The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (278 page)

T
he brief struggle in Finland had drawn the world’s attention to Scandinavia, a development deplored by the Scandinavians, who, like other neutrals, hoped they would be overlooked until the war was over. Norway’s yearning for obscurity—which was inevitably shared by Denmark, as it was situated between the Norwegians and the Reich—was frustrated by the Royal Navy on Friday, February 16, in an action which thrilled all England, widened the war, increased Churchill’s popularity, and, in its sequel, almost led to his ruin.

Probably Oslo’s desperate attempts to remain a spectator were doomed. A country’s neutrality cannot always be determined by its own government. If it is violated by one warring power, the country is like the ravished maiden in the Nibelungenlied legend who immediately becomes available to all others, and the Germans had been exploiting Norway’s territorial waters since the outbreak of the war. Swedish iron ore from Gällivare was “vital for the German munitions industry,” as Churchill had told the War Cabinet on September 19, and while in summer German ships could transport this ore across the Gulf of Bothnia, between Finland and Sweden, in winter it had to be moved westward to Narvik, a Norwegian port, and then down the length of the Norwegian coast through the Leads, a deep-water channel running parallel to the shore. Germany wasn’t the only country with U-boats; British submarines could have littered the floor of the North Atlantic with the sunken hulks of enemy freighters.
¹⁴³

It hadn’t done so because their captains had remained within Norway’s three-mile limit, and the government in Oslo, fearful of Nazi reprisals, had decided not to protest. If this use of Norwegian territorial waters could not be stopped “by pressure on the Norwegian government,” said Churchill, it would be his duty to propose “the laying of mines” inside Norway’s “territorial waters.” There was precedent for this. The Admiralty had done it in 1917, and had successfully drawn the German ships out beyond the Leads. After the meeting broke up, he sent Pound a minute advising him that the War Cabinet, including Halifax, “appeared strongly to favor this action.” Therefore, he wrote, he wanted Admiralty staff to study the minelaying operation, adding: “Pray let me be continually informed of the progress of this plan, which is of the highest importance in crippling the enemy’s war industry.” A further decision of the War Cabinet would be made “when all is in readiness.”
¹⁴⁴

Pound had seen to it that all was soon in readiness, but other members of the cabinet had not really shared Churchill’s sense of urgency, and when the project was mooted in Whitehall, the Foreign Office and the Dominions emitted sounds of alarm. After discussion a majority of the War Cabinet had decided that immediate action was unnecessary, and the matter had been set aside. This seemed to be the fate of every imaginative proposal Winston laid before them, and his sense of frustration is evident in a letter to a colleague. His “disquiet,” he wrote, was mainly due to “the awful difficulty which our machinery of war conduct presents to positive action. I see such immense walls of prevention, all building and building, that I wonder whether any plan will have a chance of climbing over them.”
¹⁴⁵

The issue had remained on Churchill’s mind, however, and had been one of his motives in drafting Operation Catherine. Now in February a flagrant Nazi trespass inside the three-mile limit called for an instant response by the Admiralty. Before
Graf Spee
’s last battle, the captured crews of the British merchantmen she had sunk had been transferred to her supply ship, the
Altmark
. Over three hundred of these English seamen had been locked in
Altmark
’s hold, and they were still there, because after
Graf Spee
went down the smaller
Altmark
had escaped from the battered British warships. For nine weeks she had been hiding in the vastness of the South Atlantic; now, running out of fuel and provisions, with no safe haven elsewhere, she was bringing the British crews home to the Reich for imprisonment. On the morning of February 16 Winston was told that an RAF pilot had sighted her, hugging the Norwegian coast and heading south. Immediately he decided to rescue the men in her hold. Ordering all British warships in the area to “sweep northwards during the day,” he directed them “to arrest
Altmark
in territorial waters should she be found. This ship is violating neutrality in carrying British prisoners of war to Germany. Surely another cruiser or two should be sent to rummage the Skagerrak tonight? The
Altmark
must be regarded as an invaluable trophy.”
¹⁴⁶

That afternoon H.M.S.
Cossack
, Captain Philip Vian commanding, sighted the German vessel. She fled into Jösing Fjord. Vian blocked the mouth of the fjord and sent in a destroyer with a boarding party. Two Norwegian gunboats intercepted them, and the captain of one of them, the
Kjell
, arrived by barge on the
Cossack
. Vian wrote afterward that he told the Norwegian that he “demanded the right to visit and search, asking him to come with me.” The Norwegian officer replied that the
Altmark
had been searched three times since her entry into Norwegian waters and that “no prisoners had been found. His instructions were to resist entry by force: as I might see, his ships had their torpedo tubes trained on
Cossack
. Deadlock.”
¹⁴⁷

Vian signaled the Admiralty for instructions. Churchill had left word that any message concerning
Altmark
should be sent directly to him. The incident offers an excellent illustration of what General Sir Ian Jacob has called “the fury of his concentration.” On such occasions, Jacob writes: “When his mind was occupied with a particular problem, however detailed, it focused upon it relentlessly. Nobody could turn him aside.” Marder adds: “With a display of energy and his imagination, Churchill sometimes carried his offensive ideas too far…. The Baltic, and increasingly the Norwegian facet, became almost an obsession with him.” There were those in the Foreign Office who thought his reply to Vian was too aggressive; they were the same people who, after his broadcast criticizing neutral countries, had issued a gratuitous statement declaring that the first lord had not represented HMG policy.
¹⁴⁸

In fact his instructions to Vian were almost flawless—“almost,” because he should have sent them through Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, Vian’s superior. He
did
phone Halifax and told him what he proposed to do. The foreign secretary hurried over to the Admiralty, where Winston and Pound lectured him on the “Law of Hot Pursuit” at sea. Halifax suggested giving the Norwegian captain an option—taking
Altmark
to Bergen under joint escort, for an inquiry according to international law. His suggestion was adopted, and then the order was radioed to
Cossack
. If the Norwegians refused to convoy
Altmark
to Bergen, Vian was told, he was to “board
Altmark
, liberate the prisoners, and take possession of the ship.” If a Norwegian vessel interfered she should be warned off, but “if she fires upon you, you should not reply unless the attack is serious, in which case you should defend yourself using no more force than is necessary, and ceasing fire when she desists.”
¹⁴⁹

That night, as the first lord and the first sea lord sat up in the war room—“in some anxiety,” as Churchill wrote—Vian boarded
Kjell
and proposed the Halifax option. The Norwegian captain declined; he repeated that the German ship had been searched, that she was unarmed, and that she carried no British prisoners. These were all lies, but as Churchill pointed out, “Every allowance must be made” for the Norwegians, who were “quivering under the German terror and exploiting our forbearance.” Already the Nazis “had sunk 218,000 tons of Scandinavian ships with a loss of 555 Scandinavian lives.” Vian said he was going to board
Altmark
. He invited the Norwegian officer to join him. The invitation was declined; henceforth he and his sister ship were passive spectators.
¹⁵⁰

So the
Cossack
entered the fjord alone, searchlights blazing, knifing through the ice floes until Vian realized that
Altmark
was under way and attempting to ram him. Luckily the German at the helm was a poor seaman. He ran his vessel aground. Vian forced his way alongside; his crew grappled the two ships together, and the British boarding party sprang across. The Nazi vessel
was
armed, with two pom-poms and four machine guns. The tars seized those and turned on
Altmark
’s crew; in a hand-to-hand fight four Germans were killed and five wounded; the others fled ashore or surrendered. No Norwegians had searched the ship. In battened-down storerooms and in empty oil tanks, 299 Britons awaited rescue. The boarding party was flinging open hatches; one of them called, “Are there any English down there?” There was a shouted chorus of “Yes!” and a boarder shouted back, “Well, the navy’s here!” By midnight Vian was clear of the fjord, racing home to England.
¹⁵¹

The news reached Admiralty House at 3:00
A.M.,
and Churchill and Pound were jubilant. Randolph’s wife, Pamela, saw
Cossack
land the rescued prisoners at Leith, on the Firth of Forth, where doctors, ambulances, press, and photographers awaited them. She wrote her father-in-law: “You must have had a very thrilling & anxious night on Friday. It’s comforting to know we can be ferocious.” In his Downing Street diary, Jock Colville’s Saturday entry began: “There was great excitement at No. 10 over the
Altmark
affair, news of which reached us early in the morning. It is a perfect conclusion to the victory over the
Graf von Spee
.” The King sent a congratulatory note to his Admiralty’s first lord, who replied at once: “It is a vy gt encouragement & gratification to me to receive Your Majesty’s most gracious & kindly message…. By none is Your Majesty’s compliment more treasured than by the vy old servant of Your Royal House and of your father & yr grandfather who now subscribes himself / Your Majesty’s faithful & devoted subject / Winston S. Churchill.”
¹⁵²

Arthur Marder speaks for RN professionals when he writes of the
Altmark
incident: “It was a minor operation of no significance save for its considerable moral effects.” The episode had repercussions, as we shall see, but the casual reference to its impact on the British public reflects the attitude of military professionals. In wartime they are condescending toward civilians, although public opinion, as France was already demonstrating, can determine what kind of war will be fought, and, to a considerable extent, whether it will be won or lost. Blackouts without bombers were merely exasperating; it was after the
Altmark
that people began to hate. Not all the people—the well-bred still recoiled from the chauvinism without which great victories are impossible. As late as April 26, 1940, Jock Colville saw “a group of bespectacled intellectuals” in Leicester Square’s Bierkeller “remain firmly seated while God Save the King was played. Everybody looked but nobody did anything, which shows that the war has not yet made us lose our sense of proportion or become noisily jingoistic.” The lower classes were less tolerant, and the newspapers fed their wrath. Churchill had found the rescued men “in good health” and “hearty condition,” but Fleet Street rechristened
Altmark
“The Hell-Ship”; those rescued were encouraged to exaggerate their ordeal, and their stories gained in the retelling. Public opinion was developing genuine hostility toward Nazi Germany. People
wanted
to believe in atrocities. Even after four of the men saved had appeared on a platform in the East End, looking well-fed and ruddy, a woman in the audience was quoted as saying: “If I saw a German drownding, I wouldn’t save him. Not after that, I couldn’t.”
¹⁵³

Churchill, no hater, used the brief clash in the fjord to build patriotism and confidence in men like Vian and his crew. The House of Commons liked that. On Tuesday, February 20, Harold Nicolson noted: “Winston, when he comes in, is loudly cheered.” Admiral Keyes had been in the war room that night, Nicolson’s diary entry continued, and had told him how “Winston rang up Halifax and said, ‘I propose to violate Norwegian neutrality.’ The message was sent and they waited anxiously in the Admiralty for the result. What a result! A fine show. Winston, when he walks out of the House, catches my eye. He gives one portentous wink.”
¹⁵⁴

Churchill wanted to squeeze every last drop out of it. The war hadn’t been much of a war thus far. The Germans, he knew, were refitting for an offensive somewhere, and the Allies—who should have been giving them no rest—remained passive. He had no authority over the other services, but he could make the navy fight. The battle off Montevideo had given England its first real news to cheer about, and on February 15, just one day before the
Altmark
triumph, he had greeted
Exeter
as she arrived at Plymouth. Now, on February 23, he gathered the heroes of the River Plate in the great hall of the Guildhall, the focal point for the government of London for over a thousand years. There, beneath the Gothic facade, beneath the four fantastic pinnacles, the exuberant coat-of-arms, and the monuments to Chatham, Nelson, and Wellington, he reminded those present—and the nation beyond—that the brunt of the war thus far had been borne by sailors, nearly three thousand of whom had already been lost in the “hard, unrelenting struggle which goes on night and day.” He said: