Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940 (43 page)

The telegram from Lord Halifax to his ambassador in Norway, Cecil Dormer, should be viewed in the light of this optimism. The message stated that the British Government was taking immediate action against the Germans in Bergen and Trondheim. This information was passed to the Norwegians and created false expectations. In fact, the members of the War Cabinet were already shifting their attention away from south and central Norway to Narvik.

Admiral Pound briefed Churchill after the War Cabinet meeting. Pound considered the operation against Bergen too risky after discovering that there were two German cruisers in that city. Churchill agreed and this led to the cancellation of the attack. By the time the telegram from Halifax to Dormer was on its way, telling the Norwegians that the British were moving immediately against the Germans in Bergen, Churchill and the Admiralty were canceling that operation. In retrospect, Churchill concluded that the Admiralty had interfered too much in operational matters and that the decision on whether or not to attack Bergen should have been left to Admiral Forbes.

A meeting of the Supreme War Council was convened at 10 Downing Street around 1730 hours on April 9, with the French represented by Reynaud, Daladier, and Admiral Darlan. The discussion focused on what could be done to thwart the Germans in Norway. The British pointed out that the two divisions held back in England for use in Scandinavia had been sent to France after the conclusion of peace between the Soviet Union and Finland. Consequently, there were only eleven battalions in Great Britain available for operations in Norway. The council was told that two of these battalions were embarked and sailing that night. Another five battalions would be available in three days, earmarked for Bergen and Trondheim according 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If additional British forces were required, they had to be withdrawn from those deployed in France.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),
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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.
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Kersaudy’s summary of the Allies’ response during the first day of the German invasion is on point:
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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
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. 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, to attack German shipping in the Swedish port of Luleå!

It seemed clear that the Allies had already sustained a crushing defeat, and some of the discussions centered on how to deflect the storm of criticism that was sure to follow. Since this setback came on top of the Allied failure to give aid to the Finns, it was necessary politically to launch a concerted effort to shift the blame. Churchill blamed Norway’s “strict observance of neutrality” in a speech delivered to the House of Commons the following day.
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Even now, on April 11, Churchill sounded full of optimism and predicted a catastrophe for the Germans as he spoke to the House of Commons:

Disorganized Forces, an Untidy Command Structure, and Bewildering Orders

As a result of their hurried debarkation in
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, the eight battalions available for disposition were in a state of confusion. Derry states that the list of forces available was “not numerically unimpressive.” This is a strange statement. The British had only 11 battalions available for operations in Norway and it would take up to two weeks for all of these to be ready to deploy. In the first week, the German forces in Norway had grown to over 45 battalions.

The 24th Guards Brigade was to figure prominently in the early efforts by the Allies to offer a riposte to the German capture of Narvik. This brigade of regulars had existed since the end of 1939, but the headquarters staff assembled hurriedly in the first days of April. It had never trained together as a unit. The 1st Battalion Irish Guards and the 1st Battalion Scots Guards were moved north from the London area on April 6. The Scots Guards were loaded on the
Batory
, a Polish transport, in the Clyde. The two remaining battalions were not yet at their embarkation points. The Irish Guards embarked in the liner
Monarch of Bermuda
in the morning of April 11. The third battalion of the brigade, the 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers, had recently returned from India, not exactly a good training ground for arctic operations. This battalion embarked on the
Reino de Pacifica
.

Unfortunately, little thought was given to how equipment was loaded. Those items most essential for landing on a hostile shore were loaded deep in the holds while there was so many unnecessary “comfort” items for headquarters operations that it ended up cluttering the piers. Tactical loading was ignored.

The 146th Infantry Brigade, consisting of three territorial battalions, was added to these forces. One battalion of the 146th Infantry Brigade had Trondheim as its destination under
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and it was ready in the Clyde. The other two battalions of this brigade, previously destined for Bergen, had gone through the hurried debarkation five days earlier and much of their equipment remained on the ships in the mass confusion associated with that embarkation.

Two territorial battalions from the 148th Infantry Brigade also required several days to replace equipment left behind on the ships. The six battalions of French alpine troops that had been part of the forces for
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were scheduled to deploy a week after the first British forces.

The 49th Infantry Division was designated headquarters for the force at Narvik with Major General Pierce C. Mackesy as its commander. No plan had yet been formulated, not even in conceptual terms. The possibility of copying the German method of landing troops directly in the target area was not realistic since the troops were embarked in large merchant vessels with little thought given to their tactical employment without first disembarking, and then being organized and equipped.

The most frantic efforts were made to get the forces underway as quickly as possible. The 24th Guards Brigade lacked artillery, vehicles, and engineers and was therefore not in a position to advance overland against organized opposition, particularly in the wintry wilderness around Narvik. The 146th was hurried on its way on April 12, without taking time to re-equip. As pointed out by Moulton, it appeared that in their haste to take some action, the command authorities mistook another hasty embarkation as signs of drive and energy.

The selection of commanders was equally confusing and the failure to designate a clear-cut chain of command violated sound operational principles. Admiral Sir Edward Evans had been designated to lead British forces against Narvik before the German attack. However, he was dispatched as a member of the Allied delegation to Sweden and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cork and Orrery was appointed commander of the naval forces for the Narvik operation. Since Admiral Cork was senior to Admiral Forbes, his nominal superior as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, the Admiralty put the control of naval operations within 100 miles of Vågsfjord in the hands of Admiral Cork. General Mackesy was sent to Scapa Flow in a hurry to accompany the Scots Guards. Mackesy, the 24th Guards Brigade commander, and two companies of the Scots Guards sailed on the same warship.

The British had only the vaguest ideas as to those two most important elements in coming up with a workable operational plan: the enemy and the terrain. A few lines from General Ironside’s written notes accompanying General Mackesy instructions are illustrative:
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