During the months following his rapid victory over Poland, Hitler gradually adjusted to what was a completely changed situation. He was now the ally of his arch-enemy, the Bolshevik Soviet Union, and found himself at war with Britain, which, since the 1920s, he had regarded as his ideal partner. Failure to bring the war to a rapid conclusion on the basis of the new status quo would mean a renewal of hostilities by the western powers, and yet he lacked the resources for a lengthy war. Thus, without waiting for the response of the British government to his ‘peace offer’ of 6 October, Hitler pressed forward energetically with his plan to attack in the West that autumn. A day after the speech, he told Halder that ‘when the autumn mists arrive’ Belgium would appeal to France for help and they must preempt that with a ‘decisive operation’.1
On 9 October, he prepared a memorandum, setting out in detail his reasons for an attack in the West. The following day, he read out and commented on this document at a meeting with Brauchitsch and Halder. His basic ideas were then incorporated in his ‘Directive No. 6 for the Conduct of the War’. He told the generals that, if the western powers did not soon indicate a willingness to make peace, he would attack France through the Netherlands and Belgium, if possible during the autumn, in order to smash the French armed forces and those of her allies. He would then establish a base within the conquered territory for a war on land and sea against Britain. Hitler claimed that, as far as could be seen, Russia would remain neutral; however, this could change in ‘8 months, in a year, let alone in a few years’ time’.2
When Chamberlain rejected Hitler’s proposals of 6 October in a speech on 12 October, the ‘Führer’ immediately responded with an exceptionally polemical government statement claiming that the Prime Minister had spurned ‘the hand of peace’.3 As a result, for the time being, all further attempts at mediation were pointless. While, at the end of September, he had appeared outwardly optimistic about Britain’s willingness to negotiate, he now went to the other extreme. He even told Goebbels that he was now glad that ‘we can go for England’.4 His rapid change of stance indicates that the peace offer was made primarily for domestic political reasons, and Hitler now regarded its rejection as an opportunity to place the blame for the continuation of the war on Britain and France.
Hitler’s determination to extend the war met with some reservations among members of the regime. Apart from Göring, the army leadership in particular was sceptical. The generals considered the prospects of success as minimal; in their view, the state of the armaments economy alone sufficed to rule out another major offensive. During October, for a short time, the opponents of the regime within the government machine were boosted by the continuing anti-war mood among the population. They once again established contact with one another and even contemplated a coup. At the centre of the conspiracy was a group of young officers within the army leadership, who looked to Franz Halder, the Chief of the General Staff, for support. He does appear to have considered a violent change of regime as a last resort if the war in the West could not be prevented.5
On 14 October, Halder discussed the situation with Brauchitsch, who suggested three options: ‘Attack, wait and see, fundamental changes’, although it was clear that none of these possibilities offered ‘certain prospects of success’. ‘Fundamental changes’ evidently meant a coup d’état, an idea the two generals considered the least attractive of the three options, ‘because basically it would have negative and damaging repercussions’.6 On 16 October, Hitler told Brauchitsch that he had given up hope of an agreement with the West, and fixed the period from 15 to 20 November as the earliest possible date for an attack.7
Hitler’s Directive No. 7 of 18 October permitted, for the time being, the ‘crossing of the French frontier by reconnaissance units’ and the over-flying of French territory by fighters.8 The Directive Yellow, issued by the commander-in-chief of the army on 19 October, reflected Hitler’s plans for the campaign. The aim was to defeat the Allied forces with an offensive through Belgium and the Netherlands and, ‘at the same time, to capture as much Dutch, Belgian, and northern French territory as possible in order to provide a base for an effective sea and air campaign against England’.9
In view of the widespread scepticism (to put it mildly) within the military about his plans for an attack, Hitler tried to convince the civilian and military leadership through a series of speeches and interviews. On 21 October, he made a speech lasting several hours to the Party’s Reichsleiters and Gauleiters. He told them he was determined to conduct the war, which he now considered ‘almost unavoidable’, ‘ruthlessly and with all means until victory has been achieved’. According to another record of the meeting, Hitler had told them he would launch a major offensive in the West in about 14 days’ time. Then, when he ‘had forced England and France to their knees’ he would ‘once again turn to the East and sort things out there, for at the moment, as a result of the present difficulties, the situation had become disordered and confused. It had become clear that the Russian Army was not up to much, that its soldiers were badly trained and armed. Once he had achieved this goal, then he would create a Germany as of old, in other words, he would incorporate Belgium and Switzerland.’10
On 22 October, Halder, who was in a state of anxiety about the, in his view, insoluble task he had been set, learnt that Hitler wanted to attack on 12 November.11 On 25 October, Hitler discussed his plans for the offensive with his military chiefs and found himself confronted with the concerns of the professionals.12 He ordered that the commander-in-chief’s Directive ‘Yellow’ of 19 October should once more be revised. The occupation of the Netherlands, originally in the plan, was dropped; the directive now envisaged ‘destroying’ (and no longer ‘defeating’) the Allied forces north of the Somme, and driving through to the Channel coast. In other words this meant no longer forcing the enemy out of Belgium, but surrounding them through an advance reaching deep into northern France.13
Hitler placed the military leadership under pressure not only as far as the launch of the attack was concerned. In contrast to his lack of interference in operational matters during the Polish war, he now began increasingly to intervene actively in the purely military planning of the attack. On 27 October, Brauchitsch once again tried to get Hitler to agree to change the date for the attack to the end of November; however, the ‘Führer’ insisted on sticking to 12 November.14
In the meantime, Halder tried to recruit opponents of the attack. At the end of October, he sent his deputy, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, to the commanders of the three army groups in the West, to secure their backing in the event of an open conflict with Hitler. Only General Wihelm von Leep, the commander of Army Group C, responded positively. However, the generals all shared Brauchitch’s and Halder’s critical assessment of an attack in the West. After a trip to Army Groups A and B, undertaken with Brauchitsch at the beginning of November, Halder concluded from his meetings: ‘We cannot anticipate a decisive success in a land war.’15
On 5 November, a serious confrontation occurred between Hitler and Brauchitsch. Hitler was furious when, in order to justify his doubts about a western offensive, Brauchitsch referred, among other things, to certain weaknesses shown by the infantry in Poland. Hitler demanded proof of this assertion, declaring that he would fly to the front himself in order to assess the troops’ morale. After this confrontation Brauchitsch left, totally demoralized.16
The combination of Brauchitsch’s evident weakness, Hitler’s threat that he would soon deal with the ‘spirit of Zossen’ (the headquarters of OKH), and his order now definitely fixing the date of the attack as the 12 November, sufficed to persuade Halder, who feared the exposure of his soundings about a coup, to cease his opposition. From now onwards he concentrated solely on his military duties. The real regime opponents, basically the group of youngish officers in the OKH, who were much more committed to acting, then abandoned their plans. The result of this confrontation had shown that Hitler had no challenger among the military leadership who could mount a serious opposition to his war plans, and was prepared to act to prevent him from implementing what was regarded as a catastrophic policy. Thus, autumn 1939 can be considered only with reservations as the second phase of the conspiracy against Hitler.
On 8 November, Hitler appeared at the celebrations in the Bürgerbräukeller, which had been significantly curtailed as a result of the war, in order to give his usual speech.17 This time the speech was dominated, above all, by an attack on Britain and designed to spread confidence in victory. However, it was much shorter than expected because Hitler had been forced at short notice to alter his plans for the return to Berlin, and had to catch the regular night train, to which his special train was attached. During the stop in Nuremberg a message was passed to the train, which to begin with Hitler simply could not believe. Shortly after he had left the Bürgerbräukeller, there had been a big explosion resulting in eight deaths and sixty injured.18
Hitler immediately agreed with Goebbels, who was accompanying him, that had he not left early he would certainly have been assassinated.19 German propaganda began immediately to blame the British Secret Service for the attack.20 For days, Hitler and his entourage speculated about who could have done it, without having any definite information.21 When, after a few days, the culprit was revealed to be a carpenter, Georg Elser, Hitler and Goebbels were convinced that he was merely the ‘creature’ of the Nazi Party renegade, Otto Strasser, who was living in Switzerland, and who, in turn, had been acting at the behest of the British Secret Service.22 Hitler then took a few days before deciding to issue a communiqué about Elser’s arrest. German propaganda now attempted to establish a connection between Elser, Strasser, and the Secret Service by including ‘revelations’ about two British agents, Richard Stevens and Sigismund Payne Best, who had been abducted from Venlo in Holland on 9 November.23 Naturally, the fact that a single individual had almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler and important members of the Nazi leadership could not be revealed in the media, nor be allowed to become public through a court case. The same was true of Elser’s motives. For this loner was not acting on behalf of any political organization and was simply aiming to get rid of Hitler as the main cause of the war. Elser was by no means alone in his conviction that, if this war were not quickly brought to an end, it would be fatal for Germany.
The spectacular abductions at Venlo and the regime’s decision to accuse the Secret Service of carrying out the assassination attempt produced such strong responses from the western powers and the neutral states that the success of the surprise attack was put in further doubt. It had already been postponed from 12 to 15 November at the earliest, and now had to be postponed again, not for the last time that year.
On 23 November, Hitler gave a speech to the military leadership in which he made clear his determination to expand the war at all costs, even against the advice of his hesitant generals, and took the opportunity to humiliate the commander-in-chief of the army in front of the top brass.
In his speech he projected the image of a ruthless conqueror. After Munich, he said, it was clear to him ‘from the very first moment that I could not be satisfied with the Sudeten German territory. That was only a partial solution. The decision to march into Bohemia was made. There followed the establishment of the Protectorate and with that the basis for the action against Poland was laid, but I was not quite clear at the time whether I should start first against the East and then in the West or vice versa.’ Then Hitler moved on to his favourite topic: ‘the adjustment of living space to the size of population’. A solution to this problem was possible only ‘with the sword’. At this time, they were engaged in a ‘racial struggle’. Basically, he had ‘not built up the Wehrmacht in order not to fight. I always wanted to fight. I wanted to solve the problem sooner or later.’ In view of the overall situation, he had decided to attack first in the East. After the defeat of Poland, they were now in the fortunate position of not having to fight a two-front war. For the moment Russia was not dangerous; it was weakened ‘by numerous internal issues’; its army was ‘of little account’. This situation would last for one or two years. The fact that he had survived the assassination attempt had convinced him that Providence had chosen him to lead the German people to victory in this war. As a result, his willingness to take a risk had considerably increased.
‘As the final factor I must in all modesty name my own person. I am irreplaceable . . . I am convinced of the power of my intellect and my determination.’ This was particularly important, for ‘wars are always ended only by the destruction of the opponent. Anyone who believes otherwise is irresponsible. Time is on the side of our adversaries. . . . The enemy will not make peace if the balance of forces is not in our favour. No compromise. We have to be tough with ourselves. I shall strike and not capitulate.’ The ‘fate of the Reich’ depends ‘on me alone’, and he would act accordingly. Their forces were still more numerous and stronger than those of their opponents in the West. They had to preempt a possible attack on the Ruhr through Belgium and the Netherlands, particularly since the occupation of both countries by German troops was an essential prerequisite for the further air and sea war against Britain. ‘My decision is unalterable. I shall attack France and England at the most favourable opportunity. Breaching the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is irrelevant. No one will question that when we’ve won’.24
Then he moved on to deal with Brauchitsch. The latter’s questioning the effectiveness of the troops, which is how Hitler interpreted the recent confrontation with his army commander-in-chief, had ‘hurt him deeply’. As far as Fedor von Bock, the commander-in-chief of Army Group B, was concerned, the whole speech was marked by ‘a certain degree of discontent with the army leadership’. According to Bock, Hitler knew ‘that, at this point, the majority of the generals did not believe the attack could achieve a decisive success.’25 Following the speech, Hitler reproached Brauchitsch and Halder for the generals’ negative attitude; however, when Brauchitsch offered his resignation, Hitler refused to accept it, and so the army commander-in-chief remained in office under a cloud.26
The ‘pause’ that occurred after the defeat of Poland did, however, give Hitler’s regime the opportunity of reorganizing the armaments sector during the winter of 1939/40. The outbreak of war had produced significant shortages of raw materials. However, during the following months, despite the Allied blockade, they could be partially compensated for with the help of neutral states and, not least, through the trade agreement with the Soviet Union.27
In the economic sphere, experts did not consider that the camouflaged mobilization, carried out at the end of August and beginning of September, had been a success. This was because many planned economic measures had not been implemented at the start of the war, and even during the following weeks the rapid victory over Poland made such changes appear unnecessary. The economics staff of the OKW, the Economics Ministry, and the Reich Food Estate were banking on it being a long war. The economy had to be adapted to wartime conditions: investment in infrastructure was needed to survive the blockade; exports had to be increased to enable the import of vital goods; the basis of the food supply had to be further expanded. All this meant that it was necessary to refrain from undertaking major military operations and remain on the defensive.28
Hitler, however, who was banking on a rapid and decisive military success against the West, had other priorities. On 21 August 1939, he had already signed a Führer order, prepared by Göring, putting the Ju-88 programme, which had stalled during 1939, once again into high gear; up to 300 of this type of aircraft were to be built every month. However, Hitler cannot, at this point, have foreseen the results of his order. He had signed a general order, enabling the Luftwaffe to secure a substantial quota of raw materials (for example around half the consumption of aluminium) and a large part of Germany’s industrial capacity.29 The navy’s Z-Plan, which since 1939 had dominated German armaments production and was only going to be completed by the mid-1940s, was now replaced by a relatively modest programme of U-boat construction.30
Above all, however, during the autumn of 1939, Hitler launched a massive munitions programme. In November he demanded a tripling of the munitions production planned by the Army Weapons Office. This was a fundamental change of course compared with his previous interventions, which had focused, above all, on increasing the supply of weapons for the Wehrmacht. He also issued various specific orders concerning the production of artillery and munitions.31 By the end of the month, he had made his intentions more precise through a ‘Führer demand’, the final version of which he signed on 12 December. It contained planned monthly production quotas for artillery of particular calibres, and revealed that Hitler’s ideas concerning the campaign in the West were strongly influenced by his own experiences in the First World War: artillery barrages would achieve the breakthrough.32 The munitions and Ju-88 programmes were set to absorb two-thirds of armaments capacity during the first ten months of the war.33
In 1940 Hitler’s decisions began to have an impact. The redirection of raw materials and the new armaments priorities led to a sharp increase in German armaments production and an 11 per cent per capita reduction in private consumption. This reduction was to continue increasing until the end of the war. Thus, the claim that the regime was attempting to avoid imposing too much of a burden on the population for political reasons is unsustainable. Hitler wanted a quick and decisive end to the war in 1940 not because he did not believe the German people were up to fighting a long war, but simply because Germany’s economic basis, even if exploited to the limit, was incapable of sustaining a long war.34
By July 1940, the output of armaments had doubled compared with that in January. However, the information given to Hitler in February 1940 did not yet show this increase, but instead conveyed the impression that armaments production had stagnated since the outbreak of war. Hitler, therefore, decided on a reorganization. On 17 March, he appointed Fritz Todt, the General Plenipotentiary for Construction, successful builder of the autobahns and the West Wall, and head of the Wehrmacht’s construction organization named after him, as the newly created Reich Minister of Munitions.35 Thus, the reputation Todt acquired in the following months as a successful armaments manager derived less from the rapid organizational changes in the munitions sector that he introduced immediately after his appointment, and more from the new priorities in the distribution of raw materials, which had been set before his appointment.36
The year 1940 began with an event that forced Germany to revise completely its plans for the western offensive, resulting in the plan of operations that in May 1940 led to a rapid and surprising victory in the West. On 10 January a Luftwaffe courier plane, which was off course, made an emergency landing in Belgium. Documents being carried by a paratrooper officer on board fell into the hands of the Belgian military authorities, revealing details of the German plans for the attack in the West, including a paratroop assault on Belgium.37 The affair prompted Hitler to issue a ‘basic order’, which had to be posted up in every office in the Wehrmacht. It stated that ‘No one. No office, no officer must have knowledge of any secret matter, unless for official reasons it is essential’; no one was to be allowed to know more than was absolutely necessary for carrying out their task, and no one was to be put in possession of this information earlier than necessary.38 The aim of Hitler’s clamp-down was drastically to reduce the number of people who had access to his strategic-operational decisions and to channel the flow of information. In Halder’s view, expressed after the war, Hitler’s objective was to prevent the military leadership from forming an independent assessment of the situation based on a comprehensive picture of it.39
That incident in Mechelen in Belgium also prompted Hitler to review his most recent decision to attack in the West. It dated from 10 January, and envisaged 17 January as the date of attack.40 A few days later, he cancelled the attack, telling Jodl he wanted to place the whole plan of the operation on ‘an entirely new basis, in particular in relation to secrecy and the element of surprise’. On 20 January, Hitler told the army and Luftwaffe chiefs that, in view of the fact that the enemy had acquired concrete ideas about German intentions, and these had been confirmed by the ‘airman affair’, the war could now be won only if they ensured with a ‘fanatical determination’ that ‘operational ideas [remained] secret’. The period between the giving of the order and the attack must be radically shortened in order to maintain the element of surprise.41 The following day he demanded from Brauchitsch and Halder ‘permanent readiness for action, in order to make use of possible favourable weather conditions in February’.42 The army leadership ensured the implementation of his directive: from 1 February 1940 onwards, the army in the West was on standby to launch an offensive within twenty-four hours.43
The renewed postponement of the campaign provided the German leadership with the opportunity fundamentally to alter the plan of attack. The original plan of the OKH envisaged the main attack as focused on two armies advancing north and south of the Belgian fortress complex of Liège. From now onwards, however, Hitler began increasingly to intervene in the operational planning.
In November 1939, Hitler had responded to the Luftwaffe’s arguments that, in the event of war, they would have to reckon on the transfer of enemy air force units to the Netherlands, by insisting that the army should partially occupy the country, although without ‘Fortress Holland’ in the centre and with only limited forces. At the same time, in November, Hitler had demanded that the army shift the main focus of attack to the southern flank of the front.44 The Chief of Staff of Army Group A, Erich von Manstein, was thinking along the same lines, also wanting the main focus of the attack to be in southern Belgium. The enemy would not anticipate a tank offensive through the Ardennes, which, despite the obstacle presented by the wooded hills, would be entirely feasible. German forces should advance towards the Somme, and then along it towards the Channel, thereby cutting off and destroying the enemy forces in Belgium and northern France.45 On 17 February, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, Schmundt, arranged a meeting between Hitler and Manstein, whereupon the ‘Führer’ adopted Manstein’s ideas, ensuring that the operational plans were revised accordingly. On 24 February, the OKH issued a new directive, moving the main focus of attack to the southern flank, and also ordering the rapid occupation of the Netherlands with much larger forces.46
In January, Goebbels noted down comments Hitler made at a small soirée about his future plans: he was ‘determined to fight a major war against England’; it must be ‘swept out of Europe and France must be deposed as a great power’. Then Germany would have ‘hegemony and Europe would have peace’. After that he wanted ‘to spend a few more years in office, carry out social reforms and his building plans, and then withdraw’. He would then ‘simply hover over politics as a benign spirit’ and write down all the things that still preoccupied him, ‘the gospel of National Socialism, so to speak’.47 A few days later, Goebbels noted Hitler’s remarks about the ‘the old Holy Roman Empire’, whose imperial tradition he wished to continue and with a clear goal: ‘on the basis of our organization and our elite we must automatically one day come to rule the world’.48
However, there was still a long way to go. In terms of foreign policy, at the beginning of 1940 the main objective was to repair the damaged relationship with Hitler’s main ally, Mussolini. For the ‘Duce’ was clearly still very uncertain about whether or not to enter the war on Hitler’s side. At the beginning of January, Hitler received a long letter from Mussolini in which he subjected the policies of his German ally to very frank criticism on a number of points. The Poles, the ‘Duce’ told him, deserved to be ‘treated in a way that did not provide subject matter for enemy speculation’. He should create ‘a Polish state under German supervision’, in order to remove the western powers’ main argument for continuing the war. This state could get rid of all the Jews; he thoroughly approved of Hitler’s plan to deport them all to a large ghetto near Lublin. Hitler must, Mussolini continued, ‘on no account seize the initiative on the western front’; victory in the West was more than doubtful, for ‘the United States would not permit the complete destruction of the democracies’.
As far as the alliance with the Soviet Union was concerned, Mussolini warned Hitler not ‘to keep sacrificing the principles of your revolution to the political requirements of a particular political situation’; he must not ‘abandon the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik banner . . . that you have held high for 20 years’. This was followed by a clear warning: ‘Any further move towards Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy’. ‘The solution to your problem of living space lies in Russia and nowhere else. . . . Four months ago Russia was still world enemy No.1; it can’t have become world friend No. 1 and it isn’t.’ Italy, wrote Mussolini in a more conciliatory tone, wanted to be Germany’s ‘reserve’, ‘from a political and diplomatic point of view’, ‘from an economic point of view’, as well as from a ‘military point of view’.49
Hitler, who, in his discussions with his entourage, made no bones about his dissatisfaction with his Italian ally,50 waited two months before replying. His response was twice as long as Mussolini’s lengthy epistle.51 Above all, he tried to persuade Italy to enter the war, saying that if Italy did not fight now, it would, in a few years’ time, be compelled to fight against the same opponents. By referring in the same paragraph to the problem of delivering German coal to Italy as a result of the British blockade, and promising an alternative solution, he was underlining the dependence of his ally on Germany for supplies of an essential raw material. He defended his alliance with Russia as a ‘clear division of spheres of influence’ with Stalin’s empire. It was possible to establish a ‘tolerable situation’ between the two countries because the Soviet system was in the process of getting rid of its ‘Jewish-internationalist leadership’ and developing ‘a Russian nationalist state ideology and economic theory’. This statement shows that Hitler was resorting to the (optimistic) idea of a ‘nationalist Russia’ that he had believed in at the beginning of the 1920s on the basis of developments in the early days of the Soviet Union. During these months, Hitler frequently discussed the unnatural alliance with Moscow with Goebbels, often referring to the allegedly inferior racial composition of the Soviet leadership. At the end of December, he expressed the view that Stalin was ‘a typical Asiatic Russian. Bolshevism had removed the West European leadership in Russia’.52 Two weeks later, he claimed that for Germany that had been a ‘very good thing. Better a weak partner as neighbour than an alliance treaty, however good’.53 In March, he asked himself: ‘Will Stalin gradually liquidate the Jews? Perhaps he only calls them Trotskyists to fool the world.’54
In his letter Hitler rejected Mussolini’s request that he should establish a Polish state; he claimed that if Poland had been left to itself after the victory there would have been a ‘ghastly chaos’, which he clearly enjoyed sketching out in detail. He attempted to persuade Mussolini to ignore the mission to Europe that the deputy American Secretary of State, Benjamin Sumner Welles, had embarked on at the end of February. This concern was presumably the reason why Hitler answered Mussolini’s letter at all and dealt with his criticisms in a relatively conciliatory tone. He did not, he wrote, rule out the possibility that the point of the mission was mainly to enable the Allies to gain time. Welles had been sent by the President to find out from the British, French, German, and Italian governments the prospects for peace. After an initial meeting with Mussolini and Ciano in Rome, Welles went on to Berlin in April, and then returned to Rome.
Hitler had issued his own guidelines for the meetings Welles had with Göring, Ribbentrop, and Hess. He ordered that they should be ‘reserved’ and, ‘if possible, avoid’ answering specific questions, such as whether there was going to be a Polish state in the future. Apart from that, they should say that the war had been forced on Germany and that they were determined to ‘break the destructive will of the western powers’. The American diplomat should not be left under any illusion that Germany was interested in discussing the possibility of peace. As a result, according to Welles, the meetings with German officials led nowhere.55 On 2 March, Hitler himself received Welles and, as was his wont, delivered a lengthy monologue, convincing the latter that the Germans had decided to continue the war.56
On 10 March Ribbentrop handed over Hitler’s 8 March letter to Mussolini during a visit to Rome; he had been assigned the task of at last getting Italy to enter the war.57 Ribbentrop told Mussolini that Germany was aiming to attack France and Britain during the course of the next few months. Its rear would be protected because Stalin had given up the idea of world revolution and, after the departure of Litvinov, all Jews had been removed from key positions. During another meeting the following day, Mussolini gave his agreement in principle to enter the war, although only after prompting by Ribbentrop.58 Hitler expressed himself ‘very satisfied’ with the success achieved by Ribbentrop in Rome,59 and met Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on 18 March. The ‘Duce’ used the few minutes left to him after Hitler’s usual lengthy monologue to reaffirm his decision to enter the war, but without naming a specific date. However, he emphasized that the Italian forces needed at least three or four months to be ready for war.60
At the end of 1939/beginning of 1940, Hitler began increasingly to consider the idea of expanding the war to Scandinavia. The ‘Weserübung’ [Weser Exercise], the occupation of Denmark and Norway, which Hitler decided on in March, had a long pre-history.61 On 10 October 1939, the commander-in-chief of the navy, Raeder, alerted Hitler to the possibility of using U-boat bases in Norway, which he hoped to secure with the aid of pressure from the Soviet Union; Hitler agreed to consider the idea.62
On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, after it had refused to agree to Soviet demands to concede certain bits of territory.63 The tough Finnish resistance against the numerically far superior Soviet forces met with sympathy from the western powers, and an expeditionary force was prepared to support Finland, which was also intended to enter Swedish territory, cutting off German imports of iron ore.64 In this conflict Hitler was definitely on the side of his Soviet ally, acknowledging the fact that in the German–Soviet treaties of 23 August and 28 September Finland had been declared to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence. The prospect that British and French troops could be shortly landing in Scandinavia meant that he was hoping for a rapid Soviet victory, particularly as he resented the fact that, in spring 1939, the Finnish government had rejected his offer of a German–Finnish non-aggression pact. A leading article in the Völkischer Beobachter, presumably written by Hitler, attributed this decision to the influence of the ‘the English warmongers’.65
The Soviet attack on Finland ensured that Norway now increasingly entered the calculations of the belligerent powers. Apart from the fear that the British might establish themselves in Norway and so close off the North Sea, the fact that Germany received two-thirds of its iron ore from Sweden via the ice-free port of Narvik was of decisive importance. In mid-December, Admiral Raeder arranged a meeting between Hitler and Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian National Socialist splinter party, Nasjonal Samling, and succeeded in getting Hitler to order the OKW to discuss with Quisling plans for the occupation of Norway, either peacefully (following a Norwegian request for assistance) or by force.66
In January, a special staff N was established in the OKW and, on 27 January, Keitel told the chiefs of the three Wehrmacht branches that Hitler wanted the ‘N Study’ to be produced under his personal and direct influence, and to be coordinated as far as possible with the overall conduct of the war’. Thus the order was clearly intended, on the principle of divide et impera, to exclude the top military leadership as far as possible from the planning process involved in extending the war to the north.67 The ‘Altmark’ incident of 16 February, in which a British commando operation in Norwegian waters captured a German naval supply ship, freeing three hundred imprisoned British sailors on board, once again made it clear how important control of the Norwegian coast was for Germany’s conduct of the war.68
On 21 February, Hitler appointed General Nikolaus von Falkenhayn to command ‘Weserübung’; the army general and his staff were directly subordinated to the OKW (rather than the OKH), probably primarily in order to exclude the army leadership from the operation and to secure Hitler’s ‘personal and direct influence’ on it.69 On 1 March, he signed the directive for ‘Operation Weserübung’70 and, on 5 March, conferred with the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht branches about it at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery. According to Jodl, Göring ‘was furious’, as he had not been ‘previously consulted’, and pushed through some changes in the plan of attack.71
In the middle of March, the Finnish–Russian war surprisingly came to an end, removing the motive for Allied intervention.72 However, Hitler was now determined to create a situation in Scandinavia favourable to Germany. Apart from wanting to secure Germany’s supplies of iron ore and extend the basis for the war against Britain, he appears to have had far-reaching plans for the region. The involvement of Quisling and the Norwegian National Socialists offered the prospect of politically coordinating Norway and incorporating it into a future ‘Greater Germanic Reich’.73 On 26 March, Hitler fixed 9 April as the date for the invasion of Denmark and Norway. He did not inform Goebbels about the impending operation until 8 April, giving him little time to prepare German propaganda for the new situation.74
The Wehrmacht began the invasion early on the morning of 9 April. A coordinated, large-scale operation involving army, navy, and Luftwaffe was a new experience for the German armed forces and carried considerable risk. Whereas the German troops took control of Denmark on the same day, events in Norway did not develop as expected. The plan for a surprise takeover of Oslo failed, giving the Norwegian government sufficient time to organize military resistance and escape capture. The landings in the other Norwegian ports largely succeeded, but with the navy suffering heavy losses.
The Goebbels diaries show that Hitler allowed himself to be dazzled by the Wehrmacht’s initial military successes. On 9 April, he was positively euphoric. At midday on the first day of the invasion, he considered the whole operation a success; it would go down ‘as the most daring piece of impudence in history’.75 On the following day, he told Goebbels he was thinking of a north German ‘confederation . . . not a protectorate, more an alliance. A unified foreign, economic, and customs policy. We shall acquire the most important military bases, take on the military defence, and the two states will give up having any kind of military capability.’76 He informed Mussolini about the invasions only on 10 April.77
However, during the next few days it became clear that Hitler had been too optimistic in his assessment of developments. On 13 April, a Royal Navy task force succeeded in sinking ten German destroyers in the Narvik fjord, or forcing them to scupper.78 Germany had been clearly put on the defensive. Hitler had already decided to evacuate German troops from Narvik; Jodl was talking about ‘chaotic leadership’.79 At a small gathering in the Reich Chancellery to celebrate Hitler’s 51st birthday, the ‘Führer’ studiously avoided this issue, preferring to discuss the coming war with the West. On 24 April, Hitler appointed the Gauleiter of Essen, Josef Terboven, as Reich Commissar in Norway. It was only at the end of the month that the military situation gradually improved for Germany. German troops were able to advance from the Oslo region towards Trondheim, where a German invasion force had meanwhile been trapped by an Anglo-French pincer movement; these Allied forces were now compelled to withdraw and re-embark. However, there was still concern about the situation in Narvik in the north, where, at the end of April, Anglo–French forces had landed and were soon reinforced.80
Viewed in the round, the surprise attack on Norway had failed. The expedition force had become involved in battles that continued until June and could be successfully concluded only because of military victories in western Europe. The navy suffered relatively high losses and the large Norwegian merchant fleet joined the Allies. Despite gaining bases on the Norwegian coast, Weserübung had, therefore, not secured any significant strategic advantages for the conduct of the war against Britain.