Balance on Norway

A sick feeling in their martial hearts and in the pit of their political stomachs was the main reaction of the Allied peoples--and their friends--to the withdrawal of Allied troops from lower Norway last week (see p. 25). Prime Minister Chamberlain's first incomplete "explanation" in the House of Commons (see p. 32) contained no restorative stronger than patience to parry the shock. At very least, the Allies had grossly, amateurishly muffed a priceless chance to gain by Adolf Hitler's expansion of the war. And even more gravely psychological than military were the implications of the retreat from AAndalsnes and Namsos. It was possible that the lessons the Allies learned in Norway, about modern war in general and German tactics in particular, would some day prove worth the lives and materiel lost, the humiliation suffered. But for the moment, the balance on Norway showed deep red.

The loss of perhaps 1,500 troops was not a disaster--not if the French estimate of 14,000 Nazis lost on sunken transports was anywhere near true. The bomb damage done to Allied warships off Norway, where so many were exposed, may have enhanced Allied respect for Nazi air power, but did not wreck the Allies' naval balance sheet. After what they did to the German Navy, they still have a wide edge in sea power. Their air power is improving. Unless Mussolini should find in Hitler's "battleship bombed" story (see below) the inspiration to make Italy fight as she never has been known to fight before, the actual balance on armaments between the Allies and their foe was changed in the Allies' favor if at all.

Strategically, however, the Allies lost a chance to win bases from which they could carry the war to Germany's heart. And in surrendering those bases to Germany they exposed the north of the British Isles to closer, fiercer attack.

On the map (see p. 28) the northern reaches of Norway look like a slim strip of bacon compared to the fat ham Germany got. But within that strip lies potential control of Germany's all-important Swedish iron ore supply. French Alpine troops ("Blue Devils"), sent on up from Namsos, were reported closing in at week's end to complete the half nelson clamped upon that region by the British Navy three weeks prior.

With Norway's Government now officially one of the Allies, Norwegian shipping is subject to Allied control. In terms of tonnage, this is important because five-sixths of Norway's merchant fleet, the world's fourth largest (4,834,902 tons), is within the Allies' reach and out of Germany's at ports around the world. In conducting their blockade of Scandinavia, the Allies need no longer judge between essentials for the Scandinavians and possible contraband for Germany. Though stretched and strained a bit by new German threats from Norway's headlands, the northern blockade can now be absolute.

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