All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [30]
Despite repeated warnings that a German invasion was imminent, the country’s tiny army had not been mobilised. The capital was quickly blacked out, but old General Kristian Laake, Norway’s commander-in-chief, responded feebly to news that German warships were approaching up Oslo Fjord: he ordered reservists to be mustered by mail – which would assemble them under arms only on 11 April. His staff officers remonstrated, but Laake was in flight from reality: ‘A little exercise should do these units no harm!’ he declared indulgently. German warships entered ports and began to disembark troops. The Norwegians, French and British had alike deluded themselves that Hitler would never dare to invade Norway in the face of the Royal Navy. Yet poor intelligence and misjudged deployments caused the Admiralty to forfeit its best opportunities to wreak havoc, as the Germans landed on 9 April. Thereafter, although the invaders suffered severe attrition at sea, so too did the Royal Navy at the hands of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Norway’s nearest coastline lay four hundred miles from Britain, beyond range of land-based air cover. The vulnerability of ships to bomber attack was soon brutally exposed.
The most dramatic development that first morning of the campaign took place in Oslo Fjord shortly after 0400, as the new cruiser Blücher, carrying thousands of German troops, approached Oscarsborg. The ancient fortress’s two nineteenth-century cannon, named ‘Moses’ and ‘Aaron’, were laboriously loaded. Local commander Colonel Birger Eriksen, knowing the gunners’ limitations, held his fire until the last moment. The cruiser was only five hundred yards offshore when the antique weapons belched flame. One shell hit the cruiser’s anti-aircraft control centre, while the other smashed into an aviation fuel store, causing a pillar of flame to leap skywards. After suffering two further hits from shore-launched torpedoes, within minutes Blücher was engulfed in fire and listing heavily, her ammunition exploding. The ship sank with the loss of a thousand German lives.
Confusion and black comedy then overtook Norway’s capital. The designated assault commander, Gen. Erich Engelbrecht, was a passenger on the stricken Blücher. He was rescued from the fjord by Norwegians who took him prisoner, leaving the invaders temporarily leaderless. Gen. Laake fled the city in the wake of his staff, first taking a tramcar, then attempting unsuccessfully to hitchhike, at last catching a train. The Norwegian government offered its resignation, which was rejected by the king. The national parliament, the Storting, entered emergency session, with fierce arguments about the merits of surrender. Ministers suggested demolishing key bridges to impede the invaders, but several deputies dissented as ‘this would mean destroying valuable architectural works’. The British ambassador delivered a message from London promising aid, but was vague about when this might materialise. German paratroopers secured Oslo airport, and most of Norway’s south-western ports were soon in enemy hands. The first elements of six divisions disembarked and deployed, while the government fled northwards.
Among stunned spectators of the invaders’ arrival was a nineteen-year-old Austrian Jewish refugee named Ruth Maier. On 10 April, in the Oslo suburb of Lillestrøm, she described in her diary a scene that was becoming a tragic commonplace of Europe: ‘I think of the Germans more as a natural disaster than as a people … We watch as people stream out of basements and crowd together in the streets with perambulators, woollen blankets and babies. They sit on lorries, horse carts, taxis and