In a surprise attack, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, and quickly secured the capital of Oslo as well as other major cities along the east and west coasts of the country. The underequipped and unprepared Norwegian military fought the Germans in the interior and in the far north but even with the assistance of British troops and ships was unable to withstand the German onslaught.
After running from the enemy for two months, the Government, King and Crown Prince of Norway fled to Britain, and the Germans took complete control of the country.
The Nazis appointed Josef Terboven as the Reich Commissioner, and all of Norway came under his control. Approximately 1700 Jews lived in Norway at the time of the invasion, and about 200 of them had fled from the Nazis in Central Europe. Although Terboven placed restrictions on the Jews and their property, it wasn’t until one year later, in the spring of 1941, that arrests and imprisonments were stepped up. Most of these arrests took place outside Oslo, in locations where Jews were small in number.
In early 1942, Terboven required all Jews to have a “J” stamped on their identity cards and the word “Jew” stamped on their identity papers. Also in 1942, Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, was named prime minister. He and Terboven executed the main persecution of the Jews.
Vidkun Quisling & Josef Terboven Courtesy of Flikr: The Commons via Wikimedia Commons
In the fall, the Norwegian police arrested the seven hundred and sixty-three Jews they could locate, including women and children, and transported them by ship to Germany. They were immediately sent to Auschwitz where most of them perished in the gas chambers.
The Norwegian Resistance had facilitated the escape of about nine hundred Jews to Sweden, where they survived the war as refugees. Hans Mamen was one of those resistance members. Hans grew up on a farm outside Oslo and was a student at the local Lutheran seminary. He learned of the persecution of Norway’s Jews and felt called as a Christian to help protect them. Hans’s mission began when a seminary professor asked him to help find a hiding place for a Jewish family who had requested the professor’s help.
Hans established a network of seminary students and other friends and contacts to assist. Some hid Jews, some shared food and supplies, and a few of them led Jews safely across the border into Sweden. Hans led many rescue efforts, usually taking only three people at a time to reduce the risk of capture. He led his charges through sparsely-populated areas of dense forests. They crossed these difficult areas on foot, often at night. Hans arranged for a Swedish lumberjack who lived just across the border to keep a lantern lit at night so they would know when they had arrived in Sweden.
On one journey, Hans accompanied a mother and her three-year-old son across the country, and then they hiked to the border. He carried the child on his shoulders into the dense forest, and the sudden, complete darkness frightened the young boy. His cries echoed across the landscape, and nothing Hans or the child’s mother tried would calm him.
With dawn approaching and the threat of their footprints in the snow leading a Nazi patrol to them, Hans feared capture. Finally, he whispered to the boy that he shouldn’t wake up the birds, and the child immediately quieted. Once across the border, they enjoyed the sunrise and the opportunity to speak aloud again.
Celia Century, a Jewish refugee from Norway, sits on the deck of a summer camp in Ronneby Sweden next to a non-Jewish friend. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
In December 1942, the Norwegian police, working for the Nazis, arrived at the Mamen’s farm and demanded to see Hans. His mother explained that he was at the seminary in Oslo. After the police left, she telephoned the seminary, and her coded message was passed to Hans during class—“‘Pack your suitcase.’”
Hans rushed to the home of a trusted friend and sent a message to his fiancée, Ruth. Although her parents were afraid and didn’t want her to leave, Ruth packed a small bag to escape with Hans.
Hans and Ruth traveled by train from Oslo but disembarked before reaching the border. He had called ahead and arranged for one of his contacts, a licensed woodcutter, to meet them. The couple rode under a tarp in the back of the man’s old truck. They stopped at a safe house; however, Nazi agents were searching the neighborhood. Hans and Ruth climbed back into the truck, and the woodcutter drove them to a border checkpoint, where he knew the lone Norwegian guard was loathe to leave his hut at night.
Although the woodcutter turned resistance fighter was willing to use his gun if necessary, the truck rolled across the border without incident. The couple’s benefactor didn’t stop until they were far from the border. After he did, Hans and Ruth climbed out of the truck, fell on their knees, and thanked God for bringing them safely through.
Hans and Ruth married in Sweden and had the first of five children. Before the war ended, Hans finished his seminary studies and assisted the Norwegian resistance by helping Allied agents cross from Sweden into Norway to conduct operations. After Norway was liberated, Hans and Ruth returned home, and he served as a Lutheran pastor for many decades.
Villa Grande in Oslo. Site of the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities and former home of Vidkun Quisling. Credit: Leifern, Wikimedia Commons
More than sixty years later, Hans was asked to speak at the new Holocaust Center in Oslo. A tall, bearded Norwegian “greeted him with unusual affection for a stranger.” The man identified himself as “the Jewish toddler who decades earlier had quieted down in the dark, snow-covered forest so he would not awaken the birds.”
Sources:
Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.
Today’s story is the miraculous account of how the Norwegian’s saved their gold reserves from the Nazis and spirited them out of the country right under the enemy’s noses. If the Germans had obtained these reserves, they would have gained more wealth to supply their war machine.
Although Norway was neutral during WWII, Nicolai Rygg, the director of Norges Bank where the nation’s gold reserves resided, made preparations in case Norway should fall or a crisis develop. Early in 1940, Rygg brought in volunteers to pack bars of gold in white painted boxes and seal them with iron bands. Bags of gold coins were packed in smaller kegs. Of the 421 million Krone stored in the bank, 300 million was shipped to the United States. The rest was left in the vault because Norwegian law did not allow all the gold to be removed from the country at one time.
After Rygg learned that German warships were headed up the Oslo Fjord on April 9th, Rygg contacted General Laake, the Commander-in-Chief of military forces, who ordered Rygg to immediately evacuate the gold to the bank in Lillehammer. Moments later, Rygg learned that the Germans already occupied major cities but hadn’t reached Oslo (the sinking of the Blücher kept the Germans from seizing the capital for an extra eight hours).
Norges Bank at Oslo 1906-1986. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
Twenty-six trucks were chartered from local merchants, and the drivers were directed to the side entrance of the bank but were not informed about what they would be carrying. Bank guards were placed close to the bank to keep inquisitive eyes away, but the military was not used in order to avoid drawing attention to the operation. The bank employees loaded the gold.
Each truck, along with two armed bank guards, drove away immediately after loading so there was no convoy to draw the attention of the Luftwaffe. The first truck left at 8:15 AM and the last truck shortly before 1:30 PM. German soldiers marched down the main street of Oslo at exactly the same time, and the Norwegian commander of the Oslo garrison surrendered the city at 2:00 PM at the Akershus Fort, only a couple hundred yards from Norges Bank.
A Gold Bar from the Norges Bank. Courtesy of Norges Bank.
The gold shipment totaled 818 large crates, 685 smaller crates, and 39 kegs of gold coins. Lillehammer was 115 miles from Oslo, and the trucks traveled over snow-laden roads. Vehicles and pedestrians fleeing the capital slowed down the trucks, and people became angry because the trucks didn’t stop to help them. The last truck arrived at the bank in Lillehammer at 8:00 PM.
The bank employees in Lillehammer tucked the gold away in their vault; however, they could only unload the cargo when the Luftwaffe wasn’t flying over them. The media picked up on the activity and broadcast that trucks of gold were arriving in Lillehammer. A Trondheim newspaper also reported on the shipment, but the Germans did not pick up on the reports. The Royal Family, the Norwegian government, and the Norwegian gold had escaped for the time being!
The gold remained at Lillehammer for ten days while the Norwegians barricaded the roads and kept the Germans from advancing. Rygg checked on the gold twice and on the second trip, he asked the bank manager, Andreas Lund, to memorize the numbers to the vault lock. Frequent bombing raids forced the bank to close and wait to reopen until the planes disappeared.
Norges Bank at Lillehammer. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
On April 14th, 15 German transport planes dropped about 180 lightly armed paratroopers in the Dombås area, northwest of Lillehammer. They were spread over a wide area, and the Norwegian troops successfully killed or captured them over a five-day period. This kept the railway lines to the north and the west coast open.
In the mean time, it became obvious that the Germans could overtake Lillehammer at any time. Oscar Torp, the Norwegian Minister of Finance, tasked Fredrik Haslund, Secretary of the Labour Party, with transporting the gold from Lillehammer to the port of Åndalsnes where the British Royal Navy could take it safely away. On April 17th, the British—determined to assist the Norwegians in ousting the Germans—had landed a large number of troops and equipment at three Norwegian ports—Harstad, Namsos, and Åndalsnes.
United States Military Academy Dept. of History – Courtesy of Wikipedia – Public Domain
At midnight on April 19th, orders came to open the bank vault door. Unfortunately due to fear and anxiety, Lund had a difficult time getting the lock to the brand new vault open—it had only been opened once before and Lund was operating by memory. He finally succeeded with the code a little past 1:00 AM.
Haslund had recruited the Lillehammer chief of police who assembled 30 volunteers who met at a secret location at 10:00 PM. They were armed with spades and shovels so they would appear to be preparing to dig trenches. Instead they were quietly transported to the bank and loaded the trucks which took the gold to the railway station, a short distance away. The gold was loaded onto the wooden railcars. A small group of soldiers was ordered to accompany the train, but the men weren’t told what they were guarding. They soon figured out the contents because of the Norges Bank initials displayed on the outside of each container.
Lillehammer Train Station. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain
The train left Lillehammer at 4:00 AM with its lights dimmed in case any Luftwaffe aircraft flew over. When dawn approached, the bullion train stopped at Otta and pulled onto a siding to wait for a safer time to proceed. Later, a train arrived at Otta Station from the north with three carriages full of British soldiers who had their thumbs in the air. The Norwegians were encouraged. Little did they know what dangers lay ahead.
The gold train sat undetected on a railroad siding in Otta. It didn’t run during the day because the German bombers loved to target anything moving. After a twenty-four-hour wait, the gold train left at 10:00 PM and arrived at the port town of Åndalsnes at 4:30 AM on April 20th.
View of the innermost part of the Romsdalsfjord with Åndalsnes up to the left in the picture. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
Åndalsnes is located at the head of a fjord – a long narrow inlet which connects to the Norwegian Sea. The British had landed troops and secured Åndalsnes two days before, and at 9:00 AM on the 20th, the Germans commenced bombing the port, the British ships, all transport routes, and the town of approximately 2000 people. In spite of their intelligence, the Germans were not aware of the presence of Norway’s gold, which remained at the station awaiting transportation out by British warship to the United Kingdom.
At 11:00 PM, Fredrik Haslund, the official tasked with conveying the gold out of Norway, sent the gold train to a siding at Romsdalhorn, a few kilometers away. Towering mountains guarded the tiny station, making it a perfect place to hide a train. Due to the constant daytime bombing, a crew of railwaymen worked in twelve-hour shifts to repair the area’s rail lines.
On the night of April 24th, Mr. Haslund ordered the gold train to be brought down to the dock in Andalsnes. Norwegian soldiers loaded 200 boxes of gold onto the HMS Galatea which had just unloaded British troops and equipment. The cruiser carried sixteen tons of the gold along with Norwegian officials to Scotland, and from there, the gold was transported to London and the Bank of England. Thirty-four tons of gold remained in Norway, awaiting transportation to the Allies. If the Nazis took possession, the precious metal would provide a tremendous boost to the enemy’s war chest.
A Modern View of Åndalsnes from the Romsdalsjjord Courtesy of Creative Commons via Wikimedia. Author Ludovic Peron.
The Norwegians expected German soldiers to come up the valley into Åndalsnes at any moment. Only hours remained to move the gold. An army captain obtained twenty-five trucks and drivers, and in two hours’ time, all the gold was removed from the train and loaded on the trucks. The convoy navigated over poorly paved roads that were covered with melting snow and mud. Unfortunately, the Luftwaffe returned to Åndalsnes and attacked the convoy. The soldiers and drivers ran for cover and no one was injured during the forty-five minutes of strafing. The convoy continued its journey, and when the next attack commenced, the drivers sped up. The Germans weren’t successful at hitting their targets. After reaching a ferry crossing, some trucks were hidden and some were camouflaged until dark.
A ferry arrived but could only carry two trucks across the water at a time. It took six hours to convey all the trucks to the other side. Because of deep ruts and potholes caused by the winter weather, the road ahead had to be repaired in places before the convoy could pass through. Trucks broke down and had to be replaced, and the crews became exhausted unloading and reloading the gold. Local farmers utilized their horses and equipment to drag one truck out of a ditch and back onto the road.
Eventually the convey arrived at the port of Molde where the Norwegian Government, King Haakon, and Crown Prince Olav were taking cover. They had arrived on April 23rd, and Molde had essentially become the new capital of Norway. The gold was unloaded into a large vault in the basement of the Confectionsfabriken building (clothing factory) in town.
Confectionsfabriken Building – Molde
The people of Molde were very helpful. They assisted with unloading the gold, providing security, and feeding the exhausted soldiers. But the Germans were intent on capturing or killing the King, Crown Prince, and Government. The Luftwaffe attacked Molde and it’s surroundings with bombs and incendiaries. The townsfolk set off the air-raid alarms as soon as they spotted aircraft, which allowed everyone time to escape to the woods.
On April 28th, the German Government announced that they were at war with Germany and that King Haakon was wanted ‘dead or alive.’ This was no surprise to the king or the Government. The relentless air strikes forced the British to send the cruiser HMS Glasgow to Molde and plans were made to evacuate.
The Germans bombed Molde for the first time at night. With debris littering the roads and fires raging, Norway’s gold was loaded on any available truck and transported to various locations at the harbor. Not all the trucks were immediately able to find a safe path through the destruction.
Before the HMS Glasgow could pull into port, a fire had to be extinguished on the dock. A portion of the gold was carried on board from this dock, and some was ferried by smaller ships from other points and loaded by crane onto the ship. The King, Crown Prince, members of the Norwegian Government, and the French, Danish, and British embassy members and staff joined British soldiers aboard the ship.
The Ruins of Molde – 1940. Courtesy of Flickr. No known copyright restrictions.
After the Germans unsuccessfully attacked the ship, the Glasgow left port and sailed down the fjord in reverse for at least an hour. It was too dangerous to turn around in the fjord at night. Not all of the gold had been loaded and not all of the gold had even made it to the dock before the Glasgow was forced to sail.
Along with the gold, the Glasgow carried King Haakon, Crown Prince Olav, members of the Norwegian Government, and diplomatic officials from Britain, France, and Denmark to the Tromso area in the far north of Norway. From here, the Norwegians hoped to form an offensive against the Germans and drive them out of the country.
Summer Night in Tromso (2012). Photo Credit: Mark Ledingham via Wikimedia Commons
After delivering its precious human cargo, the Glasgow turned south and safely landed the second installment of Norway’s gold in Scotland. Norwegian officials accompanied the shipment by train to London where it was stored in the vault of the Bank of England.
Back in Molde, Fredrik Haslund, the official in charge of rescuing the gold, searched for a way to remove the 18 tons which the Glasgow had been forced to leave behind due to the bombings. While Molde was burning, Haslund loaded eight tons of the gold on the steamer Driva, and the ship set off at 2:00 AM, only one hour after the Glasgow had pulled away.
The Luftwaffe dropped a stick of bombs in the water near the Driva, but she wasn’t damaged. During her trip north she was attacked by a German seaplane, and to avoid being sunk, the Driva’s first mate beached the craft on a flat shoreline. Bombs fell but landed in the sea. As the tide came in, another steamer pulled the Driva back out into the fjord.
Molde Under Attack in 1940 Painting by Rolf Groven
In the meantime, near Molde, Haslund decided the gold should be moved to fishing vessels because the Driva was too much of a target for the Germans. Word was sent to the Driva to rendezvous at the village of Gjemnes. The remaining ten tons of gold was transported by truck to Gjemnes and loaded onto fishing boats (puffers) there. Five hundred and forty-seven boxes of bullion were loaded in the dark, including the gold from the Driva. By this time, Norway’s fight against the Nazis was over in southern Norway but still continued in the far north of the country.
The puffers sailed through the fjords, laying over at coastguard stations and villages but not staying in any one place for long. Unfortunately, the captains of the puffers weren’t comfortable moving into unfamiliar waters farther north along the dangerous coast, and Haslund was forced to find other sources to move the gold to Tromso where the new capitol had been established.
Bodo at the time Haslund visited before it was bombed by the Germans on May 27, 1940. Courtesy of Hundholmen
The gold was again unloaded and reloaded on two different fishing boats. The boats split up but rendezvoused at a small port north of Bodo on May 7th. Hasland left the boat and traveled by car to Bodo where he located the local military commander and learned where the British had placed the minefields in a fjord they must pass through. After safe passage through the fjord, they obtained the services of the commanding officer of a Norwegian guard ship who boarded and piloted them safely to Tromso where they arrived on May 9th.
The gold was combined on one of the puffers, and that boat went out to sea with the other fishing boats each day. On May 21st, the gold was loaded on the HMSEnterprise, a Royal Navy cruiser. The Luftwaffe had previously attacked the Enterprise with 150 bombs, and she was in poor condition. She left on May 23rd on a zig-zag course for the UK. She was attacked again, but none of the bombs hit their target. The Enterprise traveled down the west coast of England without destroyer protection and docked at Plymouth in the south. The gold was transported by train to London and deposited in the Bank of England.
Expecting a German invasion of Britain at any moment, the Norwegians made plans to move its gold once again. The British had already removed all of its own gold reserves before the war started in September of 1939. The Norwegian precious metal was split into several shipments and sent across the Atlantic to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and to the Bank of Canada in Ottawa. A small portion of the gold remained with the Norwegian Government-in-Exile established in England. This allowed them to function independently throughout the war.
Source: Gold Run by Robert Pearson. Casemate Publishers, 2015.
Norway didn’t expect to be drawn into World War II. Just as in World War I, the Norwegian government had declared its neutrality and worked hard to maintain this status. But early on during WWII, two major factors made this position untenable.
Iron ore dug at Kiruna and Malmberget was railed to Luleå and Narvik. Courtesy of Wikipedia & Creative Commons
To maintain its war machine, Germany needed uninterrupted access to iron ore from Sweden. The only year-round ice-free port was at Narvik, Norway, to which the iron ore was shipped by train across a short distance. It was vital for German ships to travel safely down the Norwegian coast from this northern port, but England was determined to end German access.
Narvik, Norway. Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia
The Germans were concerned that the British would not only interfere with iron ore shipments but that the Allies would also gain access to Norwegian airfields and ports from which they could launch attacks on Germany. The Germans didn’t believe the British would allow Norway to maintain its neutral status, so Hitler ordered his military to draw up plans to invade before the Allies could gain a foothold.
In early April 1940, the British navy laid mines in the waters off the Norwegian coast at Narvik in an effort to force German ships into international waters where the Allies could attack. Unfortunately, the British waited too long. The German invasion was on.
Part 1
Part 1 is based on the firsthand accounts of Mrs. Florence Harriman who was U.S. Minister to Norway (now called Ambassador) before and during the early months of World War II.
On the morning of April 8, the U.S. Legation (Embassy) in Copenhagen, Denmark, phoned Mrs. Harriman in Norway and reported that a large body of German ships was passing through the Great Belt. This is a strait north of Germany, between two large islands in Denmark. Most officials, including the Norwegian government, thought the fleet was heading to the North Sea to engage the British Royal Navy in battle. The British even withdrew all their ships from Norwegian waters.
The Blücher Which Led the German Fleet into Norway Courtesy of Wikipedia
At 11:30 PM, the air raid alarm sounded in Oslo, but the street lights remained on for some time, and most assumed it was just another practice air raid alarm. Mrs. Harriman went to bed. However, at 3:00 AM, she was awakened by a phone call and notified that German warships were coming up the Oslo Fjord (a long narrow waterway connecting the capital with the North Sea). Mrs. Harriman was unable to call or cable the United States – Nazi collaborators had already taken control of communications.
Between 5:00 and 6:00 AM, Mrs. Harriman and others who had joined her at the American Legation made several trips to a newly-built bomb-proof room in the building. German bombers circled the city with Norwegian planes in pursuit. Anti-aircraft fire penetrated the early morning air.
The Norwegian Foreign minister notified Mrs. Harriman that the Court and Government were fleeing Oslo on a special train, and they wanted her to join them. Although she began packing, she was only given a twenty-minute notice of the 7:00 AM departure time, so she left in her Ford automobile at 9:45 AM along with other Americans.
German Troops Marching Through Oslo on April 9, 1940 Courtesy of Wikipedia and Creative Commons
On the route north to Hamar, those fleeing Oslo passed Kjeller Airfield, which the Germans had bombed, and the hangars were still burning. Behind them, the Nazis occupied Oslo, but their arrival was delayed by eight hours. Coastal guns from the Oscarsborg Fortress sank the German flagship Blücher, which slowed down the invasion and allowed the King and Government to escape the Nazis.
After six hours, Mrs. Harriman and her party reached the city of Hamar, but no accommodations were available under any roof. When word came that the Nazis were headed to Hamar, the Norwegian Government, and the U.S., British, and French Legations traveled in a long line of automobiles to Elverum. After the King and Royal Family passed by, soldiers erected a barrier south of town. Later two hundred Germans were killed at this roadblock, including the German air attache.
Dept. of History United States Military Academy. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Upon reaching Elverum, the town was blacked out except for the brightly lit schoolhouse where the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, was meeting. The King and Royal Family continued on to Trysil, seventy miles north, and Mrs. Harriman found lodging with a family outside Elverum. By 5:30 the following morning, German planes were attacking Elverum. The Germans flew at low altitudes and terrified the inhabitants with their deafening roar. When the bombing ended, only a church and Red Cross hospital remained. The Government escaped safely and retreated to Nybergsund.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister urged Mrs. Harriman to follow, but a barrier stood in her way and deep snow made the forests impassible. The Norwegians maneuvered her Ford around a barricade, and only the frozen ice kept her vehicle out of the nearby river. Upon reaching Nybergsund, Mrs. Harriman found the town wiped out and no walls standing. She had no idea where to find the King and Government. She later learned that the King and Crown Prince had run for their lives into the forest when the Nazis attacked.
King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav Hiding in the Woods During Bombing Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Mrs. Harriman crossed the border into Sweden to make contact with the U.S. Legation in Stockholm and report that she and other U.S. officials were still alive. Although she remained close to the border and intended to cross back into Norway after learning the location of the Norwegian Government, she was never able to return. In her memoir, Mission to the North, she shared a portion of King Haakon’s speech to his people, which he broadcast while on the run.
“‘In this hour, the most difficult our country has ever known in a hundred years, I send the most pressing appeal to each of you to do all in your power to save the liberty and independence of Norway. We have been the victims of a lightning attack from a nation with which we have always maintained friendly relations. That nation has not hesitated to bomb the civil population, who are suffering intensely….They have employed against us, and against the civil population high explosives and incendiary bombs and also machine-gunned us in the most savage fashion….I thank all those who are today with me and the Government, and who are fighting at their posts of duty for the independence and preservation of Norway. I pray you all to treasure the memory of those who have already given their lives for this country. God protect Norway.'”
Part 2
Part 2 is based on the firsthand accounts of C.J. Hambro, President of the Norwegian Parliament, as shared in his book I Saw It Happen in Norway.
The Germans attacked Norway on April 9, 1940 and took the country by surprise. Norway had maintained a strict neutral status in World War II and was on excellent terms with both Germany and the Allies.
The German attack on Norway, planned months in advance, was executed with simultaneous invasions by ship and air at every strategically important point in the country. Also, soldiers had been secretly loaded on German commercial ships which were already in Norwegians ports. Unfortunately, the Norwegian army had not been mobilized, and the country was completely unprepared for war.
The first inkling of trouble came when the air raid alarm in Oslo started at 1:00 AM and continued incessantly. At 2:00 AM, Mr. Hambro reached the War Office and the Prime Minister by telephone and then received updates every fifteen minutes. Reports came in from all over the country—the Germans were invading.
Between 4:30 and 5:00 AM, the German Minister met with the Norwegian Minister of Affairs. He presented a list of demands which actually called for the complete surrender of Norway. The Government rejected the proposal and made plans to flee the capital. Mr. Hambro traveled by taxi to Hamar, one hundred miles north of Oslo, to prepare for the arrival of the Royal Family, the Government (Cabinet), the 150 members of the Storting (Parliament), and others supporting them. Most of these traveled on a special train which left Oslo at 7:23 AM that morning.
The sinking of the German flag ship Blucher in the Oslo Fjord postponed the occupation of Oslo, the capital of Norway, by eight hours and prevented the Germans from ever capturing the Royal Family or the Government.
That afternoon while the Storting was in session in Hamar, word arrived that the German motorized troops were advancing toward the city – one group was only ten miles away. A special train left for Elverum with most of the members aboard about ten minutes later. Norwegian soldiers barricaded the roads leading to Elverum and established a line of defense. The Storting met for the last time before the German occupation and unanimously gave the Government the full power to make all necessary decisions under war conditions.
The king sent his daughter-in-law, the Crown-Princess, and her three children to Sweden to stay with her parents, Prince Carl and Princess Ingeborg. The King and Crown Prince traveled with them as far as Nybergsund, which was twenty miles west of the border with Sweden.
The German Minister demanded a meeting with with the King, so he made the 45-mile trip back over frozen roads to Elverum the next day. Dr. Brauer, the German Minister, set forth the ultimatum which was tougher than the one he had presented the day before. The King stated he would abdicate rather than dissolve the Government and appoint a new one headed by Hitler’s man. The Government supported him and refused to accept the German demands.
The Germans replied by bombing Elverum and nearly destroying it. Nybergsund, which was smaller than a village, was also raided by bombers, but the deep snow reduced the impact of the explosions. The King, Crown Prince, and the Government passed through the Gudbrandsdalen Valley to the town of Molde on the west coast. They were constantly on the move, running from German bombers.
King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav hiding in the woods during a German bombing. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
British, French, and Polish troops landed at three points along the west coast to assist the Norwegians in their fight. The first British troops reached Norway on April 19th, but by April 28th, they were forced to evacuate southern Norway. The fight moved to the northern counties. The King and Government sailed above the Arctic Circle to Tromso, which became the provisional capital. The plan was to drive the Germans farther and farther south, and the implementation started to succeed when the Germans slowly lost ground in the north. Nevertheless, the King, Crown Prince, and Government only stayed in Tromso for five weeks.
After the Germans invaded the Low Countries and France, the Allies were forced to evacuate Norway – the troops were needed to defend their homelands. The British offered safe passage to the Royals and the Norwegian Government, and on June 7th, they departed on the British cruiser Devonshire for England.
In August, the Crown Princess, her three children, along with Mrs. Harriman, the U.S. Minister to Norway, and hundreds of others journeyed by train up the length of Sweden to the far north. They crossed into Finland and proceeded to the port of Petsamo on the Arctic coast. There they boarded the American Legion, a troop ship, sent by Roosevelt to take them to America.
The Return of the Royal Family to Norway – June 7, 1945 Courtesy of Oslo Museum via Wikimedia Commons
On June 7, 1940, five years to the day that the King and Crown Prince had fled Norway, the King and Crown Princess and her children returned to Norway by ship to cheering crowds welcoming the Royal Family home. The Crown Prince had returned a few weeks before to prepare the way.
Sources:
Mission to the North by Frances Jaffray Harriman. J. B. Lippincott Company. 1941.
Two months after WWII began, German mathematician and scientist Hans Ferdinand Mayer checked into the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, Norway. Dr. Mayer was an anti-Nazi German, and he purposely planned a trip to Scandinavia to leak information about the Nazis’ weapons systems and latest technological development projects.
Mayer was employed by Siemens & Halske AG, an electrical engineering company specializing in communications engineering and headquartered in Berlin, Germany. He directed the communications research laboratory.
Oslo, Norway Today. Photo by Sean Hayford O’Leary via Flikr & Wikipedia
Dr. Mayer borrowed a typewriter from the Hotel Bristol and typed a seven-page report, detailing German military secrets for the purpose of bringing down the Nazi regime. He sent a letter to the British Embassy in Oslo on November 1. Mayer asked the British military attaché to request that the BBC World Service use a coded phrase at the beginning of its German-language program if the attaché wanted the report. The code was given in the broadcast, so Mayer mailed the report.
Because of its origins, the British entitled the communication the Oslo Report. Considering it was sent anonymously and included detailed facts about many types of German weapons, the report appeared “to good to be true,” and British intelligence was very skeptical. They assumed the report was planted by the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, to distract or mislead the Allies.
It was providential that a young British scientist, Dr. R. B. Jones, recently placed in charge of scientific intelligence, believed the report and forwarded it to MI6 in London. Mayer’s account detailed information about German methods of attacking fortifications, newly developed air-raid warning equipment, and the location of the Luftwaffe’s laboratories and development centers. Mayer also shared about the development and location of Germany’s first aircraft carrier and the ongoing development of remote-controlled long-range rockets.
HMS Royal Oak in 1937. Public domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Dr. Mayer described two types of new torpedoes – acoustic and magnetic – and how to counteract them. Only a few weeks earlier, the Germans had torpedoed and sunk the HMS Royal Oak battleship when it was anchored in British home waters at Scapa Flow, and 835 men were killed. Dr. Mayer instructed the Allies on how to protect themselves from this type of attack. Because many of the weapons were still in development, some of the information was incomplete and some later proved to be inaccurate; however, the Oslo report allowed the British to develop countermeasures and contributed to their victory in the Battle of Britain the following year.
After delivering his report, Dr. Mayer returned to Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for listening to the British Broadcasting Network (BBC), which was strictly forbidden, and for criticizing the Nazi regime. He spent the remaining years of the war in five concentration camps until the Allies freed him. The Nazis never learned about the existence of the Oslo Report, and Mayer’s authorship wasn’t revealed until after he and his wife had died, as stipulated in his will. Mayer lived to be eighty-four years of age and died in 1980.
