During the afternoon, Minister Zahle at the Danish Embassy signed a memorandum to the Foreign Office in Copenhagen written by Kjølsen, and had it couriered home by one of his staff on the afternoon flight. The next day Kjølsen sent a supplementary report to the Naval Ministry, copied to Zahle and the Foreign Office, stating that he believed Major Sas’s information to be reliable. Indeed, troop concentrations and loading of transport vessels in Stettin and Swinemünde indicated something was going on. Kjølsen concluded that ‘contrary to the Norwegian Embassy’ (i.e. Stang), he believed Norway would be attacked and the possible attack in the west would be limited to Holland.30
What discussion took place between Stang and Scheel in the Norwegian Embassy after Kjølsen left is not known, but Stang’s view must have won the day, as next morning, 5 April, a telegram was received in Oslo informing the Foreign Office that the embassy had ‘been informed from an attaché at one of the neutral embassies – in strict confidence – of German plans to invade Holland in the near future’. Denmark was also threatened as Germany might be seeking ‘air and U-boat bases on Jylland’s west coast’. Norway was not mentioned at all. The embassy forwarded the information cautiously, it was stressed, as it could not be verified, even though the attaché who had brought the information was ‘usually reliable and well informed’. The telegram was composed by Stang and signed by Scheel in spite of the somewhat different information he had received from Kjølsen. It must have occurred to Scheel that the message could be misleading; some hours later, a second telegram followed adding that information from Danish diplomats indicated that places on the Norwegian south coast might be threatened as well ‘to increase the speed of the war and pre-empt Allied actions’.31
Koht rated both telegrams as rumour and took little notice of either. They were copied to Ljungberg the next day, but not to any other member of the government. No initiatives were taken by the Foreign Office to discuss the information internally in the government or with the other Nordic foreign offices. The telegrams were forwarded to the Admiral Staff and the General Staff during the 5th and shown to relevant officers who came in the next day (Saturday), including the army Chief of Staff Oberst Hatledal.32
Swedish Minister Richert found the information from Sas highly disturbing, even if Sweden was not directly threatened, and asked Forshell for a meeting, to which Kjølsen was also invited. In the meeting a memorandum to the Swedish Foreign Office was compiled, detailing the information received over the last couple of days. This and a similar memorandum from Forshell to the Swedish Naval Intelligence Staff were couriered to Stockholm on the first available flight. The Swedish government, Foreign Office and military intelligence were thus informed of Operation Weserübung in the evening of 4 April. Richert added information from other sources indicating that on 2 April Hitler appeared to have made ‘some important decision’, and persons in the German Foreign Office seemed ‘nervous and pre-occupied’. Forshell in his short military style summarised: ‘Denmark will be occupied next week,’ whereafter Norway would be attacked from the Oslofjord to Bergen while no aggression towards Sweden was planned. Observations of mountain troops in northern Germany confirmed in his opinion that Norway was on the list of targets.33 Both Richert and Forshell concluded that the operation was imminent, as all the foreign military attachés in Berlin had been invited on a tour of the Western Front, starting in the evening of Sunday 7 April. Forshell had decided not to attend this tour, with his minister’s approval, believing it to be a pretext to have the attachés out of the way.34
Later that same day, an official but discreet message was passed from the German Ministry of Propaganda to the Swedish Embassy stating that there was no acute danger to Sweden from Germany in the near future. Richert sent a brief update to the Foreign Office in Stockholm: ‘I have the firm impression that far-reaching actions towards Denmark and Norway are to be expected shortly; most likely within days.’ For reasons difficult to comprehend, none of this detailed and exact information was forwarded to the Norwegian or Danish governments.35
On Friday 5 April, around 11:40, Minister August Esmarch at the Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen telephoned Undersecretary Jens Bull at the Foreign Office in Oslo. The minister had been called to the Danish Foreign Office earlier in the morning, as had Swedish Minister Hamilton. Both had been questioned by Undersecretary Mohr as to their respective countries’ reactions to the recent information from Berlin of a German offensive on the Low Countries, western Denmark and southern Norway. Esmarch had no knowledge of this and made the call to Bull requesting advice on what to tell the Danes. Being careful on the open telephone line and assuming Oslo had actually received the information referred to, he just forwarded the request without going into the background he had been given by Mohr, other than to mention the danger of a German attack on Denmark and southern Norway. ‘Copenhagen was nervous,’ according to Esmarch and wanted to know as soon as possible the considerations from Oslo.
Bull did not question Esmarch in any detail, as he apparently assumed Koht would know what this was all about. When learning of the telephone conversation with Esmarch, Koht dismissed the issue as the same rumours Scheel had mentioned and took no initiatives to ascertain what the Danish request referred to. Bull returned a call to Esmarch just before 14:00, informing him that Oslo would do nothing ‘based on rumours’ – and he could say so to the Danish Foreign Office. No information of Esmarch’s conversation with Mohr and the request for a Norwegian reaction went beyond the inner circles of the Foreign Office.36 Esmarch on his side reported back to the Danes that Oslo did not give the report ‘any significance at all’. The Swedish Minister Hamilton reported back, according to Mohr, that this was ‘old news’ and Stockholm had information the rumours were exaggerated.37 Satisfied, the Danish Foreign Office forwarded a summary of the information to the British Embassy and did little else.38
During the evening of the 5th, Oberst Carlos Adlercreutz, head of intelligence at the Swedish defence staff, called his Norwegian counterpart at the General Staff in Oslo, Oberstløytnant Wrede-Holm, informing him that Sweden had reliable information from Berlin of an imminent German attack on Denmark, followed by a similar attack on Norway.39 Shortly after, an almost identical message arrived from the Danish General Staff. Reports of these communications were sent to the commanding general, the Admiral Staff and the Ministry of Defence, though Ljungberg later had ‘no positive recollection of the issue’ and could not remember having seen any of Scheel’s letters. Nobody in the Foreign Office or the government appears to have been informed. Likewise, neither the commanders nor their intelligence officers were informed of similar information coming from the embassies.40
The Norwegian journalist Theo Findahl, stationed in Berlin for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, somehow got hold of the rumours of an imminent attack on southern Norway. He was subject to strong restrictions, but managed to submit an article to Oslo over the weekend. Unfortunately Findahl stated the number of Germans to be landed in Norway to be in the order of ‘1.5 million’. The editor, while preparing a dramatic front page for Monday’s edition, contacted the office of the commanding admiral in the evening for comments, speaking to Kaptein Håkon Willoch, the duty officer at the Admiral Staff. Willoch referred the enquiry to the commanding admiral, who found the story of 1.5 million men ‘too fantastic’ and, to his dismay, the editor received a call from the Foreign Office shortly after with instructions to halt the publication of the report.41
Meanwhile, another telegram from Scheel in Berlin arrived in the Foreign Office in Oslo. It stated that according to reliable sources, fifteen to twenty large ships loaded with troops and equipment had left Stettin on the night of 4/5 April, heading west. An unknown destination would be reached on 11 April. Ulrich Stang later told the Commission of Inquiry that this new information came from Kjølsen, adding that the reference to a westerly