King Haakon rejects German demands

On the afternoon of 10 April 1940, in a folk high school building at Elverum, a small town in eastern Norway, the German minister Curt Bräuer laid Adolf Hitler’s demands before King Haakon VII: Norway was to cease resistance, and the king was to appoint the leader of the Norwegian fascists, Vidkun Quisling, as prime minister. The king replied that as a constitutional monarch he could not take such a decision alone. That evening at Nybergsund, a village in the municipality of Trysil near the Swedish border, he told his ministers that he would not appoint a Quisling government and would rather abdicate than do so. The government unanimously rejected the German demands. With this “no” Norway confirmed that it was at war with Germany and that its lawful authorities would not go the way of Denmark.

Popular chronologies record under 10 April that the Germans set up a Norwegian government headed by Quisling, a former defence minister. That is how it looked from the outside at the time, but events ran differently. Quisling proclaimed himself prime minister on his own, over the radio, on the evening of 9 April, with the help of a Nazi Party liaison man, and not on the initiative of the German military or diplomats. Hitler backed him only after the fact, and on 10 April ordered Bräuer to demand his appointment from the king. When the king refused, Berlin quickly dropped Quisling: his “government” lasted less than a week.

Flight from Oslo

The German plan was that in the first hours of the attack of 9 April warships would land troops in the port of Oslo to take the king and the government by surprise in the capital. As in Copenhagen, where the Danes capitulated within hours, the monarch and his ministers were to be confronted with a fait accompli. The plan collapsed in the early morning, when the guns and torpedoes of Oscarsborg fortress sank the cruiser Blücher in the Drøbak Narrows. Among those on board were the officials who were to take over the administration of the capital.

At about 4.30 a.m. Bräuer read out to the Foreign Minister, Halvdan Koht, a German memorandum: the Reich was “taking Norway under its protection”, and any resistance would be crushed. After brief deliberation the government of Johan Nygaardsvold refused. “Then there will be fighting, and nothing can save you,” Bräuer is said to have replied. “The fighting has already begun,” Koht answered. On the initiative of the President of the Storting, the Conservative Carl Joachim Hambro, a special train left Oslo East Station for Hamar at about 7.30 a.m. On board were the king, Crown Prince Olav, the government and most of the members of parliament. The central bank’s gold was also taken out by lorry. Olav’s wife, Crown Princess Märtha, with her three children, got through to her native Sweden during the night of 9–10 April. A few hours after the train left, the Germans who had landed at Fornebu airfield entered the capital.

Hamar and Elverum

Hambro drove on ahead and announced to the local authorities that Hamar was that day the capital of Norway. From 1 p.m. the Storting sat in the Festiviteten theatre hall. The mood was uncertain. Nygaardsvold, crushed, according to witnesses, by the weight of responsibility, tendered the government’s resignation to make way for a cabinet of national unity. Hambro, the party leaders, the king and the crown prince persuaded him to stay. Parliament did, however, agree to open talks with Bräuer, who at noon had sent a telegram to Hamar calling for an end to resistance.

The evening session, which began at 6.30 p.m., was interrupted by an alarm. A telegraphist at Jessheim and officers on the road from Oslo reported that a column of buses carrying German paratroops was heading north. The members moved by train to Elverum, 30 kilometres further east. At roughly the same time, at 7.32 p.m., Quisling spoke on the radio for the first time. In the folk high school at Elverum the Storting met for the last time in five years, at around 9.20–10.30 p.m. Without a formal vote, but also without opposition, it adopted Hambro’s motion, later known as the Elverum Authorisation (Elverumsfullmakten). This empowered the government, until parliament could be reconvened, to look after the interests of the kingdom and to take, on behalf of the Storting and the government, the decisions “required by the security and future of the country”. The government could also co-opt three ministers without portfolio from the opposition parties, and parliament named three members who, together with Koht, were if need be to negotiate with the Germans. Lawyers later argued over whether the authorisation had been needed at all, but throughout the war the king and the government-in-exile invoked it as the source of their authority. The members dispersed and did not meet again until 14 June 1945.

A coup by radio

Quisling spent 9 April at the Hotel Continental in Oslo. Together with his associate Albert Viljam Hagelin and Hans-Wilhelm Scheidt, liaison man of the Nazi Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, he concluded that the chaos following the government’s flight was an opportunity to seize power. Neither Bräuer’s instructions nor the military plans provided for such a coup. Scheidt, however, claimed to have Hitler’s consent and, bluffing that he was acting on behalf of the German authorities, persuaded the management of the Norwegian broadcaster NRK to make a studio available. At 7.32 p.m. Quisling announced that the Nygaardsvold government had resigned and that power had been taken over by a “national government” with himself as prime minister and foreign minister. He cancelled the mobilisation and called further resistance a “criminal destruction of life and property”. At 10 p.m. he repeated the proclamation, adding the threat that officials and officers who failed to obey his orders would bear “the gravest responsibility”.

The coup was a bluff. Some of the ministers he named did not even know about it, and several refused. The commander of the regiment at Elverum, Colonel Hans Sommerfeldt Hiorth, ignored Quisling’s telephoned order to arrest the government, and the Oslo chief of police would not even meet him. In Berlin, however, the news was well received. Hitler recognised Quisling and instructed Bräuer to bypass the Nygaardsvold government and deal only with the king. The Norwegians and the world understood Quisling’s broadcast as part of the German plan.

The night at Midtskogen

Meanwhile the Germans made a second attempt to capture the king and the government. The legation’s air attaché, Captain Eberhard Spiller, gathered about a hundred of the paratroops who had landed at Fornebu that morning and at about 5 p.m. set off northwards in requisitioned buses and a lorry. On the way he stopped cars and took prisoners. At Hamar he found no one, so at about one in the morning he drove on towards Elverum.

On the road, roughly five kilometres short of the town, at the Midtskogen farm, a roadblock of lorries and logs was waiting. It was held by recruits of a King’s Guard company, volunteers from the Terningmoen camp and local riflemen, about 90 men in all with two machine guns, under Major Olaf Helset. The Inspector of Infantry, Colonel Otto Ruge, was also at Terningmoen. The fight began at about 1.30–2 a.m. on 10 April and lasted until roughly three. The machine guns jammed in the frost, and a burning barn lit up the defenders’ positions, and they eventually fell back to a second roadblock. But the Germans turned back to Oslo. They lost between two and six killed, depending on the source, and Spiller was mortally wounded and died in hospital at Hamar. The Norwegians had only wounded. Before dawn the king, the crown prince and the ministers moved from Elverum to Nybergsund. On 10–11 April the disheartened Commanding General, Kristian Laake, was replaced by Ruge, promoted to major general, a resolute advocate of fighting on.

The audience at Elverum

Bräuer pressed for a personal meeting with the king. Haakon therefore returned to Elverum on the afternoon of 10 April and received the minister in the folk high school building. Hitler wanted the conversation to take place in private, but the king stipulated that he would discuss affairs of state only in the presence of his foreign minister. Bräuer spoke first with the king alone, then with the king and Koht, and finally with the three delegates of the Storting.

Until then the Germans had demanded capitulation and a free hand for the occupation, promising in return not to interfere in government, as in Denmark. Now the minister demanded more: the Nygaardsvold government, which refused to surrender, was to resign, and the king was to appoint a government headed by Quisling. Bräuer argued that the Germans had come to defend Norwegian neutrality against the Allies, held up as an example Haakon’s brother, King Christian X of Denmark, who had accepted the occupation, and warned of further bloodshed and harsh reprisals. The king replied that in a constitutional state he could not have a government that did not enjoy the confidence of the people and of parliament, but that he would give his final answer only after consulting the government. Bräuer drove off towards Oslo.

The “no” at Nybergsund

That evening the Council of State met at Nybergsund. According to those present, the king, moved to tears, said: “I am deeply affected by the responsibility that will fall upon me if the German demand is rejected. The responsibility for the misfortunes that will befall the people and the country is so great that I dread to take it. The decision rests with the government, but my position is clear. I cannot accept the German demands. It would conflict with everything I have considered to be my duty as King of Norway since I came to this country nearly thirty-five years ago.” He added that he could not appoint Quisling prime minister, because Quisling had the confidence neither of the people nor of the Storting. Should the government decide otherwise, he would abdicate so as not to stand in its way. The Education Minister, Nils Hjelmtveit, recalled that these words made an enormous impression on everyone.

Without a dissenting voice, the government advised the king to reject the demands. Some historians note that the ministers would have rejected them anyway, but that the threat of abdication swept away the hesitations that had been weakening the line of resistance since the previous day. That same evening the answer was passed to Bräuer by telephone, and the government announced that Norway would defend itself for as long as possible and called on its fellow countrymen to support the struggle. The one-page minutes of the meeting, signed by the king, the prime minister and the secretary of the Council of State, served in 1945 as exhibit number one at Quisling’s trial. Today they are inscribed on Norway’s documentary heritage register. In Norway the decision has gone down in history as “the King’s first ‘no’”.

Bombs on Nybergsund

On the morning of 11 April an envoy from Quisling came to the king with a proposal that Haakon return to Oslo, where Quisling would assure him of his loyalty and of a system similar to Denmark’s. The king replied that he would return only with parliament and the government, and only if a new government were formed in a constitutional manner. That same day the Luftwaffe bombed Elverum. The small town, mostly built of wood, was almost entirely destroyed, and according to various sources between 34 and more than 40 people were killed. At about 5.45 p.m. eleven aircraft attacked Nybergsund with high-explosive and incendiary bombs and strafed it with their guns. The raid lasted about an hour. The king, the crown prince and the ministers took cover in the snow-covered forest and survived. Among the buildings destroyed were the school, a shop and the telephone exchange. Whether this was retaliation for the refusal or a strike at the road through the Østerdalen valley is still unclear.

After the raid the prime minister proposed crossing into Sweden. The king, the crown prince and most of the ministers objected, since that would have meant abandoning the fight. Over the following days the king travelled westwards along side roads; once he briefly crossed the Swedish border, but Stockholm would not guarantee that he would not be interned. On 14 April he reached Otta in the Gudbrandsdalen valley, where most of the government met for the first time in several days.

The end of the Quisling government

Bräuer had distrusted Quisling from the start and considered that his “government” merely hindered an understanding with the Norwegians. He looked for another partner and found one in Oslo, where the Supreme Court was the only lawful authority left in the capital. With Berlin’s consent, on 15 April the court appointed an Administrative Council (Administrasjonsrådet) made up of respected officials. It was to administer the occupied part of the country. That same evening Quisling had to renounce power officially, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Paal Berg, publicly thanked him for stepping down. The government in the unoccupied territory did not recognise the Council as a political authority. Hitler was furious that Norway would not capitulate. On 16 April he recalled Bräuer, who later went to the front as a reserve officer, and on 24 April he appointed Gauleiter Josef Terboven Reich Commissioner for Norway.

Place in the war

The refusal of 10 April ensured that Norway did not become a second Denmark. The country fought on in the Norwegian campaign, in which British, French and Polish troops fought alongside the Norwegians. The Germans did not obtain what they wanted most: legal sanction for the occupation from the hands of the king. When the campaign came to an end, on 7 June 1940 Haakon VII and the government sailed from Tromsø to Britain, and for five years they directed Norway’s war on the Allied side from London. The country’s most important contribution was its great merchant fleet, taken over by the state shipping organisation Nortraship. The legitimacy of the government-in-exile, based on the Elverum Authorisation and on the refusal at Nybergsund, was seriously challenged during the war only by the Germans and their Norwegian collaborators.

In the summer of 1940 the Germans demanded the king’s abdication. The members of the Storting’s presidium who had remained in Oslo, under pressure from the occupier, asked him to abdicate on 27 June, and Haakon refused for the second time. His letter of 3 July and his radio address of 8 July became one of the starting points of resistance in the occupied country. On 25 September 1940 Terboven declared the king and the government deposed and dissolved all parties except Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling; in 1942 the Germans finally gave Quisling the post of prime minister of a collaborationist government. The monogram “H7” painted on walls became a symbol of resistance, and Quisling’s name, repeated by the British press from April 1940 onwards, entered many languages as a byword for traitor.