersen report were a fabrication.(38) Had Furubotn issued a forgery so as to put a stop to the negotiations? The circumstances surrounding the Møllersen report deserve a closer look.

In February 1944, the Germans made a rich haul when they arrested a number of the leaders of the underground press at a meeting at the Deichmann Library in Oslo. By means of a forged illegal document the Gestapo subsequently spread the rumour that the Communists had betrayed the meeting to the Gestapo.(39) The Communists could fish in troubled waters, because they had not been at the meeting. They had been called to it, but had refused to come because they were dissatisfied with the security arrangements.(40) The Gestapo document, ``The Communists' Judas act'', found its way to Stockholm.

Lars Evensen, Secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions and one of Martin Tranmæl's closest aides, commented on the document. He realised that it might be a Gestapo provocation, but added that ``of course one could not deny that there was something mysterious about the ability of the Communists to maintain their network intact through the general raid which has been carried out''.(41)

Lars Evensen's comment shows a prominent Labour and trade union man prepared to consider the possibility that the Communists had used betrayal as a weapon against other resistance groups.(42) That he actually put his comment on paper in a letter to the Federation secretariat in London shows that his suspicions may have been even stronger than the wording indicates. A closer look at the minutes known as the Møllersen report is therefore relevant. In 1945, Hans Møllersen presented a written report on a meeting with Tranmæl and Evensen in April 1944, only a few weeks after the Deichmann arrests.(43) Møllersen, who came from Mo in Rana, had been a Labour Party member, and was acting as a courier for the Federation paper Fri Fagbevegelse (free union movement). In April 1944 he was in Stockholm to get some information for the underground in Northern Norway, because communications between Stockholm and the North had recently broken down.(44) At that time he was a communist. In his report on the meeting, Møllersen quoted Tranmæl as saying that he ``now (knew) for certain'' that it was the Communists who had informed the Gestapo of the Deichmann Library meeting. The meeting had been arranged by Furubotn to ``tempt as many as possible into the claws of the Gestapo''.(45) Tranmæl warned Møllersen against having anything to do with the communists, because there was evidence that they were ``in the service of the Gestapo''. Møllersen's report was dated 10 June 1945, but had been written on the basis of minutes which he said he wrote in consultation with Evensen and Tranmæl on 5 April 1944.(46) He had already informed some of his local contacts of Tranmæl's accusations when he got back to Mo in Rana in the spring of 1944 -- before talking to Furubotn.(47)