All Hell Let Loose

by Hastings, Max

  Even as Finland was struggling for survival, through the winter of 1939–40 the Allied armies shivered in snowbound trenches and bunkers on the frontier of Germany. Churchill, the First Sea Lord, strove to extract every ounce of excitement and propaganda from the Royal Navy’s skirmishes at sea with German U-boats and surface raiders. There was a sensational episode on 13 December, when three British cruisers met the far more powerfully armed German pocket-battleship Graf Spee off the coast of Uruguay. In the ensuing battle the British squadron was badly mauled, but Graf Spee suffered damage which caused her to take refuge in Montevideo. She was scuttled on the 17th rather than risk another battle, and her captain committed suicide, an outcome promoted as a handy Allied victory. The British strove to make friends across the Atlantic, or at least to moderate their war-making to avoid antagonising US opinion. When Churchill heard that Americans were angered by the Royal Navy’s contraband searches of their ships, on 29 January 1940 he gave orders that no further US vessels should be bear-led into the British war zone, although this concession was kept secret to avoid upsetting other neutral nations whose vessels remained subject to inspection.

  Meanwhile the Allied leaders and commanders wrangled: French thinking remained dominated by determination to reject a direct military challenge to Hitler; they declined even to shell the heavily industrialised Saarland, within easy range. The Daladier government, favouring an initiative as far as possible from France, was attracted by the notion of tightening the blockade of Germany through interdiction of its Swedish iron-ore supplies. To achieve this, it would be necessary to violate Norwegian neutrality, either by mining the inshore navigation route to force German ships out into the open sea, or by establishing troops and aircraft ashore, or both. Britain’s prime minister and foreign secretary, Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, were unwilling to adopt such a course, despite the urgings of Churchill. Many days were devoted to planning and preparing a Norwegian expedition, but action was repeatedly postponed.

  Gen. Sir Edmund Ironside, head of the British Army, wrote: ‘The French … put forward the most extravagant ideas. They are absolutely unscrupulous in everything.’ Gamelin said afterwards: ‘Public opinion did not know what it wanted done, but it wanted something else, and above all it wanted action.’ A French naval officer and later historian, Jacques Mordal, wrote contemptuously: ‘The idea was to do something, even something stupid.’ A British scheme for mining the Rhine became a new focus of friction: Paris feared that it would provoke German retaliation.

  Almost nothing about these debates was known to the Allied peoples, who saw only their armies inert in the frontier snow, digging trenches and contemplating the Germans opposite. A sense of vacuity afflicted alike young and old, national leaders and humble citizens: ‘Everyone is getting married and engaged, or else having babies,’ wrote twenty-three-year-old Liverpool typist Doris Melling on 7 April. ‘Makes me feel rather stale and out of things.’ She was unimpressed, however, by columnist Lord Castlerosse’s flippant assertion in that day’s Sunday Express that any girl who had not found a husband by the end of the war was not really trying. ‘Most of my friends have made such messes of their married life – no proper homes, keeping in their jobs, and such.’

  Maggie Joy Blunt, a thirty-year-old architectural writer of strong left-wing convictions, lived in Slough, west of London. She observed on 16 December 1939 that what seemed to her most remarkable about the war thus far was how little it changed most people’s lives:

  We have had to suffer certain inconveniences – the blackout, petrol rations, altered bus and train services, a lack of theatrical entertainment, rising cost of food, scarcity of certain commodities such as electric light batteries, sugar, butter. A number of adults are doing jobs that they have never done before and never expected to do. But there has been no essential change in our way of living, in our systems of employment or education, in our ideas or ambitions … It is as though we were trying to play one more set of tennis before an approaching storm descends … A local MP … remarked that he was not in favour of this ‘half-asleep’ war. Scattering pamphlets [on Germany] is no more use than scattering confetti. I am sorry to have to say it, but we shall have to make the Germans suffer before we can make peace possible.

  Had she and her compatriots known it, in the winter of 1939 the Nazis were troubled by many problems of their own. Germany had entered the war on the verge of bankruptcy, in consequence of Hitler’s armaments expenditure. There was so little money for civilian purposes that the railway system was crumbling, and desperately short of rolling stock: two bad train smashes killed 230 people, provoking fierce public anger. Far from the Nazis having made the trains run on time, industry suffered from disrupted coal deliveries, and the Gestapo reported widespread grumbling about the faltering passenger service. The Allied blockade had caused the collapse of Germany’s export markets and a serious shortage of raw materials. Hitler wished to launch a great offensive in the west on 12 November, and was furious when the Wehrmacht insisted on postponement until spring. The generals considered the weather wholly unfavourable to a major offensive, and recognised the deficiencies of their army’s performance in Poland: it was short of vehicles and weapons of all kinds. As the army expanded, the 24.5 million industrial workforce of May 1939 fell by four million. Industrial policy was characterised by wild vacillation and arbitrary production cuts, made necessary by steel shortages.

  A decision was made that would influence German armaments production for years ahead: to focus immediate effort on manufacturing ammunition and Ju88 light bombers. The Luftwaffe convinced itself that the Ju88 was a war-winning weapon, and the plane indeed did notable service. Later, however, lack of new-generation aircraft became a severe handicap. The German navy remained weak – in Admiral Raeder’s gloomy words, ‘not at all adequately armed for the great struggle … it can only demonstrate that it knows how to go down with dignity’. Germany’s paper military strength in the winter of 1939 was only marginally greater than that of the Allies. Given all these difficulties, it is remarkable that Hitler retained his psychological dominance of the conflict. His great advantage was that the Allies had made a principled commitment to confront and defeat Nazism, while lacking any appetite for the bloody initiatives and human sacrifice required to achieve this. Thus, Hitler was left to make his own weather.

  In the last weeks before Germany attacked in the west, relations between the two allies became sulphurous: each blamed the other for failure to wage war effectively. French public opinion turned decisively against prime minister Daladier, who sought a parliamentary vote of confidence on 20 March: only one deputy voted against him, 239 in his support – but three hundred abstained. Daladier resigned, though remaining in the government as defence minister, to be succeeded by Paul Reynaud. France’s new leader was a sixty-two-year-old conservative, notable for high intelligence and physical insignificance – he stood less than 5 feet 3 inches high. Eager to take the initiative, he now proposed a landing in Norway and bombing of Soviet oilfields at Baku. Gamelin said sourly: ‘After Daladier who couldn’t make a decision at all, here we are with Reynaud who makes one every five minutes.’ France’s prime minister initially supported Churchill’s cherished scheme to mine the Rhine, only to be repudiated by his own ministers, still fearing retaliation. The British said that if France would not support the mining operation, they in turn would decline to join a landing at Narvik.

  In the first days of April, as snow vanished from the Continent the armies emerged as if from hibernation, looking about to discern what the new campaigning season might bring. At last, Churchill persuaded his government colleagues to support the mining of Norwegian waters. Four destroyers put to sea to execute this operation, while a small land force embarked at British ports, ready to sail to Norway if the Germans responded to the Royal Navy’s initiative. London was oblivious of the fact that a German fleet was already at sea. For months, Hitler had been fearful of British intervention in Norway, because of its impli
cations for his iron-ore supplies. His agitation acquired urgency on 14 February 1940, when the Royal Navy’s destroyers pursued the Graf Spee’s supply ship Altmark into a Norwegian fjord to free 299 captive British merchant seamen. Determined to pre-empt a British initiative to seize a foothold in Norway, on 2 April he gave the final order for the invasion fleet to sail.

  British ships and planes observed Germany’s intense flurry of naval activity, but naval commanders were so preoccupied with their own impending mining operation that they failed to realise that these movements presaged German action rather than reaction. The Admiralty decided that Admiral Raeder’s warships intended a breakout into the Atlantic to attack British sea lanes; this caused them to deploy much of the Home Fleet many hours’ steaming from Norway. Before dawn on 8 April, the Royal Navy indeed laid a minefield in Norwegian coastal waters. A few hours later, however, the Germans commenced air and naval landings to occupy the entire country. The Phoney War was over.

  Blitzkriegs in the West

  1 NORWAY

  The smaller nations of Europe strove to escape involvement in the war. Most resisted association with Germany, which required acceptance of Hitler’s hegemony, but even those that favoured the objectives of the democracies were wary of joining them in belligerence. Historic experience argued that they would thus expose themselves to the horrors of war for small advantage: the fate of Poland and Finland highlighted the Allies’ inability to protect the dictators’ chosen victims. Holland and the Scandinavian countries had contrived to remain neutral in World War I. Why should they not do so again? In the winter of 1939–40, all took pains to avoid provoking Hitler. The Norwegians were more apprehensive about British designs on their coastline than German ones. At 0130 on 9 April, an aide awoke King Haakon of Norway to report: ‘Majesty, we are at war!’ The monarch promptly demanded: ‘Against whom?’

  Despite repeated warnings that a German invasion was imminent, the country’s tiny army had not been mobilised. The capital was quickly blacked out, but old General Kristian Laake, Norway’s commander-in-chief, responded feebly to news that German warships were approaching up Oslo Fjord: he ordered reservists to be mustered by mail – which would assemble them under arms only on 11 April. His staff officers remonstrated, but Laake was in flight from reality: ‘A little exercise should do these units no harm!’ he declared indulgently. German warships entered ports and began to disembark troops. The Norwegians, French and British had alike deluded themselves that Hitler would never dare to invade Norway in the face of the Royal Navy. Yet poor intelligence and misjudged deployments caused the Admiralty to forfeit its best opportunities to wreak havoc, as the Germans landed on 9 April. Thereafter, although the invaders suffered severe attrition at sea, so too did the Royal Navy at the hands of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Norway’s nearest coastline lay four hundred miles from Britain, beyond range of land-based air cover. The vulnerability of ships to bomber attack was soon brutally exposed.

  The most dramatic development that first morning of the campaign took place in Oslo Fjord shortly after 0400, as the new cruiser Blücher, carrying thousands of German troops, approached Oscarsborg. The ancient fortress’s two nineteenth-century cannon, named ‘Moses’ and ‘Aaron’, were laboriously loaded. Local commander Colonel Birger Eriksen, knowing the gunners’ limitations, held his fire until the last moment. The cruiser was only five hundred yards offshore when the antique weapons belched flame. One shell hit the cruiser’s anti-aircraft control centre, while the other smashed into an aviation fuel store, causing a pillar of flame to leap skywards. After suffering two further hits from shore-launched torpedoes, within minutes Blücher was engulfed in fire and listing heavily, her ammunition exploding. The ship sank with the loss of a thousand German lives.

  Confusion and black comedy then overtook Norway’s capital. The designated assault commander, Gen. Erich Engelbrecht, was a passenger on the stricken Blücher. He was rescued from the fjord by Norwegians who took him prisoner, leaving the invaders temporarily leaderless. Gen. Laake fled the city in the wake of his staff, first taking a tramcar, then attempting unsuccessfully to hitchhike, at last catching a train. The Norwegian government offered its resignation, which was rejected by the king. The national parliament, the Storting, entered emergency session, with fierce arguments about the merits of surrender. Ministers suggested demolishing key bridges to impede the invaders, but several deputies dissented as ‘this would mean destroying valuable architectural works’. The British ambassador delivered a message from London promising aid, but was vague about when this might materialise. German paratroopers secured Oslo airport, and most of Norway’s south-western ports were soon in enemy hands. The first elements of six divisions disembarked and deployed, while the government fled northwards.

  Among stunned spectators of the invaders’ arrival was a nineteen-year-old Austrian Jewish refugee named Ruth Maier. On 10 April, in the Oslo suburb of Lillestrøm, she described in her diary a scene that was becoming a tragic commonplace of Europe: ‘I think of the Germans more as a natural disaster than as a people … We watch as people stream out of basements and crowd together in the streets with perambulators, woollen blankets and babies. They sit on lorries, horse carts, taxis and private cars. It’s like a film I saw: Finnish, Polish, Albanian, Chinese refugees … It is so simple and so sad: people are “evacuated” with woollen blankets, silver cutlery and babies in their arms. They are fleeing from bombs.’

  The Norwegians displayed implacable hostility to their invaders. Even when compelled to acknowledge subjection, they were unimpressed by explanations. Ruth Maier heard three German soldiers tell a cluster of Oslo residents that 60,000 German civilians had been murdered by the Poles before the Wehrmacht intervened to save their ethnic brethren. Ruth laughed:

  [The man] turns to me and says: ‘Are you laughing, Fräulein?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And our Führer!’, he goes all misty-eyed. ‘Obviously he’s a human being like the rest of us, but he’s the best, the best we have in Europe.’ The [soldier] with the sky-blue eyes – also misty now – nods: ‘The best … the best …!’ More people come over to listen. The Norwegian says: ‘Are we really to believe that you’ve come over here to protect us? … That’s what it says here!’ He points to [a] newspaper … ‘Protect you? No, we’re not doing that.’ But the blond interrupts him. ‘Yes, of course that’s what we’re doing.’ The brown-haired one thinks for a moment and then says, ‘Yes, actually, if we’re honest about it … we’re protecting you from the English.’ The Norwegian: ‘And you believe that?’

  The faith of most Germans in the virtue as well as the expediency of their mission was fortified by its swift success. The invaders closed their grip on southern Norway, having secured communications with the homeland by occupying the intervening Danish peninsula almost without resistance. The Norwegian Storting met again in the little town of Elverum, forty miles north of Oslo, where its deliberations were sharpened by news that the Germans had nominated a traitor to lead a puppet regime in Oslo. ‘We now have a Kuusinen government,’ declared the prime minister contemptuously: he alluded to Finnish communist Otto Kuusinen, who collaborated with Stalin’s invasion of Finland. But Norway’s counterpart, Vidkun Quisling, would become much more notorious, his name passing into the English language.

  Four busloads of German paratroopers on their way to Elverum came under fire from a roadblock manned by members of a local rifle club; the Norwegians drove the attackers back in disarray, mortally wounding the German air attaché Captain Eberhard Spiller, who had been tasked to arrest the nation’s leadership. The royal family and ministers decamped to the little village of Nybergsund. King Haakon VII was a tall, gaunt, sixty-seven-year-old Dane, elected monarch when the Norwegians gained independence from Sweden in 1905. In 1940, he displayed dignity and courage. At a government council held amid the deep snow of Nybergsund on the evening of 10 April, he told ministers in a high, quavering voice: ‘I am profoundly moved at the idea of having to assume personal responsibilit
y for the woes that will befall our country and our people if German demands are rejected … The government is free to decide, but I shall make my own position clear: I cannot accept … This would conflict with everything I have considered to be my duty as a king.’ Rather than bow to Berlin’s insistence that he should endorse Quisling, he would abdicate. The old king lapsed into silence for several long moments, then burst into tears. At last, he continued: ‘The government must now take its decision. It is not bound by my position … Yet I felt it was my duty to make it known.’

  The Norwegians committed themselves to fight, to buy time for Allied assistance to come. Next day, the 11th, Haakon and his son Prince Olav were communing with their ministers when the Germans bombed and strafed Nybergsund in an attempt to decapitate the national leadership. The politicians threw themselves into a pigsty while the king and his aides took cover in a nearby wood. No one was killed, and though the Norwegians were shaken by the Heinkels’ repeated machine-gunning, their resolve remained unbroken. Haakon was shocked to see civilians exposed to German fire. ‘I could not bear to watch … children crouching in the snow as bullets mowed down the trees and branches rained down on them,’ he said. He declared that never again would he seek refuge in a place where his presence imperilled innocents.

  Monarch and politicians briefly discussed seeking sanctuary in Sweden, a notion favoured by the prime minister. Haakon would have none of this, and Norway’s leaders moved to Lillehammer to continue the struggle. Poor, broken old Gen. Laake was replaced as commander-in-chief by the courageous and energetic Gen. Otto Ruge, to whom a British officer paid the supreme compliment of asserting that he resembled a master of foxhounds. Norway’s belated mobilisation was chaotic, since its southern depots and armouries were in German hands, but most of the 40,000 men who responded were passionate patriots. Frank Foley, the British Secret Service’s man in Oslo, cabled tersely: ‘You cannot conceive pitiable condition material this army, but men fine types.’ In the weeks that followed, some Norwegians played heroic parts in their nation’s defence. The country had few large towns; much of its population was scattered in communities beside deep-sea fjords, connected by narrow roads passing through defiles between mountain ranges. German, British and French commanders, surprised to find themselves fighting in Norway, were alike reduced to assembling intelligence about the battlefield by buying Baedeker travel guides from their local bookshops in Berlin, London and Paris.