Secret Alliances Read online

  Relations with other governments

  The nature of the relationship with Norway certainly stands comparison alongside British links with the governments of the other occupied countries of Europe and their resistance movements. Relations with France were complicated initially by the difficulties of dealing with Vichy France and then with General de Gaulle, whose desire to maintain French independence was a constant complication, even if he sometimes aroused respect in SOE as an effective symbol of French resistance. SOE’s relations with the Belgian government in London were disrupted by the fact that it contained two separate bodies which claimed primacy over resistance matters. Attempts to resolve this were so unsuccessful that at one stage Paul-Henri Spaak, the Foreign Minister, broke off relations with SOE. In the Netherlands, the successful German Englandspiel led to the capture and death of a substantial number of SOE’s Dutch agents. The fact that Denmark remained formally neutral until August 1943 limited the development of an effective resistance there for much of the war, though SOE made up for this by providing a reporting service to SIS in a country where for much of the war it did not operate, and by stimulating a rapid growth in the numbers of the resistance from a hundred or two in 1943 to over 10,000 by late 1944. Separate communist resistance movements working to different strategies also created complications, as they were liable to spark German reactions or reprisals at times when British-supported movements were seeking to avoid them (as was the case in Norway). Sometimes, they formed the dominant resistance movement. The most striking example was in Yugoslavia, where the deputy head of the SOE Yugoslav section, James Klugmann, was a communist who played a significant role in the selection of agents to be sent into Yugoslavia, briefed them in such a way as to get them to produce the intelligence he wanted, and manipulated some of their reporting so as to gain support for the communist partisans and to discredit the Chetniks. His actions appear to have helped to influence Churchill’s decision to switch support to Tito’s partisans.22 There were also issues with the communist resistance in Greece. This is not to say that resistance movements in all these countries were ineffective: far from it. But dealing with them was rarely straightforward.23

  It will become clear how, during the German occupation, Britain contributed to the development of the different resistance organisations in Norway, dealt with setbacks and shortcomings and negotiated improvements with Milorg, the military resistance movement, and also the Norwegian government. However, the issues were not always bilateral ones. What about relations on the British side? It was never likely to be easy for SIS and SOE to cooperate with each other, for their objectives were too often mutually exclusive. There were certainly plenty of sharp differences, but while they squabbled a lot over their interests in Norway, there is evidence to show that some – particularly Norwegians who worked for them – were also able to achieve a greater degree of pragmatic cooperation than was possible elsewhere. The chapter on the work of GC&CS, in addition to demonstrating the extent to which their reporting illuminated Abwehr activities in Norway, will also show how much they understood about (and read) Norwegian cyphers in Norway before the war. The Security Service depended heavily, though not entirely, on GC&CS reporting for their work against quite extensive German attempts at penetration in Britain, and SIS did occasionally allow their reports to be used to warn SOE agents in Norway who were under threat.

  Much of our focus will be on the operations carried out by both SIS and SOE in Norway. The most important achievement of SIS was the provision of intelligence from its coast-watching stations describing the movements of all the major German warships. At the end of the war Finn Nagell, head of FO.II, the Norwegian intelligence office, claimed that SIS agents provided reporting which, to a greater or lesser extent, contributed to the sinking of the Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz, and also to the damage caused to the Prinz Eugen, Hipper and Admiral Scheer.24 However, SIS also provided intelligence on a range of other targets in Norway too.

  While the main task of SOE was sabotage, their stations and networks were also encouraged to provide reporting to SIS if it was readily available – and their files show that they provided a fairly consistent and often valuable service for large parts of the war. Although the technical limitations of equipment led to the failures of some operations (particularly the performance of the gliders in mountainous conditions during Operation FRESHMAN, and faulty limpet mines which detached from the ships they were targeting during the Operation MARDONIUS attack) the range of successful SOE operations was extensive. They included GUNNERSIDE (sabotage of the heavy water plant at Vemork), MARDONIUS and BUNDLE (attacks against shipping), Cheese (a variety of activities including the hijacking of a ship to get back to the Shetlands), the destructive activities of the Oslo gang and SOE’s anti-U-boat campaign – which was so successful that it earned a warm letter of appreciation from the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff responsible for operations against U-boats, highlighting the effectiveness of SOE’s work in Norway.

  The Oslo report and civil resistance

  There are two other subjects worthy of mention here, because they do not directly belong in the narrative which follows. The first is the Oslo report, described by Hinsley as ‘one of the most remarkable intelligence reports of the war’.25 Though it was provided in Norway, it owed nothing to British cooperation with the Norwegians and indeed preceded it. The Oslo report was a document sent anonymously to the British legation in Oslo in November 1939 and delivered to the naval attaché. He forwarded it to London where it reached Professor R. V. Jones, the principal scientific adviser at SIS. It contained a considerable quantity of scientific and technical intelligence, on such diverse subjects as German radar development, rocket and glider bombs being worked on at Peenemünde which were the predecessors of the V-1s and V-2s, close-proximity fuses and much more. The fact that it dealt with so many different topics on which no information had previously been collected led some experts to doubt its credibility. However, despite their adverse comments Jones was impressed by its general air of authority and technical competence and it proved to be accurate in all significant respects – and over time was an extremely valuable source of information. Once the existence of the Oslo report became publicly known after the war, much diligent research (and speculative journalism) led to a variety of claims about the authorship of the report, with plenty of imaginative but inaccurate conclusions. Remarkably, it was Jones himself who, by a mixture of detective work and coincidence, was able in 1954 to establish that the author was Hans Mayer, a German scientist who had been touched by the kindness of Frank Foley. When serving in Berlin, Foley had provided, through a British intermediary whose help Mayer had solicited, a visa for a half-Jewish girl who was thus able to escape from Germany. After war broke out, Mayer found an opportunity to repay this kindness by providing the intelligence during a trip to Norway.26 So, indirectly at least, SIS had played a part in the process which led to the production of the Oslo report.

  Norwegian civil resistance, or non-violent action in the form of civil disobedience, also played a significant part in resistance to the Germans. It was an effective means of demonstrating opposition to the German occupation, and provided a considerable boost to morale and helped further to increase the will to resist. For most of the war, the British services who were supporting Milorg, the military resistance, had minimal contact with it. They had little understanding of how it was organised and played virtually no part in providing it with assistance – though there were occasional exceptions. But we should not overlook the importance of the role which it played in demonstrating unwillingness to accept attempts by Vidkun Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling party to force political leaders on them, or to sign declarations or give undertakings to support the ‘New Order’. This opposition found expression in different forms: from a very active underground press which defeated German censorship by providing information about the progress of the war, through individuals wearing small symbols in their lapels, to widespread disobedien
ce by professional organisations who refused to comply with demands to show their loyalty to NS ideology. Norwegian athletic organisations stopped their activities completely rather than accept political leaders being foisted upon them, and the medical association made similar protests. But the most celebrated examples were provided by teachers and clergy who refused to conform. More than 1,000 teachers were arrested in March 1942, and many of them were eventually deported to Kirkenes, in the far north of Norway, where they did forced labour and lived in the most appalling conditions. A few were eventually obliged to compromise because of ill-health caused by their treatment, but the remainder were eventually released when the NS regime had to accept defeat.

  Clergymen were similarly ill-treated when the bishops openly criticised many abuses of power by the NS regime. In February 1942, when Reichskommissar Josef Terboven inaugurated Quisling’s national government, it was planned that an NS clergyman would hold a mass in the cathedral in Trondheim. The dean, Arne Fjellbu, announced that he would hold a regular service later the same day. Many of the congregation were prevented from entering by the police, and Fjellbu ignored their order not to hold a mass. He was dismissed, whereupon all the bishops announced that they were resigning their offices, followed soon afterwards by all the clergy. Thereafter, there was no state church in Norway, though the churches continued to function unofficially and to criticise the policies and actions of the NS. In 1944, at the request of the Norwegian government, SIS became involved in attempting to help Fjellbu leave Norway and travel to Britain, where it was thought that his influence could be significant. By then he had been compelled to move to the Vesterålen Islands in the far north of Norway. An initial attempt to move him by sea involving station Libra failed because of the disruption caused by German arrests in the area. A later attempt, Operation GUARANTOR, also had to be abandoned because other British naval commitments following the Normandy invasion meant that a ship could only be made available to pick him up on a date before the necessary arrangements could be put in place. Fjellbu was able to get to Sweden in the autumn and was appointed bishop of the liberated parts of northern Norway by the government in London.27

  All of these activities had a powerful and positive effect on boosting morale. The resistance was also involved in a variety of humanitarian actions. Perhaps the most important was the assistance provided to refugees to facilitate their escape from Norway, usually into Sweden, where escape routes were organised by both civilian and military resistance organisations. They helped not only active resistance members and sometimes their families who needed to escape because they were being sought by the Germans, but also those who wanted to get to Britain to join the armed forces, as well as political refugees and Jews. Unlike Denmark, where early warning had enabled Danish patriots to hide almost all the Jews who were at risk of imminent deportation, there was insufficient warning in Norway. About a third of the total population of 774 Jews was deported, of whom only a handful survived. However, the resistance was subsequently able to smuggle over 1,000 Norwegian and foreign Jews to Sweden. The post-war Norwegian government tried to make some amends by permitting the immigration of 660 Jews into Norway, and the first group arrived on 10 May 1947. This gesture was judged to be insufficient by some senior members of DNA, who later took matters into their own hands. Haakon Lie, the secretary of DNA, was approached by the Israeli ambassador for assistance to help a number of Jews in Poland and Rumania where their conditions were dire: they wanted to emigrate to Israel. He sought help from Asbjørn Bryhn, head of the Norwegian Security Service. Bryhn agreed to provide genuine Norwegian passports to facilitate their travel, into which the necessary details and photograph of the passport bearer could be inserted, provided they were returned after the Jews had arrived safely in Israel.28

  Sources

  A word about sources and their accuracy: much of this book is based on new material, previously unpublished, which has either come to light or recently been released to the archives. It also draws on some excellent histories written (mainly) by prominent Norwegian academics. However, even the primary material is not completely accurate, for sometimes in original documents there are errors in dates and other details, and still more in summaries which were compiled after the event. The most egregious of these errors is to be found in the citation for Leif Larsen’s DSO, for which he was put up in late 1945 by Colonel John Wilson, head of the Scandinavian section of SOE. Larsen was a skipper on boats based in the Shetlands which carried both SIS and SOE agents, and their supplies, over to Norway and back. His citation contained details of four meritorious actions towards the end of the war in which he was stated to have taken part. However, three of them had actually been carried out by his colleague Ingvald Eidsheim, who had only been put forward for a mention in despatches.§§ Moreover, the relevant source material is so extensive, and some of it so carefully (or craftily) hidden that it is extremely difficult for a historian to find it all. For example, in his history of SOE, William Mackenzie describes Rubin Langmo (known as Rubin Larsen) as ‘one of SOE’s best men’. He was indeed a brave and dedicated member of the Linge Company, who took part in the first Norwegian expedition in June 1940 and played an active part in operations throughout the war, including participation as one of only two Norwegians in the Dieppe raid. Perhaps the strain got to him, for Milorg asked for him to be withdrawn from the VESTIGE XIV party¶¶ in December 1944 on the grounds of his drunkenness, and insecure and inappropriate behaviour. He was sent to Sweden.29

  Sometimes, the SOE Norwegian section’s historian may also not have had all the facts. For example, there is a reference to an early SOE operation in Norway, which described how Alf Konrad Lindeberg and Frithjof Kviljo Pedersen were sent back by boat to establish communications with Britain in November 1940. ‘They were safely landed, but nothing further was heard from them. It later emerged that their set was faulty and they could not establish contact. Soon after landing they were arrested by the Germans in unknown circumstances and executed.’30 In fact, there were three agents – the third was Melankton Rasmussen, and they were lured back from Shetland by two Norwegian Abwehr agents. The Security Service and Section V of SIS became aware of what had happened, but if news of their fate was passed to SOE, it must have been very tightly held.|||| The memoirs of those who were involved in resistance work also need to be treated with some care, for they were generally written without the benefit of reference to contemporary reports. Even Wilson was affected by this problem. In his unpublished memoir he repeats a statement in the SOE Norwegian section history describing how Cheese (Odd Starheim) had reported in May 1941 that Bismarck had broken cover, and commented that this news played a part in the later destruction of the battleship.31 This claim was repeated in a paper prepared for the War Cabinet in May 1945 on SOE activities in Scandinavia, which also asserted that across one of Cheese’s reports, a British admiral had written ‘who is this boy? I would serve with him anywhere.’32 Examination of Cheese’s file reveals no evidence of any such message, and it would anyway have been physically impossible for such a report to have been conveyed to him and transmitted from his location in the time which was available. No doubt Wilson was drawing on an account which had been given to him orally.*** A further warning for the unwary historian of the dangers of relying on personal memoirs is to be found in an article published in 1973 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Vemork raid. The author conducted interviews with Claus Helberg and Knut Haugland, two of the participants in GUNNERSIDE, and showed Helberg a book written about the raid by one of his colleagues. ‘He began to read. “Nonsense… No, no, no… Nonsense!” he said, and began to tell us how it really happened.’33 It is not always easy to determine whose memory is likely to be the more accurate. There were strict (and sensible) security regulations designed to prevent members of the resistance from keeping diaries or any personal records during the war, especially when they were on active service. Therefore it would not have been easy for those involved in stressful and dem
anding operations to be able to remember years afterwards the detail of events they were involved in. There was one significant exception during the Norwegian campaign: Leif Tronstad ignored the rules and kept a diary both while he was in London and also after his return to Norway in October 1944 – a cavalier disregard for discipline which has since been much appreciated by Norwegian historians, including myself. His detailed contemporary accounts have been of great value.

  Notes

  1 Extract from The Times, 24 May 1945. The National Archives (henceforth TNA), FO 371/47509.

  2 The problems faced by the Norwegian government on arrival in Britain are vividly described in J. Nygaardsvold, Norge i krig: London 1940–1945 (Oslo: Tiden Norsk Forlag, 1983), J. Sverdrup, Inn i Storpolitikken 1940–1949 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1996) and O. Riste London-Regjeringa: Norge i krigsalliansen 1940–1945, Volume 1 (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1973).

  3 Patrick Salmon (ed.) Britain and Norway in the Second World War (London: HMSO, 1995).

  4 The details of this extraordinary story are well described in R. Pearson, Gold Run (Oxford: Casemate, 2017).

  5 Bjørn Rørholt, Usynlige soldater: Nordmenn i Secret Service forteller (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1990), p. 127.

  6 Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum (hereafter NHM), FO.II 8.5 – Daea 0002. SIS monthly progress report, September 1943.