The Guildhall exploded in a roaring, standing ovation.
In his diary Hoare grumbled about “Winston overbidding the market in his speeches,” but it was a popular speech. No one had fewer illusions about combat than Siegfried Sassoon, who had been court-martialed for publishing his powerful antiwar poems while serving as a junior officer in the first war. Now he wrote Eddie Marsh: “What an apotheosis Winston is enjoying! I suppose he is the most popular—as well as being the ablest—political figure in England. He must be glorying in the deeds of the Navy, who are indeed superb. And W himself has certainly put up a grand performance.”157
His last four words—“The Navy is here!”—wrote Laurence Thompson, “gripped the public mind. It was felt that, dull and unenterprising though the conduct of the war might be on land and sea, the navy was eternally there; and so it heroically was, bearing with the Merchant Navy the heaviest burden of the war.” England had gone to war no more eagerly than the French, and as a people the British were less vulnerable to slogans and political melodrama. But as divisions deepened in Paris and the rest of France, Britons grew more united. If they had to fight they would. And though it seemed on that Friday that the Royal Navy had preempted the national consciousness, British soldiers were about to take the field against Nazi troops for the first time. It was to be an inauspicious opening.158
For Hitler the Royal Navy’s coup de main in Jösing Fjord was “unerträglich”—“intolerable.” He was enraged that the German seamen on the Altmark had not fought harder. According to Jodl’s diary he raved, “Kein Widerstand, Keine engl. Verluste!” (“No resistance, no British losses!”). This seems hard on the four Germans who had been killed in the firefight, but the Führer had his own yardstick of valor; he reserved his approval for men who had been worthy of him. Two days later, on February 19, Jodl’s diary reveals, “The Führer pressed energetically” for the completion of Weserübung—the code name for plans to occupy Norway—issuing orders to “equip ships; put units in readiness.” To lead this operation he summoned a corps commander from the western front, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, who had fought in Finland at the end of the last war. Later, under interrogation in Nuremberg, Falkenhorst said he had the impression that it was the Altmark incident which led Hitler to “carry out the plan now.”159
The origins of Weserübung were more ambiguous than might appear to be the case. In his war memoirs Churchill wrote that “Hitler’s decision to invade Norway had… been taken on December 14, and the staff work was proceeding under Keitel.” The only relevant event on December 14 had been a meeting between Hitler and Major Vidkun Quisling, a former Norwegian minister of defense, who had fallen under the Nazi spell and whose present ambition was to betray his country to the Reich. Admiral Raeder had urged the Führer to exploit this man’s twisted allegiance, and Hitler had scheduled the interview because he wanted “to form an impression of him.” Afterward, the Führer had put him on the payroll “to combat British propaganda” and strengthen Norway’s Nazi party, an organization which existed almost entirely in Quisling’s imagination. But Weserübung had not been Hitler’s idea. In fact it was the only unprovoked Nazi aggression which wasn’t. It was drawn up by the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine on orders from Raeder alone, which also made it unique; the Wehrmacht high command and its Generalstab were not consulted, and Göring wasn’t even told until the execution of the plan was hours away.160
Hitler was aware of it, of course; to embark on so ambitious a venture without keeping the chancellor fully informed would have been worth an officer’s life. Hitler also knew how the kaiser’s Imperial Fleet had been frustrated in the last war, bottled up in the Baltic by the British blockade, with no access to the high seas; and he knew his navy was determined to thwart the Royal Navy in any future conflict by establishing bases in Norway. In October, during a long report to the Führer on Kriegsmarine operations, Raeder had mentioned this objective, and according to Raeder’s Nuremberg testimony, Hitler “saw at once the significance of the Norwegian operation.” After the outbreak of the Russo-Finnish war several weeks later, the Führer also became alert to the danger implicit in reports that the Allies were forming expeditions to support the Finns, a pretext which threatened the lifeblood of his munitions factories in the Ruhr valley, where the smokestack barons needed fifteen million tons of iron ore every year and counted on Sweden for eleven million tons of it. The existence of Weserübung could be misinterpreted by civilians as proof of planned aggression. It wasn’t; professional soldiers in every nation know that during peacetime general staffs draw up plans contemplating hostilities with other powers, even though the likelihood that they will ever be needed is very small. The War Department in Washington, for example, had drafted detailed instructions for invasions of virtually every country on the Continent.161
The fact—established beyond doubt at Nuremberg and in captured documents—was that Hitler did not want to occupy Norway. During his interview with Quisling, which was recorded in shorthand and transcribed, he said that he “would prefer Norway, as well as the rest of Scandinavia, to remain completely neutral”; he was not interested in schemes which would “enlarge the theater of war.” A neutral Norway meant the Reich could import Swedish ore without British interference. There is strong evidence that he impressed this on Raeder; on January 13, the official war diary of the Kriegsmarine mentioned Scandinavia in passing and noted that “the most favorable solution would be the maintenance of Norway’s neutrality.” But both the Führer and his naval staff established caveats. “If the enemy were preparing to spread the war” in Scandinavia, Hitler said, he would “take steps to guard against that threat.” Similarly, the Kriegsmarine’s war diary expressed anxiety that “England intends to occupy Norway with the tacit agreement of the Norwegian government.” The dubious source for this was Quisling, who also told Hitler that the Cossack’s boarding of the Altmark had been prearranged. The government in Oslo, he said, was England’s willing accomplice; the Norwegian gunboats had been ordered to take no action, thereby hoodwinking the Third Reich and its führer. That was the kind of meat upon which this Caesar fed, but the records of his conferences with Raeder show that he was still hesitant, still convinced that “maintenance of Norway’s neutrality is the best thing,” and—this on March 9—that so perilous an operation, pitting his small fleet against the legendary might of the Royal Navy, was “contrary to all the principles of naval warfare.” Yet in that same conference he called the occupation of Norway “dringend”—“urgent.” Ambivalence was not characteristic of the Reich’s supreme Kriegsherr, but he seems to have been indecisive here.162
On the last Thursday in March William L. Shirer observed in his diary: “Germany cannot stay in the war unless she continues to receive Swedish iron, most of which is shipped from the Norwegian port of Narvik on German vessels which evade the blockade by feeling their way down the Norwegian coast…. Some of us have wondered why Churchill has never done anything about this. Now it begins to look as if he may.” It was reported in Berlin that “a squadron of at least nine of HM’s destroyers was concentrated off the Norwegian coast and that in several instances Nazi freighters carrying iron had received warning shots.” The Wilhelmstrasse told Shirer they would “watch” Churchill, and a key source assured him that “if British destroyers go into Norwegian territorial waters Germany will act.” Act how? he wondered. “The German navy is no match for the British.”163
Evidence that the Royal Navy was closing in had been accumulating since March 13, when a concentration of RN submarines had been reported off Norway. The next day the Germans had intercepted a message alerting all Allied transports to prepare to sail on two hours’ notice; the day after that a party of French officers arrived in Bergen. Hitler did not reach his final decision, however, until Monday, April 1. Signals from Oslo, picked up by Germans monitoring all radio traffic in northern Europe, revealed that Norwegians manning coastal guns and antiaircraft batteries were being instructed to open fire on any
unidentified vessels without asking permission from their superiors. Obviously Norway was expecting action and preparing for it. If Weserübung was to achieve surprise—essential to success—the Führer would have to move fast; the invasion was ordered to begin April 9. He prepared his explanation to the international audience: “The government of the Reich has learned that the British intend to land in Norway.”164
The world outside the Reich, jaded by his gross Lügen, would dismiss this new accusation as another absurd Nazi lie. But for once the Führer was telling the unvarnished truth.
Easter had arrived a week before Hitler’s decision, and after the harsh winter England was celebrating an unseasonably warm four-day weekend. Traffic to Brighton was heavy. Over two hundred visitors were turned away from a hotel in Weston-super-Mare, and Blackpool landladies enjoyed one of their most profitable holidays in memory. Seaside resorts were unusually crowded; Britons hoped to hear warlike sounds over the water, the eruption of an exploding torpedo, perhaps, or the rattle of machine-gun fire. They heard none. Europe was at war but peaceful. The ominous news from Scandinavia attracted little attention. Hitler take Norway? With the Royal Navy barring the way? What a hope! And if he got it, what would he do with it? The British public, editors had learned, regarded Scandinavia as boring.
What they did want was summed up in a Daily Express story headed “COME ON HITLER! DARES IRONSIDE.” The six-foot-four CIGS was in hiding, suffering the mortification of a man blindsided by a clever newspaperman. Reith’s Ministry of Information had persuaded him to grant an interview to an American reporter, suggesting that he paint the rosiest possible picture. Tiny had thought he was talking off the record, and was staggered to learn that the Express owned British rights to whatever the American wrote. And so, to his horror, he found himself quoted as yearning for a clash with the Führer: “We would welcome a go at him. Frankly, we would welcome an attack. We are sure of ourselves. We have no fears.” Actually, he spoke for millions of Englishmen weary of waiting for the monster to make his next move. At No. 10 Colville had wondered, a month after the fall of Poland, “whether all that has happened has been part of a gigantic bluff.” Three months later he noted that a “number of people seem to be thinking that Hitler will not take the offensive, but may even be in a position to win a long war of inactivity—or at least to ruin us economically…. There is thus, for the first time, a feeling that we may have to start the fighting, and Winston even gave a hint to that effect in his speech on Saturday.”165
In the teeth of vehement Foreign Office opposition, led by Halifax, Churchill since late September 1939 had sought cabinet approval of his plan to mine the Leads “by every means and on all occasions,” as he later put it. The farthest his colleagues would go was on February 19, when they authorized the Admiralty “to make all preparations” to lay a minefield in Norwegian territorial waters so that, should he be given actual approval, “there would be no delay in carrying out the operation.” But ten days later, the authorization was rescinded. The tide turned for Winston on March 28, when the Allied Supreme War Council approved the plan, and on April 1—the day Hitler, unknown to them, gave the green light to Weserübung—the War Cabinet set April 5 for the operation. Churchill decided that because it was “so small and innocent,” the mining operation should be called “Wilfred”—the name of a comic strip character in the Daily Mirror. He pointed out that the minelaying “might lead the Germans to take forcible action against Norwegian territory, and so give us an opportunity for landing forces on Norwegian soil with the consent of the Norwegian government”; and he proposed that “we should continue in a state of readiness to despatch a light force to Narvik.” The Supreme War Council went farther; on April 8 a British brigade and a contingent of French troops would be sent to Narvik to “clear the port and advance to the Swedish frontier.” Other forces would land at Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim “to deny these bases to the enemy.”166
Had this schedule been followed, the Allies would almost certainly have scored a resounding triumph. On April 3 Oliver Stanley, who had succeeded Hore-Belisha at the War Office, received “a somewhat garbled account” that the Germans had “a strong force of troops” at the Baltic port of Rostock. Halifax noted that this “tended to confirm” the latest report from Stockholm, that large German troop concentrations were boarding transports at Stettin and Swinemünde. An assistant military attaché at the Dutch legation in Berlin passed along the same information to the Danes and Norwegians. The Danish foreign minister concluded that the Germans were headed for Norway but would bypass the Danes. The Norwegians believed the Nazis had decided to seize Denmark.167
On Saturday, April 6, Churchill later wrote, RAF reconnaissance pilots spotted “a German fleet consisting of a battle cruiser, two light cruisers, fourteen destroyers and another ship, probably a transport… moving towards the Naze across the mouth of the Skagerrak.” Churchill wrote: “We found it hard at the Admiralty to believe that this force was going to Narvik. In spite of a report from Copenhagen that Hitler meant to seize that port, it was thought by the Naval Staff that the German ships would probably turn back into the Skagerrak.”168
Actually, the British were involved in making adjustments to their plans because of a serious disagreement with the French, which had stalled Wilfred at a critical juncture. Churchill said that whatever the French did, England should proceed with the minelaying in Norway, and Chamberlain agreed. “Matters have now gone too far,” he said, “for us not to take action.” One more attempt would be made to reconcile differences with the French. If they continued to be fractious, Britain would go it alone.169
The row with France arose from French determination to avoid any move which might invite German retaliation. For over seven years they had been trying to wish Hitler away, and the habit was hard to break. Eventually they were bound to disagree with Churchill, who spent most of his waking moments trying to find new ways of making life miserable for the Nazis. One operation, whose potential exceeded Wilfred’s, had been encoded “Royal Marine.” During the winter he had studied mines. Among the various types, he had found, was a fluvial mine which floated just below the surface of water. The possibility of paralyzing all traffic on the Rhine—Germany’s main artery of transport and communications—excited him. Among the river’s many uses was sustaining the Reich’s huge armies on the French frontier. Large numbers of fluvial mines which exploded on contact would be launched on that stretch of the river which lay just inside French territory, below Strasbourg. Among the targets would be tankers, barges, and floating bridges. Winston had conceived this scheme during his visit to the Rhine on the eve of war, but he had hesitated to lay it before the War Cabinet because neutral shipping also used the river. His mind had been changed by the “indiscriminate warfare” of U-boats, magnetic mines, and machine-gunning of crews in lifeboats, all of which had victimized neutrals as well as Britons. Then and later he insisted that, as he wrote General Gamelin, “the moral and juridical justification” for Royal Marine “appears to be complete.” The Germans had “assailed the ports of Great Britain and their approaches with every form of illegal mining,” had attacked unarmed fishing boats, and “waged a ruthless U-boat war on both belligerents and neutrals.” Against such an enemy, he submitted, “stern reprisals are required.” On November 19, 1939, he had proposed that “a steady process of harassing this main waterway of the enemy should be set on foot…. Not a day should be lost.”170
Months, not days, were lost, for although the War Cabinet endorsed his recommendations “in principle” eight days later, the plan had to work its way through both the British and French bureaucracies. Meantime Royal Marine was expanding; by January the Admiralty had stockpiled ten thousand fluvial mines, the RAF had been brought into the picture as sowers of them, and not only the Rhine, but all major German rivers and canals were to be their targets. Churchill was captivated by his scheme; if padlock visitors called at the private office, one of his aides wrote, Winston would produce “a b
ucket full of water and insist that everyone should watch the model [of a fluvial mine] work.” The War Cabinet finally approved Royal Marine on March 6, and detailed plans provided for floating the first two thousand mines; three hundred or four hundred would be loosed each night thereafter, and eventually the number would stabilize at two thousand a week. Admiral Jean Darlan, commander in chief of the French navy, declared himself “enthusiastically in favor” of the project and predicted that it would have “a decisive effect” on the war in less than a year. Only pro forma consent of the French government remained.171
It was not forthcoming. Daladier’s government fell on March 20, several days after the Finnish surrender—he had been accused of tardy, inadequate aid to the Finns—and Paul Reynaud became premier. Though no longer premier, Daladier retained his post as minister of defense, and in that office he had the power, which he now exercised, of vetoing Royal Marine. According to gossip at No. 10, Daladier “does not want Reynaud to get the credit, or possibly… the French fear instant retaliation which they are not in a position to withstand.” The second motive was the one given the British. The minister of defense, they were told, flinched from the possibility of reprisals in the form of Luftwaffe attacks on French air factories. The factories were especially vulnerable now. In two months they would be dispersed and the mines could be launched. On March 28, at the same meeting of the Supreme War Council at which Wilfred was approved, Chamberlain intervened, and his powerful promotion of Royal Marine persuaded the French to float the mines on April 4. Back in Paris they changed their minds and demanded a three-month postponement. Colville wrote, “Winston is going over to Paris to do a little personal persuasion. We are trying to blackmail the French by maintaining that we may not undertake the Norwegian territorial waters project unless we can combine it with the other.”172