Chapter 20: The Conquest of Denmark and Norway

Hitler unexpectedly listens to his subordinates and turns his attention northward.

Apr 30, 2025

Apologies for the long gap between posts. I was quite busy Holy Week and then sick all last week. We should be back to regularly scheduled posts.

We’re now two-thirds of the way through the book. Congrats to all who have made it this far!

I know some of you have gone back to start again. For others life has gotten in the way and you have stopped reading. (A reminder: here is a post for those of you who have fallen behind on the reading.)

Admittedly, it is a lot to take in. Over 1200 pages that encompasses an entire political regime and the world war it caused. And not just any war, but the deadliest conflict in human history, along with the remarkable rise of the political regime and its leader that brought about the war. There are countless books that have been written about each topic and subtopic contained in this book. It goes quick and ends up leaving out a lot.

One criticism that Shirer does get from time to time is that his history is one of high diplomacy. Except for a few sections here and there (like Chapter 8: Life Under the Third Reich), we don’t get a sense of what Nazi Germany or World War II were like for those tens of millions not calling the shots at the top. And it’s absolutely true.

But of course, that’s not what Shirer is trying to do.

He is trying to answer the question why did this happen? And then, relatedly, what could have been done to stop it?

In late 1939, after the quick blitzkrieg defeat of Poland in only a few weeks, World War II settled into a “sitzkrieg” or “phoney war” stage. Nothing much happened. Or at least nothing much happened on land. At sea, there was some notable action.

The German navy has an interesting (and rather short) backstory. Unlike other European colonial powers like the Portuguese and Spaniards, the Dutch and French, but especially the British, the Germans had traditionally been a land power.

However, starting in the late 19th century, the Germans sought to rival the British, which generated a naval race, in which Kaiser Wilhelm II was insistent about matching his cousin’s capabilities at sea. This then became one of the causes leading up to World War I. (The German Kaiser Wilhelm II and British King George V were both grandchildren of Queen Victoria, back in those quaint days when global conflict was a mere family affair.)

The German navy then had strong memories of their World War I experience, in which the British had established a well-mined and patrolled line between the Shetland Islands and the coast of Norway that had kept the German navy bottled up.

This time around, they hoped to avoid their fate in World War I. Unlike all the other countries that Germany occupied, the conquest of Norway and Denmark originated not within the fevered megalomaniacal brain of Adolf Hitler, but in the careful planning of his naval staff.

Hitler came around to the idea in late 1939 because iron ore from Sweden was increasingly important to the war effort and because Russia’s attack on Finland changed the situation in Scandinavia.

Ultimately, the Nazis were aided by a Norwegian soldier and politician, whose name has come down to us as a byword for treachery: Vidkun Quisling.

Vidkun Quisling. Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.

In the early interwar period, Quisling was initially attracted to the Communists, but shifted to the right and founded a fascist party, the Nasjonal Samling, which he directly copied from the Nazis. Although he met with very limited political success in Norway, he did catch the eye of the real Nazis across the sea.

One key event helped convince Hitler that his naval officers were correct. When a British destroyer went into Norwegian waters to board a German vessel and liberate British POWs, Norway issued a loud protest but didn’t do much of anything else. To Hitler, this meant that Norway would not strictly enforce its neutrality and thus it was a threat. He consequently decided that Norway (and Denmark) should be taken over.

Shirer the real-time observer of events raises his head agains at the beginning of the section “The Taking of Denmark and Norway.”

Hitler’s preparations for the conquest of Denmark and Norway have been called by many writers one. of the best-kept secrets of the war, but it has seemed to this author that the two Scandinavian countries and even the British were caught napping not because they were not warned of what was coming but because they did not believe the warnings in time.

Shirer ‘s observations often track those of Winston Churchill. He felt more should have been done and that signals of Nazi intentions and actions were getting lost in the noise of propaganda and false hopes. In this chapter, as in others, he favorably cites Churchill’s observant analysis and aggressive action.

On April 9, 1940, German envoys gave both Danish and Norwegian governments ultimatums to allow German troops on their soil to protect against an Anglo-French occupation. The Danish gave in just as Hitler expected. (When I started this chapter, I mentioned it to a Danish friend, and she responded sardonically: “It must be a short chapter.”)

In the words of Shirer:

By the time the Danes had finished their hearty breakfasts it was all over.

This was not the case for the Norwegians.

There was more fighting and even after most of the main cities, ports, and airfields were taken over by the Nazis, not everyone capitulated. Notably, the King of Norway refused to give in the way the King of Denmark had done. After being rebuffed, the Nazis then tried to bomb him to death. Eventually, though, he and his family left for the United Kingdom, where they stayed for the remainder of the war. Simultaneously, the British fought the Germans for the first time on land (in Norway), but were no match for the Nazis.

In the end, Nazi Germany had taken over two more countries in Europe.

Hitler continued scheming to keep the United States out of the war. Some of the top military and political figures in the Nazi regime were also scheming to remove him. But of course, nothing ever came of it.

In secret negotiations with the British, one diplomat demanded to keep all of Hitler’s conquests if they removed Hitler and stopped the war. Needless to say, this was a non-starter.

Note the scare quotes in Shirer’s assessment of the half-hearted plot:

So ended the latest attempt of the “good Germans” to oust Hitler before it was too late. It was the last opportunity they would have to obtain a generous peace.

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Chapter 20: The Conquest of Denmark and Norway

Hitler unexpectedly listens to his subordinates and turns his attention northward.

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