Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940

394 Pages·2017·9.57 MB·English

by  John Kiszely

Anatomy of a Campaign
TheBritishcampaigninNorwayin1940wasanignominiousandabject
failure. Itisperhapsbest knownasthefiasco whichdirectly ledtothe
fall of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his replacement by
Winston Churchill. But what were the reasons for failure? Why did
the decision makers, including Churchill, make such poor decisions
andexercisesuchbadjudgment?Whatotherfactorsplayedapart?John
Kiszely draws on his own experience of working at all levels in the
military to assess the campaign as a whole, its context and evolution,
fromstrategic failures, intelligence blunders andGerman airsuperior-
ity,totheperformanceofthetroopsandtheseriouserrorsofjudgment
bythoseresponsibleforthehigherdirectionofthewar.Theresulthelps
us understand not only the outcome of the Norwegian campaign but
alsowhymorerecentmilitarycampaignshavefoundsuccesssoelusive.
john kiszely served in the British Army for forty years, rising to the
rank of lieutenant general. His operational service included Northern
Ireland,theFalklandIslands,BosniaandIraq.Heservedthreetoursof
duty in the Ministry of Defence, latterly as Assistant Chief of the
Defence Staff. On leaving the Army he was for three years a visiting
professor in war studies at King’s College London, and from 2014 to
2017 a visiting research fellow on the Changing Character of War
ProgrammeatPembrokeCollege,Oxford.
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Anatomy of a Campaign
The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940
John Kiszely
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Kiszely,John,author.
Title:Anatomyofacampaign:theBritishfiascoinNorway,1940/JohnKiszely,
independentscholar.
Othertitles:BritishfiascoinNorway,1940
Description:1stedition.|NewYork,NY:CambridgeUniversityPress,[2016]
|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2016049303|ISBN9781107194595(Hardback)
Subjects:LCSH:WorldWar,1939–1945–Campaigns–Norway.|
Norway–Strategicaspects.|WorldWar,1939–1945–Navaloperations,British.|
Norway–History–Germanoccupation,1940–1945.
Classification:LCCD763.N6K482016|DDC940.54/2181–dc23
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Contents
Preface page vii
Acknowledgements x
Listof Figures xi
Listof Maps xii
British Operations xiii
Abbreviations xv
1 Introduction 1
2 ‘ALegitimate Side-Show’ 20
3 Deciding to Decide 29
4 Warning Signs 39
5 ‘TheMajor Project’ 47
6 ‘Hare-Brained’ 55
7 TakingStock 67
8 Weserübung 79
9 ‘Something Must Be Done’ 87
10 TheJigsaw Puzzle 100
11 ‘Completely Outwitted’ 110
12 ‘BoldnessIs Required’ 135
13 ‘An Even Greater Prize’ 155
14 Maurice 168
15 Sickle 181
16 ‘We MustGetOut’ 205
17 TheThird Dimension 218
v
vi TableofContents
18 ‘In the Name of God, Go!’ 230
19 ‘AGoodDividend’? 240
20 ‘No Time to Lose’ 248
21 TheLong Retreat 259
22 Finale 268
23 Conclusions 274
Appendix A: Operational Code Names 300
Appendix B: Who’s Who (September1939–June 1940) 301
Abbreviations Used in theEndnotes 305
Notes 306
Bibliography 360
Index 370
Preface
As we have discovered in the opening years of the twenty-first century,
success in expeditionary military campaigns can be elusive. Circum-
stances conspire to frustrate the best of intentions; events take unex-
pected turns; decisions have unintended consequences; errors of
judgment are made. Disentangling the reasons for failure can itself be
far from easy, with closer examination often revealing an ever-greater
complexity. Each campaign is, of course, unique, but all have some
thingsin common, and some havemanythingsin common.
The British campaign in Norway in the spring of 1940 – for British
forces, the first land campaign of the Second World War – ended in
ignominious failure. It is not a well-known campaign, being over-
shadowed, if not eclipsed, by events on the Western Front and the fall
of France. It is perhaps best known, in the United Kingdom at least, as
the fiasco which directly led to the fall of Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain and to his replacement by Winston Churchill.
Littleknownitmaybe,butasurprisinglylargenumberofbookshave
beenwrittenaboutthecampaignoraspectsofit.Thebooksarebroadly
brokenintofourcategories.Firstarethosethatcovertheperiodpriorto
the German invasion, notably Salmon, Deadlock and Diversion: Scandi-
navia in British Strategy during the Twilight War. Second are those that
focus on the conflict itself, doing so from a British perspective and
confining themselves largely to the tactical level: Ash, Norway 1940;
Adams,TheDoomedExpedition;andKynoch,Norway1940:TheForgotten
Fiasco. The third category contains wider accounts from a British per-
spective – some written not long after the Second World War – notably
the official history by Derry, The British Campaign in Norway, published
in 1952, and Moulton, The Norwegian Campaign of 1940: A Study of
Warfare in Three Dimensions, published in 1966. More modern books in
this category are Harvey, Scandinavian Misadventure; Rhys-Jones,
Churchill and the Norwegian Campaign; and Dix, The Norwegian Cam-
paign and the Rise of Churchill. The final category includes those that
cover the campaign from a wider, non-British perspective: Kersaudy,
vii
viii Preface
Norway1940;Mordal,LaCampagnedeNorvège;andthecomprehensive
anddetailedaccountsbyLundeinHitler’sPre-EmptiveWarandbyHaarr
in TheGerman Invasion of Norway and The Battle for Norway.
All identify the main reasons for Allied failure: poor strategy, intelli-
gence blunders, German air superiority, the weak performance of the
troops involved and serious errors of judgment by those responsible for
thehigherdirectionofthewar–namely,theWarCabinetanditsmilitary
advisers, the ChiefsofStaff.
Theunderlyingreasonshavereceivedlessattention.Forexample,how
and why did the perceived errors of judgment come about? Were they
identifiable as errors at the time or only in retrospect? How was it that
intelligent,hardworkingindividualsatthetopoftheirchosenprofessions
made such poor decisions? In addressing such questions, this book sets
outtounderstandwhythedecision-makersmadethedecisionsthatthey
did based on the information available to them at the time, rather than
that available with hindsight.
Militarycampaigns beginlong beforethefirstshotisfired.Indeed,by
thetimethefirstshotisfired,theoutcomeofthecampaignmaybelargely
preordained.Itis,therefore,necessarytocomprehendthecampaignasa
whole, to understand its context and to follow its evolution from incep-
tion. In particular, it is necessary to examine the anatomy of the cam-
paign–theconstituentpartsandtheirrelationtoeachother–tofindout
whatworkedordidnotwork,bothindividuallyandincombination,and
the reasons one way or the other. To what extent were the policy and
plans forthecampaignfoundedon strategy – in thesense of theprocess
and intellectual activity balancing the ends to be achieved with the ways
and means available? How well did the policymakers assess and manage
risk? Was the military advice, on which so much depended, sound and
timely?Ifnot,whynot?
The answer to all these questions should help our understanding not
only of this campaign as a whole but also of campaigns more generally,
including (perhaps especially) recent ones. The British campaign in
Norway had a number of similarities to more modern campaigns. It
wasanexpeditionary,tri-service,multinationalcampaignwithdemocra-
ciespittedagainstadictatorship,anditwasthefirstlandcampaignaftera
long period of peace. There was, and is, no shortage of lessons to be
learned from what Churchill dubbed ‘this ramshacklecampaign’.1
This book does not set out to give a comprehensive account of the
Norwegiancampaign.ItssubjectisverymuchtheBritishroleandBritish
decision making. Its focus is at the strategic level, both the grand-
strategic (national and Alliance) level and the level of theatre strategy
(sometimes referred to as the ‘operational’ level). It looks at the tactical