Hitler

army. However, the army itself lacked even sufficient munitions following the brief Polish campaign (in which some 50 per cent of the tanks and motorized units deployed were no longer serviceable) to contemplate an immediate continuation of the war in the West.
    Hitler had to gamble everything on the defeat of France. If Britain could be kept from gaining a foothold on the Continent until this were achieved, Hitler was certain that the British would have to sue for peace. Getting Britain out of the war through isolation after a German defeat of France was Hitler’s only overall war-strategy as the abnormallyicy winter of 1940 gradually gave way to spring. Ranged against Germany at some point, Hitler was aware, would be the might of the USA. Currently still dominated by isolationism, and likely to be preoccupied by the forthcoming presidential elections in the autumn, early involvement in a European conflict could be discounted. But as long as Britain stayed in the war, the participation – at the very least through benevolent neutrality – of the USA, with its immense economic power, could not be ruled out. And that was a factor that was out of Germany’s reach. It was all the more reason, objectively as well as simply in Hitler’s manic obsession with time, to eliminate Britain from the war without delay.
    The East was at this point at the back of Hitler’s mind – though not out of it. In his memorandum the previous October he had already remarked that Soviet neutrality could be reckoned with at present, but that no treaty or agreement could guarantee it in the future. ‘In eight months, a year, let alone a few years this could all be different,’ he had said. ‘If all treaties concluded were held to,’ he told Goebbels, ‘mankind would no longer exist today.’ Hitler presumed that the Russians would break the non-aggression pact when it suited them to do so. For the time being they were militarily weak – a condition enhanced by Stalin’s inexplicable purges; they were preoccupied with their own affairs in the Baltic, especially the troublesome Finnishwar; and they posed, therefore, no danger from the East. They could be dealt with at a later stage. Their current disposition provided still further evidence for Hitler that his attack on the West, and the elimination of Britain from the war, could not wait.
    It became clear in early 1940 that, before the western offensive could be launched, it was imperative to secure control over Scandinavia and the northern sea passages. A key consideration was the safeguarding of supplies of Swedish iron-ore, vital for the German war-economy, which were mainly shipped through the port of Narvik in the north of Norway. Hitler had acknowledged to Raeder as early as 1934 how essential it would be for the navy to guarantee the iron-ore imports in the event of war. But he had shown no actual strategic interest in Scandinavia until the first months of 1940. Alongside the need to secure the supplies of ore went, in Hitler’s mind, the aim of keeping Britain off the European continent. The navy itself had developed no operational plans for Scandinavia before the outbreak of war. But as the prospect of war with Britainbegan to take concrete shape in the later 1930s, naval planners started to weigh up the need for bases on the Norwegian coast.
    Once war had started, the navy leadership, not Hitler, took the initiative in pressing for the occupation of Denmark and Norway. In October, and again in early December 1939, Raeder, elevated the previous April to the rank of Grand-Admiral, stressed to Hitler the importance to the war-economy of occupying Norway. Increasingly worried by the possibility of being pre-empted by British occupation (under the pretext of assisting the Finns in the war against the Soviet Union), Raeder continued to lobby Hitler for early action. Hitler became seriously alerted to the danger of Allied intervention in Norway after the
Altmark
, carrying around 300 Allied merchant seamen captured in the south Atlantic, had been raided on 16 February in Norwegian waters by a boarding-party from the British destroyer
Cossack
, and the prisoners freed. Now the matter became urgent for him. On 1 March Hitler put out the directive for ‘Weserübung’ (‘Weser Exercise’). Two days later, he underlined the urgency of action in Norway. He wanted an acceleration of preparations, and ordered ‘Weser Exercise’ to be carried out a few days before the western