by Tony Insall
A cheerful Jan Baalsrud (right), the only survivor from Operation MARTIN, on his way back to Norway at the end of the war. © NHM
SOE calculated that the total distance which Baalsrud had covered during his escape was approximately 170 miles, which included thirty-five miles by water, seventy miles on foot and by ski, and sixty-five miles when he was being carried on a sledge.45 SIS wrote to SOE in July, saying that they had heard that Baalsrud was in Sweden. They asked whether it could be arranged for them to interview him once he returned to England. ‘He has been looked after in Tromsø district by our men, and we would like to get from him all the local colour we possibly can with regard to our organisation in this district.’ SOE duly arranged this, and after they had met him and read his report SIS wrote, ‘this is an amazing story of fortitude, devotion and courage on the part of Baalsrud and our Upsilon organisation, and is epic’.46
Archer/Heron: further German reprisals
SOE normally took great care to try to avoid the possibility of German reprisals against the local population. Saboteurs were instructed to leave items of British equipment or clothing at the scene of an operation, to encourage the Germans to think that British commandos were responsible. This deception generally worked well, but it was inevitable that there would occasionally be incidents involving SOE personnel which led to harsh German reprisals. One of the worst occurred after the penetration of the Archer/Heron party. The first members of this group landed on Vega Island in Nordland, just south of the Arctic Circle, in December 1941, and were reinforced in the spring of 1942 by two further groups led by a Swede, Birger Sjøberg. Their tasks were to train local groups and set up arms dumps: over six months they received twenty-four tons of supplies, and moved most of them long distances over difficult terrain to safer storage, a prodigious feat. They achieved good success and SOE estimated, with exaggerated optimism, that the team had trained nearly a thousand men. However, they were given away by a mixture of the indiscretions of local supporters, and betrayal by a Norwegian informant. An exchange of fire between some of the group and a German arresting party near Majavatn on 6 September led to the death of two Germans and the accompanying Norwegian sheriff. Archer/Heron broke up.47 This incident also coincided with two successful raids – Knotgrass/Unicorn – against the Glomfjord power station, and Kestrel against the Fosdalen iron ore mine. (SOE contributed to the former, and carried out the latter.) The Germans reacted very sharply and, as a reprisal, shot thirty-four local hostages and proclaimed a state of emergency in the Trondheim area.||||||
Other problems faced by SOE
In early September 1942, Wilson reviewed the extent of SOE’s progress in establishing its organisation in Norway. He noted that in the previous year SOE had extended its reach by setting up stations from the edge of the Arctic Circle southwards: including Archer and Heron in Nordland; Lark in Sør-Trøndelag; Antrum in Møre og Romsdal; Mallard, Raven and Penguin in Hordaland; Arquebus in Rogaland; Cheese and Swan in Vest-Agder and Aust-Agder; Grouse in Telemark; Anchor in Vestfold, Anvil in Oppland; and Crow in Akershus. While this was an impressive achievement, it had come at a cost. The Arquebus agents had been lost at sea while returning to Britain and the radio was out of action. The Penguin and Anchor wireless operators had both been killed in Telavåg in late April. The Anchor organiser was captured in Drammen in May. Mallard and his assistant were both captured on 30 May after they had been in Norway for only six weeks. The Crow wireless operator had been arrested on 26 July after being in Norway for four months. The Archer wireless operator was arrested on 6 September and there was also information that Heron had come under suspicion and some of his party had been arrested in early September. Wireless operators had experienced the greatest difficulties, and Wilson calculated that a total of sixteen operators had been sent over to Norway with fifteen sets. However, of that number only six stations were still surviving – Heron, Lark, Anvil, Antrum, Raven and Cheese – while two more, Swan and Plover, were not yet on the air.
Wilson concluded that the Norwegian section had achieved a success rate of about 50 per cent. However, this did not take into account the very severe losses suffered by loyal Norwegians in Norway who might have been implicated in SOE’s activities. He noted that the Norwegian government was solid in its support and emphasised that the threat of reprisals could not be permitted to justify the cessation of all aggressive operations. The fact that the Germans used reprisals as a weapon meant that the very greatest care needed to be taken in the preparation and planning of all their activities. This should include the thorough training of personnel, the collection of up-to-date intelligence, the provision of equipment and supplies, transport, the passing of messages, and every detail connected with activities of every nature operated both from Britain and through Stockholm. Equipment needed to be checked carefully to ensure that it worked properly – there were still examples of radios failing to function – and that it contained no compromising materials of British origin, such as toothpaste or British batteries. There had been examples of both – and sometimes even more embarrassing incidents, where supplies were wrapped in British newspapers.
Wilson was frank about the fairly long list of reasons causing failures, which involved shortcomings on both the British and the Norwegian sides, and the steps which should be taken to address them. He pointed out that long-term planning was a foreign concept to many of those who were sent to Norway, as they had hoped for an Allied landing in 1942 and risked being more casual. He also blamed a Norwegian tendency to overrate the loyalty of relatives and friends, carelessness and the combination of separate objectives for the same mission – a characteristic we have seen several times. It would be necessary to ensure in future that personnel were not landed at the same time as arms which were to be stored in dumps. No two arms consignments should be landed in the same neighbourhood. Neither organisers nor wireless operators destined for different areas should be sent on the same trip, as had happened at Telavåg. A series of trips to the same destination should be avoided unless there was certainty that no suspicion had been aroused by a previous trip. A boat carrying out an operation should not visit two separate places on the coast during a single trip. Prior arrangement for the reception of personnel or arms should be made most carefully. And, finally – and perhaps most importantly – it was essential to establish close liaison with other organisations (such as the navy) also conducting operations on the Norwegian coast.48
Dealing with Norwegian collaborators
Despite the planning and careful preparation outlined by Wilson to reduce the risks to SOE in Norway, it did not prove possible to eliminate all the risks. There were some aspects which were often beyond their control. In particular, the actions of collaborators, informers and agents provocateurs posed a threat to loyal Norwegians.
The most damage was done by members of the Rinnan gang, led by Henry Rinnan and Ivar Grande, whose activities led to the deaths of many Norwegians. Perhaps Rinnan’s most notorious achievement was the successful infiltration of a resistance group based in the Vikna district of Trøndelag, of which one of the leaders was the cleric Thorvald Moe. Rinnan ingratiated himself so successfully that Moe started to trust him with information and to cooperate with him. When Moe was arrested by the Germans, Rinnan staged his release and encouraged him to travel to Sweden. Before his departure, Moe gave Rinnan extensive information about his activities and contacts, which enabled Rinnan to take over the whole organisation, running it from early 1943 until September 1944. The group was eventually broken up, and well over a hundred Norwegians were arrested. Many were tortured, and some were killed.49 Also in 1943, Rinnan obtained information which enabled him to betray Henry Thingstad, the leader of the youth sports club in Trondheim which was active in resistance. Thingstad and nine others were executed. The Rinnan group was considered so important that they were given their own office in the German headquarters in the Misjonshotell, the Gestapo headquarters in Trondheim. Grande was liquidated after four unsuccess
ful attempts, while Rinnan was captured, tried and executed after the liberation.
In the wartime conditions which existed in Norway, it was also possible for experienced resistance members to be taken in by people who subsequently sought to betray the organisation. For example, Einar Skinnarland, who played a key role in GUNNERSIDE, later recruited a young lad called Erling Solheim in the winter of 1943. Solheim had been a school friend and was considered to be a good patriot by local acquaintances. He provided the resistance with some quite useful information. In February 1944, a Norwegian working for the Gestapo in Oslo intercepted a letter to the Gestapo from Solheim in which he expressed his willingness (in return for money) to provide information on Milorg activities in Rjukan, Brevik and Moss. This was reported and two resistance members disguised themselves as Norwegian state police and drove to Rjukan in a Norwegian police car, carrying police identification papers. They told Solheim that the Gestapo were most grateful for his offer, which they accepted, and asked him to tell all he knew. Solheim did so, while they took copious notes. He then asked for 100,000 Norwegian kroner, whereupon they shot him, left his body in the middle of the road and arranged for publication of the story in the local clandestine press as a warning to others.50
Sometimes there was compassion, or at least understanding, in similar (but less serious) cases. Arthur Pevik, who was one of the early SOE organisers in Trondheim, recruited Nils Lien into his organisation. He had known Lien well before the war; the two of them had fought together against the Germans after the invasion. Lien was wounded and Pevik took over their platoon.51 For some time Lien worked effectively by disseminating BBC news broadcasts to local patriots. However, he was then seen being driven in a car belonging to the German security police, which led to him being unmasked as an informer. Pevik informed him that he would be liquidated unless he left for Sweden, which he did immediately.
As this problem became more serious, the Norwegian government decided that it was necessary to take action to eliminate informers. Actions to deal with them were approved by Torp and General Hansteen. However, the first attempt, Bittern, which was mounted by SOE at the request of the Norwegian High Command in October 1942, was not a success.
Milorg were not consulted before the group’s arrival about the nature of the tasks which they had been given. They were not at that stage convinced that the policy was justified and did not agree with the selection of those on the list for ‘liquidation’. The group was dropped without warning on a site that had been selected by another resistance group, which consequently then had to look for somewhere else. Other aspects of the group’s behaviour also upset Milorg, particularly the excessive drinking of some of them. They exhibited other shortcomings too: Johannes Andersen had been a notorious burglar before the war and took little trouble to conceal that fact. Although some of the group did well as instructors, Milorg became alarmed at the risks which Bittern posed, and sent them back to Stockholm after only six weeks. Wilson was told afterwards that ‘it is extremely interesting to note that the worst complaint we have ever heard from Norway concerning our agents in the field and our own behaviour in London comes from an operation planned entirely by the Norwegian High Command’. With SOE’s own previous problems with Milorg in mind, Wilson retorted that the case had served a useful purpose, ‘if for no other reason than that it had made the Norwegian High Command fully alive to the difficulties which we ourselves have experienced in the past’.52
In the autumn of 1943, SOE staged a ‘rat week’ covering all occupied European countries. The intention was to liquidate a range of informers throughout Europe and thereby obtain the maximum effect. The results in Norway were meagre, but gradually Milorg became more accepting of the need for such measures, which were carried out quite extensively in 1944 and 1945. Although SOE helped to support these activities, and to despatch groups such as Goldfinch and Chaffinch (which were among those heavily involved), the decisions about which collaborators should be liquidated were generally resolved between Milorg and the Norwegian High Command. It will never be known exactly how many people were killed in these operations. SOE calculated that there had been fifty-nine, while the Norwegian total was sixty-five. Arnfinn Moland’s research has gone further, providing details of eighty-two confirmed cases of liquidations carried out by the resistance, but it is quite possible that there were other instances which will remain unknown.53
Notes
1 TNA, HS 2/136.
2 TNA, HS 8/790.
3 TNA, HS 8/822. Fleming later became famous as the author of the James Bond novels.
4 TNA, HS 2/177.
5 NHM, SIS progress report, February 1943.
6 Berit Nøkleby, Pass godt på Tirpitz!, pp. 46 – 47.
7 Rørholt, Usynlige soldater, pp. 447– 448.
8 Oluf Reed Olsen, Two Eggs on my Plate (London: Companion Book Club, 1954), pp. 41–89.
9 TNA, HS 9/892/7.
10 TNA, HS 7/175.
11 TNA, HS 2/234.
12 TNA, HS 2/229. Neither the identity of the agent, nor of the incoming party, is recorded here.
13 TNA, HS 7/175.
14 M. R. D. Foot, SOE, p. 72.
15 TNA, HS 2/167.
16 TNA, HS 7/174.
17 TNA, HS 2/162–163. Merkesdal’s personal file, HS 9/1023/2, contains no relevant information beyond his training report.
18 TNA, HS 9/781/1 and HS 2/162–163.
19 TNA, HS 7/280.
20 TNA, HS 9/1553/6.
21 TNA, HS 2/150.
22 TNA, HS 2/150.
23 TNA, HS 9/1406/3.
24 TNA, HS 2/182.
25 TNA, HS 2/180–183.
26 TNA, HS 9/1603/3.
27 Max Manus, Underwater Saboteur (London: William Kimber, 1953), p. 30.
28 TNA, HS 2/191.
29 TNA, HS 2/208–210.
30 TNA, HS 2/11. Pyrites were used for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, a key chemical for many industrial processes.
31 TNA, HS 2/134.
32 TNA, HS 9/413/5.
33 Security Service ‘lessons learned report’, 20 August 1942, TNA, HS 2/136.
34 Ibid.
35 TNA, Wilson minute to Gubbins, 14 June 1942, HS 2/154.
36 RA, Letter from Nagell to Hansteen, 18 May 1942, Nagell papers, box 10.
37 TNA, HS 2/155.
38 TNA, HS 2/136. The last sentence was a reference to operations which were envisaged against Norwegian informers and agents provocateurs working for the Germans.
39 TNA, HS 2/243.
40 Ibid.
41 TNA, HS 8/790.
42 Kristian Ottosen, Natt og tåke. Historien om Natzweiler-fangene (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1989), p. 387 and p. 385.
43 NHM, SIS progress report, April 1943.
44 TNA, HS 2/161. A fuller version of the story of Baalsrud’s escape is graphically told by David Howarth in We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (London: Lyons Press, 2016), also in Norwegian as Ni liv (Oslo: Cappelens Forlag, 1955). Baalsrud is one of a small number of SOE Norwegian agents (others are Gunnar Sønsteby, Ingvald Johansen and Tor Gulbrandsen) for whom there is no personal file in TNA.
45 TNA, HS 2/234.
46 TNA, HS 2/161.
47 TNA, 2-147-8.
48 TNA, HS 2/232.
49 Sverre Kjeldstadli, Hjemmestyrkene, pp. 252–254.
50 TNA, HS 2/229 and HS 2/170.
51 TNA, HS 9/1178/7.
52 TNA, HS 2/200.
53 Arnfinn Moland has carried out extensive and well-documented research on this subject, published in Over Grensen? Hjemmefrontens likvidasjoner under den tyske okkupasjonen av Norge 1940–1945 (Oslo: Orion, 1999). British records are less than complete. For example, the files for Chaffinch and Goldfinch are not among those which have survived and been released to the National Archives.
* To give some idea of the problem, which was a continuing irritant, according to SOE figures just 101 passengers were flown to Britain in September 1942. The waiting list for flights was
very long indeed, and by then some people had been waiting for two and a half years. The list included SIS and SOE personnel, RAF flight crews, Allied officers and troops from France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Holland, Belgium and Yugoslavia, Swedish merchant officers, diplomats from Britain, America, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland and other countries, nearly 3,000 Norwegian refugees, and also vital freight for the Ministry of Supply. A priority system enabled key SOE and SIS personnel to be put at the head of the queue. The basic problems were the inadequate number of aircraft, and that most of those available were unsuitable. Whitleys had very unreliable engines, and could not fly on only one. Lockheed Lodestars had a poor payload and insufficient altitude – and two of them could only carry four passengers. Norwegian frustration at British inability to provide better services grew to such an extent that on several occasions they threatened retaliation. The previous chapter outlined how Lie threatened to prevent the supply of ball bearings from Sweden if the service was not improved. He was only with difficulty dissuaded from this and similar actions. Some Mosquitoes were made available in 1943, but their numbers were still very limited.
† It was finally decided to close Burghead after an incident in which the commandant Hugh Marks (who had been sent home from Stockholm in October 1941) and Andreas Fasting (who parachuted into Norway with Odd Starheim in January 1942) were drowned.
‡ A total of ten boats were lost between 1940 and 1943.