Inferno - Max Hastings [32]
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. General 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 southwestern 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 private cars. It’s like a film I saw: Finnish, Polish, Albanian, Chinese refugees … It is so simple and so sad: people are ‘evacuated’ with woollen blankets, silver cutlery and babies in their arms. They are fleeing from bombs.”
The Norwegians displayed implacable hostility to their invaders. Even when compelled to acknowledge subjection, they were unimpressed by explanations. Ruth Maier heard three German soldiers tell a cluster of Oslo residents that 60,000 German civilians had been murdered by the Poles before the Wehrmacht intervened to save their ethnic brethren. Ruth laughed:
[The man] turns to me and says: “Are you laughing, Fräulein?” “Yes.” “And our Führer!,” he goes all misty-eyed. “Obviously he’s a human being like the rest of us, but he’s the best, the best we have in Europe.” The [soldier] with the sky-blue eyes—also misty now—nods: “The best … the best … !” More people come over to listen. The Norwegian says: “Are we really to believe that you’ve come over here to protect us? … That’s what it says here!” He points to [a] newspaper … “Protect you? No, we’re not doing that.” But the blond interrupts him. “Yes, of course that’s what we’re doing.” The brown-haired one thinks for a moment and then says, “Yes, actually, if we’re honest about it … we’re protecting you from the English.” The Norwegian: “And you believe that?”
The faith of most Germans in the virtue as well as the expediency of their mission was fortified by its swift success. The invaders closed their grip on southern Norway, having secured communications with the homeland by occupying the intervening Danish Peninsula almost without resistance. The Norwegian Storting met again in the little town of Elverum,