All Hell Let Loose_ The World at War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings [35]
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