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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 15, 13 April 1940, pp. 1 & 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Allies and Germany have chosen in Norway the scene of their first great test of military strength.
Between dawn of Monday, April 8, and Tuesday, April 9, Norway was attacked by the Allies and then by Germany.
By nightfall of April 9, Norway itself was laid prostrate. German forces were already in possession of its capital and its chief ports. Allied forces were on the way in an effort to expel them.
The German forces came in to “protect” Norway against the Allies. The Allies moved to “protect” Norway from the Reich. Norway, which wanted protection from neither, was not consulted by either. It has become the victim of both. This is the fate that awaits the rest of the small states of Europe.
In accordance with the decision of the Allied Supreme Council on March 28 to speed up the tempo of the war, to extend the blockade and to squeeze the neutrals mercilessly in that process, British and French warships on the morning of April 8 invaded Norwegian territorial waters and mined three sections of the passage used by German ore boats bound from Narvik for the Baltic.
The day before, Sunday, the Norwegian foreign minister threatened that his country would “go to war” with either side if the country’s sovereignty was infringed.
Monday morning Norway filed a violent protest with the French and British governments, charging them with an “open breach of international law,” and demanding withdrawal of mines and warships from its waters.
But Germany was not waiting upon the Allies to honor the fruitless protests of the Norwegians. News of Norway’s protest had barely had time to reach the public prints, before Germany intervened to “protect” Norway’s neutrality against the Allied attack.
At dawn Tuesday morning, April 9, Hitler’s armed hordes gave a startled world another sample of the Nazi blitzkrieg technique.
The German army marched across the Danish border and within a few hours occupied the entire country. The Danish government, aware of the futility of resistance, “accepted” Germany’s “protection.”
Simultaneously German naval units sailed up through the Kattegat, the passage that separates Denmark and Sweden, into the Skagerrak, and began landing troops at Norwegian ports. By mid-morning of the 9th it became apparent that the Germans had slipped right through the British fleet and successfully landed at all the main ports on the West coast of Norway – Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, Kristiansund, and even Narvik, nearly 1,000 miles to the north. Some reports said that the landing party at Narvik came from Murmansk.
Norway proclaimed ‘resistance’ to the invader long enough to be seized upon as an “ally” by Britain and France. In London and Paris it was promptly announced that France and Britain would fight the German invasion of Scandinavia. The war machines of both powers were immediately put into gear for the struggle. At this writing the first engagements, in the air and at sea, were apparently already underway while German troops seized all important centers of Norway and Sweden, Holland, Belgium, waited fearfully for their turn to be sucked in.
From their own point of view the Allies have good reason to “aid” Norway. They were so ready to “aid” Norway that they probably would have taken possession of its coast themselves if Hitler had not beaten them to it. That was indubitably the meaning of the Allied act in mining Norwegian waters. Hitler’s general staff showed that it understood the seriousness of the challenge by hurling its tremendous machine into action with such astounding speed.
The Allies decided at their Supreme Council session last week to tighten the squeeze on Germany economically by tightening the blockade whatever the cost to neighboring neutrals. This was made publicly plain by Chamberlain and Churchill.
Britain and France were finished with the hypocritical game of “respecting” neutral rights. Their policy now more frankly became to force all neutrals still supplying goods to Germany to cease making those supplies available, and to become instead part of the Allied blockade system whether they liked it or not.
Scandinavia was chosen as the first testing ground for this policy because the Allies considered they had a good chance of enforcing their policy with military means if Germany should seek to resist it. And that is just what has happened.
Only Germany has certainly moved faster than the Allies could possibly have expected, because for Germany the stakes are undoubtedly great. Economically, if it can control Scandinavia, it assures itself important supplies of ore, timber, fats, and other foodstuffs. Strategically, it acquires a coast and bases for direct attack on England and Allied shipping lanes.
Neither side can afford to let the other win control of the northern peninsula. The Allies failed to seize the opportunity afforded by the Soviet-Finnish war. They dallied uncertainly until that war came to an end and the opportunity passed. This time they have deliberately created a new opportunity and Germany has taken them up on it.
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