Henry Rinnan, one of eight children of a shoemaker, was born on 14 May 1915 in the Norwegian town of Levanger. The Second World War started on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. During the Winter War which was fought between 30 November 1939 and 13 March 1940, Henry Rinnan tried to enlist with the Finns to fight against the Soviet Union, but was rejected due to his poor physique as the army rejected people with dentures and Rinnan had dentures in his upper mouth. The German invasion of Norway began on 9 April 1940, and two months later, on 10 June 1940, Norway fell to Germany. During the invasion, Rinnan drove a truck for the Norwegian Army.
In January 1942, Henry Rinnan recruited three agents for his operations. At the beginning, the members of the Rinnan’s unit were only involved in intelligence and infiltration. The group - which later consisted of around 50 – 60 Norwegian informants - was known as Sonderabteilung Lola - meaning the Special Unit Lola - or after the war as the Rinnan gang as they all worked for Henry Rinnan. Rinnan worked closely with the German Security Police in Trondheim, where his main contacts were German officers Walter Gemmecke and Gerhard Flesch - a commander of the security service and security police in Trondheim. Rinnan is said to have been very impressed by Flesch, both as a tall, handsome man with a great uniform and the power he had to decide over life and death in his district. Flesch usually listened to Rinnan's advice when the Gestapo planned an operation and is said to have personally tortured prisoners in Rinnan's presence.
The Rinnan group was not formally a part of the Nazi Party intelligence service the SD until 1943 when Rinnan received a formal position within the occupation. Before this, he had reported on people in the resistance to Flesch and Gemmecke, so that these people were arrested, tortured and possibly killed, or put in concentration camps. From 1943 however, their activities were expanded to include torture, murder and military action. From September 1943, the group had a base at Jonsvannsveien 46 in Trondheim, which after the war became known as Gang cloister. This base was equipped with cells and torture chambers in the basement, where several were killed under torture.
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