Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 Henrik Lunde (general ebook reader txt) 📖

to Secretary of State for War Oliver Stanley, and the remaining four would not be ready for another two weeks. Some of the battalions were short of equipment and supplies left behind on the warships when R4 was cancelled and the fleet readied for naval action.

If additional British forces were required, they had to be withdrawn from those deployed in France. The French offered an alpine division that they claimed would be ready to embark in 40 hours. Even now, after the Admiralty’s cancellation of an attack on Bergen and heavy attacks on the Home Fleet by German aircraft operating from Sola Airfield, the highest level of the government continued to operate as if all would turn out well. Chamberlain informed the French that he hoped to recapture not only Narvik, but also the west coast ports of Bergen and Trondheim.

The War Council was not in agreement over the action that should be taken in Norway. Whereas the French preferred to concentrate on resecuring Narvik, Stanley advocated the capture of Trondheim and Bergen, which would shore up Norwegian resistance. Churchill remained confident that this could easily be achieved and that the Allied troops would be able to push as far as the Swedish border. In the end, no decisions were taken on how to handle the situation in Norway. The meeting concluded with a very vague reference to the employment of forces at ports on the Norwegian coast, with particular emphasis on Narvik.

There was a meeting of the Military Coordination Committee (MCC),12 chaired by Churchill, at 2130 hours on April 9. Churchill proposed that no action be taken against Trondheim and that the focus should be on Narvik. Ironside and the others present agreed. Their fixation with the old question of iron ore meant that they failed to change their thinking in response to the new situation created by the German invasion. Even a successful local operation in Narvik would be of limited use if the Germans held the rest of the country.

The successful conquest of southern and central Norway by the Germans would eventually make the Allied presence in northern Norway untenable. The German forces in Narvik were isolated almost 500 miles from their nearest comrades in Trondheim. They could not receive reinforcements on a meaningful scale and supply by air presented enormous problems, particularly if actions were taken to make the Værnes Airfield near Trondheim unusable. The greatest blow against the Germans in Narvik could best be struck by contesting the German conquest of central Norway. Some at the meeting must have thought along these lines since the committee’s directive to the Chiefs of Staff to prepare plans for the capture of Narvik included a provision for establishing footholds in central Norway, at Åndalsnes and Namsos.

Chamberlain, addressing the House of Commons, was greeted by loud applause as he concluded that the events in Norway would prove to be catastrophic for the Germans. He, like his French counterpart, believed that the references to Narvik in the dispatches were mistakes. He believed they meant the town of Larvik, about 900 miles to the south.13

Kersaudy’s summary of the Allies’ response during the first day of the German invasion is on point:14

… the Allies, after six major gatherings in seventeen hours, had covered considerable ground—on paper at least: at 6:30 a.m., top priority given to Bergen and Trondheim, with a progressive drift towards Narvik in the course of the morning: confirmation of Narvik’s new-found predominance during the afternoon, under insistent pressure from the French: “definite” shelving of Trondheim in the evening, with the surprise appearance in the late-evening conclusions of the Military Co-ordination Committee of the small ports of Namsos and Aandalsnes … some 500 miles south of Narvik.

Realities Set In

After the series of confusing meetings in Great Britain on April 9, the War Office faced the task of earmarking and assembling the force required to implement the decisions, a task made very difficult by the Admiralty order to debark the forces planned for R4. The planners began to realize that the Allies had been caught napping and that the German operations in Norway were on a much larger scale than they had anticipated. However, they were also operating in an intelligence vacuum. Because the Allied representatives became separated from the Norwegian government due to the German thrusts, there was no reliable information on what was happening in that country, on where the government was now located, what it intended to do, or on whether the Norwegian forces were actively opposing the Germans. They could only guess at the strength of the German beachheads.

The lackluster planning that had gone into the Allied plans for occupation of certain points on the Norwegian coast now became very apparent. The planners were unable to locate reliable information on landing sites and they ended up scraping together information and photographs of various harbors in Norway. The forces previously intended for Norway had been chosen on the assumption that they would face unopposed landings. They were not trained or equipped for the opposed landings that now appeared certain. They had no artillery, very limited transport capability, and no air support. In the afternoon of April 10 the planners informed General Ironside that an immediate recapture of Narvik was not feasible with the available forces.

The results of naval operations filtering back to London were not encouraging. The German Luftwaffe, which was now operating from recently captured Norwegian airfields, made naval operations along the Norwegian coast risky. Admiral Forbes’ reaction was to withdraw the Home Fleet northward and out to sea. The Narvik situation was uncertain and it looked like the naval action there that morning had ended in a draw.

The meeting of the War Cabinet made it clear that Narvik was the priority objective. The policy makers were still preoccupied with the iron ore issue and failed to consider the larger strategic picture. There was even discussion of pressing on to the Swedish iron ore areas after Narvik was recaptured, or if that was not possible,