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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 25, 22 June 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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The writer of the following article was in Oslo when the Germans arrived and was an eye-witness to the collapse of Norwegian resistance. He managed to escape shortly afterward to another country. |
The first day of the German landing of troops in Norway, April 9, revealed what all insiders had known long ago: that the Norwegian sea and coastal defenses were a farce. To be sure, the so-called labor government of Norway had in recent years surrendered to the armament hullabaloo and squandered several hundred millions of kronen in arms expenditures. Squandered is the right word; for these millions were not used to arm the Norwegian workers, but were sunk in a Lilliputian army, half of whose officers were infected with Nazism and the other half absolutely worthless.
In spite of the fact that since the Russo-Finnish war, at least, the possibility of a German invasion of Norway had been openly discussed all over the world, the Norwegian general staff had not prepared so much as a single plan for such an eventuality.
The German fleet had already passed the Great Belt when the commander-in-chief of the Norwegian army, General Laake (pronounced Loki, but not to be confused with Loki, the war god of the Norse sagas), received representatives of the Oslo press in a pleasant birthday interview: the general was busy at this time preparing to celebrate his sixtyfifth birthday, which was to take place on April 9.
As for the “labor” government, it could, bring itself to no decision in the course of April 8th. It spent its time discussing with various parliamentary committees the attitude Norway should take on the mine fields sown by the English the night before. No one seemed to think at all about any danger from Germany.
Since the Norwegian government had no instructions to announce to the populace, the Oslo broadcasting station went off the air at 11:30 on the night of the 8th. During the night the first German warships penetrated the Norwegian fjords; when the news reached Oslo, the government did not know whether the ships concerned were English or German.
Early in the morning Dr. Brauer, the German ambassador, delivered Hitler’s ultimatum; after negotiating senselessly with Hitler’s messenger boy, the government and the Storting decided to leave the capital: without a public proclamation and without the slightest word to the Norwegian people.
At the very last moment, from the railroad station, a mobilization order was issued – short and simple – which was broadcast by the Oslo radio station, but which had already become senseless by that time as far as the large cities of Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim were concerned. For when the Norwegian soldiers arrived during the day at their places of assembly they were received by Norwegian Nazis and German officers and very politely sent home. Thus a few thousand German troops were able to occupy the Norwegian coast almost without a battle.
The Norwegian government arrived at Hamar still full of irresolution. It lost another day in negotiations with the German ambassador, who had come on the trail of the government and the king. However, these negotiations fell through on only one point: Hitler’s emissary stood firm on the naming of Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nazis, as prime minister. According to the White Book issued by the Norwegian government itself one week after the beginning of the invasion, Foreign Minister Koht asked Ambassador Brauer in very explicit terms whether the German authorities would not accept some other government which would be ready to co-operate “amicably” with the army of occupation. Only when Brauer rejected this proposal were negotiations broken off.
Three weeks of petty warfare followed among the Norwegian valleys and mountains, which, after the German troops had occupied all the important points of exit, had to end the way it did, with the complete conquest of southern and central Norway. Far too late, the English and French expeditionary forces could do nothing to change the situation. In the end the few Norwegian troops had to cover the hurried retreat of the Allies, in the course of which they suffered heavy losses.
Meanwhile the Norwegian government withdrew to the north and took its place there as a modest cog in the great war machine of the Franco-British imperialists. There is no question, even by implication, of any independent class policy on the part of the Norwegian labor party. To emphasize the truce between the classes, conservative deputies were taken into the government; independent propaganda by the labor party disappeared.
Yet, in spite of all this, the labor party is by no means unambiguously on the side of the Allies. Like all Norway, the labor party has split into two sections. While the government and a part of the party’s directing council, Tranmael among them, sit in northern Norway and make common cause with the Allies, the leaders of the labor party and of the trade unions who remained behind in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, have submitted to the German authorities and, like Stauning in Denmark, carry out their instructions. The labor party’s newspapers in the occupied areas appear with the approval of the German authorities and print their official proclamations. Illegal revolutionary propaganda is carried on only by isolated lower units of the party.
In any case, the Norwegian Stalinists have behaved the most shamefully of all. Their Oslo newspaper, Arbeideren, appeals with complete legality under the protection of the authorities of occupation and of the Gestapo governor, Terboven. It exhausts itself in fulminations against Anglo-French imperialism and in accusations against the Labor party members who fled, accusing them of the misappropriation of workers’ funds and of other crimes in the same vein. Moreover, information has reached us first hand that two members of the Russian trade delegation in Oslo and the well-known Norwegian Stalinist lawyer, Regnar Solheim, were surprised in active espionage for the Germans. An extensive report on these matters has been circulated among all the labor organizations in Oslo.
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