BRITISH TROOPS HEAD FOR TRONDHEIM. The Tommies have landed and are ready to put up a fight for Norway. Otto D. Tolischus writes in Saturday’s New York Times that a combined British-Norwegian force is expected to launch an attack on the Nazi-held port of Trondheim. The Germans are rushing troops and artillery northward to meet the Allied threat. The International News Service says that 50,000 British troops have marched into central Norway in the last few days, with more arriving hourly near the port of Namsos. There, the British smashed a German “death battalion” Thursday, took the city, and set up a defense line from Namsos to the Swedish border, with the aim of keeping the main German invasion force out of the northern half of the country.
But the Germans are on the attack, too, and have as of Friday landed 85,000 men in south Norway, according to an Associated Press estimate. (About 2,000 Nazi troops are arriving every day, says the A.P.) Donald Day reports in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that reinforced German units are pushing southeast from Trondheim and north from Oslo and “are threatening the secret hiding place of King Haakon and the Norwegian government.” The Nazis are also on the outskirts of Elverum, the “West Point of Norway” and the former temporary capital. But according to the Times, “strong Norwegian forces” are ready to oppose the Germans there, and British troops might be on hand as well.
So, still no big land battles yet, but it sounds like they’re coming any day.
WAR JITTERS ALL OVER EUROPE. As if Europe couldn’t get any more worried about the war, a front-page story in Saturday’s Washington Post describes a near-panic among neutral governments over the possibility of “Fifth Column” activity that the Nazis made so much use of in Norway. Says the Post -- “Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, and Sweden extended surveillance or ordered arrest of suspected aliens.” The story raises some alarming possibilities of what else Hitler might be contemplating, and Mussolini as well --
“Holland declared martial law for all the Netherlands, and a virtual state of siege. The Hague government continued its roundup of suspected saboteurs and foreign agents....Belgium, where German ‘tourists’ are reported to have arrived in large numbers, decided on a roundup of aliens and interned thousands of them....Yugoslavia, rumored facing an Italian ‘protectorate’ as well as a Nazi invasion, announced discovery of a plot to turn the government over to the Nazis....Hungary called out its air raid protection squads as British and French nationals fled Budapest on rumors of a threatened German invasion....Sweden maintained her border and coast patrol on a war footing.”
MAYBE HOLLAND, MAYBE RUMANIA. That’s what Capt. M.M. Corpening writes in Friday’s Chicago Tribune --
“A continuous flow of propaganda has been focusing attention upon the Baltic states and some sources say this indicates that Adolf Hitler’s next offensive will be a drive against Holland. It is part of Hitler’s policy to strike in an unexpected sector. Others contend the time has come for Germany to invade Rumania and obtain essential raw materials.”
Or, Capt. Corpening says, the Nazis might be ready to attack both countries at once -- “A heavy concentration of troops and equipment has been in progress recently both opposite Holland and in southeast Germany....Troops were similarly concentrated in the north before Norway was invaded.”
It’s funny how, prior to April 9, there were so many predictions that Hitler had decided to sit out 1940 and not attempt any major offensive operations for a full year, at least. Germany just didn’t have the strength to strike in force, said these reports, many of them coming from Paris. And now, since the day the first German troops landed in Norway, the experts are talking as if the Fuehrer’s about to launch an all-out attack against every other nation on the continent. But what if Norway is his big effort for 1940 -- a tactical effort to gain better access to raw materials and bases to use against Britain next year? And what if nothing else happens this spring? Just a thought.
NORWAY ALMOST SURRENDERED. The Norwegians themselves now admit just how close they came to capitulating to Hitler, according to James B. Reston in Saturday’s New York Times -- “Hunted by German troops and planes, his capital and all his strategic ports occupied by Nazi soldiers, King Haakon of Norway and his ministers held a brief peace conference with the German minister, Dr. Curt Brauer, and indicated a willingness to accept sweeping German terms, but the talks broke down when Chancellor Hitler issued new demands.”
Yes, an official White Book issues by Norway’s legation in London says that but for Hitler’s arrogance, the Nazis might have marched into the country without formal resistance, and British troops might have landed “in a hostile instead of a friendly Norway” -- if they dared make the effort at all. Specifically, Hitler demanded that the sitting Norwegian government be replaced by a gang headed by Major Vidkun Quisling, head of the Norwegian Nazi movement. And this King Haakon could not tolerate.
By the way, Mr. Reston, Hitler retired his “Chancellor” title last year. He’s simply “Der Fuehrer” now.
FRENCH CRACK DOWN ON RED SUBVERSIVES. The current issue of Time magazine has an update on France’s continuing efforts to thwart Nazi and Communist subversion. It’s getting pretty serious -- Premier Reynaud has ordered his interior minister to issue a decree making any further Nazi or Communist agitation punishable by “long imprisonment or death.” Last week a Paris court handed out five-year sentences to thirty-six Communist ex-legislators. Other Reds are being sent to concentration camps for “Communazis” near Paris, and some are claimed to be hiding in the Soviet Embassy.
The trouble with the Communists, of course, is that they’re propagandizing on behalf of Germany's party line -- the Allies started the war, peace should be made immediately on Hitler’s terms, etc. And the Reds have been at it since the war began. Says Time -- “French police have made over 11,000 raids on suspects since break of war, have seized as much as two tons of Communist propaganda in a raid.”
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