(Mirror.)
The Gestapo gaze upon the home front was imbued with suspicion, and this was apparent among leading [Axis] officers as well.³³ This suspicion included the Sami as a potentially threatening folk element, but Sami ethnicity or race, and the Sami as such, appeared not to be a focal point of Gestapo interest. The following were listed by Laqua to Heliara: communist activity in particular, people of foreign extraction and Russians.
The sources comprise almost entirely details of action against suspected communists, and there is one example of reindeer herders from the Norwegian side of the border being arrested and “made to talk” by the Gestapo. Some reindeer herders³⁴ were viewed by the Valpo as “communist-minded”, as well.
The communist-inclined reindeer herder and peasant surfaces one again in the sources, since a planned road between Sør-Varanger and Petsamo was to cross his lands. What was of interest were his political leanings, considered suspicious in spite of his wealth, and the resulting need to produce cover-up stories for the road construction. His ethnicity is not mentioned in the source, but the fact that he was well-to-do is.³⁵
[…]
The Skolt Sami were targeted once again in Spring 1942. As the Wehrmacht were preparing for the Spring campaign, Officer Berger, representing Gestapo³⁸, suggested evacuating the Skolt village of Ylä-luostari, near [an Axis] military airfield. The Skolt Sami had lived in the vicinity of the airfield throughout the war and been able to witness all the airfield activity.
Other [Axis] officers, including the airfield commandant, felt that the Skolt Sami frequenting the Parkkina and Liinahamari population centres had a good chance to spy. A new airplane model was to be brought to the airfield, so all the civilians were to be barred from the area.³⁹
An evacuation was ordered, but a while later, in an indication of the informality of German–Sami relations, some Skolt Sami women had once again been hired for kitchen and laundry duties. The source reports Berger’s complaint that the women would soon haul along their children, husbands and their whole kin.⁴⁰
[…]
To Hillilä’s great frustration a few Skolt Sami were caught by [Axis] troops, but escaped in Russian partisan action. Hillilä feared that this would provoke the commander-in-chief Eduard Dietl and provoke mistrust against the local population, which it did. Dietl demanded more troops from the head of Yhteysesikunta Roi, Colonel Oiva Villamo, in order to secure the rear area and the civilian population.
Hillilä disputed the evacuation once again, his reasons connected to military needs: there was no point in allowing evacuees to spread unrest to the rest of population, and it was time to harvest the hay. In addition, the Soviets would then “achieve their goals” and there would be greater scope for action in the emptied villages. For the moment there were great numbers of troops in Lapland, which could secure the local population.⁵⁰
For Dietl the Sami were, and had now turned out to be, a potentially disloyal threat, but for Hillilä the local population was a part of a defensive system in a totally mobilized territory/province.
[…]
Knut Einar Eriksen and Terje Halvorsen have concluded that the German–Austrian gaze upon the Sami differed from their gaze upon “Untermensch”, the Jews and the Slavs. This is credited to the Sami’s lack of racial positioning in [Fascist] racial hierarchies and the potential for a “touristic” gaze upon this “colourful” and “exotic group”.
There were some exceptions to this notion, however. Reichskommissar Josef Terboven (wished to) exclude(d) Sami women who had children with German fathers from the services of Lebensborn and there were some occupants who thought that the Sami ranked as “Untermensch”.⁷¹
The perception as such is correct, in that the Sami were encountered and treated differently to the other groups mentioned, but I claim that in addition to the good relations, the troops imposed a suspicious gaze upon a security threat, and took a eugenic interest in a racial problem to be administrated.
[Wehrmacht] sources reveal that the Sami were not only an exception. The gaze upon the Sami was equalled in stringency by the German gaze upon the local population in general.⁷² One aspect of the military and [Fascist] mental landscape was imagery of a constant, pitiless threat from the surrounding folks and states, and the violence that the German people lived under and experienced during the war.⁷³
In the world-view of the troops, the Sami occupied culturally and racially low positions, which also implied an inability to organize themselves (raise an armed resistance, practise agriculture, form higher polities), which diminished the perceived risk but did not erase it.
If a situation showed signs of a rupture in the regulated friendship, existing good relations were set aside; the risk of sanction or aggression was always present and the Sami risked a disruptive change from the category of uncertain ally to that of enemy. In this sense, the Sami were treated under the same military preconditions as the Norwegians during the increasing Nazification of Norway.⁷⁴
Amongst others, the reindeer herder “made to talk” by Gestapo and the border pilot sent to Sachsenhausen experienced this — but it was not their Sami-ness that was sanctioned, it was their anti-occupant activity. […] The Sami were not under threat of holocaust. The secretive cooperation between the secret police services was harsher against the Soviet POWs, the communists and potentially, at the level of rhetoric, the Jews.⁷⁵ Norwegian researchers have not found any Sami lists corresponding to those compiled by the NS of Norwegian Jews to be arrested and deported.⁷⁶
(Emphasis added.)