Posts tagged April 9

Norway Invaded/New Article Published

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If you were a Norwegian going to bed on the evening of April 8, 1940, you fell asleep in a country at peace with the world, and with the reasonable expectation that you would wake up the following morning in a country still at peace.

After all, Norway was officially neutral in World War II, which had begun seven months earlier, with the German invasion of Poland.  Norway had no quarrel with either the Allies or the Axis powers.  It had previously safeguarded its neutrality through the long and bitter years of the First World War. [Although it did send a mission to the U.S. to negotiate some relief from the Allied blockade, a mission headed by none other than Fridtjof Nansen.]  Norway saw no reason why it could not sit out the Second World War as well.

Norway should have realized, however, that Adolf Hitler was no respecter of neutrality.  As William L. Shirer noted in a radio broadcast from Berlin as early as December 7, 1939: “[T]onight we have a semi-official statement severely taking the Scandinavian states to task and telling them in effect that they must choose between friendship with Britain and friendship with Germany.  In the German view, so far as I can make it out, a neutral country hasn’t the right to be friendly with both.”

Heck, Hitler wasn’t even a respecter of nonaggression treaties he had previously signed.  Examples: Poland (1934); Denmark (1939); and the Soviet Union (1939).  In mid-December 1939, just days after Shirer’s broadcast, arch-traitor Vidkun Quisling secured two meetings with Hitler, where he convinced the dictator that if Germany did not soon seize control of Norway, Great Britain was surely planning to, a move that would imperil Germany’s access to Sweden’s iron ore and once again allow the Allies to blockade and slowly strangle the Axis powers.  Apparently, Hitler saw no ulterior, self-interested, motive in Quisling’s warning—such as a desire to rule Norway as Hitler’s puppet—behind Quisling’s urgent warning.

So, unbeknownst to you on the evening of April 8, 1940, six German naval task forces, which had been launched at sea five days earlier, were now poised to strike, and occupy, all the key coastal ports of Norway: Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Kristiansand, and Oslo.  Oslo was by far the biggest prize of all: home to the Royal Family, all government ministers, the Storting (Norway’s parliament), and last, but by no means least, Norway’s central bank and the nation’s gold reserves, all 54 tons of it.

Five of the six task forces performed flawlessly, and seized their objectives at dawn on April 9 in a coup de main.  The most important task force—Gruppe V—aimed at Oslo, failed miserably, allowing the King and his family, government ministers, the members of the Storting, and the all-important gold supply, to escape to the north.

All this was due to the courageous actions of one man: Col. Birger Eriksen, who commanded an antiquated fort—Oscarsborg—which sat at, and guarded, a bottleneck in the Oslofjord about 20 miles south of Oslo.  Firing antediluvian weapons and fielding a force of raw recruits and trainees, Eriksen nevertheless turned back the German spearhead.

Much of this story, and the Norwegian efforts to keep their gold supply out of the grasp of the invading Germans for thirty frenetic days, is recounted in an article I recently published in the Spring issue of World War II Magazine, entitled “Rescuing Norway’s Gold.”  Here is a link to the article (you may need to increase your screen size to 100% to read it):WW2P-230400-NORWAY-final (1) (1) (1)

Happy reading!

Video Tip:  The movie “The King’s Choice,” a 2016 Norwegian film with English subtitles (available on Amazon Prime), opens with the dramatic events at Oscarsborg Fortress on the morning of April 9.  The movie is an excellent depiction of the agonizing dilemma faced by King Haakon VII: whether to capitulate and spare his country from destruction, or resist and face the mighty Wehrmacht.  He chose resistance, and exile, and the eternal gratitude of his nation.

April 9, 1940: Norway Invaded

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Eighty years ago today German Armed Forces showed up in Norway—uninvited, unannounced, and unwelcome.  Despite holding out for longer than most other European countries overrun by the Nazis, Norway finally capitulated on June 10, 1940.  It would remain occupied for over five years—longer than any other European country, excepting only Czechoslovakia and Poland.

German troops in Norway

Germans employed almost 400,000 troops during their occupation of Norway, or approximately 1 soldier for every 7.5 civilians.  On a per capita basis, that would be the equivalent of America being occupied today by a foreign army totaling over 44 million soldiers—more than the combined populations of Illinois, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Jersey.

Notwithstanding this overwhelmingly heavy German presence, many people, of all ages, joined the Resistance—including 38-year-old Odd Nansen—activities that he would later describe in his diary as “wanton playing with fire” [July 14, 1942].  No less an authority than preeminent British military historian John Keegan once observed that the Norwegians “provided the SOE with its most dependable and spirited supporters in Western Europe.” The SOE, or Special Operations Executive, was a British World War II organization formed to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe.  [I’ve previously written about resistance heroes here, here, and here.]

H7: The symbol for King Håkon VII, and widely used as a symbol of defiance to Nazi rule.

Many people are familiar with the unusual events in Norway preceding the invasion.  How, just days prior to their invasion, the German Embassy in Oslo invited many prominent Norwegian officials, and others, including America’s Ambassador to Norway, Florence Harriman, to a lavish reception and film screening of a “peace film.”  Rather than a pleasant nighttime social event, the guests were shown a shocking film of Germany’s recent blitzkrieg attack on Poland, together with a warning that this is what would happen to a country if it resisted the Nazis.  As a bit of psychological warfare it may have missed its mark.  As Harriman wrote in her diary: “The audience was shocked and—this seems strange now—still puzzled, as to why the film had been shown to them, to Norwegians.”

Clare Boothe Luce (whom I’ve written about here) also relates, in her highly readable memoir, Europe in the Spring, about another equally bizarre event which, in retrospect, explains much about the mindset of Europe at the dawn of World War II, and what can occur without collective security agreements between nations facing a common enemy.  Luce (an American ambassador to Italy and Brazil after the war, and the wife of publisher Henry Luce) found herself in Holland on May 7, just three days before it would be overrun by German forces.  That night she dined with Herr Snouck Hurgronje, Holland’s Permanent Secretary General for Foreign Affairs.  Naturally, Luce writes, she asked him about the impending crisis.  Here is their exchange:

“’The Germans are making troop movements,” said Mr. Snouck placidly, ‘which strongly suggests an invasion [of Holland].’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Are you sure.’

Ja,’ he answered cheerfully.  ‘The same sources have informed our government so which informed it five days before the German invasion of Norway.’

I said, aghast: ‘You knew five days before that the Germans were going to invade Norway?’

Ja!’ he affirmed proudly. ‘Our sources of information are excellent.  You see, a good Dutchman often can pass as a real German.’ (I thought: ‘And vice versa.’)

I asked: ‘You knew five days before? Did you—tell the English and the French about it?’

‘Certainly not,’ he said indignantly.  ‘Why should we? They are not our allies.’” 

Holland was technically neutral before the war.  Parts of the country were liberated by Allied forces in the second half of 1944; the remainder of the country was finally liberated on May 5, 1945.  As Luce mordantly records later in her book: “(Mr. Snouck ten days later was in London, a member of her exiled Majesty’s belligerent government.)”

Norway Invaded: A Fish(y) Tale

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King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olaf, Molde, Norway

When we last left Norway in 1940 (here), it was reeling from an invasion by German forces which began on April 9, 1940.

The Germans had achieved complete surprise, and quickly seized key ports and airports.  Practically the only thing that went well for the defenders was the sinking of the German heavy cruiser Blücher, which was steaming up the Oslo Fjord on the morning of April 9 when well-placed artillery and torpedo fire from Oscarsborg Fortress sank her.  The mission of the Blücher had been to seize the capital, Oslo, and the ship’s destruction gave the King, government officials, the Parliament (Storting) and, crucially, Norway’s gold supply (23 tons worth), enough time to flee Oslo by train.

Initially German officials, led by envoy Curt Bräuer, tried to negotiate with King Haakon VII, to convince him that resistance was futile, and that it was in Norway’s interest to capitulate—much like what had occurred in Denmark, where the king and government capitulated without almost a shot being fired.  By April 10, however, the 67 year-old King, with the support of his government, rejected any surrender, and elected to fight on:

“In this most difficult time that my people and my country find themselves in . . . I ask all Norwegian women and men to do all they can to save freedom and independence for our dear fatherland.  God preserve Norway.”

King Haakon VII

From then on, the mission of German forces was to capture or kill Haakon, and he was hunted through the interior of Norway, always staying one step ahead of his pursuers.

By late April, the King elected to move to Molde, Norway, a small seaport town, but with a large and busy harbor, to set up his government until Trondheim was recaptured.  [By this time, British, French and Polish forces had landed in Norway to help drive the invaders out. The King—and almost all Norwegians—were confident they would succeed.  Instead, the outgunned and outmanned Allies failed miserably and eventually withdrew.]  The King arrived in Molde on April 23—seventy-eight years ago tonight.

I have previously written about my friend, Siri Svae Fenson (here), whose uncle, Hjalmar Svae, attempted to escape to England during the war, was captured and sentenced to death, only to make a daring escape from prison, and ultimately to freedom in Sweden, and later England and Canada.

Well, the Svae saga is not quite over yet.

While in Molde, King Haakon stayed at a villa on the outskirts of town called Glomstuen.  Glomstuen was the home of Jacob Preuthun (the regional forest director), and his wife, Mathilde Petersen.  Mathilde Petersen, it turns out, was Siri Fenson’s great-aunt.

Glomstuen

By April 25th, German intelligence was aware of Haakon’s presence in Molde, and began an unrelenting bombing campaign targeting the city.  As Tim Greve, the King’s biographer, notes in Haakon VII of Norway: “Undoubtedly the object was to kill the King, the Crown Prince and as many of the [government] ministers as possible.” [Incidentally, Tim Greve was Odd Nansen’s son-in-law, and the late husband of my dear friend, Marit (Nansen) Greve.]

The idea of the royal party dashing from Glomstuen into the adjacent snow-covered forest to escape the near constant German raids wreaking destruction on Molde is more than a bit ironic, inasmuch as Kaiser Wilhelm himself had visited Molde each summer prior to World War I, where he was a guest at none other than Glomstuen!

The picture shown at the top of this blog, of the King consulting with his son beside a large birch tree—one of the most iconic pictures of Norway during the invasion—was taken at Glomstuen.  There is a plaque nearby commemorating this famous scene.

Although Glomstuen itself was never hit, by April 28 Molde was practically in ruins, and it was clear that Haakon would have to leave. The following day the British cruiser HMS Glasgow, with an escort of two destroyers, arrived in port to transport the King, Crown Prince, cabinet members, and gold supply to Tromsø, 600 miles farther north.  “By nightfall Molde was a roaring bonfire,” writes historians Hans Christian Adamson and Per Klem in Blood on the Midnight Sun.  The royal party and the government made good their escape.  But by then Molde, a quaint, idyllic town whose lush gardens and parks had earned it the nickname The Town of Roses, was almost 70% destroyed.

Siri Fenson’s mother relates one particularly comic episode in what was an otherwise bleak time in Norway’s history.  One day, the air raid sirens sounded just as a fish gratin had been placed in the oven at Glomstuen.  The cook, named Kristine, was out of action, having broken her leg in an earlier sprint to the woods.  So, Mathilde, fearing for the fate of the untended fish gratin, left her hiding place, dodged the attacks, dashed back into the house and rescued the savory dish.

After the war, Mathilde was invited to an audience at the royal castle in Oslo.  There, King Haakon, after having just lived five years in exile in England, posed a question which apparently had haunted him all that time: “Tell me, Mrs. Preuthun—how did you manage to save the fish gratin?”

April 9, 1940: Norway Invaded

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“If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway.  If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to Norway.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 16, 1942*

In the pre-dawn hours of April 9, 1940, German naval, air and airborne forces invaded Norway.  In a well-coordinated attack, the Germans seized airports (including Fornebu, outside Oslo, where Odd Nansen had been designing air terminals) and attacked all major seaports along Norway’s coast.

Norway was woefully unprepared.  Neutral during World War I, Norway expected to maintain its neutrality during World War II as well, a neutrality which obviated, in its eyes, the need for significant armed forces.  Moreover, what little navy, army and air force Norway possessed had suffered through years of austerity and neglect brought on by the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Hitler, anxious to deny Norway’s ports to the British (whom Hitler suspected might be planning their own invasion) and determined to assure access to Sweden’s iron ore (which could only reach Germany through the Norwegian port of Narvik in the winter, when all Swedish harbors were ice-bound), Hitler authorized preliminary planning for Operation Weserübung in December 1939.

Luckily, the Royal Family and members of Norway’s parliament (the Storting) fled Oslo ahead of advancing German forces, but this left a leadership vacuum just when the surprised, shocked and confused populace needed guidance the most.  Vidkun Quisling, a traitor, attempted to seize the reins of power, and in a radio broadcast attempted to cancel all mobilization orders, and observed that resistance was futile.

German soldiers marching into Oslo

Nevertheless, within a few days the Norwegian Army—really a militia of citizen-soldiers—rallied and put up stiff resistance as German forces moved inland.  Though a country of less than three million, Norway ultimately held out longer than France, Poland, Holland, Belgium, and Denmark before capitulating on June 10, 1940.

Thereafter, as in most occupied countries, some people chose to collaborate, joining the fascist Nasjonal Samling (National Unity) party in hopes of preferment or better jobs.  Many joined in, or stood by, when the Norwegian police rounded up the country’s Jews in the fall of 1942.  [It should be said that at this early stage of the war, the designs of the Nazis were not as apparent as they would become by 1943 and 1944.  As Odd Nansen’s friend, Sigrid Helliesen Lund—herself recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations—related: “[P]eople forget that many others were also in danger then, for whom transport to safety seemed even more urgent.  It would have been critical for members of the resistance, if they had been captured.  Many Jews were seized only because they were Jews, not because they had been involved in the opposition movement.  At that time, we didn’t realize what was likely to happen to the Jews after they were taken.  The pretty word was ‘internment.’”]

Many, on the other hand, fought back.  Thousands of young men tried to escape to England (a crime punishable by death) to join the armed forces.  Many manned the fishing smacks and small boats used to ferry men out of Norway, and resistance forces and equipment into Norway—a link that was to be immortalized thereafter as “the Shetland  Bus.”  Many created underground newspapers dedicated to bringing outside news from the BBC to the country’s inhabitants.  Many joined resistance networks.

Shetland Bus Memorial, Scalloway, Shetland Islands

 I have previously described the incredible sacrifice of Norway’s merchant sailors (here).  I have written (here) about Hjalmar Svae, who stole a German boat to escape to Britain, only to have the engine quit within miles England’s coast. When the current carried him back to occupied Denmark he was seized and condemned to death (which he avoided by escaping from jail).  I have also written about Jens Christian Beck (here), who similarly escaped the clutches of the Gestapo, later trained with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), only to drown on his first parachute jump when, weighed down with equipment, he was mistakenly dropped over a deep lake in the mountains of Norway on October 10, 1943.  In From Day to Day I describe the British raid on the Lofoten Islands in March 1941, and quote “a contemporary who wrote that the decision of three hundred young people to follow the British ‘after only a few minutes in which to make their decision tell[s] more about the fighting spirit of the Norwegian youth than any words can do.’”

Perhaps the final word on the Norway’s contribution to World War II can be attributed to someone who saw and trained many young men from many different Allied nations.  Major George T. Rheam, described as “the founder of industrial sabotage,” ran Brickendonbury Manor, in Herfordshire, England, also known as SOE Station XVII, where the SOE taught its sabotage techniques to operatives and resistance fighters from every Allied nation.  [It was Rheam who trained Joachim Rønnenberg’s team for their mission to destroy the heavy water plant at Vemork, but that is another story for another time.]

Brickendonbury Manor

M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of the SOE, described Rheam as “a large man with a large mind,” who did not suffer fools gladly. While his students might think him dour, behind his “stiffish manner” lay a keen sense of humor and an intense sympathy for the European exiles with whom he often worked.

“Of these,” Foot writes, “he once said in retrospect, he thought on the whole the Norwegians impressed him the most, for bravery, for readiness to run risks, and for steadiness in facing the dangers of sabotage.”

Not a bad tribute to the 40,000 Norwegians who, like Odd Nansen, were imprisoned during the war, to the 28,000 who escaped Norway and enlisted in the Allied military services, to the over 10,000 who died, either in the conflict, the resistance, or in prison, and to the countless others who suffered or risked their lives during the occupation.

[*Remarks delivered at the handover ceremony of the HNoMS King Haakon VII, gifted by the U.S. to Norway at the Washington Navy Yard on September 16, 1942. During her war service King Haakon VII sailed 85,000 nautical miles and escorted 79 convoys without mishap. On June 26, 1945 King Haakon VII successfully berthed in home waters in Kristiansand for the first time.   In 2005, His Majesty King Harald V of Norway visited the Washington Navy Yard to view events including a reenactment of President Roosevelt’s “Look to Norway” speech, honoring the United States and Norway’s long-term alliance. The ceremony marked the centenary of diplomatic relations between Norway and the United States since Norway’s independence in 1905.]

HNoMS King Haakon VII

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October
  • 06

    All day
    Oct 06, 2020-Sep 30, 2021
    Odd Nansen arrives at Sachsenhausen Camp, Germany
  • 10

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    Oct 10, 2020-Oct 04, 2021
    Odd Nansen’s father, Fridtjof Nansen was born.
  • 13

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    Oct 13, 2020-Oct 07, 2021
    Odd Nansen’s wife, Karen (Kari) Hirsch was born
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    Oct 22, 2020-Oct 16, 2021
    A border pilot attempting to help 9 Jews escape to Sweden kills policeman; Jews are blamed
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    Oct 24, 2020-Oct 18, 2021
    Quisling executed at Akershus Castle
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