Everything was ready by the 2nd of March. But upon being sounded out, Norway and Sweden both refused to permit passage of the troops through their territory for fear of being dragged into the war. And Finland, already at the end of her rope, did not want an intervention that would only prolong the hopeless conflict. In fact, on March 12, despite her knowledge that the Allies were on the verge of sailing, she made peace with Russia.
Finland could no longer be used as an excuse to intervene. The British Admiralty dispersed their expeditionary forces and cancelled all their preparations. The French Navy received orders to do likewise, but Admiral Darlan wanted to retain all the forces he had assembled. He was convinced that the thing was not over yet; the essential thing, to his way of thinking, was to prevent Swedish ore from going to Germany. But the French Government decided otherwise.
The failure to do anything for Finland caused a furor in the Parliament. Premier Edouard Deladier, the head of the Government, resigned, and was replaced by Paul Reynaud, who was reputed to be of tougher fiber. At any rate Mr. Reynaud, after appointing Deladier as Minister of National Defense, rushed off to London to confer on the common strategy.
The meeting of the Interallied Supreme Council took place at No. 10 Downing Street on March 28. It was presided over solemnly by Sir Neville Chamberlain. On one side of him sat Lord Halifax, meditative, and sometimes with his eyes closed. On the other side sat Mr. Churchill, who also closed his eyes at intervals that afternoon—but not always to meditate. Mr. Reynaud sat facing Sir Neville, with the principal military and naval leaders scattered around. The generals and admirals had already conferred the day before, so the Council discussions developed into an almost parliamentary style dialogue between the two chiefs of government.
Other fields having been briefly surveyed—the blockade, the Caucasus, the Danube, etc.—it was decided to take up the Scandinavian affair again by less oblique approaches. The Norwegians and Swedes would be bluntly told that the Allies could no longer stand by idly while Swedish ore destined for the German war industry passed through Norwegian costal channels unmolested—to prevent this the Allies would lay two or three minefields in those channels to stop the iniquitous traffic. At Britain’s request it was also decided to mine the Rhine River with Mr. Churchill’s pet river mines. And after the luncheon recess, Messrs. Chamberlain and Reynaud quietly announced that during the meal they had agreed on the text of an official statement to be given to the press at the end of the meeting: namely, that the two governments engaged themselves not to conclude a separate armistice or peace with the enemy. To the military people present, such unity of purpose went without saying. In fact no one present attached any more importance to the statement than they would have done to any simple communique intended to bolster the public morale.44 No Frenchman there could ever have imagined that ten weeks later, under the crucifixion of defeat, this pronouncement would result in attacks on their government as though the declaration had been part of a solemn treaty.
In 1914 a similar engagement had been entered into, but only after most careful study and full discussion by the Council of Ministers. (See G. Chastenet, La République Triomphante—“The Republic Triumphant.”)
Strange to say, not one person around that table raised the question of a possible German reaction to the laying of minefields in Norwegian waters. Admiral Darlan noted this default, however, and winked at Captain Auphan, who sat behind him. But the admiral was afraid that if he spoke, the entire Norwegian question would be reopened, and the project perhaps cancelled.
Once the meeting was over, however, Admiral Darlan conferred with the other military chiefs on the necessity for all haste in staging the Norwegian undertaking. Everyone agreed that a minefield which could not be kept patrolled would be of little use; they must be prepared to occupy the Swedish ore fields themselves before the Germans seized them. The French Admiral of the Fleet wired orders from London to Maintenon, directing that all the forces he had originally promised the British for this project be reassembled immediately.
The British Admiralty was equally prompt, but the British War Office contented itself with hauling out and pouring over boxes full of plans for a “peaceful” landing that had been prepared a month earlier. No consideration was given to the risk that the operation might develop—as indeed it did—in an entirely unexpected manner.
The 2nd of April had been set as the date for launching the operation. But on March 30 the French Government demurred again in the matter of aerial mining of the Rhine River for fear of unleashing the whole holocaust of aerial warfare. Thereupon the British promptly suspended the entire Norwegian operation. Urgent consultations in Paris resulted in a new date—April 8—being set. On that date the Allied ambassadors were to inform the Norwegian authorities that the minefields were being laid,55 that the British were laying them, and that the first convoy of British troops was already about to sail.
Three minefields were planned: one at the entrance to the Vest Fjord, off Bodö; another at Statlandet (not laid because of bad weather); and a third, purely fictitious, at Bud. The Notices to Mariners, published immediately, announced these three minefields, as well as a fourth in the Swedish waters of the Baltic, where a few mines were to be dropped by plane.
But now the quibbling and the delays of the Allies were to prove fatal. For by a coincidence that no novelist would have dared touch, on that very day the German operation against Norway was launched. Carried out resolutely, with powerful forces, its purpose was to seize all of Norway in order to open up to the German Navy a path to the North Atlantic which the Allies could not block. At the very moment when the French and British diplomats were delivering their messages at Oslo and the Norwegian Parliament was deliberating on the matter, the German Fleet was at sea, heading for various Norwegian ports as far north as Narvik. At 0900 the British destroyer Glowworm, which had been delayed on her way to the Vest Fjord by a man washed overboard, was caught alone by the German cruiser Hipper and sunk by gunfire. The following day the British battle cruiser Renown, of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes’ Home Fleet which was at sea covering the Allied operation, had a fleeting engagement with the enemy battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which also were at sea covering the German operation.
A VERY OLD COASTAL BATTERY, manned by the Navy, in the sector of Dunkirk, during the winter of 1939-1940.
Notwithstanding these engagements, which should have showed that the Scandinavian sector was just beginning to boil, Mr. Reynaud announced triumphantly, “The iron route is definitely cut!” And from the speaker’s rostrum of the House of Commons Mr. Churchill shouted, “That cursed corridor is now closed forever!”
It would require a complete book devoted to the Norwegian campaign alone to cover all the details of that ill-fated operation.66 The strategic considerations leading up to it have already been described; the campaign itself lasted exactly two months—from April 8 to June 8, 1940—and extended over almost 1,500 kilometers of coastline. The principal events of that campaign are chronologically tabulated below:
For more complete details, see Jacques Mordal, La Campagne de Norvège—(“The Norwegian Campaign”).
The swift occupation by the Germans, within only a few days, of all the principal ports and airfields of Norway, including Narvik, where ten destroyers of the Kriegsmarine put ashore 2,000 crack mountain troops; and the equally swift destruction of these destroyers in the fjord of Narvik by an audacious counterattack by British destroyers in two raids, the second of which was supported by the battleship Warspite of the Home Fleet.
Allied irresolution in the matter of a counterattack to eject the Germans, with especial uncertainty as to choice