for office. The Labour government was formed on 20 March 1935. Koht became Minister of Foreign Affairs in Johan Nygaardsvold's Cabinet. Among Koht's first actions as minister was to persuade the Labour Party not to pull Norway out of the League of Nations, something the party had declared that it would do as recently as 1934. In foreign policy matters Koht and Nygaardsvold usually made decisions without consulting the other ministers, merely informing the rest of the cabinet of the decisions that had been made. After the League of Nations failed as an effective international body, Koht again favoured the strict neutrality policy to which Norway had adhered before the League of Nations membership. For many years, he was reluctant to an expansion of a Norwegian military defense capacity. He did not vehemently and principally oppose such an expansion, and had been quite friendly to the principle of a national defense in the past. His neutrality policy nonetheless put him on the "defense-skeptical" side together with Johan Nygaardsvold and most of his cabinet. Among the more "defense-friendly" in and around the cabinet, not the least from 1936, were Trygve Bratteli, Haakon Lie, Finn Moe, Trygve Lie, Oscar Torp, Martin Tranmæl and Minister of Defense Fredrik Monsen. In 1936 Koht expressed great concern for the consequences of the arms race taking place in Europe, which he felt could easily lead to war. Following the 1936 outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the Nygaardsvold Cabinet followed a policy of non-intervention in the conflict between the Spanish government and rebels led by General Franco. Koht's view of the matter was that Norway should not be involved in the conflict in any way; this became the policy of the government for the duration of the civil war. The government soon banned the sale or transfer of Norwegian arms, aircraft and ships to Spain. Koht himself promoted a ban on the use of Norwegian ships to transport arms, ammunition and aircraft to foreign countries in general, to ensure that there could be no Norwegian connection to any such items that were delivered to Spain. The strict non-intervention policy promoted by Koht and Prime Minister Nygaardsvold was heavily criticised by forces within the Labour Party. Martin Tranmæl, a central figure in the apparatus of the Labour Party and the editor of the party newspaper Arbeiderbladet, led the critics of the policy towards the conflict in Spain.