The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (134 page)

T
HE INNOCENT-SOUNDING
code name for the latest plan of German aggression was
Weseruebung
, or “Weser Exercise.” Its origins and development were unique, quite unlike those for unprovoked attack that have filled so large a part of this narrative. It was not the brain child of Hitler, as were all the others, but of an ambitious admiral and a muddled Nazi party hack. It was the only act of German military aggression in which the German Navy played the decisive role. It was also the only one for which OKW did the planning and co-ordinating of the three armed services. In fact, the Army High Command and its General Staff were not even consulted, much to their annoyance, and Goering was not brought into the picture until the last moment—a slight that infuriated the corpulent chief of the Luftwaffe.

The German Navy had long had its eyes on the north. Germany had no direct access to the wide ocean, a geographical fact which had been imprinted on the minds of its naval officers during the First World War. A tight British net across the narrow
North Sea
, from the Shetland Islands to the coast of Norway, maintained by a mine barrage and a patrol of ships, had bottled up the powerful Imperial Navy, seriously hampered the attempts of U-boats to break out into the North Atlantic, and kept German merchant shipping off the seas. The German High Seas Fleet never reached the high seas. The British naval blockade stifled Imperial Germany in the first war. Between the wars the handful of German naval officers who commanded the country’s modestly sized Navy pondered this experience and this geographical fact and came to the conclusion that in any future war with Britain, Germany must try to gain bases in Norway, which would break the British blockade line across the North Sea, open up the broad ocean to German surface and undersea vessels and indeed offer an opportunity for the Reich to reverse the tables and mount an effective blockade of the British Isles.

It was not surprising, then, that at the outbreak of war in 1939 Admiral Rolf
Carls
, the third-ranking officer in the German Navy and a forceful
personality, should start peppering Admiral Raeder, as the latter noted in his diary and testified at Nuremberg, with letters suggesting “the importance of an occupation of the Norwegian coast by Germany.”
¹
Raeder needed little urging and on October 3, at the end of the Polish campaign, sent a confidential questionnaire to the Naval War Staff asking it to ascertain the possibility of gaining “bases
in Norway
under the combined pressure of Russia and Germany.” Ribbentrop was consulted about Moscow’s attitude and replied that “far-reaching support may be expected” from that source. Raeder told his staff that Hitler must be informed as soon as possible about the “possibilities.”
²

On October 10, in the course of a lengthy report to the Fuehrer on naval operations, Raeder suggested the importance of obtaining naval bases in Norway, if necessary with the help of Russia. This—so far as the confidential records show—was the first time the Navy had directly called the matter to the attention of Hitler. Raeder says the Leader “saw at once the significance of the Norwegian problem.” He asked him to leave his notes on the subject and promised to give the question some thought. But at the moment the Nazi warlord was preoccupied with launching his attack in the West and with overcoming the hesitations of his generals.
*
Norway apparently slipped out of his mind.
³

But it came back in two months—for three reasons.

One was the advent of winter. Germany’s very existence depended upon the import of iron ore from
Sweden
. For the first war year the Germans were counting on eleven million tons of it out of a total annual consumption of fifteen million tons. During the warm-weather months this ore was transported from northern Sweden down the Gulf of Bothnia and across the Baltic to Germany, and presented no problem even in wartime, since the Baltic was effectively barred to British submarines and surface ships. But in the wintertime this shipping lane could not be used because of thick ice. During the cold months the Swedish ore had to be shipped by rail to the nearby Norwegian port of
Narvik
and brought down the Norwegian coast by ship to Germany. For almost the entire journey German ore vessels could sail within Norway’s territorial waters and thereby escape destruction by British naval vessels and bombers.

Thus, as Hitler at first pointed out to the Navy, a neutral Norway had its advantages. It enabled Germany to obtain its lifeblood of iron ore without interference from Britain.

In London, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, perceived this at once and in the very first weeks of the war attempted to persuade the cabinet to allow him to lay mines in Norwegian territorial waters in order to stop the German iron traffic. But
Chamberlain
and
Halifax
were most
reluctant to violate Norwegian neutrality, and the proposal was for the time being dropped.
⁴

Russia’s attack on Finland on November 30, 1939, radically changed the situation in Scandinavia, immensely increasing its strategic importance to both the Western Allies and Germany. France and Britain began to organize an expeditionary force in Scotland to be sent to the aid of the gallant Finns, who, defying all predictions, held out stubbornly against the onslaughts of the Red Army. But it could reach Finland only through Norway and
Sweden
, and the Germans at once saw that if Allied troops were granted, or took, transit across the northern part of the two Scandinavian lands enough of them would remain, on the excuse of maintaining communications, to completely cut off Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore.
*
Moreover, the Western Allies would outflank the Reich on the north. Admiral Raeder was not backward in reminding Hitler of these threats.

The chief of the German Navy had now found in Norway itself a valuable ally for his designs in the person of Major Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Quisling, whose name would soon become a synonym in almost all languages for a traitor.

Quisling had begun life honorably enough. Born in 1887 of peasant stock, he had graduated first in his class at the Norwegian Military Academy and while still in his twenties had been sent to Petrograd as military attaché. For his services in looking after British interests after diplomatic relations were broken with the Bolshevik government, Great Britain awarded him the C.B.E. At this time he was both pro-British and pro-Bolshevik. He remained in Soviet Russia for some time as assistant to Fridtjof Nansen, the great Norwegian explorer and humanitarian, in Russian relief work.

So impressed had the young Norwegian Army officer been by the success of the Communists in Russia that when he returned to Oslo he offered his services to the Labor Party, which at that time was a member of the Comintern. He proposed that he establish a “Red Guard,” but the Labor Party was suspicious of him and his project and turned him down. He then veered to the opposite extreme. After serving as Minister of Defense from 1931 to 1933, he founded in May of the latter year a
fascist party called Nasjonal Samling—National Union—appropriating the ideology and tactics of the Nazis, who had just come to power in Germany. But Nazism did not thrive in the fertile democratic soil of Norway. Quisling was unable even to get himself elected to Parliament. Defeated at the polls by his own people, he turned to Nazi Germany.

There he established contact with Alfred Rosenberg, the befuddled official philosopher of the Nazi movement, among whose jobs was that of chief of the party’s Office for Foreign Affairs. This Baltic dolt, one of Hitler’s earliest mentors, thought he saw possibilities in the Norwegian officer, for one of Rosenberg’s pet fantasies was the establishment of a great Nordic Empire from which the Jews and other “impure” races would be excluded and which eventually would dominate the world under Nazi German leadership. From 1933 on, he kept in touch with Quisling and heaped on him his nonsensical philosophy and propaganda.

In June 1939, as the war clouds gathered over Europe, Quisling took the occasion of his attendance at a convention of the
Nordic Society
at
Luebeck
to ask Rosenberg for something more than ideological support. According to the latter’s confidential reports, which were produced at Nuremberg, Quisling warned Rosenberg of the danger of Britain’s getting control of Norway in the event of war and of the advantages to Germany of occupying it. He asked for some substantial aid for his party and press. Rosenberg, a great composer of memoranda, dashed out three of them for Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop, but the three top men appear to have ignored them—no one in Germany took the “official philosopher” very seriously. Rosenberg himself was able to arrange at least for a fortnight’s training course in Germany in August for twenty-five of Quisling’s husky storm troopers.

During the first months of the war Admiral Raeder—or so he testified at Nuremberg—had no contact with Rosenberg, whom he scarcely knew, and none with Quisling, of whom he had never heard. But immediately after the Russian attack on Finland Raeder began to get reports from his naval attaché at
Oslo,
Captain Richard Schreiber, of imminent Allied landings in Norway. He mentioned these to Hitler on December 8 and advised him flatly, “It is important to occupy Norway.”
⁵

Shortly afterward Rosenberg dashed off a memorandum (undated) to Admiral Raeder “regarding visit of Privy Councilor Quisling—Norway.” The Norwegian conspirator had arrived in Berlin and Rosenberg thought Raeder ought to be told who he was and what he was up to. Quisling, he said, had many sympathizers among key officers in the
Norwegian Army
and, as proof, had shown him a recent letter from Colonel Konrad Sundlo, the commanding officer at
Narvik
, characterizing Norway’s Prime Minister as a “blockhead” and one of his chief ministers as “an old soak” and declaring his willingness to “risk his bones for the national uprising.” Later Colonel Sundlo did not risk his bones to defend his country against aggression.

Actually, Rosenberg informed Raeder, Quisling had a plan for a coup.
It must have fallen upon sympathetic ears in Berlin, for it was copied from the
Anschluss
. A number of Quisling’s storm troopers would be hurriedly trained in Germany “by experienced and diehard National Socialists who are practiced in such operations.” The pupils, once back in Norway, would seize strategic points in
Oslo,

It was the Anschluss tactic all over again, with Quisling playing the part of Seyss-Inquart.

Admiral Raeder saw Quisling on December 11, the meeting being arranged through Rosenberg by one
Viljam Hagelin
, a Norwegian businessman whose affairs kept him largely in Germany and who was Quisling’s chief liaison there. Hagelin and Quisling told Raeder a mouthful and he duly recorded it in the confidential naval archives.

To anticipate a British move, Quisling proposed to place “the necessary bases at the disposal of the German Armed Forces. In the whole coastal area men in important positions (railway, post office, communications) have already been bought for this purpose.” He and Hagelin had come to Berlin to establish “clear-cut relations with Germany for the future … Conferences are desired for discussion of combined action, transfer of troops to Oslo, etc.”
⁷

Raeder, as he later testified at Nuremberg, was impressed and told his two visitors that he would confer with the Fuehrer and inform them of the results. This he did the next day at a meeting at which Keitel and Jodl were also present. The Navy Commander in Chief (whose report on this conference is among the captured documents) informed Hitler that Quisling
had made “a reliable impression” on him. He then outlined the main points the Norwegians had made, emphasizing Quisling’s “good connections with officers in the
Norwegian Army
” and his readiness “to take over the government by a political coup and ask Germany for aid.” All present agreed that a British occupation of Norway could not be countenanced, but Raeder, become suddenly cautious, pointed out that a German occupation “would naturally occasion strong British countermeasures … and the German Navy is not yet prepared to cope with them for any length of time. In the event of occupation this is a weak spot.” On the other hand, Raeder suggested that OKW

Hitler was not quite ready to go so far at the moment. He replied that he first wanted to speak to Quisling personally “in order to form an impression of him.”
⁸

This he did the very next day, December 14, Raeder personally escorting the two Norwegian traitors to the Chancellery. Although no record of this meeting has been found, Quisling obviously impressed the German dictator,
*
as he had the Navy chief, for that evening Hitler ordered OKW to work out a draft plan in consultation with Quisling. Halder heard that it would also include action against Denmark.
¹⁰