The German Invasion of Norway. Geirr H. Haarr
intervention in Norway firmly on the agenda of the OKW in December 1939 and the decision to launch the operation matured over time, pushed by Raeder and Rosenberg and fuelled by a number of seemingly minor incidents. Gradually the question changed from if it should be initiated to when. After the Altmark incident, there was hardly any question other than when. Whether German intentions were aggressive or defensive has been argued at length since 1940. In fact it was both, or rather a complicated, multidimensional combination of several factors, some of which had aggressive and strategic rationale, independent of Allied dispositions, some defensive and tactical, intended to forestall perceived Allied intentions. Berlin had no direct knowledge of Operation Wilfred, but the German intelligence organisation Abwehr could partly decipher British naval codes and during the winter the build-up of an expeditionary force to Finland was duly registered. In addition, French and British press reported freely on plans for Scandinavia and both Churchill and Reynaud were rather loose-lipped about their intensions.112
In the war diary of the SKL, there is a note on 4 April, stating that in spite of official British assurances that no operations in the north are being planned, the SKL believe there is and conclude that ‘a race between England and Germany towards Scandinavia’ has developed.113
A Hundred Incidents
IN 1941, THE US minister to Norway, Florence Harriman, wrote: ‘Hindsight is all we seem to have. But it is fantastic that none of the things which happened in the week preceding the fatal daybreak of April 9th awakened us to danger. A hundred incidents should have prepared us. Instead we were transfixed, still watching the war in Finland.’1
Indeed, the almost uniform inability to see and understand the warning signals, which were abundantly available in spite of tight security, is one of the great enigmas of Weserübung. Not only were the signals overlooked in Oslo, but equally so in London, Paris and Copenhagen. Swedish authorities in Stockholm realised what was going on, but did nothing.
In the early pre-electronic part of the war, identification of relevant information in the flow of often contradictory signals arriving was demanding. All the more so, as even the ‘right’ signals were rarely unambiguous and could, more often than not, justify several rational interpretations. Thus, the psychological concept of cognitive priming must be accounted for, where the appreciation of new information is influenced by the receiver’s expectations and beliefs. Something that confirms an existing point of view is far more readily accepted than something pointing in an unfamiliar direction. This was certainly true for Norway in 1940.
Intelligence consists of four elements: acquisition, analysis, interpretation and distribution. If one is missing or weak, the others become meaningless. The Norwegian government of 1940 did not have any individuals or groups with access to all available intelligence material and tasked with assessing the threats to neutrality. The ministers would have to do this themselves, in addition to their many other tasks, without professional military analysis or management systems. Foreign Minister Koht in particular worked alone. He had a personal confidence that gave him strength, but also made him inaccessible to other people’s advice and arguments. Koht believed himself to be the best man to interpret and understand the incoming information and decide how to act upon it – or not – in most cases without seeking a second opinion. He had no group of analysts established to try to help him see the larger picture and he never took any initiatives to have incoming signals systematically verified.
As with most tasks in the Norwegian military, intelligence was handled separately by the services. The Admiral Staff had an Intelligence Office led by Kaptein Erik Anker Steen and the General Staff a similar unit: Section IV (the ‘Foreign Office’) led by Oberstløytnant Harald Wrede-Holm.2 Both offices were understaffed, but worked well together and shared most of the information they received. Communication between the military and the government was never made interactive – not even after September 1939 – and no systematic assessment of the incoming information in a political context existed. Information was forwarded to the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs ‘when of interest’. Similarly, information came to the intelligence offices from the ministries, but rarely with any comments or analysis. Between the Nordic countries, there was a close, but unofficial and informal co-operation regarding military intelligence, largely unknown to the politicians.3
The threat from Germany was recognised by the military, but, as the analysis of strategic intelligence rested with the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the army and navy staffs lacked the necessary political perspective on their part of the intelligence. Tactical intelligence was not recognised as a concept and neither was the need for such information to be gathered, shared and systematically assessed between the political and military administrations. Defence Minister Ljungberg did not systematically forward the assessments given to him by the military staffs to the government; nor did the military themselves forward all information they possessed to their minister.
In the report of the post-war Commission of Inquiry, Prime Minister Nygaardsvold was criticised for not having taken charge of the information flow, analysis and decision-making process after the outbreak of war. Instead, he was sidelined and remained passive, leaving assessments and decisions to others.4 This criticism can easily be extended to Koht, Ljungberg, Diesen and Laake – at least.5
Error of Judgement
In the early part of the war, British intelligence was no less fragmented than in Norway. Co-ordinated acquisition of intelligence from reliable sources was rare and the exchange of analysis and interpretations almost non-existent. Hence, the disregard of the mounting evidence that Germany was preparing to invade Norway and Denmark is almost a textbook example of lack of co-ordination and inability to conceive that the opponent could actually do something unexpected. The German readiness to face British supremacy at sea, landing troops around the coast from Oslo to Narvik, ran counter to all predictions made to the British government by its military advisers.
On 28 December, two weeks after Quisling set the wheels moving in Berlin, the British War Office sent a summary note to the Foreign Office indicating signs of possible German plans for Scandinavia, picked up by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Two weeks later, on 8 January, the War Cabinet received a memorandum from the Foreign Office, concluding from compiled intelligence that Germany was contemplating an invasion of southern Scandinavia. Nobody pursued the issue and when a month later the German section of military intelligence concluded that the preparations probably had other purposes, as some twenty-five to thirty divisions would be needed for such a venture and only six could be recognised in north-west Germany, few eyebrows were raised.6
During the spring, several reports arrived at the Naval Intelligence Staff in Whitehall, detailing amphibious exercises in the Baltic and the gathering of paratroopers, transport aircraft and troopships in northern Germany. In the middle of March the Luftwaffe bombed Hatston in the Orkneys for the first time, whereas mine-laying sorties and U-boat attacks in the Atlantic ceased altogether. Simultaneously, signals were intercepted from a German intelligence vessel operating in Norwegian waters, reporting in Abwehr code. Had information such as this been processed collectively by a group of trained intelligence analysts, supported by evidence from signals intelligence (sigint) and photographic reconnaissance, it might have created a different picture. The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and the Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) had been set up to ensure just such collation of assessments, but the procedures for submitting information to these was as yet in its infancy and poorly adhered to.7
Loading transport ships in Stettin. From right: Westsee, Antares, Ionia. This photograph was probably taken in late March. (E Skjold collection)
On 17 March, the British military attaché in Stockholm, Lieutenant Colonel Sutton-Pratt,