and into the war.’ Koht realised that circles in London saw a direct interest in undermining Norwegian neutrality and provoking retaliatory German actions, which would force Norway into the war on the Allied side. He mistakenly believed that Berlin would find the reasons for maintaining Norwegian neutrality more compelling than those for military actions and therefore would not rise to the Allied lures. In all his rationality, Koht failed to grasp that the leadership in Berlin had a logic of its own and was not hindered by international boundaries and declarations of neutrality, even after Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland had been overrun.
For personal and political reasons, Koht declined several invitations to go to Berlin and Rome. He never travelled to London either, but later alleged this to be coincidental and largely due to lack of a good opportunity. In his memoirs, he wrote that a planned visit to England in early 1939 was cancelled on the advice of the Norwegian minister in London, Erik Colban, as a recent visit from the Polish foreign minister had been portrayed in British media as the building of an alliance. Had Koht and Colban found an opportunity to develop relations and perhaps a better understanding of intentions in both London and Oslo, things might have been very different. Koht played a hard hand with both the German and British ministers in Oslo, being very conscious not to let them know what he really believed or expected. That the politicians in London were offended by his apparent lack of distinction between the aggressive German warfare and what they considered defensive measures did not occur to Koht. ‘My impression was that both the Germans and the Allies were uncertain of me . . . I think this was to the benefit of my country,’ he wrote. One may wonder.56
In December 1939, Oberst Birger Ljungberg was appointed defence minister, replacing the ageing Fredrik Monsen. The appointment was somewhat surprising as Ljungberg was a professional officer, unknown outside the army and not a member of the Labour Party. If anything, he was a Conservative. The appointment of a professional military man was well received in the Parliament, where it was believed that the government would now be guided in the right direction.57 For many, Oberst Otto Ruge, the inspector general of the army, would have been the natural choice. Nygaardsvold and Koht agreed, however, that he was too obstinate for them and would never accept a passive role in the government. Thus, when Monsen suggested Ljungberg as his successor, Nygaardsvold eagerly concurred.58 Welcoming his new minister to the government, Nygaardsvold bluntly advised him to ‘concentrate on the administration of the defence [as] the political side would be handled by the other ministers’. That this reinforced Ljungberg’s position as an outsider seems not to have bothered Nygaardsvold. The communication between the military and the government was unsatisfactory during the neutrality period in general and in early April in particular. The responsibility for this cannot be put anywhere but on the defence minister. What might have happened, had a stronger, more influential personality like Ruge, Fleischer or Hatledal been chosen, remains conjecture.59
Commanding general, Generalmajor Kristian Laake (from 1933), and commanding admiral, Kontreadmiral Henry Diesen (from April 1938), both of whom reported directly to the defence minister, were largely political appointments having been given their offices because the government knew it could trust their loyalty and subordination to political decisions.60 Before becoming commanding general, Laake had led the preparatory work for the Defence Act of 1933, and there would be no better man to carry it through, cutting the Norwegian defence forces to the bone. Laake and Diesen must take responsibility for the failure of the armed forces to optimise the use of the resources made available to them and for not taking a more active role towards the politicians when it became clear that not even the minimum obligations of the Defence Act would be followed. Both accepted that the government had to take ‘economic considerations’ and expressed their opinions through budget proposals and occasional reports, but neither man was prepared to take individual initiatives on a scale required to rock the boat. They believed the ‘prescient Foreign Office’ would initiate necessary precautions in due time, if needed. Neither man ascertained whether the time it would take and the resources needed to increase the strength of the Norwegian defences were appreciated by the government. In 1945, Laake told the Investigating Committee that he believed the ‘initiatives taken during the autumn of 1939 were adequate [as] the government counted on England and assumed it would never come to actions of war on Norwegian soil. Should a German attack occur, England would help reject it – and versus the British, one should not fight.’
Birger Ljungberg, Norwegian defence minister from 1940. (NTB/Scanpix)
Commanding General Laake was nearing retirement. His health had started to fail and the 55-year-old Oberst Hatledal, Chief of the General Staff, troubled by the situation, took on more and more of the tasks and responsibilities of the general. It appears that Ljungberg did not appreciate this and a fatal gap in communication opened up between the General Staff and the minister.
Between the army and the navy, there was a fundamental disagreement on the assessment of threats and tactics to be applied. Hatledal as well as Oberst Otto Ruge, inspector general of the army, assumed a potential attacker would have clear military objectives – naval and air bases or iron ore. Contrary to Koht and the Foreign Office, Hatledal and Ruge believed that the main threat to Norway would come from Germany (and Russia in the north). Britain would, in all likelihood, respect Norwegian neutrality, but attempt to tie the country as close as possible to their economic warfare and not accept any of the other powers utilising the neutrality for its own purposes. A full-scale occupation of the country was not envisaged, as Ruge later openly admitted. When the grants for the military did start to rise, large-scale combined field exercises were organised in south-west Norway in 1937, 1938 and 1939. The exercises were intended to test the defence against an expeditionary corps that had landed between Kristiansand and Stavanger, moving towards Sola airfield. Naturally, numerous flaws and inadequacies emerged and it was clear that it would take years before the Norwegian defences could adequately meet a real threat. Above all, tactics and mobility needed to be improved and new weapon systems against aircraft and armoured vehicles were desperately needed. Demonstrating such shortcomings had undoubtedly been part of the exercises, but there is no record of this being explicitly presented to and understood by the government.
The navy was involved in the exercises, scouting, protecting convoys and acting as opponents. Chief of the Admiral Staff Kommandør Elias Corneliussen argued, with support from fellow naval officers, that the scenario for the exercises was unrealistic as long as the Royal Navy dominated the North Sea. In a newspaper interview in January 1939, Commanding Admiral Diesen held that he considered a war between Britain and Norway improbable, and hence a German intervention in Norway unlikely. ‘To attack Norway one needs supremacy in the North Sea – but if one has, there is no need to,’ he argued – tacitly implying that the threat to Norway indeed was from Germany, but held in check by Britain’s naval strength.
Ruge, on the other hand, predicted that under certain conditions Britain could become engaged elsewhere, creating a situation where Germany might seek to improve its position. The modernised Luftwaffe was a far greater threat to British naval power than before and might achieve at least temporary supremacy, covering the transport and landing of German troops on the Norwegian south coast. This would eventually provoke a British response, he wrote, but ‘. . . British intelligence may fail, or British hesitation may miss the moment of opportunity. In any case, we must be aware that the powers at war will not assist us out of mere sympathy, bur consider their own interests. We shall have to bear the brunt of the first attack alone.’61
The commanders expected the government to keep them informed of the development of the international situation. The government, however, expected the commanders to keep them informed of the military situation and of any shortcomings in the ability of the armed forces to sustain the neutrality. Neither happened. Diesen and Laake never had adequate insight into the government’s thinking regarding the international situation and the threats to Norwegian neutrality. The politicians never understood the mobilisation apparatus, its terminology or inevitable disruption of everyday life. Important intelligence
