by Herman Wouk
Sitzkrieg Ends: Norway
Much vociferous propaganda went on in the Western democracies about the attack on Finland, and about sending the Finns military aid. In the end they did nothing. However, the opening of the Finnish front did force Hitler to face up to a genuine threat in the north: the British plot to seize Norway.
Of this we had hard intelligence. Unlike many of the “plots” and “conspiracies” of which our German armed forces were accused at the Nuremberg trials, this British plot certainly existed. Winston Churchill openly describes it in his memoirs. He acknowledges that the British invasion was laid on for a date ahead of ours, and then put off, so that we beat the British into Norway by the merest luck, by a matter of days.
The Russo-Finnish war made the problem of Norway acute, because England and France could use “aid to Finland” as a perfect pretext for landing in Norway and driving across Scandinavia. This would have been disastrous for us. The North Sea, bracketed by British bases on both sides, would have been closed to our U-boats, choking off our main thrust at sea. Even more important, the winter route for ships bringing us Swedish iron ore lay along the Norwegian coast. Deprived of that iron ore, we could not have gone on fighting for long. When the High Command convinced Hitler of these risks, he issued the order for “Weser Exercise,” the occupation of Norway, and postponed Case Yellow once again.
It is a sad commentary that Admiral Raeder, at the Nuremberg trials, was convicted of “a plot to occupy neutral Norway,” when the British who sat in judgment had plotted the same thing themselves. Such paradoxes have enabled me to bear with honor my own experience at Nuremberg, and to regard it as not a disgrace at all, but rather as a political consequence of defeat. Had the war gone the other way, and had we hanged Churchill for plotting to occupy Norway, what would the world have said? Yet what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander.
Our occupation of Norway, a surprise overwater move virtually under the guns of a highly superior British fleet, was a great success; not, however, because of Hitler’s leadership, but in spite of it. We took heavy losses at sea, especially of destroyers that we sorely missed when the invasion of England was later planned. But the price was small compared to the gain. We forestalled the British, opened up a much wider coastline to counter the blockade, and secured the Swedish iron ore supply for the rest of the war.
Mistakes in Norway
Hitler’s amateurishness showed up badly in Norway. It cropped up again and again in every campaign, tending only to get grosser as time went on.
The mark of the amateur in any field is to lose one’s head when the going gets hard. What marks the professional is his competence in an emergency, and almost the whole art of the soldier is to make sound judgments in the fog of war. Hitler’s propensity to lose his head took two forms: calling a panicky halt to operations when they were gathering momentum, and changing the objective in mid-campaign. Both these failings appeared in Weser Exercise. I give details in my Norway operational analysis, of his hysterical insistence day after day that we abandon Narvik, the real key to the position; his wild sudden scheme to capture the port of Trondheim with the luxury liner Bremen, and so forth. Why then was the occupation of Scandinavia a success? Simply because General Falkenhorst, once in Norway, ignored the Führer’s interference, and did a fine professional job with good troops and a sound plan.
This interference from above, incidentally, was to haunt operations to the end. Adolf Hitler had used all his political shrewdness over many years to gain control of the armed forces, not stopping at strong-arm methods. There is no question that this man’s lust for power was insatiable, and it is certainly regrettable that the German people did not understand his true nature until it was too late. The background of this usurpation will be sketched here, as it significantly affected the whole course of the six-year war.
How Hitler Usurped Control of the Army
In 1938, he and his Nazi minions did not scruple to frame grave charges of sexual misconduct against revered generals of the top command. Also, they took advantage of a few actual unfortunate lapses of this nature; the details need not be raked over in this account. Suffice it that the Nazis managed to topple the professional leadership in a bold underhanded coup based on such accusations. Hitler with sudden stunning arrogance then assumed supreme command himself! And he exacted an oath of loyalty to himself throughout the Wehrmacht, from foot soldier to general. In this act he showed his knowledge of the German character, which is the soul of honor, and takes such an oath as binding to the death.
Our staff, muted and disorganized by the disgusting revelations and pseudo-revelations about our honored leaders, offered no coherent resistance to this usurpation. So the strict independence of the German army from German politics, which for generations had kept the Wehrmacht a strong stabilizing force in the Fatherland, came to an end; and the drive wheel of the world’s strongest military machine was grasped by an Austrian street agitator.
In itself this was not a catastrophic turn. Hitler was far from a military ignoramus. He had had four years in the field as a foot soldier, and there are worse ways to learn war. He was a voracious reader of history and of military writings. His memory for technical facts was unusual. Above all, he did have the ability to get to the root of a large problem. He had almost a woman’s intuition for the nub of a matter. This is a fine leadership trait in war, always providing that the politician listens to the soldiers for the execution of his ideas. The combination of a bold political adventurer, a Charles XII personality risen from the streets to weld Germany into a solid driving force, and our General Staff, the world’s best military leadership, might well have brought us ultimate success.
But Hitler was incapable of listening to anybody. This undid him and ruined Germany. Grand strategy and incredibly petty detail were equally his preoccupations. The overruling axiom of our war effort was that Hitler gave the orders. In a brutal speech to our staff in November 1939, prompted by our efforts to discourage a premature attack on France, he warned us that he would ruthlessly crush any of us who opposed his will. Like so many of his other threats, he made this one good. By the end of the war most of our staff had been dismissed in disgrace. Many had been shot. All of us would have been shot sooner or later, had he not lost his nerve and shot himself first.
Thus it happened that the strength of the great German people, and the valor of the peerless German soldier, became passive tools in Hitler’s amateur hands.
Hitler and Churchill: A Comparison
Winston Churchill, in a revealing passage of his memoirs on the functioning of his chiefs of staff, expresses his envy of Hitler, who could get his decisions acted upon without submitting them to the discouragement and pulling apart of hidebound professional soldiers. In fact, this was what saved England and won the war.
Churchill was exactly the kind of brilliant amateur meddler in military affairs that Hitler was. Both rose to power from the depths of political rejection. Both relied chiefly on oratory to sway the multitude. Both somehow expressed the spirit of their peoples, and so won loyalty that outlasted any number of mistakes, defeats, and disasters. Both thought in grandiose terms, knew little about economic and logistical realities, and cared less. Both were iron men in defeat. Above all, both men had overwhelming personalities that could silence rational opposition while they talked. Of this strange phenomenon, I had ample and bitter experience with Hitler. The crucial difference was that in the end Churchill had to listen to the professionals, whereas the German people had committed itself to the fatal Führerprinzip.
Had Churchill possessed the power Adolf Hitler managed to arrogate to himself, the Allied armies would have bled to death in 1944, invading the “soft underbelly of the Axis,” as Churchill called the fearful mountains and water obstacles of the Balkan peninsula. There we would have slaughtered them. The Italian campaign proved that. Only on the flat plains of Normandy did the Ford-production style of American warfare, using immense masses of inferio
r, cheaply made machinery, have a chance of working. The Balkans would have been a colossal Thermopylae, won by the defenders. It would have been a Churchill defeat compared to which Gallipoli would have been a schoolboy picnic.
With a Führer’s authority, Churchill would also have frittered away the Allied landing craft, always a critical supply problem, in witless attempts to recapture the Greek islands and to storm Rhodes. In 1944 he nagged Eisenhower and Roosevelt to commit these wild follies until they both stopped talking to him.
Churchill was a Hitler restrained by democracy. If the German nation ever rises again, let it remember the different ends of these two men. I am not arguing for the goose gabble of parliamentarians. By conviction I have always been a conservative monarchist. But whatever the civilian structure, let our people hereafter entrust military affairs to its trained generals, and insist that politicians keep hands off the war machine.
__________
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: This very jarring and distorted comparison of Hitler and Churchill omits the crucial difference, of course. By the common verdict of historians, even most German ones, Hitler was a ruthless adventurer bent on conquest and plunder, while Churchill was a great defender of human liberty, dignity, and law. It is true that Churchill tended to interfere in military matters. Politicians find that temptation hard to resist.
Roon’s assertion about the British plan to land in Norway is correct. His conclusions, again, are a different matter, showing how slippery the issues at Nuremberg were. England was the sole protector and hope of small neutral countries like Norway and Denmark. The purpose of a British landing would have been to defend Norway, not to occupy and dominate it. In a war, both sides may well try to take the same neutral objective for strategic reasons, which does not prove that both sides are equally guilty of aggression. That is the fallacy in Roon’s argument. I would not recommend trying to persuade a German staff officer of this.—V.H.
18
WARREN HENRY and his fiancée Janice were set straight about Russia’s invasion of Finland by an unexpected person: Madeline’s new boyfriend, a trombone player and student of public affairs named Sewell Bozeman. Early in December the engaged couple came to New York and visited Madeline in her new apartment. Finding the boyfriend there was a surprise.
The news of her move to her own apartment had enraged Pug Henry, but had he known her reason, he would have been pleased. Madeline had come to despise the two girls with whom she had shared a flat. Both were having affairs—one with a joke writer, the other with an actor working as a bellhop. Madeline had found herself being asked to skulk around, stay out late, or remain in her room while one or another pair copulated. The walls in the shabby apartment were thin. She had no way of even pretending unawareness.
She was disgusted. Both girls had good jobs, both dressed with taste, both were college graduates. Yet they behaved like sluts, as Madeline understood the word. She was a Henry, with her father’s outlook. Give or take a few details of Methodist doctrine, Madeline believed in what she had learned at home and at church. Unmarried girls of good character didn’t sleep with men; to her, that was almost a law of nature. Men had more leeway; she knew, for instance, that Warren had been something of a hellion before his engagement. She liked Byron better because he seemed, in this respect, more like her upright father. To Madeline sex was a delightful matter of playing with fire, but enjoying the blaze from a safe distance, until she could leap into the hallowed white conflagration of a bridal night. She was a middle-class good girl, and not in the least ashamed of it. She thought her room-mates were gross fools. As soon as Hugh Cleveland gave her a raise, she got out.
“I don’t know,” she said, stirring a pot over a tiny stove behind a screen, “maybe this dinner was a mistake. We all could have gone to a restaurant.”
She was addressing the boyfriend, Sewell Bozeman, called Bozey by the world. They had met at a party in September. Bozey was a thin, long, pale, tractable fellow with thick straight brown hair and thoughtful brown eyes that bulged behind rimless glasses. He always dressed in brown, to brown shoes, brown ties, and even brown shirts; he was always reading enormous brown books on economics and politics and had a generally brown outlook on life, believing that America was a doomed society, rapidly going under. Madeline found him a piquant and intriguing novelty. At the moment, he was setting her small dining table, wearing over his brown array the pink apron he had put on to peel onions for the stew.
“Well, it’s not too late,” he said. “You can save the stew for another night, and we can take your brother and his girl to Julio’s.”
“No, I told Warren I was cooking the dinner. That girl’s rolling in money, she wouldn’t like an Italian dive. And they have to rush off to the theatre.” Madeline came out, patting her hot face with a handkerchief, and looked at the table. “That’s fine. Thanks, Bozey. I’m going to change.” She opened a closet door crusted with yellowing white paint and took out a dress and slip, glancing around the small room. With a three-sided bay window looking out on back yards and drying laundry, it was the whole apartment, except for the kitchenette and a tiny bath. Large pieces of blue cloth lay on the threadbare divan under yellow paper patterns. “Darn it. That divan is such a rat’s nest. Maybe I’ll have time to finish cutting that dress, if I hurry.”
“I can finish cutting it,” Bozey said.
“Nonsense, Bozey, you can’t cut a dress. Don’t try.” A doorbell wheezily rang. “Well, the wine’s here already. That’s good.” She went to open the door. Warren and Janice walked in and surprised the tall pop-eyed man in his pink apron, holding shears in one hand and a sleeve pattern in the other. What with the smell of the hot stew, and Madeline in a housecoat with a dress and a lacy slip on her arm, it was a strikingly domestic scene.
“Oh, hi. You’re early. My gosh, Warren, you’re tan!” Madeline was so sure of her own rectitude that it didn’t occur to her to be embarrassed. “This is Sewell Bozeman, a friend of mine.”
Bozey waved the shears feebly at them; he was embarrassed, and in his fluster he started to cut a ragged blue rayon sleeve.
Madeline said, “Bozey, will you stop cutting that dress!” She turned to Janice. “Imagine, he actually thinks he can do it.”
“It’s more than I can,” Janice Lacouture said, staring incredulously at Bozeman. Bozey dropped the shears and took off his apron with a giggle.
Warren said just to say something and cover his stupefaction, “Your dinner smells great, Madeline.”
After completing introductions, Madeline went off into what she called her boudoir, a grimy toilet about four feet square. “If you’d like to freshen up first—” she said to Janice as she opened the door, gesturing at the few cubic feet of yellow space crammed with rusty plumbing. “It’s a bit cosy in there for two.”
“Oh, no, no I’m just fine,” Janice exclaimed. “Go ahead.”
A halting conversation ensued while Bozey donned his jacket and tie. Soon Madeline put out her head and one naked shoulder and arm. “Bozey, I don’t want that beef stew to boil over. Turn down the gas.”
“Sure thing.”
As he went behind the screen, Janice Lacouture and Warren exchanged appalled looks. “Do you play with the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Bozeman?” Janice raised her voice.
“No, I’m with Ziggy Frechtel’s orchestra. We play the Feenamint Hour,” he called back. “I’m working on getting up my own band.” He returned and sat in an armchair, or rather lay in it, with his head propped against the back and the rest of him projecting forward and down, sloping to the floor. Warren, something of a sloucher himself, regarded this spectacular slouch by the limp long brown bulging-eyed trombonist with incredulity. In a way the strangest feature was his costume. Warren had never in his life seen a brown tie on a brown shirt. Madeline issued from the bathroom smoothing her dress. “Oh, come on, Bozey, mix some drinks,” she carolled.
Bozey hauled himself erect and made drinks, talking on about the problems of assembling a band
. A shy, awkward fellow, he honestly believed that the best way to put other people at their ease was to keep talking, and the one subject that usually occurred to him was himself. He disclosed that he was the son of a minister in Montana; that the local doctor had cured him of religion at sixteen, by feeding him the works of Ingersoll and Haeckel while treating him less successfully for thyroid trouble; and that in rebellion against his father he had taken up the trombone.
Soon he was on the topic of the war, which, he explained, was nothing but an imperialist struggle for markets. This was apropos of a remark by Warren that he was a naval fighter pilot in training. Bozey proceeded to set forth the Marxist analysis of war, beginning with the labor theory of value. Madeline meanwhile, finishing and serving up the dinner, was glad to let him entertain her company. She knew Bozey was talkative, but she found him interesting and she thought Warren and Janice might, too. They seemed oddly silent. Perhaps, she thought, they had just had a little spat.
Under capitalism, Bozey pointed out, workers never were paid what they really earned. The capitalist merely gave them the lowest wages possible. Since he owned the means of production, he had them at his mercy. Profit was the difference between what the worker produced and what he got. This had to lead to war sooner or later. In each country the capitalists piled up big surpluses because the workers weren’t paid enough to buy back what they produced. The capitalists, to realize their profits, had to sell off those surpluses in other countries. This struggle for foreign markets, when it got hot enough, inevitably turned into war. That was what was happening now.
“But Hitler has no surpluses,” Janice Lacouture mildly observed. An economics student, she knew these Marxist bromides, but was willing to let the boyfriend, or lover—she wasn’t yet sure which—of Warren’s sister run on for a while. “Germany’s a land of shortages.”
