Despite the warnings by the Swedes of a build-up of troops and ships in the Baltic, poised ready to take Scandinavia, the German strike took the British by surprise.30 Landings by air and sea took place in Denmark in the early morning of 9 April. A German warship entered Copenhagen harbour; the Danish navy had not even been put on the alert. The aerodrome at Aalborg in the north of Jutland fell to a parachute landing of German troops. The Danish army briefly opened fire in North Schleswig. But the Danes swiftly decided to offer no resistance. The Norwegian operation went less smoothly. Narvik and Trondheim were taken. But the sinking of the
‘Weser Exercise’ had proved a success. But it had been at a cost. Much of the surface-fleet of the German navy had been put out of action for the rest of 1940. Running the occupied parts of Scandinavia from now on sucked in on a more or less permanent basis around 300,000 men, many of them engaged in holding down a Norwegian population bitterly resentful at a German administration that was aided and abetted by Quisling’s movement.31 And there was a further consequence which would turn out to be to Germany’s disadvantage and have major significance for the British war-effort. Blame for the Allied fiasco in Norway was attributed by the British public not to Churchill, the minister directly responsible, but to the Prime Minister, Chamberlain. Indirectly, the British failure led to the end of the Chamberlain government and brought into power the person who would prove himself Hitler’s most defiant and unrelenting foe: Winston Churchill.32
The eventual success of ‘Weser Exercise’ concealed to all but the armed forces’ leadership Hitler’s serious deficiencies as a military commander. The lack of coordination between the branches of the armed forces; the flawed communications between the OK W and the heads of the navy and, especially, army and Luftwaffe (leading to the need for alterations to directives already signed and issued); Hitler’s own reluctance, in larger briefing meetings, to oppose either Raeder or Göring, though advocating a tough line in private; and his constant interference in the minutiae of operations control: all provided for serious complications in the execution of ‘Weser Exercise’.33 And for all his talk of keeping strong nerves, Hitler betrayed signs of panic and dilettante military judgement when things started to go wrong in Narvik in mid-April. Major-General Walter Warlimont, observing Hitler at close quarters in these days, later recounted ‘the impression of truly terrifying weakness of character on the part of the man who was at the head of the Reich’. Citing Jodl’s diary entries, he pointed to ‘a striking picture of agitation and lack of balance’. He recalled on one occasion having to see Jodl, whom Warlimont credited as largely responsible for the success of the operation, in the Reich Chancellery: ‘and there was Hitler hunched on a chair in a corner, unnoticed and staring in front of him, a picture of brooding gloom. He appeared to be waiting for some new piece of news which would save the situation…’34 On this occasion, the crisis soon passed. Hitler could bask in the glory of another triumph. But when the victories ran out, the flaws in his style of military leadership would prove a lasting weakness.
For now, however, he could turn his full energies to the long-awaited western offensive.
