Ominous items of news of varying credibility now began to come in. At this same meeting of the War Cabinet on April 3 the Secretary of State for War told us that a report had been received at the War Office that the Germans had been collecting strong forces of troops at Rostock with the intention of taking Scandinavia if necessary. The Foreign Secretary said that the news from Stockholm tended to confirm this report. According to the Swedish Legation in Berlin, 200,000 tons of German shipping were now concentrated at Stettin and Swinemiinde, with troops on board which rumour placed at 400,000. It was suggested that these forces were in readiness to deliver a counter-stroke against a possible attack by us upon Narvik or other Norwegian ports, about which the Germans were said to be still nervous.
On Thursday, April 4, Mr. Chamberlain delivered a speech of unusual optimism. Hitler, he declared, had “missed the bus”. Seven months had enabled us to remove our weaknesses and add enormously to our fighting strength. Germany, on the other hand, had prepared so completely that she had very little margin of strength to call upon.
This proved an ill-judged utterance. Its main assumption that we and the French were relatively stronger than at the beginning of the war was not reasonable. As has been previously explained, the Germans were now in the fourth year of vehement munitions manufacture, whereas we were at a much earlier stage, probably comparable in fruitfulness to the second year. Moreover, with every month that had passed the German Army, now four years old, was becoming a mature and perfected weapon, and the former advantage of the French Army in training and cohesion was steadily passing away. All lay in suspense. The various minor expedients I had been able to suggest had gained acceptance; but nothing of a major character had been done by either side. Our plans, such as they were, rested upon enforcing the blockade by the mining of the Norwegian corridor in the north and by hampering German oil supplies from the south-east. Complete immobility and silence reigned behind the German front. Suddenly the passive or small-scale policy of the Allies was swept away by a cataract of violent surprises. We were to learn what total war means.
CHAPTER XXI
NORWAY
BEFORE resuming the narrative I must explain the alterations in my position which occurred during the month of April 1940.
Lord Chatfield’s office as Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence had become redundant, and on the 3rd Mr. Chamberlain accepted his resignation, which he proffered freely. On the 4th a statement was issued from No. 10 Downing Street that it was not proposed to fill the vacant post, but that arrangements were being made for the First Lord of the Admiralty, as the senior Service Minister concerned, to preside over the Military Co-ordination Committee. Accordingly I took the chair at its meetings, which were held daily, and sometimes twice daily, from the 8th to 15th of April. I had therefore an exceptional measure of responsibility, but no power of effective direction. Among the other Service Ministers who were also members of the War Cabinet I was “first among equals”. I had however no power to take or to enforce decisions. I had to carry with me both the Service Ministers and their professional chiefs. Thus many important and able men had a right and duty to express their views on the swiftly-changing phases of the battle—for battle it was—which now began.
The Chiefs of Staff sat daily together after discussing the whole situation with their respective Ministers. They then arrived at their own decisions, which obviously became of dominant importance. I learned about these either from the First Sea Lord, who kept nothing from me, or by the various memoranda or aide-mémoires which the Chiefs of Staff Committee issued. If I wished to question any of these opinions I could of course raise them in the first instance at my Co-ordinating Committee, where the Chiefs of Staff, supported by their departmental Ministers, whom they had usually carried along with them, were all present as individual members. There was a copious flow of polite conversation, at the end of which a tactful report was drawn up by the secretary in attendance and checked by the three Service departments to make sure there were no discrepancies. Thus we had arrived at those broad, happy uplands where everything is settled for the greatest good of the greatest number by the common sense of most after the consultation of all. But in war of the kind we were now to feel the conditions were different. Alas, I must write it: the actual conflict had to be more like one ruffian bashing the other on the snout with a club, a hammer, or something better. All this is deplorable, and it is one of the many good reasons for avoiding war, and having everything settled by agreement in a friendly manner, with full consideration for the rights of minorities and the faithful recording of dissentient opinions.
The Defence Committee of the War Cabinet sat almost every day to discuss the reports of the Military Co-ordination Committee and those of the Chiefs of Staff; and their conclusions or divergences were again referred to frequent Cabinets. All had to be explained and re-explained; and by the time this process was completed the whole scene had often changed. At the Admiralty, which is of necessity in war-time a battle headquarters, decisions affecting the Fleet were taken on the instant, and only in the gravest cases referred to the Prime Minister, who supported us on every occasion. Where the action of the other Services was involved the procedure could not possibly keep pace with events. However, at the beginning of the Norway campaign the Admiralty in the nature of things had three-quarters of the executive business in its own hands.
I do not pretend that, whatever my powers, I should have been able to take better decisions or reach good solutions of the problems with which we were now confronted. The impact of the events about to be described was so violent and the conditions so chaotic that I soon perceived that only the authority of the Prime Minister could reign over the Military Co-ordination Committee. Accordingly on the 15th I requested Mr. Chamberlain to take the chair, and he presided at practically every one of our subsequent meetings during the campaign in Norway. He and I continued in close agreement, and he gave his supreme authority to the views which I expressed.
Loyalty and goodwill were forthcoming from all concerned. Nevertheless both the Prime Minister and I were acutely conscious of the formlessness of our system, especially when in contact with the surprising course of events. Although the Admiralty was at this time inevitably the prime mover, obvious objections could be raised to an organisation in which one of the Service Ministers attempted to concert all the operations of the other Services, while at the same time managing the whole business of the Admiralty and having a special responsibility for the naval movements. These difficulties were not removed by the fact that the Prime Minister himself took the chair and backed me up. But while one stroke of misfortune after another, the results of want of means or of indifferent management, fell upon us almost daily, I nevertheless continued to hold my position in this fluid, friendly, but unfocused circle.
Eventually, but not until many disasters had fallen upon us in Scandinavia, I was authorised to convene and preside over the meetings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, without whom nothing could be done, and I was made responsible formally “for giving guidance and direction” to them. General Ismay, the Senior Staff Officer in charge of the Central Staff, was placed at my disposal as my Staff Officer and representative, and in this capacity was made a full member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. I had known Ismay for many years, but now for the first time we became hand-in-glove, and much more. Thus the Chiefs of Staff were to large extent made responsible to me in their collective capacity, and as a deputy of the Prime Minister I could nominally influence with authority their decisions and policies. On the other hand, it was only natural that their primary loyalties should be to their own Service Ministers, who would have been less than human if they had not felt some resentment at the delegation of a part of their authority to one of their colleagues. Moreover, it was expressly laid down that my responsibilities were to be discharged on behalf of the Military Coordination Committee. I was thus to have immense responsibilities, without effective power in my own hands to discharge them. Nevert
heless I had a feeling that I might be able to make the new organisation work. It was destined to last only a week. But my personal and official connection with General Ismay and his relation to the Chiefs of Staff Committee was preserved unbroken and unweakened from May 1, 1940, to July 26, 1945, when I laid down my charge.
On the evening of Friday, April 5, the German Minister in Oslo invited distinguished guests, including members of the Government, to a film show at the Legation. The film depicted the German conquest of Poland, and culminated in a crescendo of horror scenes during the German bombing of Warsaw. The caption read: “For this they could thank their English and French friends.” The party broke up in silence and dismay. The Norwegian Government was however chiefly concerned with the activities of the British. Between 4.30 and 5 a.m. on April 8 four British destroyers laid our minefield off the entrance to West Fiord, the channel to the port of Narvik. At 5 a.m. the news was broadcast from London, and at 5.30 a note from His Majesty’s Government was handed to the Norwegian Foreign Minister. The morning in Oslo was spent in drafting protests to London. But later that afternoon the Admiralty informed the Norwegian Legation in London that German warships had been sighted off the Norwegian coast proceeding northwards, and presumably bound for Narvik. About the same time reports reached the Norwegian capital that a German troopship, the Rio de Janeiro, had been sunk off the south coast of Norway by the Polish submarine Orzel, that large numbers of German soldiers had been rescued by the local fishermen, and that they said they were bound for Bergen to help the Norwegians defend their country against the British and French. More was to come. Germany had broken into Denmark, but the news did not reach Norway until after she herself was invaded. Thus she received no formal warning. Denmark was easily overrun after a resistance in which a few faithful soldiers were killed.
That night German warships approached Oslo. The outer batteries opened fire. The Norwegian defending force consisted of a mine-layer, the Olav Tryggvason, and two minesweepers. After dawn two German minesweepers entered the mouth of the fiord to disembark troops in the neighbourhood of the shore batteries. One was sunk by the Olav Tryggvason, but the German troops were landed and the batteries taken. The gallant minelayer however held off two German destroyers at the mouth of the fiord and damaged the cruiser Emden. An armed Norwegian whaler mounting a single gun also went into action at once and without special orders against the invaders. Her gun was smashed and the commander had both legs shot off. To avoid unnerving his men, he rolled himself overboard and died nobly. The main German force, led by the heavy cruiser Bluecher, now entered the fiord, making for the narrows defended by the fortress of Oscarsborg. The Norwegian batteries opened, and two torpedoes fired from the shore at 500 yards scored a decisive strike. The Bluecher sank rapidly, taking with her the senior officers of the German administrative staff and detachments of the Gestapo. The other German ships, including the Luetzow, retired. The damaged Emden took no further part in the fighting at sea. Oslo was ultimately taken, not from the sea, but by troop-carrying aeroplanes and by landings in the fiord.
Hitler’s plan immediately flashed into its full scope. German forces descended at Kristiansand, at Stavanger, and to the north at Bergen and Trondheim.
The most daring stroke was at Narvik. For a week supposedly empty German ore-ships returning to that port in the ordinary course had been moving up the corridor sanctioned by Norwegian neutrality, filled with supplies and ammunition. Ten German destroyers, each carrying two hundred soldiers and supported by the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, had left Germany some days before, and reached Narvik early on the 9th.
Two Norwegian warships, Norge and Eidsvold, lay in the fiord. They were prepared to fight to the last. At dawn destroyers were sighted approaching the harbour at high speed, but in the prevailing snow-squalls their identity was not at first established. Soon a German officer appeared in a motor launch and demanded the surrender of the Eidsvold. On receiving from the commanding officer the curt reply, “I attack,” he withdrew, but almost at once the ship was destroyed with nearly all hands by a volley of torpedoes. Meanwhile the Norge opened fire, but in a few minutes she too was torpedoed and sank instantly. In this gallant but hopeless resistance 287 Norwegian seamen perished, less than a hundred being saved from the two ships. Thereafter the capture of Narvik was easy. It was a strategic key—for ever to be denied us.
8 + s.w.w.
The Allied Campaign in Norway 1940
That morning Admiral Forbes, with the main fleet, was abreast of Bergen. The situation at Narvik was obscure. Hoping to forestall a German seizure of the port, the Commander-in-Chief directed our destroyers to enter the fiord and prevent any landing. Accordingly Captain Warburton-Lee, with the five destroyers of his own flotilla, Hardy, Hunter, Havock, Hotspur, and Hostile, entered West Fiord. He was told by Norwegian pilots at Tranoy that six ships larger than his own and a U-boat had passed in and that the entrance to the harbour was mined. He signalled this information and added: “Intend attacking at dawn.” In the mist and snowstorms of April 10 the five British destroyers steamed up the fiord, and at dawn stood off Narvik. Inside the harbour were five enemy destroyers. In the first attack the Hardy torpedoed the ship bearing the pennant of the German Commodore, who was killed; another destroyer was sunk by two torpedoes, and the remaining three were so smothered by gunfire that they could offer no effective resistance. There were also in the harbour twenty-three merchant ships of various nations, including five British: six German were destroyed. Only three of our five destroyers had hitherto attacked. The Hotspur and Hostile had been left in reserve to guard against any shore batteries or against fresh German ships approaching. They now joined in a second attack, and the Hotspur sank two more merchantmen with torpedoes. Captain Warburton-Lee’s ships were unscathed; the enemy’s fire was apparently silenced, and after an hour’s fighting no ships had come out from any of the inlets against him.
But now fortune turned. As he was coming back from a third attack Captain Warburton-Lee sighted three fresh ships approaching. They showed no signs of wishing to close the range, and action began at 7,000 yards. Suddenly out of the mist ahead appeared two more warships. They were not, as was at first hoped, British reinforcements, but German destroyers which had been anchored in a near-by fiord. Soon the heavier guns of the German ships began to tell; the bridge of the Hardy was shattered, Warburton-Lee mortally stricken, and all his officers and companions killed or wounded except Lieutenant Stanning, his secretary, who took the wheel. A shell then exploded in the engine-room, and under heavy fire the destroyer was beached. The last signal from the Hardy’s captain to his flotilla was “Continue to engage the enemy.”
Meanwhile Hunter had been sunk, and Hotspur and Hostile, which were both damaged, with the Havock, made for the open sea. The enemy who had barred their passage was by now in no condition to stop them. Halfan hour later they encountered a large ship coming in from the sea, which proved to be the Rauenfels, carrying the German reserve ammunition. She was fired upon by the Havock, and soon blew up. The survivors of the Hardy struggled ashore with the body of their commander, who was awarded posthumously the Victoria Cross. He and they had left their mark on the enemy and in our naval records.
Surprise, ruthlessness, and precision were the characteristics of the onslaught upon innocent and naked Norway. Seven army divisions were employed. Eight hundred operational aircraft and 250 to 300 transport planes were the salient and vital feature of the design. Within forty-eight hours all the main ports of Norway were in the German grip. The King, the Government, the Army and the people, as soon as they realised what was happening, flamed into furious anger. But it was all too late. German infiltration and propaganda had hitherto clouded their vision, and now sapped their powers of resistance. Major Quisling presented himself at the radio, now in German hands, as the pro-German ruler of the conquered land. Almost all Norwegian officials refused to serve him. The Army was mobilised, and at once began to fight the invaders pressing northwards from Osl
o. Patriots who could find arms took to the mountains and the forests. The King, the Ministry, and the Parliament withdrew first to Hamar, a hundred miles from Oslo. They were hotly pursued by German armoured cars, and ferocious attempts were made to exterminate them by bombing and machine-gunning from the air. They continued however to issue proclamations to the whole country urging the most strenuous resistance. The rest of the population was overpowered and terrorised by bloody examples into stupefied or sullen submission. The peninsula of Norway is nearly a thousand miles long. It is sparsely inhabited, and roads and railways are few, especially to the northward. The rapidity with which Hitler effected the domination of the country was a remarkable feat of war and policy, and an enduring example of German thoroughness, wickedness, and brutality.
The Norwegian Government, hitherto in their fear of Germany so frigid to us, now made vehement appeals for succour. It was from the beginning obviously impossible for us to rescue Southern Norway. Almost all our trained troops, and many only half trained, were in France. Our modest but growing Air Force was fully assigned to supporting the British Expeditionary Force, to Home Defence, and vigorous training. All our anti-aircraft guns were demanded ten times over for vulnerable points of the highest importance. Still, we felt bound to do our utmost to go to their aid, even at violent derangement of our own preparations and interests. Narvik, it seemed, could certainly be seized and defended with benefit to the whole Allied cause. Here the King of Norway might fly his flag unconquered. Trondheim might be fought for, at any rate as a means of delaying the northward advance of the invader until Narvik could be regained and made the base of an army. This, it seemed, could be maintained from the sea at a strength superior to anything which could be brought against it by land through five hundred miles of mountain country. The Cabinet heartily approved all possible measures for the rescue and defence of Narvik and Trondheim. The troops which had been released from the Finnish project, and a nucleus kept in hand for Narvik, could soon be ready. They lacked aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, tanks, transport, and training. The whole of Northern Norway was covered with snow to depths which none of our soldiers had ever seen, felt, or imagined. There were neither snow-shoes nor skis—still less skiers. We must do our best. Thus began a ramshackle campaign.
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