Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 by Henrik Lunde (the reader ebook .TXT) 📕

The British naval staff believed that the shore batteries at the fjord entrance could be dealt with easily. Admiral Forbes was informed about the planned operation on April 14 and asked for his opinion. Forbes warned the Admiralty that they should expect heavy losses in ships and troops from German air attacks. Churchill asked him to reconsider. Forbes replied that he saw no serious difficulties if, among other things, he was given sufficient forces, the troops were carried on warships, and he was given a large number of landing craft. Forbes was surely aware that there were only ten landing craft in Great Britain.3

The Joint Planning Committee (JPC), which had viewed Trondheim as the key to Allied operations in Norway, prepared a paper on April 15 at the request of the chiefs of staff. It argued against a direct attack and recommended that the main efforts to capture Trondheim be made by the forces landed at Namsos and Åndalsnes. The JPC met all day on April 16 and produced a new version of the paper. The JCP members now concluded that Trondheim, if recaptured, could not be held because of German air power.

The chiefs of staff initially overruled the JCP but on April 19, they advised the MCC against a direct attack on Trondheim. Admiral Forbes’ views were now known and these weighed heavily on the JPC. There can be no doubt that the only serious objection to the operation was the exposure of the Home Fleet to German air power. However, the potential rewards of a direct attack were great and it is not obvious why the British concluded that the danger to the navy in an attack on Trondheim, after seizing the shore batteries, was greater than the danger faced in the waters around Namsos and Åndalsnes. The air staff was against all operations in Norway. They felt that any ground operations in that country were doomed to fail unless they had adequate air support and they viewed the diversion of air assets from France and Britain as an unjustified squandering of precious resources.

The effectual abandonment of the operation against Trondheim doomed operations in southern and central Norway to failure. Those who maintain that Ruge was responsible for the abandonment of Hammer because he diverted the forces intended as the southern pincer to shore up the front to the south, fail to consider the discussions in Great Britain that led to its abandonment. The operations from Namsos and Åndalsnes were designed to draw German forces away from Trondheim, thereby facilitating the quick capture of the city and Værnes Airfield by a direct attack. The two pincer movements lost their rationale when the direct attack was abandoned. The direct approach was abandoned before Ruge requested that the forces landed in Åndalsnes be used in the south. This is demonstrated by the order Brigadier Morgan received from General Ironside while at sea on April 17 (see later in this chapter).

There was virtually no chance that the Allies would be able to cover the long distances from the landing sites at Namsos and Åndalsnes to Trondheim through a snow-covered landscape against eight German infantry battalions. If the two battalions of the 148th Brigade had turned north at Dombås, they would most likely have been trapped by the northward German advance, which would have cut them off from their base at Åndalsnes.

The Second Crisis in the German High Command

The Allied landings in central Norway that began on April 14, the slow progress of the German drives from Oslo, and the failure to come up with a political solution acceptable to the Norwegians threw the German leadership into a second command crisis. For his failure, Ambassador Bräuer was recalled on April 17 and retired from the diplomatic service. Göring painted a picture of widespread guerrilla warfare in Norway, argued for strong measures against the population, and complained that the navy was not doing its part in transporting troops to Norway. A close friend of Göring, Josef Terboven, came to Berlin on April 19 and Hitler appointed him Reich Commissioner in Norway.

The OKW wanted to avoid repressions against the civilian population that could bring on an extended campaign against the Norwegians. Keitel and Jodl were interested in limiting Terboven’s powers and sharply delineating von Falken horst and Terboven’s respective spheres of authority. This led to an argument between Hitler and Keitel on April 19 that became so heated that Keitel stomped out of the room. Jodl notes in his diary, “We are again confronted with complete chaos in the command system. Hitler insists on issuing orders on every detail; any coordinated effort within the existing military command structure is impossible.” The military’s worries about the delineation of authority between von Falkenhorst and Terboven continued, as did worries that the latter could take actions that would stiffen Norwegian resistance. Jodl writes on April 20 that, “We must do nothing to cause the Norwegians to offer passive, still less active resistance. That would simply be to play the game of the English…”

The OKW planned to transfer the 11th Motorized Brigade to Norway from Denmark. Hitler cancelled the transfer of the 11th Brigade on April 21 and instead ordered the 2nd Mountain Division to Norway. He also planned to send the 1st Mountain Division but the transfer of the latter was cancelled when a linkup with the forces in Trondheim was achieved.

Still very apprehensive about the forces in Trondheim, Hitler proposed on April 22 to send a division to that city using the two ocean liners Bremen and Europa. Raeder regarded this as completely out of the question. The whole fleet would be required to escort the two ships and the likely outcome would be the loss of the ocean liners, the fleet, and the division. Raeder’s arguments convinced Hitler to give up on the idea. Instead, he directed the employment of all means to open the land route between Oslo and Trondheim. The Germans had