Tale of Two Brothers

In these circumstances, which are so grave to our country, I ask all of you inhabitants of the cities and country to maintain an attitude completely correct and dignified, since every inconsiderate act or word can draw in its wake most serious consequences.

So spoke King Christian X of Denmark in his darkest hour, while German lorries, tanks, airplanes and 50,000 soldiers swarmed over his little land last week to bring it "protection from the Allies." Almost to a man the Danes did as bid, laying aside their arms, getting on with their work as usual--all except the guard at the Royal Palace in Copenhagen, never before invaded by foreign troops. The guards led by Count Valdemar, deemed it their duty to challenge the grey juggernaut as it entered the palace courtyard.

Three of them were shot dead, as were four civilians, in a skirmish that lasted a few minutes and ended with the Count's and guards' arrest. The Nazis reported that the Danes so understood and appreciated their arrival that only nine other killings were "necessary" in all Denmark.

In King Christian's younger brother's capital, 300 miles northward, the Nazis' arrival in Oslo streets was also taken calmly by the populace. But this populace was puzzled, incredulous, as 1,500 shock-troopers, hard-looking but amiable enough, only a few of them gripping their automatic weapons, took possession of a city of 250,000 with scarcely a finger raised against them, even with a city police escort. Correspondent Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News was the first outsider on the spot to figure out one of the darkest inside jobs ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting people.

Treachery. In Berlin on the night of Friday, April 5, was Major Vidkun Quisling, 53, onetime (1931-33) Norwegian Minister of Defense, leader of the Nazi Party in Oslo which long ago withered at the polls but still had roots, nourished by big money, throughout Norway's Army and Navy. How alive those roots were, and how far spreading, Adolf Hitler & Co. well knew when they sent their warships into heavily fortified Oslo Fjord on the night of April 8, followed by long convoys of transports. With few exceptions, the Norse forts and naval units did not fire (see p. 19). Major Quisling's friends told them not to. At Fornebo Airport outside the city, when the Nazi Air Force began arriving at dawn, it was necessary to kill 120 Norwegian soldiers before the rest got the point. Oslo, and other points of entry, were betrayed from within by their sworn defenders before the people knew what was happening. At far-north Narvik, Major Quisling's good friend Colonel Konrad Bertram Holm Sundlo, commanding officer, actually welcomed the invaders. At Oslo, when 20,000 troopers had been landed, and Nazi warplanes had appalled the population by incessantly roaring low over the rooftops, and 200 big Junkers 52s were shuttling over on schedule every half-hour, each bringing 20 more fully armed men each trip, it didn't much matter if the people found out what went on. In four busses, 200 shock troopers were sent to find King Haakon and the Royal Norwegian Government, which had fled Oslo at Tuesday's dawn. The invading high command, headed by General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, who arrived by airplane, wanted the King to recognize Nazi Quisling as Premier, succeeding Laborite Premier Johan Nygaardsvold (who used to be an I.W.W. agitator in the U. S. northwoods).

Flight of Haakon. But King Haakon, his Ministers, his Parliament and diplomatic corps, were elusive. After their train had been halted two hours at Kjeller while German planes bombed the nearby airport, they reached the little provincial town of Hamar. Hotels were requisitioned, Government officials in ski clothes sloshed about unpacking crates of documents left in the slushy streets, Parliament convened in the theatre, King and Council met in the theatre's restaurant. The King was dressed in a field uniform, but General Laake, Commander of the Norse Army, had on a black overcoat and derby. He had been out of touch with Army and Government all day.

Parliament had appointed three negotiators to treat with the invaders when a staff officer rushed in shouting: "The Germans are coming!" In panic, the Royal Government of Norway again took flight, to Elverum higher up in the mountains, then to Nybergsund. Nazi planes, spewing slugs and incendiary bombs, followed wherever they went, razed these villages. Once the King had to hide in the woods, fling himself into the snow, as a killer pilot dived so low it seemed he recognized royal quarry.

Mourned the 67-year-old sovereign three days later: "Since I left Oslo Tuesday I have not taken off my shoes and have hardly slept. All civilization seems to have come to an end. I cannot understand how such terrible things can happen.

"I can no longer be sure of anything. . . . My people can evacuate to Sweden.

I will have to stay in my country as long as there remains a single inch of Norwegian soil." From his late brother-in-law's son, King George VI of Great Britain, harassed Haakon received a telegram: ". . . Profound admiration ... for the dignity, courage and tenacity shown by Your Majesty and your people . . . [The Allied Governments] are bringing all help in their power ... so that the Allied forces, fighting side by side with the Norwegians, may prove this latest outrage by Germany to have been as rash as it was wicked." But by this time, General von Falkenhorst had some 80,000 picked troops in Norway. Most of them were, like himself, Austrians -- skilled mountain fighters (jager) at home on skis, practiced in the guerrilla type of warfare waged so effectively by the Finns in rough, forested country. At least one division was motorized, and Correspondent Stowe, who scored world beats reporting their landings along the Oslo Fjord, told of seeing field artillery (773).

Minute Men. What was now left of Norway's bacon, was now saved by King Haakon's pluck, and by an old American fighting custom. King Haakon refused to countenance "Premier" Quisling, exhorted his people to fight. This a lot of them were already doing. Loyal Norse airmen, hearing of the Germans' approach, managed to spirit half of Norway's 100 military planes away to secret fields (frozen lakes). Loyal Norse soldiers, as they fell away from the shores of Oslo Fjord, man aged to blow up Selbergross Dam, main source of the capital's light & power. To join the loyal soldiers in their retreat, down from rural hills and valleys came farmers, woodsmen, householders, carrying rifles they had learned to shoot during the brief Army training which every Norseman receives. They were Norway's Minute Men and suddenly, at 2 a.m.

Wednesday, Elverum became Norway's Lexington (Mass.). When the German flying wedge that had scared the Government out of Hamar rolled up to Elverum, their busses were stopped by a barricade of overturned autos.

Wham! banged a rifle. Wham! Wham! The Minute Men of Elverum offered Norway's first interior resistance. Some of the Germans ran into the woods. The busses turned and fled. The Germans fell back south of Hamar and all over Norway hearts rose, resistance hardened.

Campaign. The Germans consolidated inside a wavering defense ring which the rallying Norwegians now threw around Oslo. Newly arrived Germans easily broke through this ring and, while earlier arrivals moved north and west, started methodically subjugating Norway's southeast cor ner. If the Allied sea blockade should prove effective, they might have to breach Swedish neutrality and bring up reinforce ments by rail from Malmoe or Haelsingborg.

Their hold on the mountain ridge down to Halden would enable them to flank Sweden's southern defense zone, which runs southeast through her big lakes, Vaner and Vatter. With their command of the air, their superior arms (automatic rifles against old 6.5-mm. Kraag-Joergensens, for which the Norse can get more ammunition only from Sweden or the U. S. ), they should be able soon to take southern Norway. Unless King Haakon would order nonresistance, the Nazis promised "martial law," the Gestapo, the death penalty, confiscation, destruction, starvation, the whole bag of tricks displayed in Poland.

In the North it was a different story. Not only was Narvik soon out of German control -- and the road to the vital nearby Swedish ore fields -- but the railhead at Namsos on a fjord 55 miles north of Trondheim was not held. From it runs a rail spur down to Hell, near middle Norway's only landing field of military size.

From towns along that rail spur, came word of a strong Norwegian mobilization, to cooperate with the Allies should they strike for Trondheim and the main rail line south to Oslo.

Norway's salvation lay in the hope that, in a non-Lexingtonian sense, the British were coming. This week, same day Traitor Quisling dropped his ministerial pretensions, the British arrived.

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