Operation WESERÜBUNG
SUNDAY, 7 APRIL 1940, and a fine spring day. Leutnant Helmut Lent and the rest of his Staffel, 1/ZG 76, were flying over the Baltic sea in their twin-engine Messerschmitt 110 Zerstörers. Below, Lent could see a large formation of German ships, including two battleships, the mighty Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, heading north, a sight that made him feel proud and one that he would not readily forget. The task of the Luftwaffe was to protect this fleet from any aerial attack, but why the Kriegsmarine was steaming north was anyone’s guess. ‘One could speculate,’ noted Lent, ‘but one couldn’t come up with any answers.’
Not until the following day did Lent and his comrades discover the truth. Called together that morning, Monday, 8 April, they were told they were being posted north from their base at Jever to Westerland on the island of Sylt, just off the western side of the German–Danish border. The reason for the move was that at dawn the following day Germany was going to invade both Denmark and Norway. The task of the Zerstörers was to protect the airborne drop planned for the airfield at Fornebu near Oslo in Norway and then to land there themselves. ‘It was,’ scribbled Lent, ‘to be the most daring operation ever in German history.’
Lent may well have been right, but Hitler had felt compelled to act, terrified that the Allies would snatch control of the all-important Swedish iron ore so crucial to his war aims. General Thomas and the economists at the OKW pointed out that a shortfall would be disastrous should the war continue for longer than around six months. In other words, not only was the Narvik route still of vital importance, but so was ensuring all other shipping routes remained open too, which rather gave weight to Churchill’s original strategy for Norway.
But it wasn’t just about supplies of iron ore. Throughout the autumn of 1939, Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine, had repeatedly stressed to Hitler the value of having bases along the Norwegian coast, both to deny them to the Allies and for use by U-boats. As Raeder pointed out, British naval and air bases in Norway would be a serious problem for Germany, not least because it would mean a significant tightening of the economic blockade. Of course, the converse was also true: a Norway in German hands would unquestionably work against the Allies and Britain especially.
With his mind focused on an assault in the West, Hitler had initially favoured a policy of ensuring both Sweden and Norway remained neutral. But Raeder continued to chip away, even introducing the Führer to Vidkun Quisling, leader of the admittedly small Norwegian Fascist party, the Nasjonal Samling.
Whether it was Quisling who prompted Hitler into action is not clear, but certainly the Führer was listening to the repeated argument about the danger of a British occupation of Norway. He still favoured keeping Norway neutral but was becoming open to the idea of striking there swiftly should there be any sign the British were to make a move in that direction.
To be ready for this eventuality, preparations needed to be made. Initially, the OKW was asked to draw up a feasibility study, then at the beginning of February a new Sonderstab – or ‘special staff’ – was formed within the OKW especially to prepare operational plans for an attack on Norway. These were drawn from Jodl’s and Warlimont’s staffs and were ordered to do their work in utmost secrecy.
Everything about these plans had the mark of Hitler’s direct involvement and they were hurriedly accelerated following the Altmark incident, when the British boarded the German ship inside Norwegian waters. Hitler summoned General von Falkenhorst, an Army commander who back in 1918 had once served in Finland, for consultation about fighting in the north. Apparently liking the cut of von Falkenhorst’s jib, he there and then appointed him as the commander of Operation WESERÜBUNG, as it was to be called, without any further consultation with either the OKW or the OKH whatsoever. Von Falkenhorst had then hurried out, still in a state of shock, and had hastily bought a Baedeker travel guide and begun making his own plans.
Neither Halder and von Brauchitsch nor Göring and the Luftwaffe staff were consulted on any aspect of the plans. Both parties were furious about it when they were finally briefed at the beginning of March, not just because they had been kept in the dark, but also because they felt they were massively pushing their luck with the plans for the Western offensive as it was; attacking Norway and Denmark seemed a highly unnecessary diversion of resources at a critical moment. At the conference at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin on 5 March, Göring pronounced the plans unworkable and refused to subordinate the Luftwaffe to von Falkenhorst as Hitler had proposed. Instead, he appointed his deputy, General Erhard Milch as commander for WESERÜBUNG. Hitler responded by shutting Göring, second only to himself in the Nazi hierarchy, out of any further planning discussions. It was an unconventional way to prepare a major military operation, to say the least. As Warlimont later noted, sensible military practice was to consult fully with senior commanders and staffs, co-ordinate those requirements and appreciations, and carefully weigh up the pros and cons. Such an approach did not wash with Hitler, however.
As far as Warlimont was concerned, the end of war in Finland should have put an end to the plans. The attack in the West would be launched soon and would tie down British and French troops. If they were successful in the West, Warlimont reasoned, they could tackle Norway far more easily later. What was the point of undertaking an operation that would unquestionably draw on important resources? It was an entirely unnecessary risk. There was much in what Warlimont said.
But Hitler now had his mind irrevocably set on the Scandinavian venture. When Göring’s private listening service, the Forschungsamt, picked up a Finnish diplomatic telegram in March revealing Allied plans for Norway, the Führer decided to act. On 2 April, he announced that Operation WESERÜBUNG was on. The attack would begin on 9 April at 5.15 a.m., and would be, he pronounced, one of the ‘rashest undertakings in the history of modern warfare’. High-risk military gambles with minimal consultation or co-ordinated planning were very much Hitler’s style.
The final plan that had been outlined to Helmut Lent and his comrades on 7 April was astonishingly bold, and involved six naval task forces – or Marinegruppen – for Norway and five for Denmark. This required pretty much the entire Kriegsmarine, including thirty-one U-boats – the entire operational submarine force, which had thus given Allied Atlantic trade a welcome respite from attack. The invasion force also included Luftflotte X, an entire air corps of over 1,200 aircraft, and some eight Army divisions plus reserves and other units amounting to around 120,000 men; more than 30,000 troops would be part of the first wave. Simultaneously, this force intended to occupy Denmark and key cities in Norway, from the capital, Oslo, in the south to Narvik in the north and including Trondheim, Bergen, Egersund and Kristiansand. Rash it may have been, but there was certainly nothing half-cocked about the plan. The Germans meant to occupy both countries in their entirety.
The Allied intervention in Scandinavia had appeared to be dead in the water following the end of the fighting in Finland and the subsequent resignation of Daladier. But the new French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, had been determined to show a bit more grip and offensive spirit and had quickly proposed a series of actions that included mining the Leads, submarine attacks in the Black Sea and air strikes on the oil fields of the Caucasus; the French were prepared to go to war with Russia if it meant disrupting the flow of all-important oil to Germany. In fact, anything was fair game so long as it meant distracting the Germans away from France’s back door.
In the meantime, the British Chiefs of Staff had decided to opt for a continuation of the waiting strategy; they wanted to further rearm before taking the offensive, yet they appreciated the need to work in tandem with the French. At yet another meeting of the Supreme War Council on 28 March, they managed to dissuade the French from any attack on the Soviet Union and to get Reynaud to agree to mine the River Rhine, an operation the British had been urging for months. In return, they agreed to the mining operation of the Leads. It was also subsequently agreed, at the urging of both Churchill and his French counterpart, Amiral François Darlan, to put an Allied expeditionary force on standby for Norway because they both thought it likely that mining the Leads would prompt the Germans into an attempt to seize the iron ore mines.
All this having been agreed, Daladier, who had remained Minister of National Defence and War, and the French Comité de Guerre then refused to authorize the mining of the Rhine. For a while, the Narvik operation was once again off. On 4 April, Churchill, with Edward Spears in tow, hurried once more to Paris to try and change Daladier’s mind, flying in an ageing de Havilland. Spears felt as buffeted about as if they were a ‘salad in a colander manipulated by a particularly energetic cook’, but they none the less made it in one piece.
It was soon clear that Daladier’s refusal to play ball over the mining of the Rhine was as much to do with his personal animosity towards Reynaud as it was about any military considerations; certainly Edward Spears was in no doubt. ‘The two men detested each other,’ he noted, ‘and Daladier was determined to exert his utmost power to humiliate Reynaud in every way possible.’
In Paris, Churchill tried but failed to persuade Daladier to reconsider the Rhine mining project. The French, Daladier told him, did not have the air force to retaliate should the Germans bomb France’s cities in response to the mining of the Rhine. In fact, Daladier was mistaken. The Armée de l’Air had almost the same number of aircraft as the Luftwaffe, that is around 3,500. Nor would Daladier agree to have dinner with both Churchill and Reynaud, which the former had hoped to use to bring about some unity of purpose. ‘What will centuries to come say if we lose this war through lack of understanding?’ Churchill asked him. Churchill, determined that Britain should not be drawn into the same personal conflict, advised the War Cabinet and British Chiefs to go ahead with the Norwegian mining operation in the interest of maintaining good relations with their French ally. This was agreed, as was a further plan, known simply as ‘R.4’, to land troops in Narvik should the Germans either set foot on Norwegian soil or show clear signs that they intended to do so. These troops would be ready and waiting to be shipped out as soon as the minelaying operations began.
‘The PM for his part is not over-enthusiastic,’ noted Jock Colville on Saturday, 6 April, ‘but feels that after the expectations aroused by the meeting of the Supreme War Council the other day, some effective action must be taken.’ It was hardly a ringing endorsement from Britain’s war leader, but finally, some seven months after Churchill had first suggested the operation, and after much heartache, general teeth-sucking, negotiations and prevarication, Norwegian neutrality was to be cast aside. ‘The laying of the minefield in Norwegian waters,’ added Colville, ‘is timed for dawn on Monday.’
As the German invasion forces steamed north through Sunday, 7 April, RAF reconnaissance aircraft picked them up and later more than thirty British bombers attacked the naval groups heading for Trondheim and Narvik, but their bombs missed. Meanwhile, that afternoon, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Home Fleet, Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, finally received more precise details of the numerous German forces, and by just after nine that evening, after some hastily changed plans, his ships had put to sea. There were already a number of British destroyers and minelayers stationed at the mouth of the Vestfjord, the gateway to Narvik, and further south near Ålesund for the planned minelaying operations, so a clash was inevitable.
It was incredible that after so much Allied vacillation over Norway, both sides should have been beginning their offensives at the same moment and both be ignorant of the other’s plans. Just a few days earlier, the Prime Minister, a very reluctant war leader, had declared in a speech on 4 April that he now felt ten times more confident of victory than he had at the outbreak of war. He was not so very surprised that Hitler had not launched the offensive that had been promised; applying the calm methodical approach to war that had dictated his own strategic views, he assumed Hitler had decided such an attack was not worth the do-or-die risk it would inevitably prove to be. Chamberlain clearly still hoped the war would fizzle out into a negotiated peace. He was, of course, making the fatal error of judging Hitler by his own standards. The British Prime Minister and the German Führer could not have been more different. Chamberlain would never have recklessly gambled all; Hitler was instinctively compelled to do so. At any rate, one thing was certain, Chamberlain assured his audience: Hitler had missed the bus. How those words would come back to haunt him.
Now, on the evening of 7 April, frantic recalculations had to be made. Clearly, a sizeable German naval operation was underway; just precisely what its intention was, though, was not so clear. Both Admiral Forbes and the Admiralty believed what was now important was to bring their superior naval forces to bear to deal a crucial blow to the Kriegsmarine. Forbes ordered his Home Fleet to try and bring the German capital ships to battle, while in London Churchill, without consulting either Chamberlain or Forbes, ordered the four cruisers at Rosyth, jam-packed with troops for Narvik, to disembark the soldiers and then head with all speed to seek battle. This was to prove a bad mistake.
The first major clash happened around 8 a.m. the following morning when HMS Glowworm intercepted the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and four destroyers. Glowworm had been part of the minelaying force in the Vestfjord but had been left behind to look for a sailor who had fallen overboard. Initially, the British destroyer had tried to run, having sent crucial signals as to the size and location of the German force, but was soon obliged to fight. Badly crippled, the ship continued firing in return and then, with its decks on fire and beginning to sink, her skipper gave the order to ram the Admiral Hipper, sheering off forty metres of armour and torpedo tubes from the German warship in the process. It was the end of Glowworm, which rolled and blew up, killing all but thirty-eight of her crew.
Meanwhile, the British battlecruiser HMS Renown and nine destroyers had been ordered to prevent any German force reaching Narvik. Throughout the day, the weather deteriorated with gales and a heavy swell, so it was not until dawn the following morning, 9 April, that the British force finally spotted the two German battleships, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, and their accompanying destroyer force. Both sides quickly went into action, the big ships slugging it out with their heavy guns despite the still rough seas. The British destroyer force was struggling to keep up with Renown, but the weight of their fire convinced the Germans they were facing stronger opposition than was the reality, and with Gneisenau’s main fire support system destroyed, the Germans turned away.
By that time, the invasion of Denmark and Norway was already well underway.
At the Royal Palace in Oslo, King Haakon VII of Norway had been woken at 1.30 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, 9 April. Several unknown ships had been spotted moving into the Oslofjord. Soon after, further reports of ships had been reported at Bergen and Stavanger, and a little while later they were confirmed as German.
‘Majesty,’ the King’s aide told him, ‘we are at war!’
‘With whom?’ replied the King.
Both the King and the Government had learned about the arrival of British ships off Narvik the previous day, and since then their focus had been on Britain and the minelaying operation; the sudden appearance of the Germans had caught them off guard. An immediate mobilization had been ordered, but no one in the Government, it was quickly realized, knew how the mobilization should proceed. A few hours later, the Germans formally requested the Norwegians to capitulate and offer no resistance; the aim of the operation, the Germans claimed, was to protect Norway from occupation by Anglo-French forces. The Norwegians dismissed this out of hand.
While the Government was frantically trying to react as swiftly as possible but faltering badly, the German invasion forces were beginning to reach their objectives and land. At 7 a.m., the Messerschmitt 110s of 1/ZG 76 were taking off from Sylt. The entire Zerstörer Gruppe was involved that day, but 1. Staffel, including Helmut Lent and his radio operator/gunner, Walter Kubisch, were to play an important part in the capture of Fornebu, the main airfield near Oslo. In what was to be the first ever operational airborne drop, paratroopers, or Fallschirmjäger, were to land, followed twenty minutes later by waves of troops in Junkers 52 transport planes. Lent and his comrades were both to provide cover and to attack targets on the ground.
Eight of them took off at 7 a.m. that morning heading north to Fornebu so as to be there at 8.45 a.m. when the Fallschirmjäger were due to land. Thick cloud covered the sky, so they climbed to some 13,000 feet to get clear of it and an hour and a half later were at the entrance to the Oslofjord. Lent did not know it at the time, but already the German invasion force at Oslo had been badly hit. The heavy cruiser Blücher, commissioned only the previous September and one of only five in the Kriegsmarine, had been hit by Norwegian shore batteries and at 7.23 a.m. had sunk. There had been some 1,600 men on board, of whom more than three hundred were dead. A second heavy cruiser, the Lützow, had also been badly damaged.
Lent saw nothing of this, although as they flew over the Oslofjord the clouds cleared. ‘For the first time we see the land of Norway beneath us,’ wrote Lent, ‘a wonderful sight!’ Opening the throttles, they sped on towards Oslo, then Lent realized the rest of the Staffel were veering to starboard towards the sun. A moment later, he saw a Norwegian Gloster Gladiator, a biplane fighter, away to his left sitting on the tail of one of his comrades. Banking sharply, Lent opened fire and the Gladiator peeled off and disappeared.
Seemingly out of nowhere, however, Lent now found himself in the middle of a swirling dogfight. He managed to get behind another Gladiator, and briefly opened fire only to find bullets arcing past him. A further Norwegian plane was now on his tail. ‘I dive, pull up, turn. My attack fails,’ he scribbled. ‘We Zerstörers are faster, but the Glosters are more manoeuvrable.’ Moments later, the sky was empty and the Me110s were regrouping, only for two more Gladiators to appear out of the clouds and attack. One plunged downwards, trailing smoke, the other disappeared once more.
Now they were over Fornebu and there was no sign of the airborne troops. Desperately looking around, all Lent could see was a Ju52 attempting to land but under heavy fire. Lent glanced at his fuel gauges – there was just fifteen minutes’ worth left. The plan was to land at Fornebu themselves once it had been secured, but if they weren’t on the ground soon, they would fall out of the sky for lack of fuel. Lent and his Rotte of three further Zerstörers dived down over the airfield and began shooting up the defences themselves. As he swooped over, a machine-gun nest he had not spotted opened up, riddling the plane. Lent pulled up past the end of the airfield, only to hear Kubisch call out, ‘Starboard engine on fire!’
‘Calm down, Kubisch! We’ll land!’ Lent replied.
Quickly shutting down the smoking engine, Lent thought quickly. Apart from the Ju52, no other plane had landed, but he decided he might as well be the first. Lowering the undercarriage, then the flaps, he banked and turned in towards the runway but realized he was too high – and the airfield looked horribly short. Would he get away with it? More bullets were spitting towards him from the right. The ground rose towards him and then – touchdown. Brakes, then Lent felt himself lurch forward and suddenly he was at the end of the runway with no more time for thought, only the hedge at the end of the field rushing towards him. Bracing himself, he felt the Zerstörer tear through the bushes then collapse as the undercarriage was wrenched off. Now they were sliding, tearing across the grass on the aircraft’s belly until finally they came to a halt just yards short of a fence by a country house.
Lent hurriedly opened the canopy, saw Kubisch was as alive and well as he was, then spotted an airman striding towards him. ‘Heil Hitler,’ called out the man and seeing the pistol in Lent’s hand asked him whether he was going to fire.
‘If you don’t fire, I won’t,’ Lent replied. The two men quickly agreed an armistice, by which time Lent saw that other Zerstörers had landed. Fornebu, it seemed, was now in German hands. Soon after, the transport planes arrived, filled with troops: one Ju52 after another was landing in quick succession, until no fewer than fifty-three had touched down, soldiers pouring out of every one.
In his parents’ flat in Oslo, Gunnar Sonsteby, twenty-one years old, was woken early by the sound of an air raid siren. Every radio in the building suddenly appeared to be on, blaring the astonishing news that the Germans had invaded and instructing people to make for the nearest air raid shelters. Hurrying out of bed, his first reaction was one of defiance. He was both appalled and indignant, so much so that while everyone else in the building trooped downstairs, Sonsteby remained where he was. So with his parents now living in Rjukan, a hundred miles west of Oslo, he made his breakfast and calmly ate his egg.
Although he had registered to study economics at the university, he made ends meet with a job at a nearby motorcycle shop, and, still bristling with anger and thoughts of rebellion, he soon after headed out to work. Walking through the city, he repeatedly had to take cover in doorways as planes hurtled over and machine guns barked out. Having made it to work in one piece, he discovered his colleagues gathered there chattering about what was happening, and so Sonsteby headed back out again to have a look around. To his horror, the city already appeared to be occupied by German troops. A column of them were marching down Karl Johan, the main street in the city, while machine guns had been set up in the park behind the Royal Palace. Other Norwegians passed on the news and rumours: Oslo had fallen and the King and Government had escaped and were now ‘somewhere in Norway’. ‘Everyone I met,’ noted Sonsteby, ‘was as stupefied as me.’
In fact, the resistance of the shore gunners, small warships in Oslofjord and the tiny Norwegian Air Force had proved crucial. The German invasion of the capital, swift though it unquestionably was, had been held up just long enough to allow King Haakon and the Government to escape, to Hamar, seventy miles to the north. Incredibly, the nation’s gold reserves had also been smuggled out almost from under the noses of the Germans now swarming over the city. However, with more troops landing at Fornebu and with German merchant ships cunningly already in port stacked with arms, ammunition and other supplies previously hidden on board, the capital and the surrounding area were now in German hands. Operation WESERÜBUNG may have been an incredibly rash undertaking, but once again Hitler’s penchant for extreme risk-taking appeared to be paying off.