by John Kelly
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Until 1904 Scapa Flow, a thinly inhabited Scottish waterworld of low horizons, cold islands, and deep drafts, dwelled in the eternity of geological time. Then the Royal Navy arrived, military time replaced geological time, and the British Home Fleet replaced the local fishing fleet. Piers, workhouses, minefields, artillery emplacements, brothels, and pubs arose; a war came and went; and a generation of young naval officers returned to Scapa Flow, proud of their service at Jutland, the climactic Anglo-German sea battle of the Great War, and certain that nothing like it would ever be seen again. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the prospect that airpower would render sea power obsolete darkened the days of the senior naval officers at Scapa Flow, and that darkness persisted down to the afternoon of April 7, 1940, when news arrived that large elements of the German fleet had put to sea.
Despite the recent intelligence reports, the German action came as a surprise. On April 3, Churchill, who as first lord of the Admiralty was privy to the latest naval intelligence, had told the cabinet that he “personally doubted whether the Germans would land a force in Scandinavia.” Two days later Chamberlain also dismissed rumors of a German action in Norway. Berlin would issue furious protests when the Royal Navy began the mining of Norwegian waters, he said, but the German government would “take no retaliatory action.”
Forty-eight hours later, a Coastal Command pilot sighted a German task force of eight destroyers and a cruiser heading northward in a heavy sea. A few hours later there was another sighting—three German destroyers also heading north. Then, at one thirty on the afternoon of the seventh, came a third sighting. An RAF pilot counted fourteen destroyers, three cruisers, and one other vessel, possibly a transport; this force was also sailing north. At eight thirty that evening the Home Fleet, which had been on alert since early afternoon, raised anchor and sailed out into the April night. The Second Cruiser Squadron, at Rosyth (another Scottish port), set sail an hour and a half later, leaving behind several battalions of angry British soldiers. The squadron had been preparing to ferry the troops to Norway when news arrived that the German Navy was at sea. Roused from their bunks, the troops had been ordered off the cruisers without explanation, without new orders, and without their equipment. At about the same time, the naval units accompanying British troop ships across the North Sea to Norway peeled away from the convoys and disappeared into the darkness.
The German naval movements were a feint designed to draw the Home Fleet away from the Norwegian coast by the prospect of a historic sea battle along the lines of Jutland. As the British Home Fleet took up battle positions on the night of April 7–8, German warships and merchantmen, holds crowded with troops and engines of war, were taking up attack positions along the unguarded Norwegian coast. “Up the other side of the channel steering came merchant ship after merchant ship. . . . Great tempting tankers, heavy laden ships . . . the German invasion of Norway going north.” So wrote a British submarine captain who was under orders not to attack northbound merchantmen. In the Far North, one German battle group bore down on Narvik, the port through which Swedish iron ore was shipped to Germany; farther south, another force approached Trondheim, a central Norwegian town with a good port and a historic past as the capital of medieval Norway. Below Trondheim, where the weather was treacherous, a third German battle group pitched and rolled in the sea off Stavanger, the site of a strategically important air base. Other German units steamed eastward toward Oslo in force-11 gale winds that reconfigured the sea into canyons of whistling black water.
The Admiralty’s first indication that the German fleet was not where it imagined it was came the following morning, April 8, when the Glowworm, a British ship attached to the mine-laying operation, encountered the Bernard von Arnim, a German destroyer, off the Norwegian coast. During the running gun battle that ensued, the German ship lost its equilibrium in the pitching sea; its bow heaved, its forecastle (upper deck) snapped off, its hold flooded, and two deckhands were swept away. The Glowworm, smaller and more nimble in the heavy seas, was closing in on the destroyer when the Hipper, a large German cruiser, emerged from a snow squall and blew off the Glowworm’s bridge. The British ship fired several torpedoes and made smoke to cover its retreat. Just before the Hipper’s guns caught it emerging from the far side of the smoke screen, the Glowworm made a final transmission to the Admiralty—“Germans at sea”—and then turned into the wind, rammed the Hipper, and blew up. A moment later, the morning sea held more sorrows than the hills of Jerusalem.
In London that morning General Hasting Ismay, secretary to the Imperial Defense Committee, awoke to the sound of a ringing telephone. The duty officer at the War Office was on the line; his words were so garbled that at first Ismay thought his caller had forgotten to put his dentures in. Ismay instructed the officer to do so and then to repeat the message. The caller steadied himself and reported that, overnight, the Germans had seized the main Norwegian ports and Denmark. Hanging up, Ismay realized that until this moment he had never fully grasped “the devastating and demoralizing effect of surprise.”
The next morning, April 9, the intelligence services reported that, overnight, the Germans had occupied three important Norwegian population centers—Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim—and were about to occupy Stavanger and Narvik. A cable from Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador in Paris, further deepened the gloom in Downing Street and Whitehall. The cable concerned Daladier and Reynaud, who were scheduled to visit London later in the day. Campbell warned that due to “acute differences . . . on private and personal matters . . . [Daladier] was now determined to embarrass Reynaud in every possible way.” Spears, always au courant with Parisian gossip, identified the source of the discord thusly: “The Marquise backs the one and the Comtesse backing the other [and both women] having a grand old time, all claws and no holds barred.”
Campbell’s warning proved to be a false alarm. When the Allied Supreme Council convened at four on the afternoon of the ninth, Reynaud and Daladier, conscious of the gravity of the hour, were models of professionalism and seriousness. The French offered an alpine division to assist in the reconquest of the occupied Norwegian ports and agreed that Narvik, the bright, shiny object in British military thinking since the start of the war, should be a priority target. There was also a long discussion about the significance of the German action. Was Norway a one-off or the beginning of the long-anticipated German offensive in the West? On the streets of Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Paris, that question was also a topic of lively and nervous debate on this early spring afternoon. “Will it be Holland and Belgium [next] or the Maginot Line, or a great air attack on this country—or altogether?” wondered the young Downing Street aide John Colville. The council concluded that the threat of a general offensive was grave enough to press neutral Belgium for permission to set up Allied defensive positions along its border.
“These will be fateful days, these next few,” General Ironside wrote in his diary that night.
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The politicians, though slower than soldiers to grasp the dimensions of the German success, had awakened to it by the next morning, April 10. “The Germans have seized the [Norwegian] ports . . . and to dislodge them [would] be a difficult operation,” Chamberlain said at the morning cabinet meeting. The announcement would have greatly surprised readers of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. The morning papers were reporting that Trondheim, Oslo, and Bergen had already been recaptured. “England’s waking up” and “We’ve started on them now,” people told one another on the bus to work; miniature Union Jacks appeared in shop windows; “Rule Britannia” echoed through lunchtime pubs. On the eleventh, when Churchill rose from his seat to brief the House of Commons on Norway, there was a noticeable tingle of expectation in the chamber. Ah, thought Harold Nicolson, an MP at the Ministry of Information, “tales of victory and triumph” from a master orator. What a pleasant prospect!
That happy thought did not survive Churchill’s first few sentences. As the first lord
told a scandalous tale of British setbacks and defeats transformed into victories by unverified rumors emanating from New York and Stockholm and from an irresponsible tabloid press, Nicolson could feel “a cold wave of disappointment” pass through the House. As news of Churchill’s speech spread across the country, the first reaction was confusion. How could that be? people wondered. The government said we’ve already recaptured Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim! Then people became angry, and then depressed. In a scathing report on the handling of the news from Norway by the government and press, Mass Observation noted that the early erroneous good news about Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim had the effect of intensifying the negative impact of Churchill’s bad news.
Many people expected that we should immediately smash Hitler out; wipe his troops and air force and navy off the face of Northern Europe. The First Lord of the Admiralty encouraged this view. And two days after the invasion the press and BBC proclaimed magnificent victories and rumor ran wild. . . . When the rumor was exploded all the uncertainty came up again . . . insidious, magnified.
What came out of all this? . . . A growing belief that Hitler is infinitely cunning, infinitely clever, and immensely strong. A suspicion that he is some sort of ultra-human devil born to curse our days.
In the weeks to come, Norway would become the graveyard of several political careers and the making of several others. It would prove, once again, that Churchill was born under a lucky star, and it would expose glaring weaknesses in the British military’s command structure, most notably in the area of interservice cooperation. General Mackesy, who had been appointed ground commander of the Narvik expedition, and Lord Cork, the naval commander, left Britain on separate ships from separate ports after receiving separate briefings. General Mackesy received his from General Ironside; Lord Cork, his from the first sea lord, Dudley Pound, and a second briefing from Churchill, in the backseat of the first lord’s car just as Cork was about to depart for Norway. Then, amid Admiralty complaints that it had no information about the ground plan for Narvik, War Office complaints that it had no information about the naval plan for Narvik, and Mackesy’s and Cork’s complaints about each other, the war cabinet would decide that Narvik was not that important after all. The Norwegian government wanted first priority given to Trondheim, and Chamberlain and Lord Halifax were inclined to agree with the Norwegians. Churchill half agreed.
At 1:00 a.m. on April 12, General Ironside heard a knock on the door. When he opened it, Churchill was standing in the doorway. Behind the first lord were the first sea lord, Dudley Pound; the first sea lord’s deputy, Admiral Phillips; and the air chief marshal, Cyril Newall. Ironside, who was six feet four, stood in the half light of the doorway, examining his guests, the tallest of whom was a half head shorter than he. “Tiny” Ironside was not a man easily intimidated. He had faced down the Boers in the Boer War, the Germans in the Great War, the Red Army in revolutionary Russia, and innumerable War Office officials. Still, Ironside knew from experience that late-night visits generally brought trouble, and late-night visits involving Churchill generally brought serious trouble. “Tiny,” the first lord said, “I want several of the battalions earmarked for the assault on Narvik diverted south to stake a claim on Trondheim.” Ironside, who as chief of the Imperial General Staff had to approve the request, said no. “A convoy packed in one place is not suitable for landing in another.” After an often heated argument, Churchill went home frustrated, and Ironside, who was acquainted with the first lord’s determination, went to bed uneasy. “I shall not get much sleep tonight,” he wrote in his diary.
On the fourteenth, Churchill again made a late-night visit to the general. “Tiny,” he said, “we are going to the wrong place. We should go for Trondheim.” In the past seventy-two hours, the Royal Navy had scored a series of spectacular victories in the waters around Narvik; and with the town now seemingly on the edge of recapture, Churchill believed that British forces could be safely diverted to the Trondheim operation. “The Navy will make a direct attack on [Trondheim],” he said. “I want a small force of good troops, well led, to follow up the naval attack. I also want landings north and south of Trondheim . . . to cooperate with the assault when it comes off.” Ironside again pointed out that diverting troops to Trondheim would cause insurmountable logistical difficulties; Churchill again insisted that Trondheim was the priority now. The argument went back and forth for several minutes; finally, a resigned Ironside asked Churchill if he was acting in his capacity as first lord of the Admiralty or as the chairman of the Military Coordination Committee. Churchill said in his capacity as chairman of the MCC, which had authority over all three fighting services. Absolved of responsibility for an order he believed foolhardy, Ironside agreed to release the troops.
Almost immediately, the British Chiefs of Staff began to have second thoughts about Trondheim. To reach the town, the invasion fleet would have to force a heavily defended fifty-five-mile fjord. The more the chiefs studied the operation, the more the word “Gallipoli” came to mind. That was the last time the Royal Navy attempted to force a heavily defended, enclosed body of water, and the effort had cost three battleships. The chiefs were also worried about Narvik again. While British troops sat offshore, waiting for the snow to melt on the landing beaches, the Germans had reinforced the town. On April 16 an attack on Narvik looked a good deal more formidable than it had on the fourteenth.
On April 17 the naval assault on Trondheim was scheduled for the twenty-second; on the eighteenth it was rescheduled for the twenty-fourth; and on the nineteenth it was canceled for good, in favor of a land operation. A British force moving south from the fishing village of Namsos, and a second force moving north from the town of Åndalsnes, would attack Trondheim from the landward side. For experienced troops, traversing a hundred-plus miles of snow-covered road in subzero temperatures against heavy opposition on the ground and in the air would be a remarkable feat of arms. For the inexperienced troops of the 146th and 148th Brigades, it would require something akin to a miracle. The 146th and 148th were territorial units made up of citizen soldiers, much like American National Guardsmen. Ten months earlier, most of the men had been ironmongers, farmhands, factory workers, insurance clerks, teachers, and bus drivers. Young men, they knew the names of all the popular bandleaders of the day, but the British army had not yet had time to teach them how to be proper soldiers and did not have enough machine guns and motors to arm them properly.
The Germans that the territorials encountered on the roads to Trondheim were everything they were not. Blocked, the Germans would flank, climb to higher ground, infiltrate, find ways to go around—all to keep up the offensive momentum. Physically and mentally unprepared for war, the territorials were overwhelmed and outmatched. Dazed, they fell back, regrouped, feel back again; on retreats, the men cursed the snow and the meteorologists in Britain who’d said it would be melted by April. They cursed the cruiser that had sailed out of Rosyth with their equipment; they cursed the RAF for surrendering the Norwegian sky to the Luftwaffe. No matter how deep a hole a man dug, the bombs and machine guns of the Stukas and Heinkels always found him. Morale fell; positions were abandoned with little or no resistance; units fragmented, and the newspapers filled with harrowing accounts of the British death march to Trondheim. After one battle, a young lieutenant pulled an American newspaper correspondent aside and said, with some urgency, “Get the word out to the people at home. [Tell them] we’ve got no proper clothes, we’ve got no white capes. . . . For God’s sake, tell them we have no airplanes and antiaircraft guns. Tell them everything I’ve said.” In early May, the remnants of the 146th and 148th Brigades were evacuated back to Britain.
The Narvik operation also had an inglorious end. For weeks after arriving off the coast of Narvik, General Mackesy and Lord Cork sat in a ship, arguing about what to do next. Lord Cork favored an immediate assault on the town beaches; General Mackesy, the ground commander, did not. The beaches were still covered by three- and four-foot snowdrifts, and behin
d the snowdrifts were German machine guns. Cork proposed a naval bombardment to soften up the beaches; citing the risk of heavy civilian casualties, Mackesy said no. In early May the two men were still arguing when General Claude Auchinleck arrived and relieved Mackesy. Under Auchinleck, landings were made at sites around Narvik but not on the town beaches. On May 28 a combined French, Norwegian, and Polish force would capture Narvik, but by that time Norway was about to surrender and the British Expeditionary Force was trapped in a pocket around Dunkirk. Narvik was abandoned almost immediately. To the thousands of British troops who were evacuated back to England, Narvik would forever remain a silhouette on a hostile shore, glimpsed from the portal of a distant ship.
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It is difficult to overestimate the impact the Norwegian campaign had on public opinion in Britain and France. Describing her village’s reaction to Chamberlain’s May 2 announcement that the assault on Trondheim had been abandoned, Margery Allingham wrote: “We had always thought of Mr. Chamberlain as a wonderful vain old man who had nothing particular up his sleeve. . . . Instead [it turned out] the old blighter was mucking about. The effect of this discovery . . . was like suddenly discovering the man driving the Charabanc [bus] in which you were careening down an S-bend mountain road with a wall on one side and a chasm on the other, was slightly tight. Was he about to drive the bus right off the cliff? I have never been more abjectly frightened in my life.” Elsewhere in Britain, reaction to Chamberlain’s announcement was equally sharp.