Harald Damsleth

Damsleth was tried in a court on 15 May 1945, only a week after the liberation of Norway. He pleaded not guilty of treason. He was unaware of the actions conducted by national socialist authorities. In 1950, Damsleth was sentenced to five years of hard labor for treason committed during World War II, but was pardoned after two years served.

Damsleth was also a war reporter for Waffen-SS, and had a stay at the Eastern Front in 1942.

Norway was invaded by Germany in 1940, and occupied for the following five years. Erling Sandberg was eventually appointed to Josef Terboven's Council of State, and Harald Damsleth began receiving assignments for public service announcements in April 1940, shortly after the German invasion of Norway. From October the same year Herolden was given a monopoly on state announcements. Damsleth also designed nearly all stamps issued in Norway between 1940 and 1945. Among the stamps designed by Damsleth were the three stamps of the shipwreck series commemorating civilian Norwegian passenger ships lost to allied attack. The ships portrayed on the stamps were SS Barøy, SS Irma and SS Sanct Svithun. His monopoly was not only caused by the national socialist sympathies nurtured by employees in Herolden, but also because other advertising agencies boycotted the occupant regime. At the same time, Damsleth lost his professional contact with publishing houses.

During his younger days, Damsleth was primarily a professional in the field of advertising. He worked for several advertising agencies in Oslo before taking over Myres reklamebyrå and in 1939 Heroldens annonsebyrå. In addition to advertising, he drew book covers, postcards, posters for the Norwegian Mountain Touring Association and more. However, Damsleth did nurture antipathies for socialism, and was a Norwegian nationalist. His illustrations were inspired by the Norwegian scenery and healthy, blonde people (Arne Skouen once described him as a "specialist on Aryan facial traits"). On the other hand, he was to a degree inspired by modernist art. He was involved in Fedrelandslaget for some time, and joined Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian Fascist Party, already in 1933, its foundation year. He did not actually pay the membership fee until 1939, but upon the German invasion of Poland that year, he invigorated his support for the party, and paid the fees for the years 1933 to 1939.

Born in Bremen, Harald Damsleth had a Norwegian father and German mother. His father soon returned to Norway to work at Fredrikstad Mekaniske Verksted, whereas Harald Damsleth lived with his mother until the age of eleven. Upon his mother's death in 1917, Damsleth moved to Norway to grow up with his godfather, bank director Erling Sandberg. During a study tenure in Germany from 1929 to 1931, Damsleth met the German citizen Liselotte Friedmann, whom he engaged to marry. She did not move to Norway until 1935.

Harald Damsleth (August 16, 1906 – March 1, 1971) was a Norwegian cartoonist, illustrator and ad-man. He is best known for his posters for Nasjonal Samling (NS) during World War II.