Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940, Henrik Lunde [new ebook reader TXT] 📗

would give them excellent reasons for establishing themselves in Scandinavia.10 A number of key Allied policy-makers believed that the landings could be carried out with the approval of Norway and Sweden and would therefore not be regarded by the United States and the Dominions as a breach of neutrality in the way that mining Norwegian waters almost certainly would be.

The proposed help to Finland camouflaged the real objective: to occupy Narvik and secure control over the Swedish mining district. The French government under Edouard Daladier had another hidden objective in mind in helping the Finns. The French faced the German Army on their eastern border. Memories of the enormous suffering and destruction during World War I were still fresh in French memories, and Daladier also hoped for a change of leadership in Germany that could lead to peace. In the meantime, however, the French government viewed operations in Scandinavia as an excellent opportunity to divert the war to someone else’s territory while pacifying the demand from the French populace that action be taken to aid the Finns.

A French plan formulated in the middle of January 1940 sought to avoid the necessity of asking the Swedish and Danish governments permission to breach their neutrality. It called for British and French forces to land at Petsamo, in former Finnish territory and for a naval blockade of the Soviet coast between Murmansk and Petsamo. The British objected to this plan since it would certainly lead to war with the Soviet Union. Why the British did not think that active Allied intervention on the side of the Finns would lead to a similar result is difficult to understand, unless one assumes that the policy-makers never intended for Allied forces to advance further than to the Swedish iron ore districts.

The only measures undertaken at the War Cabinet meeting on December 22, 1939 were to make diplomatic protests to Norway about the misuse of its territorial waters by Germany and to provide instructions to the military chiefs to consider the implications of any future commitments in Scandinavia. The cabinet authorized the military to plan for a landing at Narvik in the north and to consider the consequences of a German occupation of southern Norway.

The military chiefs had been somewhat skeptical about the risks involved in an operation against the iron ore districts in northern Sweden. Some of this skepticism now began to fade. General Ironside, while stating that it would not be an easy matter to reach the iron ore districts in snow and difficult terrain, concluded that the Allies could reach the mines before any possible Russian counter-moves. He further concluded that, if the British army were to be confronted by superior forces, a line of retreat was available after the mines were destroyed. He estimated that a force of three or four thousand men on skis or snowshoes would be sufficient.11 Admiral Pound tried to ease worries that the Germans might occupy southern Sweden and Norway by stating that the disadvantages if they did so would be more than offset by cutting the iron ore supplies to Germany. The danger of war with the Soviet Union was now viewed as an acceptable side-effect of an operation that could cut the iron ore supplies to Germany. Fears of the Soviet military machine were somewhat abated when it was stopped in its tracks by the small Finnish conscript army. Military planners no longer considered the Soviets capable of creating problems for the Allies in other parts of the world or of providing a great deal of help for Germany in Scandinavia.

The military chiefs also focused on the advantages of shifting the war to Scandinavia, where they reasoned that the Germans would need at least 20 divisions while the Allies, with the help of the Swedes and Norwegians, could make do with a much smaller force. It was believed that the German army had only limited reserves of iron ore on hand, and the chiefs concluded that this fact would force the Germans to attack in the west in the near future or to invade Sweden to secure the Swedish ore. Such an action would also require the Germans to invade Norway, and these combined operations would demand resources on a scale that would force them to postpone indefinitely an attack in the west.

The chiefs gave their blessings to the proposed operations in northern Norway and Sweden, and recommended that the first part of the force be dispatched no later than March 1940 in order to secure the mining districts and the port of Luleå before the northern Baltic became navigable. No direct military action was contemplated against the iron ore mines in central Sweden. They were to be made inoperable by sabotage.

The military chiefs’ acquiescence in the operation against northern Scandinavia carried with it several assumptions. It was imperative to obtain the cooperation of the Norwegian and Swedish governments, although such cooperation would place both those nations at odds with Germany and very possibly the Soviet Union as well.

The chiefs expected that an operation against Narvik would cause German counter-action in southern Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian nations would be promised help and this help would come primarily through Trondheim in central Norway. The forces landed there would proceed to Sweden, and in cooperation with that nation’s military, establish a defensive line south of Stockholm. Since a German occupation of southern Norway would place Trondheim within the reach of their air force, it was deemed necessary to also occupy Bergen and Stavanger. It was considered essential to carry out these operations almost simultaneously, and this required much shipping and very large naval forces.

Churchill kept pressing for his more limited option of mining the territorial waters. He presented a five-point plan to the War Cabinet on December 29 calling for quick action, pending execution of Ironside’s more ambitious plan:

1. Send a note to Norway and Sweden promising Allied help in certain circumstances.

2. Notify Norway on January 1 that the British intended to retaliate for the sinking