Secret Alliances
Page 40
† HMS Tribune had also attacked a German submarine on 6 September 1940 when both were submerged, and reported an explosion shortly after it had fired a torpedo. But the captain only observed a small amount of evidence of wreckage afterwards and no German submarine was reporting missing in the operational area on that date. Venturer was sold to the Royal Norwegian Navy after the war, and remained in service as KNM Utstein until 1964.
‡ It was later established that the two Germans were actually deserters who had carried out some small acts of sabotage but were then given away by another German whom they met. They were forced to keep the meeting with Gram and Tallaksen so as to identify them, but were shot the following day. (TNA, HS 2/193.)
CHAPTER 13
‘LUKKET PÅ GRUNN AV GLEDE’
‘CLOSED BECAUSE OF JOY’ – THE FINAL STEPS TO FREEDOM
SIGN IN AN OSLO BOOKSHOP WHICH CLOSED TO MARK THE LIBERATION OF NORWAY.
Attempts to alleviate the situation in northern Norway
The situation in northern Norway became more desperate in early 1945, with growing devastation as a result of the continuing German scorched-earth policy. Trygve Lie explored further means of achieving Allied intervention. First, he sought public British support and sympathy. He requested that British ministers mention Norway in speeches and commend her contribution. Eden asked his Cabinet colleagues to help, and several did.1 Eden himself also obliged a few days later in a speech in Parliament on 16 January when, referring to Norway and Holland (where starvation was also prevalent), he said,
they are two countries that set perhaps some of our allies something of an example in political unity, two countries which have contributed to the fullest extent in their power to the Allied effort, and I think that the House would wish that at this time of their greatest travail, a message from us should go to the people to tell them that everything that is in our power to alleviate their suffering will be done and that we shall not forget, either now or in future years, the glorious part that they have played.2
Public statements alone were of course insufficient to cause any change in policy. The Norwegian government continued to search for ways to stimulate the Allies into changing their attitude and invading northern Norway. This was partly, as Lie candidly admitted to Collier, because he wanted to provide the Norwegian government with an alibi for use with Norwegian public opinion after the war. He asked Collier for assistance in arranging a conference with the director and deputy director of Military Intelligence (Generals Sinclair and Peake respectively) to discuss the possibility of military action. Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, pointed out that Sinclair and Peake were not competent to discuss military possibilities in such circumstances. He recommended that the Norwegians should be advised to approach SHAEF instead, as this responsibility fell within their competence. The Foreign Office Northern Department countered that to do so would suggest to Norwegians that they were not being taken seriously. It proposed that Eden should meet Lie, ask him to submit his proposal to SHAEF, but also request a copy of the details, so that the Foreign Office could study the political aspects while SHAEF looked at the military considerations. Eden did so on 13 January.
Lie provided a very detailed plan prepared by the Norwegian High Command. Its purpose was mainly to provide humanitarian assistance in Finnmark. It would include large elements of the Norwegian brigade in Scotland, as well as part of one of the Norwegian squadrons serving in the RAF.3 Eden observed, ‘we can hardly refuse to allow the Norwegians to use their own forces on behalf of their own folk’. General Thorne of Scottish Command, who was to become Commander in Chief of British Land Forces in Norway, passed the plan to SHAEF, and Crown Prince Olav took a copy to Washington to discuss with the Americans – though the American Chief of Staff General Marshall made clear that he considered this to be a British, rather than an American, problem.4 However, as with previous attempts to encourage a landing in Norway, the Norwegian plan foundered on the attitude of the Chiefs of Staff. They put forward a range of objections, noting that it would entail diversion of naval and air units required to counteract the U-boat offensive, that SHAEF would be unable to provide a maintenance commitment and that the allocation of shipping would place an extra burden on Allied resources when naval resources were already in short supply. Finally, they pointed out that it remained the case that the Allies simply had insufficient forces to be able to support the Norwegians in such a move. The Chiefs of Staff calculated that even in the event of a German collapse, it would take weeks before they would be able to divert adequate forces to Norway to assist with the process of disarmament.5 It would be necessary to rely heavily on Milorg. At the end of January, when the Chiefs of Staff consulted SHAEF about briefing the Norwegians on this problem, Eisenhower decided that they should only be given a limited explanation about the nature of the Allied difficulty. The Chiefs of Staff asked the Foreign Office to discourage the Norwegians from pursuing their idea.6
Large quantities of medical, fuel and building supplies, as well as foodstuffs, were delivered to northern Norway during this period. The Ministry of War Production calculated in February that 5,183 tons of relief supplies had already been delivered, but this was only a small part of what was needed.7 Not surprisingly, the British failure to do more to provide assistance to northern Norway, however understandable in the face of the resource issues which they could not adequately resolve, cast something of a shadow over Anglo-Norwegian relations during this late stage of the war.
As the Allies advanced into Germany in the spring of 1945, there remained much uncertainty about what might happen in Norway. In particular, there were concerns right up until the last days of the war about Festung Norwegen – the possibility that the eleven German divisions remaining in Norway might continue to fight even after the army in Germany had been defeated. On 3 May at a meeting in Flensburg, Böhme and Lindemann (German commanders in chief in Norway and Denmark respectively) and Terboven (Reichskommissar in Norway) all spoke for continuing the war. This might have been intended as a bargaining counter for use by Dönitz in negotiations with the Allies. Hauge, who had his own contacts with German headquarters, had reported to London a fortnight earlier that both Böhme and the naval commander Admiral Ciliax had told Terboven that they could not guarantee the loyalty of their troops.8 Nor was it known how far Sweden would be willing to become involved in supporting Allied operations in Norway or even in temporarily giving up its long-standing neutrality and entering the war. Military staff talks with the Swedes did eventually take place, but they did not get very far. Britain remained unable to offer the Norwegian government any reassurance about the support which would be available if Germany did decide to fight on in Norway. At a meeting on 5 April, Churchill told Nygaardsvold that he could not promise any diversion of Allied resources if that happened, and could only undertake that the Allies would continue the war until Norway was liberated.
SOE operations
Wilson chaired a meeting at Special Forces headquarters (SF HQ) on 9 January to assess the current state of the Norwegian resistance. He emphasised the importance of maintaining their morale and the danger to any secret organisation of a prolonged period of inactivity. He pointed out that there were thought to be as many able-bodied male Germans in Norway as there were able-bodied male Norwegians – approximately 250,000. This meant that the balance of armed strength remained very much in the German favour.9 In fact, as Wilson acknowledged after the war, estimates varied and he considered that SHAEF’s calculations of enemy forces in Norway had been too low. It transpired that the total number of Germans in Norway, including military, security and police forces and a small number of civilians, was actually over 365,000. Wilson also referred to the dangerous situation in the north, particularly around the Kirkenes area. Without referring to the political complications, he simply said that the government was thinking of transferring the Norwegian brigade there to protect Norwegian interests and show that something was being done, but plans
were held up because of the strength of German naval forces in the area.10
Although many members of the resistance had to bide their time, waiting for the order to move into action, their morale would have been lifted by the continuing series of effective sabotage operations. Attacks continued against shipping, as well as loading cranes, railway lines and bridges, fuel supplies and factories linked to the production of war materials, as well as equipment, clothing and other supplies. One of the most imaginative was the sabotaging of more than twenty shells of 88mm anti-aircraft ammunition at a store at Gvepsborg (near Rjukan) in February 1945, which was carried out by members of the Sunshine counter-sabotage group. The shells were unobtrusively doctored so that they would explode immediately when fired. Sunshine reported that they had been evenly distributed among 200 tons of ammunition transported to Oslo and Horten. Wilson sent Sunshine a message of congratulations a few days later, informing them that the German anti-aircraft guns at Horten had been put out of action during an RAF raid there on 23 February, and he assumed that their work was responsible for this achievement.11 It was shortly after this, on 11 March, that Leif Tronstad and Gunnar Syverstad were killed when they were interrogating a quisling official. Tronstad was replaced in command by Jens-Anton Poulsson, the leader of the Grouse/Swallow party which supported FRESHMAN/GUNNERSIDE, who had been in charge of Moonlight (one of the subordinate Sunshine teams tasked to protect Norwegian strategic installations against German destruction).
A further preparatory measure, the Scale/Minim operation, was implemented in December 1944 with the posting of Henning Nyberg from the SOE Norwegian section to Stockholm. His role was to assist with the training of Norwegian police troops, who could be deployed into Norway as soon as the Germans capitulated, in an operation known as BEEFEATER. This did not work as Wilson had hoped, because Nyberg was not permitted access to any of the BEEFEATER units – apparently because it was being treated as a bilateral matter with the Swedes. Nyberg also judged that it was a sign that the Norwegians wanted to be able to ‘run their own show’, perhaps not surprisingly by this stage of the war.12
The Anglo-Norwegian Collaboration Committee (ANCC) did not meet for nearly four months between December 1944 and April 1945 because several of the Norwegian members were abroad. Øen planned to be absent for three weeks, but was away for three months. By this time it may not have been thought to matter too much, because there were few difficult issues to resolve and operational reports were still being circulated. However, Wilson noted that it caused unfortunate results, because Øen held the balance between the military and Milorg elements of FO.IV, which coordinated their activity. Things did not run quite so smoothly in his absence.13 Øen was able to complete some complicated and protracted negotiations with the Swedes over the establishment of bases on Swedish territory and the transport of operational stores. Furthermore, to the considerable surprise (perhaps even consternation) of Wilson and the SOE hierarchy, he visited Norway, meeting the Milorg leadership and a range of district leaders. Escorted by Sønsteby, he inspected a fully armed and equipped resistance unit at Odal, north-east of Oslo in one of the larger Milorg areas, and then went to Kongsberg, where he met Tronstad and other members of the Sunshine party.* 14
Bjarne Øen, the head of FO.IV, the Norwegian counterpart of SOE. © NHM
Sønsteby’s last coup
On 2 May 1945, Sønsteby carried out one of his most important operations – and one of the most brazen. He organised a group of eleven members of the Oslo gang to bluff their way into the Ministry of Justice and the police headquarters and to remove more than two and a half tons of documents from them, including some from the office of the Justice Minister Sverre Riisnæs, which he was shown by a cooperative secretary. Many of them were in a safe weighing more than half a ton on the second floor. Remarkably, the group were able to manhandle it downstairs. Their raid was just in time, because some documents had already been burned. The material which they rescued was to prove of considerable value in the trials of Quisling and NS collaborators held after the war. Wilson described it as ‘a haul of the utmost importance’.15 After the liberation, Sønsteby was awarded a richly deserved DSO.
SIS activities
By January 1945, SIS had forty-two stations in Norway, of which half were sending in what it assessed as being good or valuable intelligence, mainly on convoy and shipping movements. Of the other half, some were in the process of establishing themselves, some were closing down because of security or other concerns, some had not been able to make contact and two were under German control. It is worth looking at a representative sample of their activities. Delfin, manned by Torstein Raaby, was operating from Vadsø, near Kirkenes. At that time SOE had no communications equipment available, so Delfin was relaying back to London all messages from the Norwegian military mission liaising with the Russians in northern Norway. This service was stopped on 18 January, following the Russian refusal to permit the transmission of encyphered traffic to London.16 In addition to sending in regular and valuable reports on the military situation in the Tromsø area, Gudrun was relaying instructions from the Norwegian High Command to the local population for action in the event of compulsory evacuation. Because of security concerns, the agent manning Libra, together with his family and seventeen others including an SIS Synnøve agent, was evacuated by a naval whaler from Kvitnes, in the Lofoten islands. Frey, south of Ålesund, continued to be one of SIS’s ‘most regular and valuable convoy reporting stations’. An attempt to establish Ulva snear Bergen had not succeeded because of the discovery by the Germans of an SOE arms dump near the site of the intended station. The agent, Erling Lunde, was arrested in the widespread search which followed. SIS admitted that his brother was an SOE agent, an indication that some security lessons still remained to be learned. Njord, in Hurum on the Oslofjord, manned by the redoubtable Hans Clifton (an outstanding SIS agent of long standing), sent in its 600th message: ‘He continues to send in first class shipping intelligence.’ Lyra (in Finnmark) and Reva (near Bergen) were two German-controlled stations which continued to be active. SIS observed that despite the sinking of Tirpitz on 12 November, Lyra had sent in a message more than a month later accusing SIS of leaving him in the lurch. They judged that the Germans were still trying to obtain details of the organisation in Tromsø – though they did not persist for very much longer.17
During the last few months of the war the Germans remained very active – and effective. Gubbins told the Foreign Office that they were still working hard to suppress Norwegian activities, and had put out a notice saying that they would shoot any Norwegian serviceman who landed with or without uniform.18 They were very successful against SIS during this period, capturing a series of stations, including Leporis III and Mani in Trondheim, Sabor in Stavanger, Turid in Ålesund, Roska in Florø and Corona, Thor II and Olga in Oslo. Most of the operators survived, though members of Roska, Corona and Sabor were shot when resisting arrest. Other stations were forced to close and evacuate, either because some of their agents were arrested, or because of other security alerts in the area. These included Frey, Glaur and Njord. Following the capture of Olga, Clifton was told to leave Njord and take refuge in Sweden. However, making light of the risks, he returned a few weeks later and established another station, Lillemor, in the same area.19
Liberation
After Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, the end of the war came quickly. Hitler was replaced by Dönitz, who authorised General Jodl to sign an unconditional surrender on 7 May, which would come into force on 8 May. General Thorne established radio contact with General Böhme and sent Brigadier Hilton to negotiate the German surrender at a meeting later the same day at his headquarters in Lillehammer, north of Oslo. Böhme accepted the following morning, 9 May. He may have been taken by surprise by the speed of the unconditional surrender, and would certainly not have been aware of the very limited forces which the Allies could have made available to enforce the surrender terms if he had chosen to fight on.
SOE had also been taken somewhat unawares by the speed of developments, and SF HQ was slow to send out definite and immediate orders to Norway. Milorg themselves reacted quickly to the statement made by Churchill on 6 May about the imminent cessation of hostilities, and took that as the signal to start to come out of hiding and take their positions to prevent any last-minute German attempts at demolition or sabotage. They made contact on 7 May with the German headquarters in Lillehammer, north of Oslo, to discuss their intentions. The Wehrmacht eventually accepted that Milorg could make a valuable contribution to maintaining law and order. There were nonetheless a series of tense meetings across Norway as similar discussions took place elsewhere – usually between a Milorg commander in some sort of makeshift uniform with a small group of bodyguards and a senior German officer backed by a large staff. Fortunately, discipline prevailed and there were no significant incidents. Terboven committed suicide. Norwegian police battalions and some of the Sepal groups moved into Norway at the same time, supplemented a few days later by airborne troops and further special forces detachments. The German surrender, and the subsequent disarmament and repatriation of German troops, was more peaceful than even the most optimistic forecasts.
Crown Prince Olav returned to Oslo on 13 May with some members of the Norwegian government. King Haakon returned, amid enthusiastic scenes of joyful celebration, on 7 June, five years to the day since he had left Tromsø. Some of the NORIC detachment acted as his bodyguard as he returned to the palace. On 9 June, 15,000 members of Milorg, and others who had assisted the resistance, paraded in front of the King and his family together with Jens Chr. Hauge and Colonel Øen. On 28 June, 205 members of the Linge Company and sixty crew members of the special naval unit which had manned the sub-chasers paraded in front of King Haakon. The following day they had a final inspection in front of Colonel Wilson, marking the formal end of their collaboration with the British, and were dismissed. Members of Milorg were finally stood down on 15 July.