All Hell Let Loose (11 page)

The British 148 Brigade, whose commander defied instructions from London and marched his men to offer direct support to the Norwegian army, was mercilessly mauled by the Germans before its three hundred survivors retreated by bus. A staff officer dispatched from Norway to the War Office to seek instructions returned to tell Maj. Gen. Adrian Carton de Wiart, leading another force: ‘You can do what you like, for they don’t know what they want done.’ British troops fought one engagement in which they acquitted themselves honourably, at Kvan on 24–25 April, before being obliged to fall back.

Thereafter in London, ministers and service chiefs favoured evacuation of Namsos and Åndalsnes. Neville Chamberlain, self-centred as ever, was fearful of bearing blame for failure. The press, encouraged by the government, had infused the British people with high hopes for the campaign; the BBC had talked absurdly about the Allies ‘throwing a ring of steel around Oslo’. Now, the prime minister mused to colleagues that it might be prudent to tell the House of Commons that the British had never intended to conduct long-term operations in central Norway. The French, arriving in London on 27 April for a meeting of the Allied Supreme War Council, were stunned by the proposal to quit, and demurred fiercely. Reynaud returned to Paris claiming success in galvanising Chamberlain and his colleagues: ‘We have shown them what to do and given them the will to do it.’ This was fanciful: two hours later, the British evacuation order was given. Pamela Street, a Wiltshire farmer’s daughter, wrote sadly in her diary: ‘The war goes on like a great big weight which gets a bit heavier every day.’

The Norwegian campaign spawned mistrust and indeed animosity between the British and French governments which proved irreparable, even after the fall of Chamberlain. To a colleague on 27 April, Reynaud deplored the inertia of British ministers, ‘old men who do not know how to take a risk’. Daladier told the French cabinet on 4 May: ‘We should ask the British what they want to do: they pushed for this war, and they wriggle out as soon as it is a matter of taking measures which could directly affect them.’ Shamefully, British local commanders were instructed not to tell the Norwegians they were leaving. Gen. Bernard Paget ignored this order, provoking an emotional scene with Norwegian C-in-C Otto Ruge, who said: ‘So Norway is to share the fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland. But why? Why? Your troops haven’t been defeated!’ After this brief explosion, however, Ruge’s natural dignity and calm reasserted themselves. Some historians have criticised his defence of central Norway, but it is hard to imagine any deployment of his small forces that would have altered the outcome. When King Haakon and his government opted for exile in Britain, the army C-in-C refused to leave his men and insisted upon sharing their captivity.

At Namsos, Maj. Gen. Carton de Wiart obeyed the evacuation order without informing the neighbouring Norwegian commander, who suddenly found his flank in the air. After conducting a difficult retreat to the port, Ruge’s officer found only a heap of British stores, some wrecked vehicles, and a jaunty farewell note from Carton de Wiart. Gen. Claude Auchinleck, who assumed the Allied command at Narvik, later wrote to Ironside, the CIGS, in London: ‘The worst of it all is the need for lying to all and sundry in order to preserve secrecy. Situation vis a vis the Norwegians is particularly difficult, and one feels a most despicable creature in pretending that we are going on fighting when we are going to quit at once.’ In the far north, the British and French concentrated some 26,000 men to confront the 4,000 Germans who now held Narvik. Amazingly, even after the campaign in France began, the Allies sustained operations until the end of May, seizing the port on the 27th after days of dogged and skilful German resistance.

The confusion of loyalties and nationalities that would become a notable feature of the war was illustrated by the presence among Narvik’s attackers of some Spanish republicans, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion after being evicted from their own country. ‘Those officers who had misgivings about welcoming [them] into the Legion (they dubbed them all communists) were gratified by their fighting prowess,’ wrote Captain Pierre Lapie. ‘[One of] the young Spaniards who attacked a German machine-gun post behind Elvegard … was mown down by fire at only a few yards’ distance. Another sprang forward and smashed the head of the gunner with his rifle butt.’ The regimental war diary described the Legionnaires’ ascent of the steep hill before Narvik, where they met a fierce counter-attack: ‘Captaine de Guittaut was killed and Lieutenant Garoux severely wounded. Led by Lieutenant Vadot, the company managed to halt the counter-attack and the Germans fell back, abandoning their dead and wounded … Sergeant Szabo being the first man to set foot in the town.’

It was all for nothing: immediately after capturing the town and burying their dead, the Allies began to re-embark, recognising that their position was strategically untenable. The Norwegians were left to contemplate hundreds of wrecked homes and dead civilians. Their monarch and government sailed for Britain on 7 June aboard a Royal Navy cruiser. Some Norwegians undertook epic journeys to escape from German occupation and join the Allied struggle, several being assisted by the Soviet ambassador in Stockholm, the remarkable woman intellectual Aleksandra Kollontai, to travel eastwards around the world and eventually reach Britain.

The evacuation of central Norway, under heavy air attack, shocked and dismayed the British public at home. Student Christopher Tomlin wrote on 3 May: ‘I am stunned, very disillusioned and afraid of our retreat … Mr Chamberlain … made me believe we would drive the Germans out of Scandinavia. Now the wind is out of my sails; I feel subdued and expect to hear more bad news … Haven’t we, can’t we find, more men of Churchill’s breed?’ In truth, the First Sea Lord bore substantial responsibility for the rash and muddled deployments in Norway. Britain’s armed forces lacked resources to intervene effectively; their bungled gestures mocked the tragedy of the Norwegian people. But Churchill’s rhetoric and bellicosity, in contrast to the prime minister’s manifest feebleness of purpose, prompted a surge of public enthusiasm for a change of government, which infected the chamber of the House of Commons. On 10 May, the prime minister resigned. Next day King George VI invited Churchill to form a government.

The Germans suffered the heaviest casualties in the Norwegian campaign – 5,296 compared with the British 4,500, most of the latter incurred when the carrier
Glorious
and its escorts were sunk by the battlecruiser
Scharnhorst
on 8 June. The French and a Polish exile contingent lost 530 dead, the Norwegians about 1,800. The Luftwaffe lost 242 planes, the RAF 112. Three British cruisers, seven destroyers, an aircraft carrier and four submarines were sunk, against three German cruisers, ten destroyers, and six submarines. Four further German cruisers and six destroyers were badly damaged.

The conquest of Norway provided Hitler with naval and air bases which became important when he later invaded Russia, and exploited them to impede the shipment of Allied supplies to Murmansk. He was content to leave Sweden unmolested and neutral: his strategic dominance ensured that the Swedes maintained shipments of iron ore to Germany, and dared not risk offering comfort to the Allies. Yet Hitler paid a price for Norway. Obsessed with holding the country against a prospective British assault, until almost the war’s end he deployed 350,000 men there, a major drain on his manpower resources. And German naval losses in the Norwegian campaign proved a critical factor in making a subsequent invasion of Britain unrealistic.

The British were chiefly responsible for conducting Allied operations in Norway, and must thus bear overwhelming blame for their failure. Lack of resources explained much, but the performance of the Royal Navy’s senior officers was unimpressive – the shocking incompetence of
Glorious
’s captain was chiefly responsible for the carrier’s loss; the weakness of British warship anti-aircraft defences was painfully exposed. The 10 and 13 April attacks on German destroyers at Narvik, and later evacuations of Anglo-French ground forces, were the only naval operations to be creditably handled. British conduct towards Norway was characterised by bad faith, or at least a lack of frankness which amounted to the same thing. It is remarkable that the Norwegians proved so quickly forgiving, becoming staunch allies both in exile and in their occupied homeland. No action within British powers could have averted the German conquest, once the Royal Navy missed its best chance on 9 April. But the moral ignobility and military incompetence of the campaign reflected poorly upon Britain’s politicians and commanders. If the scale of operations was small compared with those that now followed, it reflected failures of will, leadership, equipment, tactics and training which would be repeated on a much wider stage.

The campaign’s most important consequence was that it precipitated the fall of Chamberlain. Had there been no Norway, it is overwhelmingly likely that he would have retained office as prime minister through the campaign in France that followed. The consequences of such an outcome for Britain, and for the world, could have been catastrophic, because his government might well have chosen a negotiated peace with Hitler. But only posterity can thus discern a consolation for the Norwegian débâcle which was denied to all the contemporary participants save the victorious Germans.

2
THE FALL OF FRANCE

On the evening of 9 May 1940, French troops on the Western Front heard ‘a vast murmuring’ in the German lines; word was passed back that the enemy was moving. Commanders chose to believe that this, like earlier such alarms, was false. Though the German assault upon Holland, Belgium and France began at 0435 on 10 May, it was 0630 before Allied C-in-C General Maurice Gamelin was awakened in his bed, five hours after the first warning from the outposts. Following the long-anticipated pleas for assistance that now arrived from governments in Brussels and The Hague, neutrals in the path of the German storm, Gamelin ordered an advance to the river Dyle in Belgium, fulfilling his longstanding contingency plan. The British Expeditionary Force’s nine divisions and the best of France’s forces – twenty-nine divisions of First, Seventh and Ninth Armies – began rolling north-eastwards. The Luftwaffe made no serious attempt to interfere, for this was exactly where Hitler wanted the Allies to go. Their departure removed a critical threat to the flank of the main German armies, which were thrusting forward further south.

The defences of Holland and Belgium were smashed open. In the first hours of 10 May, glider-landed Luftwaffe paratroops secured the vital Eben Emael fort, covering the Albert Canal – built by a German construction company which obligingly provided its blueprints to Hitler’s planners – and two bridges across the Maas at Maastricht. Even as Churchill took office as Britain’s prime minister, German spearheads were rolling up the Dutch army. Meanwhile south-westwards, some 134,000 men and 1,600 vehicles, of which 1,222 were tanks, began threading their way through the Ardennes forest to deliver the decisive blow of the campaign against the weak centre of the French line. Germans joked afterwards that they created ‘the greatest traffic jam in history’ in the woods of Luxembourg and southern Belgium, forcing thousands of tanks, trucks and guns along narrow roads the Allies had deemed unsuitable for moving an army. The advancing columns were vulnerable to air attack, had the French recognised their presence and importance. But they did not. From beginning to end of the struggle, Gamelin and his army commanders directed operations in a miasma of uncertainty, seldom either knowing where the Germans had reached, or guessing whither they were going.

Disproportionate historical attention has focused upon the operations of the small British contingent, and its escape from Dunkirk. The overriding German objective was to defeat the French army, by far the most formidable obstacle to the Wehrmacht. The British role was marginal; especially in the first days, the BEF commanded the attention of only modest German air and ground forces. It is untrue that France’s defence rested chiefly on the frontier fortifications of the Maginot Line: the chief purpose of its bunkers and guns was to liberate men for active operations further north. Scarred by memories of the 1914–18 devastation and slaughter in their own country, the French were bent upon waging war somewhere other than on their own soil. Gamelin planned a decisive battle in Belgium, heedless of the fact that the Germans had other ideas. The French C-in-C’s gravest mistake in the early spring of 1940 had been to move the French Seventh Army to the left of the Allied line in anticipation of the Belgian incursion.

French vanguards crossed into Holland to find that the Dutch army had already retreated too far north-eastward to create a common front, while the Belgian army was falling back in disarray. Gamelin’s formations fought hard in the significant battles that followed in Belgium: although short of anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, they had some good tanks, notably the Somua S35. In a long slogging match at Hannut between 12 and 14 May, 165 panzers were knocked out, for the loss of 105 French tanks. The French front on the Dyle remained unbroken. But its defenders were soon obliged to fall back, because they found their right flank turned. The Germans, gaining possession of the Hannut battlefield, were able to recover and repair most of their damaged armour.

For the first two days of the campaign, the French high command was oblivious of its peril: a witness described Gamelin’s demeanour as positively jaunty, ‘striding up and down the corridor in his fort, with a pleased and martial air’. Another observer spoke of the C-in-C as ‘in excellent form with a big smile’. Now sixty-seven years old, as Joffre’s chief of staff in 1914 he had been widely perceived as the architect of France’s triumph in the Battle of the Marne. A self-consciously cultured figure, he enjoyed discussing art and philosophy; also intensely political, he was much more popular than his future successor, the splenetic Maxime Weygand. Gamelin’s crippling weakness was an instinct for compromise: he strove to avoid making hard choices. Anticipating ‘
une guerre de longue durée
’, a protracted confrontation on the frontier of France, he and his subordinates were confounded in May 1940 by events unfolding at a speed beyond their imaginations.