23 Days

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The Nazi war flag (black swastika on a white bull's-eye in a quartered red field with Iron Cross) fluttered up triumphantly one spring afternoon last week over the ruins of AAndalsnes, at the head of Romsdal Fjord in western Norway. It was 15 o'clock (3 p.m.) by German Army watches and just two weeks since British battalions landed there for the purpose, the whole world believed, of pushing the German invaders out of Norway. Instead, all the pushing--and a lot of punching, hammering, rushing and blasting--had been done by the Germans. It was the British who went out backwards, faster than they had come in.

There was little left of what had been a tidy fishing village. All around the fjord's beachhead, where quays, warehouses, railroad station, freight sidings used to be, now lay a charred, twisted, upheaved destruction left by repeated showers of high explosive and incendiary bombs. As the German advance force ran up their flag and piled up stacks of abandoned Allied equipment, Nazi warplanes still winged high over, out to sea, looking for the fugitive enemy to punish him some more. He had escaped in his boats by night, after pretending by day to deploy for rallies and counterattacks. This maneuver was directed by the British Army's redheaded commander, Major General Bernard Paget, 51, son of the late Bishop of Oxford. That same spring afternoon in London, Prime Minister Chamberlain, breaking the news to Parliament that Britain's arms south of Trondheim were completely outclassed, said in a pathetic attempt at enthusiasm that the AAndalsnes reembarkation was carried out "without losing a single man." If it was so carried out it was technical operation that military men will admire, but that did not alter the fact that the expedition had come a shocking cropper.

All Out. Next day the world learned that the evacuation of AAndalsnes was only the curtain raiser for the abandonment by all Allied forces of three-fifths of the land and six-sevenths of the people they had only a fortnight before gone to save. What Mr. Chamberlain did not say was that from the Allies' other main beachhead, Namsos, north of Trondheim, the balance of the Northwestern Expeditionary Force fled Norway that same day and night. The Allies had intended to pinch Trondheim from north and south. With the south prong of the pincers demolished, to press with the north prong would have been only a waste of men and munitions.

The French Alpine troops at Namsos embarked first, under General Sylvestre Gerard Audet, who was wounded in the head by bomb splinters. Then went the British, throwing their arms and stores away, their retreat "covered" by Norwegians, whose Colonel Ole Getz complained bitterly, and surrendered to the Germans, when he found that the Allies had left him to fight with an open flank and rear. (The British said Colonel Getz's superior, General Otto Ruge, understood their plan, went with them.) Furiously pursuing German airmen raked and bombarded the launches loading on Namsos' concatenated waterfront. They dumped rack after rack of bombs at transports and warships steaming away from shore. How many boatloads sank in the inferno the Nazis poured on them may not be known until the post-war opening of archives. At Gallipoli the British suffered 50,000 casualties out of 120,000 troops landed. The N. W. E. F. affair, a pint-sized Gallipoli, will probably lag far behind that proportion of losses. The rating of those who ordered it, and then countermanded it, will be even lower. The Germans saluted its departure with a furious effort to sink a battleship from the air, a loud but hollow claim of having done so (see p. 29).

All Quiet. Relative silence now fell over lower Norway, with only a few guerrilla bands of stubborn natives fighting on in mountain pockets. Even the 160 men and 15 officers in thick-walled Hegra Fortress outside Trondheim, though unbeaten, finally surrendered. In 23 days a husky nation of 3,000,000 people, living in mountainous, snow-covered country well suited to defense, and with some 35,000 supposedly modern soldiers sent to help them, had been conquered by an army of perhaps 85,000 skilled, swift-moving, hard-hitting fighters, and some 500 indefatigable warplanes. As a military feat of sheer nerve, though not of power, this conquest outclassed the 18-day subjugation of flat Poland's 34,000,000 people by 1,000,000 Germans and as many more Russians. Even after discounting Norse innocence, lack of equipment, treachery within, discounting also British amateurishness and unpreparedness, the German campaign was a masterpiece of organization as well as cunning surprise. Military men in other countries snapped mental salutes to its organizer and leader. Yet the U. S. Army, for one, searched its Intelligence dossiers in vain to find out something about him.

Two days before the Nazi flag rose over AAndalsnes, when the Nazi power columns driving from the south made contact with their cut-off comrades near Trondheim, Adolf Hitler knew his Norwegian gamble was won. He addressed a special order-of-the-day to his "Soldiers of the Norwegian scene of war."

". . . An achievement reflecting the highest honor on the daring of the young German armed forces. . . .

"You have fulfilled the tremendous task which I, in faith in you and your powers, was forced to set for you.

"The nation through me expresses thanks. As an external sign of recognition and of this gratitude, I decorate the Commander in Chief in Norway, General von Falkenhorst, with the Chevalier's Cross of the Iron Cross. . . .

"Long live the Great Germany!"

Falkenhorst means "falcon's eyrie," and it was his use of winged killers that swept Germany's new hero to his fame. Blond, blue-eyed, smallish Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, 55, had proved himself a pitiless war lord. His soldierly qualities came to him from a line of professional fighters and from the same military academies--at Wahlstatt and Lichterfelde (oldtime Prussian West Point)--that turned out Germany's Hindenburg and Ludendorff. From the age of twelve, in school and at home in Breslau, he was shaped strictly for membership in his father's regiment, the crack Seventh Grenadiers of Liegnitz, Silesia, whose honorary chiefs were the Kaiser and the Tsar. Schoolmates recall him as a witty wisecracker, gay, with a talent for dramatics. But he stuck to soldiering faithfully, gained his lieutenancy in time for World War I. By bravery at Longwy and the Meuse, by luck at Verdun, he rose and survived to become a staff officer under Count Ruediger von der Goltz, who in 1918 was sent to help Baron Mannerheim win Finland's independence.

That Falkenhorst did not brilliantly distinguish himself then is suggested by the fact that he came out of his first war only a captain. In planning the Finland expedition, as General von der Goltz's operations officer, he learned about embarking troops, transporting them overseas, disembarking them for action in rough, cold country, effecting naval cooperation to feed and supply them.

He free-lanced against the Poles in 1919-20 under General Hoefer, then rejoined Germany's post-Versailles army of 100,000. In 1922 he was called to the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin, got his majority in 1925, his first regimental command in 1928. Three years later he was Chief of Staff of the First Division, in 1932, a full colonel. Then he went to Prague for three years as military attache for Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania. Germany did not have left many competent officers of his generation and he was soon commissioned a major general, Chief of Staff of the Third Army Corps.

By 1936, Adolf Hitler's blueprints for the Polish push were complete and Falkenhorst was given the job of raising and organizing, from scratch, an entire new division (32nd Infantry) with headquarters in the hick town of Koeslin on the Pomeranian plain. Cheerfully he moved his wife and two daughters to their first real home after years of nomadic army life: an old castle just off the Koeslin market place. He added municipal cares to his army work, became a military potentate. As sleepy Koeslin came to life with martial activity, recruits and war materials pouring in, he had the town councilors substitute busses for their antiquated tram-cars, including late busses for moviegoers. He entertained well and often, guzzling beer in soldier-size quantities. He liked chess and horseback riding as well as motorcycling and engineering. He intervened to save their horses for a few squadrons who were downcast by the cavalry's motorization. The soldiers of his division called him "The Old Man" for his paternalism. When September 1 came last year, the 21st Army Corps fought for him like fearless robots to take Graudenz, Poland's corner-pillar in the Corridor.

That job they accomplished in four days, then were switched to East Prussia for the drive down the Narew, through a line of pillboxes, to Lomza. Falkenhorst & men smashed through in three days, surrounding and capturing the 18th Polish division at Ostrow. When the other armies had finished their jobs and Poland was crushed, Lieut. General von Falkenhorst was raised one last notch to General of Infantry.

Groundwork for a Nazi conquest of Norway was laid as long ago as 1931-33 when Major Vidkun Quisling, later a Hitler Stooge, became Norway's Defense Minister. Promotions and appointments made then by him were never unmade by later Ministers. For example, Colonel Bertram Sundlo, crony of the whilom German War Chief, General von Blomberg, was in command of the Narvik area when Blomberg in 1935 took a "yachting trip" through that key region's islands and fjords. Colonel Sundlo was still there last month, happy to receive the occupying forces sent up by General von Falkenhorst. But such preparation, together with the infiltration of "tourists" and "salesmen" and the return to Norway of German and Austrian refugees and orphans of World War I who, brought up in Norwegian homes, knew their way well around the country, was only standard practice by Hitler & Co. It has been applied to all countries that Hitler might some day want to absorb.

Specific planning and mounting of a Norse military drive was entrusted to General von Falkenhorst some time last autumn or winter. He went to work at ports in the Baltic removed as far as possible from the eyes of the Allied Intelligence. Russia's invasion of Finland afforded protective coloration for such reports of his activities as did leak out.

For troops he chose veterans of the Polish Blitzkrieg, men not only trained but fire-tested in the use of diversified arms and mechanized equipment. In the perpendicular Norse terrain with its narrow roads and sparse population, Falkenhorst knew he needed more armored cars and trucks than tanks, more speed and agility than sheer power. Motorcycle units, each carrying two men, were essential for reconnaissance and to traverse shaky bridges, mountain trails. Engineers to remove obstructions and repair communications were needed in force. With bombing planes preceding and supporting their advance, razing hamlets such as Rena (see cut, p. 25) which offered resistance, his first columns of occupation could travel light, supplementing their automatic rifles, hand grenades and machine guns with nothing heavier than trench mortars and light mountain artillery.

Practice in loading such an expedition aboard transports was carried out with care and German thoroughness, until each boatswain and quartermaster of the ships assigned knew exactly how to pack in his martial cargo and how to hoist it out instanter.

Execution. How elastic was the German plan of invasion, how alert and audacious its execution, was seen when the campaign's only major slip-up occurred. The destruction of the cruisers Emden and Bluecher by unquisled Norse in Oslo Fjord so seriously disrupted matters that no more Nazi troops landed in Oslo Fjord by ship for two and one-half days. Without batting an eye, General von Falkenhorst, who had meantime alighted on the Oslo airport with a battalion, proceeded to bring more troops into the Oslo district the same way he got there: by Junkers transports, under cover of menacing demonstrations over the city by bomber and fighting craft. Experts now know that a score or two of Allied bombers could have paralyzed the Falkenhorst expedition by a determined attack on Fornebo airport at any time in those first 48 hours. The Nazis say they counted on British sluggishness. They were not disappointed.

The original German plan also had called for King Haakon's capture in his palace, where he would be persuaded to issue a quick proclamation of nonresistance. Failure in this particular did not upset the plan for one simple reason: surprise had been achieved. The Norwegians, trusting, law-abiding, were completely disorganized; and it was six days before the Allies were able to land even territorial troops at any point south of Narvik. In the interval Falkenhorst recovered from his one serious setback. When the Allied Fleet and planes finally got busy in the

Skagerrak and Kattegat, when Norse resistance stiffened and the "Minute Men of Elverum" covered their Government's flight, more & more German men and arms were already pouring northward by sea as well as by air from Germany and from new Nazi bases in Denmark, grimly taking losses as they had to, but still coming on. Unlike the Allies' relief expedition, Falkenhorst's invasion was geared to smite and smite again.

By the time the Nazi flag went up at AAndalsnes last week, U. S. Army experts estimated 85,000 Germans had been put into action on Norwegian soil. By this week observers raised the figure to 150,000, despite a heavy toll from continued Allied attacks in the sea lanes off Sweden's west coast. Many more were expected in weeks to come, because Falkenhorst played for Norway for keeps. He got there first, now he must stay there last, since Germany needs Norway not only for military reasons, but for prestige and home morale.

Consolidation. A band of 144 Norwegians ambushed and cut in two a motorized battalion of 400 Nazis last week near Elverum. A Finnish volunteer was credited by the Norse with the campaign's No. 1 individual example of ferocity: he held his fire while a Nazi approached to disarm him, then grappled and beheaded the Nazi with his long-bladed puukko. But while Nazi mop-up planes and parties ranged the land to stamp out such last flickers of resistance--bombing Roeros churchgoers as an example to all--Nazi engineer units were already busy repairing telephone and telegraph wires, railroad tracks, bridges, tunnels.* Already work was in progress on new airfields and on naval depots, especially for submarines, along the fjord-dented coastline. For the Germans now view Norway as their Northwall, a continuation of their Westwall. Norway is a new carrier for their aircraft, a mighty mothership for their U-boats, only 300 miles from Great Britain's northern naval bases and shipyards (see map), instead of the 500 miles that separates these places from Sylt and Helgoland Bight. The Nazi counter-blockade can now reach even Britain's western ports with little effort.

The German problem of holding Norway might be seriously complicated if the Norse took to guerrilla warfare, for which their corrugated country is so suited. But it is doubtful whether many Norwegians will have much stomach for such work, now that the Allies have gone. For General von Falkenhorst a bigger problem than fighting Norwegians will be feeding Norwegians, who hitherto have imported half their food. He does not have to let them eat, but if he doesn't they may decide after all to turn guerrillas, or decamp to Sweden.

Norway, which had the world's third largest tanker fleet, undoubtedly provided Germany with greater stores of gasoline, of fuel and lubricating oils, than the campaign cost her. Norway, where cheap water power is everywhere, provides Germany with considerable new industrial plants and labor, especially for fabricating metals and machinery. Timber for wood pulp and cellulose will not now be wanting in Germany, and already the Allies feel the loss of their Scandinavian supply of these commodities. Only military aspect from which Norway may seem a liability to Germany is as a front whose supply lines can be harassed by the Allies. For the long pull, this might be serious. For a short pull of one or two years such as Germany, now near her power peak, is believed to plan, it is no great liability. Chief liability to the Germans' conquest of southern Norway is psychological.

The Boyg. Playwright Henrik Ibsen is to the Norse what Playwright William Shakespeare is to the British. In his play Peer Gynt, Ibsen's hero, a rustic, wastrel Hamlet, tussles furiously but unsuccessfully with an unseen presence called the Boyg, which may be construed as Peer Gynt's conscience, his better self. The Boyg is also construed as a dominant power in the Norse soul, an ingrained instinct for decency and conservatism against which immorality or forces for change cannot prevail. On many lips last week as the Falkenhorst talons closed on lower Norway was the question whether a combination of dismay at the Allies' ineptitude, plus the Gestapo, which promptly moved in led by Gauleiter Terboven (TIME, May 6), plus the treachery of quislings, would eventually result in destruction of the Boyg, extermination of the Norse as a people with a soul of their own, their subjugation as helots of the German people.

Not many hours before the Nazi flag rose over AAndalsnes, Norway's King Haakon fled aboard a British man-of-war out of Molde, the port at the sea end of Romsdal Fjord. Some reports said he would go to Great Britain, as did his Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht, while calling back over his shoulder to his countrymen to resist to the last. But Norse loyalists insisted that their King would take his stand and maintain his Government in one of the three northern provinces yet left to him: Nordland, Troms, Finnmark. Upon his attitude and whereabouts, or those of his son, Crown Prince Olav, depended the immediate fate of Norway's Boyg and the completeness of the Falkenhorst conquest.

*The Norse were singularly unable or reluctant to dynamite major communication lines as they retreated. Not one of 178 tunnels on the railroad between Bergen and Oslo was closed. In one place the Germans actually fought their way through a tunnel three miles long.

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