from Sas highly disturbing, even if Sweden was not directly threatened, and asked Forshell for a meeting, to which Kjølsen was also invited. In the meeting a memorandum to the Swedish Foreign Office was compiled, detailing the information received over the last couple of days. This and a similar memorandum from Forshell to the Swedish Naval Intelligence Staff were couriered to Stockholm on the first available flight. The Swedish government, Foreign Office and military intelligence were thus informed of Operation Weserübung in the evening of 4 April. Richert added information from other sources indicating that on 2 April Hitler appeared to have made ‘some important decision’, and persons in the German Foreign Office seemed ‘nervous and pre-occupied’. Forshell in his short military style summarised: ‘Denmark will be occupied next week,’ whereafter Norway would be attacked from the Oslofjord to Bergen while no aggression towards Sweden was planned. Observations of mountain troops in northern Germany confirmed in his opinion that Norway was on the list of targets.33 Both Richert and Forshell concluded that the operation was imminent, as all the foreign military attachés in Berlin had been invited on a tour of the Western Front, starting in the evening of Sunday 7 April. Forshell had decided not to attend this tour, with his minister’s approval, believing it to be a pretext to have the attachés out of the way.34
Later that same day, an official but discreet message was passed from the German Ministry of Propaganda to the Swedish Embassy stating that there was no acute danger to Sweden from Germany in the near future. Richert sent a brief update to the Foreign Office in Stockholm: ‘I have the firm impression that far-reaching actions towards Denmark and Norway are to be expected shortly; most likely within days.’ For reasons difficult to comprehend, none of this detailed and exact information was forwarded to the Norwegian or Danish governments.35
On Friday 5 April, around 11:40, Minister August Esmarch at the Norwegian Embassy in Copenhagen telephoned Undersecretary Jens Bull at the Foreign Office in Oslo. The minister had been called to the Danish Foreign Office earlier in the morning, as had Swedish Minister Hamilton. Both had been questioned by Undersecretary Mohr as to their respective countries’ reactions to the recent information from Berlin of a German offensive on the Low Countries, western Denmark and southern Norway. Esmarch had no knowledge of this and made the call to Bull requesting advice on what to tell the Danes. Being careful on the open telephone line and assuming Oslo had actually received the information referred to, he just forwarded the request without going into the background he had been given by Mohr, other than to mention the danger of a German attack on Denmark and southern Norway. ‘Copenhagen was nervous,’ according to Esmarch and wanted to know as soon as possible the considerations from Oslo.
Bull did not question Esmarch in any detail, as he apparently assumed Koht would know what this was all about. When learning of the telephone conversation with Esmarch, Koht dismissed the issue as the same rumours Scheel had mentioned and took no initiatives to ascertain what the Danish request referred to. Bull returned a call to Esmarch just before 14:00, informing him that Oslo would do nothing ‘based on rumours’ – and he could say so to the Danish Foreign Office. No information of Esmarch’s conversation with Mohr and the request for a Norwegian reaction went beyond the inner circles of the Foreign Office.36 Esmarch on his side reported back to the Danes that Oslo did not give the report ‘any significance at all’. The Swedish Minister Hamilton reported back, according to Mohr, that this was ‘old news’ and Stockholm had information the rumours were exaggerated.37 Satisfied, the Danish Foreign Office forwarded a summary of the information to the British Embassy and did little else.38
During the evening of the 5th, Oberst Carlos Adlercreutz, head of intelligence at the Swedish defence staff, called his Norwegian counterpart at the General Staff in Oslo, Oberstløytnant Wrede-Holm, informing him that Sweden had reliable information from Berlin of an imminent German attack on Denmark, followed by a similar attack on Norway.39 Shortly after, an almost identical message arrived from the Danish General Staff. Reports of these communications were sent to the commanding general, the Admiral Staff and the Ministry of Defence, though Ljungberg later had ‘no positive recollection of the issue’ and could not remember having seen any of Scheel’s letters. Nobody in the Foreign Office or the government appears to have been informed. Likewise, neither the commanders nor their intelligence officers were informed of similar information coming from the embassies.40
The Norwegian journalist Theo Findahl, stationed in Berlin for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, somehow got hold of the rumours of an imminent attack on southern Norway. He was subject to strong restrictions, but managed to submit an article to Oslo over the weekend. Unfortunately Findahl stated the number of Germans to be landed in Norway to be in the order of ‘1.5 million’. The editor, while preparing a dramatic front page for Monday’s edition, contacted the office of the commanding admiral in the evening for comments, speaking to Kaptein Håkon Willoch, the duty officer at the Admiral Staff. Willoch referred the enquiry to the commanding admiral, who found the story of 1.5 million men ‘too fantastic’ and, to his dismay, the editor received a call from the Foreign Office shortly after with instructions to halt the publication of the report.41
Meanwhile, another telegram from Scheel in Berlin arrived in the Foreign Office in Oslo. It stated that according to reliable sources, fifteen to twenty large ships loaded with troops and equipment had left Stettin on the night of 4/5 April, heading west. An unknown destination would be reached on 11 April. Ulrich Stang later told the Commission of Inquiry that this new information came from Kjølsen, adding that the reference to a westerly course should have indicated to Oslo that Norway was at risk.42 The cipher secretary on duty, Gudrun Martius, considered the message serious enough to call Koht at home as no senior political staff were present in the office. Having the telegram referred to him, Koht reassured Miss Martius that the ships were not heading for a destination in Norway, but ‘into the Atlantic’. How Koht knew this, and what a large fleet of German transport ships loaded with troops was hoping to achieve there, was not discussed. A copy of the report was couriered to the Admiral and General Staff that evening, but no further measures were taken, as Koht had given no instructions. The next day, a copy of the signal was sent to the Ministry of Defence, but whether it reached Ljungberg or not is unclear. It appears the mentioning of the 11th, which was several days away, to a large extent affected Koht’s dismissal of Norway as the target. Miss Martius was confused after the conversation with Koht, but could only conclude that, as the foreign minister took the telegram so calmly, he had other information that put the situation in a different light. A copy of the signal reached Kaptein Willoch at the Naval Staff around 22:00 on the 7th. He called the commanding admiral and, quoting it, asked if he should initiate any measures: for example alert the districts and prepare for mines to be laid. Diesen answered no, and assured Willoch he himself would make sure those who needed to know would be informed. Willoch’s frustration was marked, all the more so as he never heard back on the issue. According to Steen, the commanding admiral and his Chief of Staff agreed the troopships were most probably related to an attack on Holland.43
Kaptein Håkon Willoch (1896–1955), the brother of Odd Willoch in Narvik and Gunnar Willoch in Bergen – and father of Kåre Willoch, prime minister of Norway from 1981 to 1986. (Kåre Willoch)
Thus, the information from Oster reached Oslo during 5 April through circuitous routes while there was still time to prepare the Norwegian armed forces to meet an invasion on the 9th. Neither Koht nor Ljungberg or his commanders, however, considered the signals from Berlin to indicate a ‘clear and present danger’ towards Norway and none of them initiated investigations to have the signals verified. There are independent accounts of Koht having commented on the reports from Germany with something like, ‘Either the rumours are false, in which case there is no cause for alarm, or they are correct, in which case we will not have any useful answers.’ That might be true, but no attempts were made to compile the signals and assess them jointly. Neither was the
