From the Archives: Last Hope Island
Often when we're traveling, something we see makes me think about posts from the past, books I've read, or posts from the past about books I've read.
While we were in Norway, that book/post was Lynne Olsen's Last Hope Island. As soon as we got home, I pulled it off the shelf and have been dipping in and out ever since. It is just as good as I remembered.
As those of you who hang out regularly here on the Margins have probably guessed, I love it when a book turns what I think I know upside down and shakes the change out of its pockets. Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War is one of those books.
Historian Lynne Olson looks at the seldom-told stories of how European refugees—both governments-in-exile and individual patriots—continued to fight Nazi Germany from a (relatively) safe base of operations in London.
Taken individually, their stories are dramatic, and occasionally tragic. Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands was outraged when the captain of the British destroyer on which she escaped Amsterdam refused to put her ashore at Zeeland: she had been determined to "be the last man to fall in the last ditch" in defense of her country. (She continued to be outraged throughout the war. Her grandchildren were not allowed to listen to her radio broadcasts because her language was so bad when she talked about the Nazis) A young French banker named Jacques Allier, traveling on a fake passport, smuggled the world's supply of heavy water from German-occupied Norway to Scotland under the nose of Abwehr operatives—hamstringing Germany's efforts to develop a nuclear bomb.
Told in combination, these stories challenge traditional accounts of the war. Olson reminds us that French forces guarded British troops during the heroic evacuation at Dunkirk. That Polish pilots played a critical role in the Battle of Britain and in defending London during the Blitz. That Britain's successes in breaking the Enigma codes rested on the work of the Polish underground, who were able to decipher a high percentage of Enigma intercepts by early 1938. That Churchill was a butthead as well as a great leader.*
In the English-speaking world, Britain and the United States are often portrayed as standing alone against the Nazis in World War II. Last Hope Island reminds us that was never true.
*Okay. She doesn't say that. But the stories she tells reinforce my growing dislike for the man.
Road Trip Through History: Oscarsborg Fortress and the Nazi Invasion of Norway (plus a little bit about Sigrid Schultz)
As those of you who read my newsletter know,* My Own True Love and I spent two weeks in Norway on a history-nerd tour run by the Vesterheim Museum. We began with Vikings and ended with a tour of the royal palace in Oslo, which was far more interesting than I expected. (As is so often the case when we’re on the road. Never presume.)*** Instead of focusing solely on the decor and its treasures, the docent gave a brief history of the Norwegian royal family. She wove the royal family’s history into the larger history of Norway, nicely wrapping up a number of recurring themes from the last half of the tour. The most important of these was King Haakon VII’s refusal to cooperate with the Nazis and the Norwegian government’s subsequent escape to London.
A history tour of Norway necessarily spends a great deal of time on the Nazi invasion and occupation of Norway. Going in, I had a general sense of the Nazi invasion of Norway, which signaled the end of the “Phony War” and the beginning of action on the Western Front. I was familiar with the story of King Haakon’s heroic stand. But I had forgotten the action at Oscarsborg Fortress which made it possible for the king, the Norwegian government, and members of the Storting (the Norwegian parliament) to escape.
In the early hours of April 9, German troops launched surprise attacks on every major port in Norway. (Though why anyone was surprised is not clear. As Sigrid Schultz reported in her account of the invasion, “Hitler acted according to the pattern so often successful for him: On the one hand, he amazed the world by his swiftness. On the other hand, he gave ample warning of his intention to strike.”)
Norway’s military defenses were shockingly weak, despite the king’s urging that the country re-arm. Despite its strong maritime heritage, the country owned only 70 ships, including the two oldest ironclad ships in the world that were still sailing. (The naval chief of staff called them “my old bathtubs.”) Its army was small, with an elderly officer corps and equally elderly armaments. It had one tank, no submarines, and no anti-aircraft guns. Not surprisingly most of Norway’s military commanders failed to defend their positions. By noon, German forces controlled Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, Egersund and Kristiansand.
The sole exception was Birger Erickson, the commander of Oscarsborg Fortress. Erickson was scheduled to retire in the fall of 1940. Most of the men under his command were new conscripts who had only been on the island for one week. The fortress itself was no better equipped than the rest of the Norwegian military. Oscarsborg had been the strongest fortress in Europe when it was built in 1855. Norway upgraded the fortress at the end of the nineteenth century, installing new guns (made in Germany) and an underwater torpedo battery. Those “new” weapons were 40 years old when the Nazis attacked Norway. There was no reason to think that Erickson would do any better than his counterparts on the mainland. German intelligence dismissed the fortress and its two antique cannons as obsolete, and was apparently unaware of the torpedo battery.
Obsolete or not, Oscarsborg Fortress was Norway’s last line of defense against the the Germans.
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96375
A small flotilla of German ships, including a new warship, the Blücher, entered the Oslo fjord shortly before midnight, sailing toward Oslo. In addition to 1500 inexperienced sailors, the Blücher carried German invasion troops, a cadre of government officials, and a military band. Their assignment was to seize the government buildings, including the palace, arrest the royal family, and establish a German administration. The band’s job was to celebrate their success by playing “Deutschland über Alles” in the city center.
The Blücher had to pass the narrows at Oscarsborg Fortress to reach Oslo. Two small island forts fired on the German ship as it sailed up the fjord. Hampered by the fog, they did not hit the ship but their guns warned Erickson that the Blücher was approaching. Shortly before 4 a.m., the ship reached Oscarsborg. The fog lifted as the ship approached. As it came into view, searchlights from the main land illuminated it further and the fortress's two old cannons, called Moses and Aaron by their crews, fired.**** Both hit their target. Within minutes the ship was on fire. Moments later, the torpedo battery fired, hitting the ship below the water line. Within an hour, the Blücher had sunk. More than 1000 men were lost, including the government officials who had been tasked with setting up the Nazi administration in Oslo. Only a few hundred men escaped
The remainder of the small invasion fleet retreated.
The actions of the men at Oscarsborg Fortress did not stop the Germans from taking Norway, but they delayed the invasion of Oslo and the establishment of a viable Nazi government long enough for the royal family and key members of the government to escape. It also gave the Bank of Norway time to ship out fifty tons of gold bullion that the Nazis had planned to seize.
* It’s time for my occasional reminder that in addition to History in the Margins, I also write a semi-monthly newsletter. With a very few exceptions, this blog and the newsletter have completely different material. In the newsletter, I struggle with historical concepts rather than telling historical stories and share my experience of the process of writing. In recent issues, I’ve considered a special case of active vs. passive voice, talked about the new-to-me concept of experimental archeology, and looked at the bigger themes of our multi-year road trip down the Great River Road.** If that sounds like your piece of cherry pie, you can subscribe here.
** I've shared stories of our adventures driving along the Mississippi over the last ten (!!!) years here on the Margins. We drove the last stretch in May, and there are stories yet to come. As you may have noticed, I’ve been busy for the last couple of months.
***One unexpected high point: when we were in the ballroom, the docent suggested that guests take a spin . After all, we might never have a chance to dance in a royal ballroom again. My Own True Love offered me his arm and we waltzed across the room. Big Fun! Also, swoon!
****Our guide was quick to point out the irony of cannons named after iconic Jewish historical figures taking out a Nazi warship.
Building Blocks
I’ve lived in Chicago since the fall of 1980, but I never noticed that the street side of the Tribune Tower is embedded with stones from famous buildings around the world until recently. The trigger for me was correspondence from Sigrid Schultz detailing her successes and failures in acquiring, authenticating, and shipping stones to the Tribune’s Chicago office from a variety of locations, including Wartburg Castle, where Luther lived in hiding for a time.
The project was a brainstorm of the paper’s owner, Colonel Robert McCormick—one of many that he would inflict on his foreign correspondents over the years.
Among other things, McCormick was a history bugg* and collector of historical memorabilia on a grand scale. He acquired what would be the first pieces of the Tribune Tower collection on a brief stint as a war correspondent in 1914. While touring the trenches in France, he pocketed stones from the medieval cathedral of Ypres, which had been damaged by German shelling, and a historic building in Arras.
When McCormick began constructing his Tower in 1923, he decided to expand his collection of historical rocks and incorporate them into the structure of the building. He sent a memo to his foreign correspondents instructing them to acquire “stones about six inches square from such buildings as the Law Courts of Dublin, the Parthenon at Athens, St. Sophia Cathedral, or any other famous cathedral or palace or ruin—perhaps a piece of one of the pyramids” and send them to Chicago.
Not surprisingly, local authorities were not always happy to supply the Colonel with a piece of their historical landmarks. Nonetheless, Tribuners successfully collected 136 stones from sites near and far. After the Colonel’s death in 1955, his successors decided to continue the tradition, adding a moon rock in 1971 and a piece of the Berlin wall in 1990.
*A typo that I accept whenever I commit it. I honestly think it makes as much sense as history buff. If the Oxford English Dictionary is to be believed, the use of buff to describe a fan of any sort is an extension of a person who was fascinated by fires and firemen. They were called “buffs” in the early twentieth century because of the buff-colored uniforms then worn by volunteer firemen in New York. Who knew?
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For those of you who might be interested, I will be talking about Sigrid Schultz on the History Happy Hour podcast on Sunday, August 18 at 3pm central time. You can watch it in real time here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1514126705853093 or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ1eErYSE6E. It will also be available for streaming later.