On 2 April, Hitler signed the order for the invasion. At 7.17 p.m., a message was sent out to the fleet and to the U-boats: ‘Wesertag ist der 9. April.’79 The time was set for 5.15 a.m. Cut out of the decision-making process, the German Foreign Ministry was informed only the following day.
On 6 April, General Dietl and 139 Regiment, with Edelweiss symbols on their caps and sleeves, arrived at Wesermünde, and in the evening embarked on the ten destroyers waiting for them. By 11 p.m., Group 1 convoy bound for Narvik was moving down the channel towards the German Bight. The Germans hoped that the movements of their ships would be interpreted by the Admiralty – as they were – as an attempt to break out of the naval blockade and find a passage into the Atlantic to menace British shipping.
On 8 April, the date when the British laid their mines off Narvik, Hitler summoned Goebbels to discuss the German reaction to the news of ‘Wilfred’. It was a hot day, and in a walk around the Chancellery gardens, Hitler informed his Propaganda Minister of the operation that was due to take place within the next few hours. The club-footed Goebbels, a former novelist, listened in silent admiration to his Führer’s imaginative plan. ‘Everything has been prepared down to the last detail.80 The action will involve around 250,000 men. Most of the guns and ammunition have already been transported concealed in ships.’ At a late stage, Denmark had been included in ‘Weserübung’. Hitler was confident there would be no resistance. ‘First we will keep quiet for a short time once we have both countries, and then England will be plastered.’81
‘A hundred incidents should have prepared us,’ wrote the American Minister to Norway, Florence Harriman.82 In the run-up to that ‘fatal daybreak’, few in Oslo, Stockholm, Paris or London had taken seriously the ‘abundantly available’ evidence of a German invasion.
The warning signs had been there to read since before the war, and in Hitler’s own words. On 9 February 1940, Chamberlain asked his sister Hilda: ‘Have you read Hitler Speaks by Rauschning? It is illuminating.’83 The English edition had appeared in December, and extracts were circulated to the War Cabinet. The conversations with Hitler had taken place in 1933 and 1934, and jotted down by Dr Rauschning – ‘a very pleasant quiet man, an East Prussian landowner’, according to Leo Amery.84 Hitler might have been describing ‘Weserübung’. ‘When I wage war … in the midst of peace … troops will suddenly appear, let us say in Paris.85 They will wear French uniforms. They will march through the streets in broad daylight. No one will stop them. Everything has been thought out, prepared to the last detail …’ Hitler even indicated where his ‘gigantic, all-destroying blow’ might land. ‘“We need space,” he almost shrieked, “to make us independent of every possible political grouping and alliance … I shall have … a Northern Union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway.”’
Hitler’s ambition for his Northern Union was given impetus by a book published in 1929: Die See Strategie des Weltkrieges, by Admiral Wolfgang Wegener. In May 1939, Cadogan’s predecessor at the Foreign Office, Robert Vansittart, drew the First Sea Lord’s attention to Wegener’s book, from which it seemed probable: ‘1. that Denmark and part of Norway may be seized as a jumping off ground.86 2. that the trade routes will be attacked with all available naval and air power working from such shore bases as can be seized and held, or can be concealed, and from supply ships.’
Then, in January 1940, Maurice Hankey, Lloyd George’s Secretary to the War Cabinet who had been brought back from retirement by Chamberlain, received an anxious letter from a Norwegian friend, a former schoolmistress with good contacts in government circles in Oslo. On 5 January, she had met the new German Minister to Norway, Curt Bräuer, on a train to Oslo, and in the course of a long conversation the diplomat had told her that ‘the danger came from England who threatened to take possession of Stavanger and Bergen “and in that case we go directly to Oslo”’.87
A month after Hankey had passed on her letter to Halifax, the American journalist William Shirer was told ‘a fantastic story’ in Berlin.88 ‘A plan is afoot to hide S.S. shock troops in the bottom of a lot of freighters, have them put in at ports in Scandinavia, Belgium and Africa, and seize the places … I suspect this story is a plant that the Nazis would like us to put out as part of their nerve war.’ Yet the stories kept coming which suggested that Germany was up to something. On 17 March, the British Military attaché in Stockholm reported that German officers had told Swedish colleagues how Norway ‘would be taken care of in a very short time’.89 On 30 March, the French Naval Minister wrote to both the new French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, and to the Commander-in-Chief of France’s armed forces, General Maurice Gamelin. ‘Recent information reveals that [Germany] has gathered the material for an expedition against bases in south Norway.’90 On 1 April, the head of the Swedish Foreign Office informed the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Stockholm, who instantly passed it on to the British Minister, that ‘the Germans were going to attack Norway’.91
Made aware of these rumours, British Intelligence dismissed them. As late as 8 April, Military Intelligence issued a paper, ‘The Possibilities of German Action against Scandinavia’, which ‘did not support any probability of a Scandinavian invasion’.92 At the Admiralty, Captain Ralph Edwards, the new Deputy Director of Operations (Home), recorded in his diary the opinion of British Intelligence that the German military chiefs would never allow such ‘a mad expedition to sail’.93 A note pencilled by General Ismay during a meeting of the War Cabinet on 26 April betrayed a retrospective exasperation. ‘Information reached us many months ago that the Germans had collected and prepared transports for an operation of this character and were training their troops.’94
So why was nothing done?
Where German preparations for ‘Weserübung’ were conducted in conditions of pain-of-death secrecy, with single-minded focus, British plans were characterised by stalls, hiccups and shilly-shallying; or as Churchill put it, ‘vain boggling, hesitation, changes of policy, arguments between good and worthy people unending’.95
Between February and April, the race for Norway was between two leaders with competing strategies and temperaments. On one side was Hitler, who, unconcerned at offending Norwegian goodwill or neutrality, wished to gamble everything on what he boasted to von Falkenhorst was ‘one of the most daring operations in the history of modern warfare’.96 Agonising on the other side over whether to mine a neutral country’s territorial waters was Chamberlain, who did not want to take risks without being sure of the result, long believing that ‘you should never menace unless you are in a position to carry out your threats’.97
Against this cautious mindset, Churchill’s renewed championing of ‘Wilfred’ made juddering headway. Cadogan wrote in his diary on 23 February: ‘Apparently Cabinet still undecided about minefield in Norwegian waters.98 Of course, it is really only a Winston stunt, and ill-conceived.’
Increasingly, Chamberlain felt ground down by his First Lord who took a broad view of his responsibilities, and made his weight felt outside the Admiralty, as often as not despatching Geoffrey Shakespeare to be his errand boy. ‘I am concerned about the shortage of fish,’ Churchill told Shakespeare.99 ‘We must have a policy of utmost fish.’ Shakespeare several times had to send a message to a Minister ‘that Mr Churchill intended to raise the matter in question at the next War Cabinet unless it was settled forthwith’.100 Another of Shakespeare’s tasks was to prepare the Prime Minister’s weekly naval statement on the progress of the war. Included in the confidential list of telegrams (‘so I might be aware of losses and sinkings’), Shakespeare could not fail to be aware that Operation ‘Wilfred’ was a project, as Chamberlain put it, ‘on which Winston was particularly & fiercely keen’.101, 102 For Uncle Geoffrey no less than for Chamberlain, ‘Wilfred’ represented each and every one of Churchill’s plans and interferences to which he had relentlessly subjected Ministers since joining the War Cabinet.
For six months now, Chamberlain had resisted Churchill’s ‘rash suggestions’.103 Even so,
he was ‘conscious that Winston would like very much to become Minister for Defence with authority over the War Office and Air Ministry, and that just won’t do’.104 On 2 March, Chamberlain felt obliged to remind Churchill who was in charge. ‘I said that for once & contrary to my usual practice I would speak first and that I did not anticipate any serious trouble with Winston for the simple reason that if I put my foot down he must either accept my decision or resign.105 Now he would just hate to resign … he is thoroughly enjoying life.’
Instead, it was under pressure from his chief ally, the French premier Edouard Daladier – ‘a bull with snails horns’, Chamberlain called him – that the Prime Minister consented on 11 March to send a more ambitious expedition to Narvik.106
Since November, a beleaguered Finnish army had fought a valiant rearguard battle against a brutal invasion by 450,000 Russian forces and 1,000 tanks. ‘Avonmouth’ was a proactive Allied plan to bring assistance to the Finns, and Narvik was to serve as its base. Had the plan gone ahead, it would have meant the Allies breaching Norwegian neutrality on the mainland before the Germans. The operation was quite distinct from ‘Wilfred’, though Chamberlain believed that he could ‘kill two birds with one stone’ by also occupying the Swedish ore-fields.107 Churchill’s support was immediate and enthusiastic. ‘We had everything to gain and nothing to lose by the drawing of Norway and Sweden into the war.’108
After much toing and froing, the Anglo-French force of 20,000 men, gathered from two British brigades and a brigade of French Chasseurs Alpins, had been assembled to embark by mid-March. When Air Marshal Cyril Newall learned the details on 11 March, he muttered to Major General John Kennedy, the operation’s designated Chief of Staff: ‘I think the whole thing is hare-brained.’109 Kennedy agreed – as did Major General Ismay. Cadogan, too, considered the plan ‘amateurish and half-hatched by a half-baked staff’.110
Next morning, 12 March, General Ironside swelled their number. ‘We had a dreadful Cabinet … A more unmilitary show I have never seen.111 The Prime Minister began peering at a chart of Narvik, and when he had finished he asked me what scale it was on. He asked what effect an eight-inch shell would have on a transport and finished up by saying that he was prepared to risk a four-inch shell but not an eight-inch shell. He then asked what the weight of the shells were.’ Ironside had since come round to the plan for this ‘northern sideshow’, but he was scornful of the politicians whose job was to give the operation sinew and muscle. ‘The Cabinet presented the picture of a bewildered flock of sheep faced by a problem they have consistently refused to consider.’
At 6.30 p.m., General Kennedy walked over to No. 10 where a ‘tired and lugubrious’ Chamberlain shook hands with the military commander of ‘Avonmouth’, Major General Pierse Mackesy.112 Chamberlain ‘half-listened in grave silence’ and ‘looked more and more horrified’ as Admiral Edward Evans, the navy commander, gave an excited exposé. Chamberlain’s jumbled instructions differed radically from those issued by Hitler to von Falkenhorst. ‘It is not the intention of the Government that the force should fight its way through either Norway or Sweden. None the less should you find your way barred by Swedish forces you should demand passage from the Swedish Commander with the utmost energy.’ Halifax advocated a position even less confrontational. ‘Well, if we can’t get out except at the cost of a lot of Norwegian lives, I am not for it – ore or no ore.’ Kennedy could only wince. ‘The meeting ended with Neville Chamberlain shaking hands with us as we filed out of the room, saying, “Goodbye, and good luck to you – if you go.”’
Newall put the odds at three to one against; Mackesy at a hundred to one. To their secret relief, ‘Avonmouth’ was cancelled next afternoon on 13 March, on news that the Finns had signed a peace treaty with Russia.
On 14 March, Churchill wrote a private letter to Halifax summing up his frustrations since he had first presented his Narvik plan to the War Cabinet six months before:
‘My dear Edward,113
‘I feel I ought to let you know that I am vy deeply concerned about the way the war is going. It is not less deadly because it is silent … All has now fallen to the ground; because so cumbrous are our processes that we were too late.
‘Now the ice will melt; & the Germans are masters of the North … Excuse me writing like this – wch I so seldom do – but I am bound to tell you that we have sustained a major disaster in the North: & that this has put the Germans more at their ease than they have ever been. Whether they have some positive plan of their own wh will open upon us I cannot tell. It w’d seem to me astonishing if they have not.’
Churchill had emphasised to his First Sea Lord Pound on 6 March: ‘The first step is the one that counts.’114 In the days following the Russian–Finnish ceasefire, Chamberlain became sensitive to the need ‘to do something spectacular’ to keep public morale high.115 On 19 March, the Liberal leader Archie Sinclair goaded him in the Commons. ‘It is time we stopped saying: what is Hitler going to do? It is about time we asked: what is Chamberlain going to do?’
Recently back from Finland, Harold Macmillan criticised ‘the delay, the vacillation, change of front, standing on one foot one day and on the other the next before a decision is given’.116, 117 Chamberlain merely had to glance across the Channel to recognise the dangers posed by a policy of continued inaction. Hard on the dispersal of the Anglo-French forces assembled for Operation ‘Avonmouth’, the French premier Edouard Daladier had been replaced in poisonous circumstances by his rival Paul Reynaud, a friend of Churchill. This was one day after The Times had written: ‘Great Britain and France are fortunate in having Prime Ministers whose resilience is exceptional.’118
If Daladier was a snail-horned bull, then Reynaud, reckoned Chamberlain, had ‘a foxy expression which causes me to wonder if his real name is not Reynard instead of Reynaud’.119 The new premier, surviving on just one vote, reiterated a demand made by the French government on the day after ‘Avonmouth’ was cancelled: for the British to launch Operation ‘Wilfred’ without further delay. Reynaud wanted action, like Churchill, who had immediately written to him: ‘I rejoice that you are at the helm.’120 Anxious to consolidate his precarious position, Reynaud decided that it was essential to win ‘the battle of iron’, and on 27 March he flew to London for a meeting of the Supreme War Council at which the decision was taken to sow mines at the entrance to Narvik, and also in the Rhine.121 The twin operation was planned for 5 April.
To Rab Butler, the decision to go ahead with ‘Wilfred’ meant that the ‘Winston’ policy on Norway had triumphed over the ‘Halifax’ policy, Halifax only agreeing ‘because of his loyalty to the P.M.’122 The Foreign Secretary had never been all that keen on Churchill’s Narvik plan ‘as I believe its practical value is overrated, but psychologically – and this war seems to be largely one of psychology – it will make the Germans wonder a bit’.123 Chamberlain remained to be convinced, according to Colville, while believing in ‘the necessity of throwing occasional sops to public opinion’.124
In fact, the Prime Minister seemed unusually upbeat. He still clung to his hunch that the war would be over ‘by the spring’.125 The longer its phoney phase continued, the deeper grew his confidence that his strategy to strangle Germany by an economic blockade had been the correct one. Opinion polls supported him: 56 per cent of the population approved of his leadership, a figure unchanged since January. In contrast, only 30 per cent preferred Churchill as an alternative. It cheered Chamberlain to think that Labour politicians previously obstructive as well as bitterly hostile to him might have fallen in with his way of thinking. ‘Attlee actually looks me in the face sometimes …’
Ambassador Maisky had been a close observer of Chamberlain since he replaced Baldwin as leader.126 On 4 April 1940, Maisky was reminded of Chamberlain’s first speech as Prime Minister in 1937. On that occasion, recalled Maisky, Chamberlain had spoken ‘of the gathering thunder-clouds, the tense international situation, and the need to keep a cool head so as not to provoke a catastrop
he with an incautious step.127 The P.M. employed a metaphor in this connection: he spoke of avalanches of snow in the mountains which had sometimes been caused by movements in the air from a human voice.’ Three years on, an incautious remark from Chamberlain lent fatal weight to his earlier metaphor.
On the same day that Maisky made this entry in his journal, Chamberlain climbed on stage at Westminster Hall to deliver a lunchtime speech to the National Union of the Conservative Party. Halifax wrote in his diary: ‘This I heard later he did very successfully, assuring them that, by having allowed nothing to happen for the last six months Hitler had missed the bus.’128 Chamberlain, too, thought his speech was ‘very warmly received, and the informality and “jauntiness” of “Hitler missed the bus” seems to have given peculiar satisfaction.’129 Churchill would take issue with Chamberlain’s phrase in The Gathering Storm, and no doubt was reacting to it the following day when he said to Louis Spears in Paris that ‘we showed a lamentable tendency to miss the bus (Nous allons perdre l’omnibus)’, though as Lord Normanbrook later pointed out: ‘I doubt if he had ever travelled on a bus.’130, 131 The phrase was used a third time – by General Ironside, in an interview given to the Daily Express in which he downplayed the Nazi threat. ‘We are ready for anything they may start, as a matter of fact we would welcome a go at them … I think it is right to say that the British Army is the finest equipped army in the world … Thank goodness Hitler missed the bus.’132
Chamberlain’s speech was well received and widely reported. The change in the French Cabinet had inspired him ‘to speak more like Winston’, observed Lord Salisbury.133 Especially uplifting were Chamberlain’s remarks to the Free Church Council on 6 April that he was now ten times more confident of victory than at the beginning of the war, despite the unnatural calm of the last few weeks. On the same day, he wrote to his sister Hilda: ‘There is a curious and some would say ominous lull in war activities … one wonders what the Boche is up to … we are getting the usual information from “reliable sources” that something prodigious is imminent, but I remain sceptical … But by the time you get this we should have accomplished a little surprise of our own.’134
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