Why Hitler Did It

"The day of small States is past. . . I shall have ... a Northern Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. If they don't like it, they can try to drive me out. In any case, they will have to bear the main burden of attack.

"It will be a daring but interesting undertaking, never before attempted in the history of the world. Protected by the fleet and with the cooperation of the Air Force, I shall order a series of unexpected individual exploits." So spoke Adolf Hitler in 1934 to Hermann Rauschning,* then his chief Party henchman in Danzig, today one of numerous experts who believe that the Austrian Corporal, having taken final leave of his senses, is spinning insanely toward the same fate that overtook a Corsican Corporal 125 years ago.

But apart from pure power lust and grandiose dreams of empire, why did Adolf Hitler choose last week as the time, and the forbidding coasts of Norway as the place, for his first move into the North?

The immediate military gains offered by successful seizure of Norway must have looked considerable to Herr Hitler: air bases only an hour (instead of two) from Great Britain's naval bases and shipyards; windows on the Atlantic for his "living room," now stifling behind the Allied blockade; control of Sweden and her high-grade iron ore, which Hitler's war machine must have; demonstration to Benito Mussolini of the supremacy of air power over sea power. Above all, there was the gain of seizing the initiative, re-asserting the Reich's dynamism. A magnificent demonstration of Might upon weak Norway might topple all opposition in the scared Balkans, persuade Italy that now was the time to get off the fence (see p. 25).

Of the risks to be run, the first and most certain was losing the German Navy. Writing that off as a dead loss, the project was still worthwhile, provided Hermann Goring's air force was as all-powerful as rated. But Norway's coast is a nearer target for the R. A. F. than Germany's air bases at Sylt and in Helgoland Bight. Moreover, destruction of the German Fleet would leave the Allied navies more free to fight elsewhere to Germany's disadvantage.

In the matter of impressing Italy and lesser neutrals, as much prestige could be lost as gained if the gamble did not win quickly, brilliantly. If the gamble lost, with it might go all Swedish iron ore, all neutral prestige, perhaps the whole war.

The risks probably did outweigh the gains. But so, perhaps, did necessity outweigh choice. Hitler could have nailed down his Swedish iron supply by sending a small shock army to Lulea after the Bothnian ice goes out next month. Perhaps he was forced into the Norwegian adventure prematurely by Allied moves. March 28, the Allied Supreme War Council decided to carry the war more sternly to the Germans, to squeeze even harder with the blockade. April 3 impetuous Winston Churchill was named British coordinator of defense. April 5 is the latest Herr Hitler could have started his first convoys toward Norway to have reached their destinations last week.

As Hitler's vision of a quick Northern Union, greased by treachery, went glimmering this week, in its stead arose a phantasmagoria of future acts by a war lord frustrated: unrestricted bombing of Great Britain (threatened as a "reprisal" for British bombing at Bergen), Blitzkrieg through the Lowlands, through Switzerland, at (or under) the Maginot Line, or somewhere in the Southeast.

* Author of The Voice of Destruction (Putnam).

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