Chapter 1: How did Hitler's plans for Norway and Denmark unfold?
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I speak to you for the first time as Prime Minister, in a solemn hour for the life of our country, of our empire, of our allies, and above all, of the cause of freedom. A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defences north of the Maginot Line.
If this is one of the most awe-striking periods in the long history of France and Britain, it is also beyond doubt the most sublime. Side by side, unaided except by their kith and kin in the greater minions and by the wide empires which rest beneath their shield.
Side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them, behind us, behind the armies and fleets of Britain and France, gather a group of shattered states and bludgeoned races.
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Chapter 2: What was the significance of the Winter War for Hitler's strategy?
And we'll be coming to that attack and to Churchill's emergence as Britain's savior later in this episode. But first, somewhere we haven't discussed at all in the whole of this series on the Third Reich, going back four seasons, and that is the North.
And the irony being that the Nazis were so obsessed with their Northern inheritance and their Nordic roots and Norse myths, but they never gave much thought to Scandinavia really. But we mentioned the iron ore in Sweden.
Which I'm very excited about. Yes, and that will come. But also, you touched on Finland, didn't you? The fact that the Soviets were bogged down in the snows of that distant northern land.
Yeah, it's like listening to Winston Churchill. I know, I'm kind of infected by it. The brave people of Finland. So Finland, formerly the Grand Duchy of Finland, had been part of the Russian Empire. Three and a half million people.
And Stalin had attacked it at the end of November 1939 because he had given an ultimatum to the Finns to hand over a chunk of Karelia, the bit of Finland that is just above Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg. The Finns, to his great surprise, said no. Stalin sent in the Red Army. But the Red Army was useless at this stage because Stalin had killed all their generals as part of the Great Terror.
He had purged them. And they were completely unprepared. We think of the Russians as supremely well-equipped to fight in the winter. But they were very unprepared compared with the Finns, who were wearing these kind of white camouflage uniforms and were on skis and were throwing Molotov cocktails at them. So this is the war that gives us the Molotov cocktail.
And basically, Finland is clearly never going to completely win the war because it's tiny compared with the Soviet Union. Basically, the two sides had to agree a compromise. And in March 1940, the Finns handed over a chunk of Karelia. But Stalin then dropped his previous plan of basically turning Finland into a semi-absorbed client state. And he lets them keep their independence.
And the result of this war, the Winter War, is that the Red Army have lost about 125,000 men killed, and another 300,000 have been incapacitated by wounds, or they've basically got disease, or they've got frostbites.
And Hitler's been watching this, right?
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Chapter 3: How did the Allies respond to the German invasion of Norway?
Kind of nondescript. But a good name. Yeah, but a good name. So Narvik is also ice-free in winter, so you can bring iron ore all year round. Now, as soon as the war broke out in September 1939, Grand Admiral Raeder of the Kriegsmarine, which is the navy, went to Hitler and said, look, we have to guarantee this flow of iron ore from northern Sweden.
In other words, we have to establish ourselves in Norway, which is neutral, because if we don't, the Allies will. And if they get there first, we're in real trouble. And Raeder said to Hitler, this business of the Winter War in Finland is a real issue because the Allies, I think, will use that as a pretext They will send troops to help Finland against Stalin.
And on the way, they will occupy Norway and northern Sweden. And the thing is, he's right, isn't he? Because actually, the Allies do have exactly such a plan. They do. And this may surprise a lot of listeners. The Allies absolutely had such a plan. Churchill, now running the Admiralty, the Navy in Britain, is especially keen on it.
So under his aegis, Britain and France draw up a plan to invade Denmark and Norway. Basically, if you're invading Norway, you have to take Denmark as well because it's right next door. They would have landed troops at Narvik.
They would have seized the Swedish iron mines and they would have then pushed troops further on into Finland to help the Finns against Stalin, who at this point they kind of perceive as Hitler's ally, his partner in crime. Now, they ended up scrapping this plan, basically in part because the Norwegians and the Swedes got wind of it. And they said, what? You're planning to occupy us?
Yeah, that's not good, is it? That's outrageous. But the threat is still there. So on the 20th of February, Hitler summoned one of his generals, who was called Paul von Falkenhorst, and said, I want you to come up with a plan to invade Norway and Denmark. And this is a very good indication of the mad way that Hitler does business. It's so funny.
See, he calls to this guy, Falcon Horst, and says, by the way, I need this plan. You've got until five o'clock this afternoon. I don't know what time it is. It's like lunchtime or something. Yeah, kind of three hours. And also, you can't tell anyone about it and you can't get any help.
So he goes to a bookshop, doesn't he? He gets a baedeker, a guide.
Yeah. To Scandinavia.
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Chapter 4: What were the key factors in the German success against France?
And he'd worked very closely with the explorer turned refugee campaigner, Frithjof Nansen. Anyway, there's only about 10 people in Norway. So if you've got those high marks from the academy, you can thrive in Norwegian politics. So Quisling was defense minister very briefly. Then in the 1930s, he sort of got really into Nordic nationalism.
And he formed his own Nazi-style party, and he called himself the Führer of this party, spelled in an entertainingly Norwegian way. Yeah, so it's an O with a dash through it. Exactly. But he never did well. They were very poor. They never got more than 2.5% of the vote. So that's what, about six people voting for him? Yeah. They never managed to elect a single Norwegian MP.
Anyway, Raider brings him to Hitler and introduces him to Hitler, this guy Quisling, and Hitler thinks that he's a bit useless. However, he's the only person they've got, so they decide to back him anyway. And Quisling does turn out to be genuinely useful to the Germans because he was defence minister, so he's able to give them details of all Norway's defences. So overt treason. Completely.
I mean, he really is a Quisling. And of course, that's where the name comes from. Now, in the meantime, the Allies, finally, unbelievable, they've actually got their act together and decided to do something.
So the French have finally got rid of their dithering prime minister, who was Deladier, a socialist, and they've replaced him with somebody from the other end of the political spectrum, the centre-right, Paul Reynaud. And Reynaud is a very clever man, very impressive in many ways. He's extremely short, actually. He's 5'3", so that's his defining characteristic.
And he, Deladier, people used to say of Deladier, he made no decisions at all. But Raynaud makes a decision every five minutes. And a lot of them are mad. So he's very like Churchill.
He loves kind of mad invasions of remote, distant places. That's his vibe, isn't it? He loves all that. Right. A wheeze.
Yeah. So he's very keen on the idea of landing in Norway. And he also wanted to attack Soviet oil fields in Baku in Azerbaijan. I mean, that seems mad. Indeed. Anyway. After a lot of dithering about this, the French and the British finally agree they will intervene in Norway. They will mine the waters around Narvik. That's the crucial port the Germans get their iron ore from.
Now, they know that if they mine these waters, there will be a German reaction. So they say we'll also have to send troops and occupy Norway's western port. So that's Narvik, Stavanger, Bergen, places like that. And how do the Norwegians feel about this?
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Chapter 5: How did the German military strategy change during the invasion of France?
But I mean, I guess the reason that he doesn't end up carrying the can is because Chamberlain, on the 3rd of April, he addresses the Conservative National Union and he makes a kind of fateful boast, doesn't he? Whatever reason Hitler had for not making an immediate endeavor to overwhelm us, one thing is certain, he has missed the bus.
And that phrase, Hitler has missed the bus, will return to haunt Chamberlain.
Indeed. Because actually, while the Allies have been messing around and dithering with their mad ideas... Hitler has made up his own mind, and he has already sent the German fleet to begin the operation against Norway.
Now, the British, this speaks volumes about the quality of Britain's decision-making at this point, the British have intelligence to say the Germans are put to sea, but they say, yeah, they're probably not going to Norway. I imagine they're going to try and break through into the Atlantic, so let's not overstress about that.
Early on the 8th of April, the British start to lay their minds outside Narvik. But the Germans are approaching all the time.
My brother's brilliant on this. And he writes, 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. I mean, that is kind of mad, isn't it? It's crazy.
So midnight on the 8th, the Norwegians realise something is up. And the Norwegian side of the story is great, actually. And I shall be referring listeners to some excellent films on this made in Norway. It's about 1.30 in the morning. An aide comes in to wake the king, who is called Håkon VII. And he is a very sort of tall, gaunt man, if you Google him. He's actually a Dane.
So they had to pick a new king when they broke away from Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century. And they'd pick this Danish bloke. He's got an absolutely first-class moustache. He sent his son to Balliol College, Oxford, which I think reflects very well on him. Anyway, there he is in bed, and his aide says, Majesty, we're at war. And the king says, With whom?
Because they don't know whether it's going to be the Germans or the Allies.
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Chapter 6: What was the role of Winston Churchill during the early stages of the war?
This is my favorite detail. To get my toiletries. He basically has to get his wash bag from his farm outside Oslo. He goes out to his farm and collects his change of clothes, some underwear, toothbrush, whatever. And then he calls a taxi. But because the invasion has begun, the taxi is very, very severely delayed. It takes ages for this taxi to arrive.
The taxi picks him up and takes him back to Oslo to a Norwegian army headquarters. By the time he gets there with his wash bag, The general staff have evacuated and they haven't left any information to tell him where they've gone. This isn't the spirit of Harold Hardrada, is it? So he works out where they've gone.
He gets a tram, a suburban tram, carrying his stuff as far as he can to the end of the line. And then he walked to the Norwegian Map Institute to see if they had a car that he could borrow to take him to meet his men. They don't have a car. So then he had to walk all the way back to the railway station. to get a train, and it's hours and hours until he finally rejoins his staff.
So blitzkrieg, it is not. Well, do you know what? It sounds like I'm dissing the Norwegians, and I'm not, because they put up some pretty stout resistance. The Germans have come up the Oslo fjord in this cruiser, the Bluka, with thousands of troops. There's a whole film about this called Bluka, a Norwegian film that came out in September. You can see clips from it on YouTube.
The Norwegians have this fortress called the Oscarsborg. And it has two 19th century antique cannons. And basically, this Blucher comes closer and closer. These guys wait at this fortress until it's really close. Then they fire with these antique cannons. They hit the Blucher's fuel store. The Blucher explodes, bursts into flames and explodes. And 800 of the Germans were drowned.
So it was a big win for the Norwegians. And because of scenes like this, this gave the king, King Håkon, and his ministers time to get out of Oslo. They managed to smuggle out the gold reserves as well, don't they? Pretty much under the noses of the Germans. Yeah, it's a great story. I mean, as we'll see, it makes a great film.
Because they head to this village called Elverum, which is about 40 miles north of Oslo. And they're being pursued the whole time by German paratroopers who've been basically told, get the Norwegian government and get the king. We'll need them. The local rifle club, the Elverum Rifle Club, put up a roadblock and basically drove back these German paratroopers. I mean, that's incredible.
These blokes were like hunting rifles or whatever. These ordinary Norwegians managed to drive them back. And that gave the king and his entourage time to get away. And they had a meeting. And basically, the king is told, the Germans want Quisling to run a puppet government and you have to approve it. And the king says, it's a very sort of stirring scene.
He says to his ministers, look, there's no way I'm going to accept this. No way whatsoever. He says, if you want to accept it, fine, but I will abdicate. I will never, ever preside over a Quisling government. And then he bursts into tears. And it's a very stirring scene. There's a Norwegian film of this called The King's Choice.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of the Battle of France for the Allies?
And I mean that as no disrespect to the Danes, but the geography is just not in the Danes' favour.
Yeah, well, also, they've got a land border with Germany, so the panzers presumably can just roll through Schleswig-Holstein.
Which is exactly what they do. So they kick off at 4.15 in the morning. The panzers roll over, naval landings, paratroopers, and the Danes are completely and utterly helpless. There's a bit of fighting around the royal palace in Copenhagen. But the king of Denmark, Christian X, who is actually the Norwegian king's older brother, he can see that this is totally pointless.
There's no geographical barriers. The Germans are just sort of rolling into Denmark. And by breakfast, he has ordered a ceasefire and they signed the capitulation at 10 o'clock in the morning. That was the shortest campaign of the entire war. So that's five and three quarters hours. Yeah. From start to finish. Like it's perfectly plausible if you had a lion that day.
you could wake up and not know that an invasion had happened and was finished.
So my brother goes so far as to say, surely the fastest conquest of a country in history.
Yeah, quite possibly. And actually, I definitely don't want to disrespect the King of Denmark, because King Christian, he didn't go into exile, as many monarchs did. Because his son's wife, Crown Princess Ingrid, who is, I think, Swedish, she was nine months pregnant and she couldn't travel. So he has to stay in Copenhagen.
But he behaves tremendously well, doesn't he?
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: How did the events of May 1940 lead to the fall of France?
And because he's a very short man, he falls into a snowdrift and has to be dug out by the rest of the men.
So not the most glorious moment in British military history.
No. So we did land in central Norway. We did capture Narvik and then recapture it. But basically, Churchill is constantly coming up with schemes of various kinds, which end up being ditched. To quote Max Hastings again, Churchill shouted loudest, but his extravagant schemes were frustrated by the lack of means to fulfill them.
Do you know what's even worse about that? In his office in the Admiralty, opposite his desk, Who do you think Churchill has a portrait of? Surely Admiral Lord Nelson. It is Admiral Lord Nelson, whose record in Scandinavian conflict was a whole lot better.
Yeah, but also Nelson was rubbish on land, to be fair. So landings in Norway were precisely the kind of thing that Nelson would have made a terrible hash of. Do you not think?
Yeah, but not as big a hash as Churchill did.
As Churchill made of Norway. No, I know, absolutely. And the worst thing is when the British and French decide to pull the plug and they're going to have to evacuate, they didn't have the decency to tell the Norwegians. So they were dishonest with them until the final moment. So what's it Max Hastings said? Moral ignobility. Yeah, moral ignobility and military incompetence.
And actually when the British finally did pull the plug and the Norwegian commander in chief, a man called Otto Ruger, when he found out, he said very bitterly, so Norway is to share the fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland. And that's a crucial point.
Yeah.
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