Chamberlain and Halifax were still hoping for a change of leadership in Germany that could lead to peace, a chance that could be destroyed through aggressive actions in Scandinavia. However, members of their own party were demanding action, and the two leaders turned the differences in the plans of Churchill and Ironside to good advantage. Churchill’s more limited plan could be executed within a few days, but would not assist the Finns, while Ironside’s proposal would take months to prepare.
In a memorandum dated December 16 and considered by the war cabinet on December 22, Churchill attempted to secure approval for his scheme of mining Norwegian waters. In this memorandum he states:
The effectual stoppage of the Norwegian ore supplies to Germany ranks as a major offensive operation of the war. No other measure is open to us for many months to come which gives so good a chance of abridging the waste and destruction of the conflict, or of perhaps preventing the vast slaughters which will attend the grapple of the main armies… If Germany can be cut from all Swedish ore supplies from now onwards till the end of 1940, a blow will have been struck at her war-making capacity equal to a first-class victory in the field or from the air, and without any serious sacrifice of life. It might indeed be immediately decisive.6
However, Churchill knew that the mining would not cut Germany off from all Swedish ore supplies and he was already thinking about submarine mining of the approaches to Luleå and sabotage action (“methods which be neither diplomatic nor military”) at Oxelösund.7
The distinct possibility that the contemplated actions in Scandinavia would bring additional countries into the German camp and severely damage Allied reputations in the Dominions and among neutrals did not seem to worry Churchill. In a memorandum to the War Cabinet dated February 19, 1940, dealing with the stoppage of German traffic in Norwegian territorial waters, he wrote:
Finally I do not hesitate to say that if the worst case came to worst and Norway and Sweden joined Germany and invited their troops into their country to protect them, a step which would be fatal to their independence and also extremely unpleasant for them at the time, even so, a state of war with Norway and Sweden would be more for our advantage than the present neutrality which gives all the advantages to Germany for nothing and imposes all disadvantages upon us. Germany would then have to defend and victual the Scandinavian peninsula, thus diverting her strength and consuming her strained supplies. Our blockade would become far more effective, and using sea-power we could easily supply ourselves with varying temporary bases on the Norwegian coast.8
Some of these conclusions are certainly open to question. It is difficult to see how it would be more advantageous for the British to have the Scandinavian countries in the German camp rather than neutral. The loss of the large Norwegian merchant fleet and the raw materials coming from Norway and Sweden would certainly lead to a strained situation for the British, and seems a strange contention in view of Churchill’s emphatic statement two months earlier that “it cannot be too strongly emphasized that British control of the Norwegian coast-line is a strategic objective of first-class importance.”9 That the British forces would be able to establish and supply themselves at temporary bases on the Norwegian coast using sea power was a dangerous assumption.
Furthermore, it was unlikely that the Germans would need to move any forces into Sweden for that country’s defense. What they needed to move into Norway were primarily air and naval forces. This move, which was being urged by high officials in the German Navy, would immediately improve the German strategic position without a shot being fired.
While Allied policy was shortsighted, the military planning for carrying it out was ineffective. The expeditionary force would risk facing not only Norwegian resistance but also that of Sweden, a country with a large citizen army that was better trained and equipped than that of its neighbor to the west. In addition, the expeditionary force could expect to meet the full fury of the German armed forces, as well as those of the Soviet Union if the Allies made good on their promise to help the Finns.
It appears that the Allied policy makers had become so preoccupied with the importance of interrupting Germany’s importation of iron ore, and of embroiling that nation in military operations in Scandinavia, that they ignored realities and the obvious risks to themselves.
Chamberlain and Halifax came down on the side of Ironside. In this way, they demonstrated willingness to aggressively pursue the war and to bring help to the Finns, while winning precious time for their desired peaceful solution to the war. Such action was also in line with Chamberlain’s well-known anti-Soviet views and the views of the military leaders that supporting the Finns was necessary not only to prevent a Soviet attack on Norway and Sweden but also to protect Allied interests against possible Soviet aggression in other areas of the world. Churchill, on the other hand, had expressed considerable understanding for the Soviet demands vis-à-vis Finland, and he viewed a war between the Scandinavian countries and the Soviet Union as an advantage to the Allies, since it would give them excellent reasons for establishing themselves in Scandinavia.10 A number of key Allied policy-makers believed that the landings could be carried out with the approval of Norway and Sweden and would therefore not be regarded by the United States and the Dominions as a breach of neutrality in the way that mining Norwegian waters almost certainly would be.
The proposed help to Finland camouflaged the real objective: to occupy Narvik and secure control over the Swedish mining district. The French government under Edouard Daladier had another hidden objective in mind in helping the Finns. The French faced the German Army on their eastern border. Memories of the enormous suffering and destruction during World War I were still fresh in French memories, and Daladier also hoped for a change of leadership in Germany that could lead to peace. In the meantime, however, the French government viewed operations in Scandinavia as an excellent opportunity to divert the war to someone else’s territory while pacifying the demand from the French populace that action be taken to aid the Finns.
A French plan formulated in the middle of January 1940 sought to avoid the necessity of asking the Swedish and Danish governments permission to breach their neutrality. It called for British and French forces to land at Petsamo, in former Finnish territory and for a naval blockade of the Soviet coast between Murmansk and Petsamo. The British objected to this plan since it would certainly lead to war with the Soviet Union. Why the British did not think that active Allied intervention on the side of the Finns would lead to a similar result is difficult to understand, unless one assumes that the policy-makers never intended for Allied forces to advance further than to the Swedish iron ore districts.
The only measures undertaken at the War Cabinet meeting on December 22, 1939 were to make diplomatic protests to Norway about the misuse of its territorial waters by Germany and to provide instructions to the military chiefs to consider the implications of any future commitments in Scandinavia. The cabinet authorized the military to plan for a landing at Narvik in the north and to consider the consequences of a German occupation of southern Norway.
The military chiefs had been somewhat skeptical about the risks involved in an operation against the iron ore districts in northern Sweden. Some of this skepticism now began to fade. General Ironside, while stating that it would not be an easy matter to reach the iron ore districts in snow and difficult terrain, concluded that the Allies could reach the mines before any possible Russian counter-moves. He further concluded that, if the British army were to be confronted by superior forces, a line of retreat was available after the mines were destroyed. He estimated that a force of three or four thousand men on skis or snowshoes would be sufficient.11 Admiral Pound tried to ease worries that the Germans might occupy southern Sweden and Norway by stating that the disadvantages if they did so would be more than offset by cutting the iron ore supplies to Germany. The danger of war with the Soviet Union was now viewed as an acceptable side-effect of an operation that could cut the iron ore supplies to Germany. Fears of the Soviet military machine were somewhat abated when it was stopped in its tracks by the small Finnish conscript army. Military planners no longer considered the Soviets capable of creating problems for the Allies in other parts of the world or of providing a great deal of help for Germany in Scandinavia.