Ironside’s plan, if successful, might stop Germany’s importation of Swedish ore, but it was ill-founded. In December 1939, a report from the intelligence division of the British War Office estimated that Germany would need 25–30 divisions for a successful invasion of Sweden and Norway.5 In spite of this, Allied war planners never considered using anything near that force level in their own plans in Norway and Sweden. At the most, they considered that only a few brigades were required and, if the Germans intervened, a force of no more than 150,000. Part of this force was also intended to aid the Finns in their campaign against the Soviet Union.
Chamberlain and Halifax were still hoping for a change of leadership in Germany that could lead to peace, a chance that could be destroyed through aggressive actions in Scandinavia. However, members of their own party were demanding action, and the two leaders turned the differences in the plans of Churchill and Ironside to good advantage. Churchill’s more limited plan could be executed within a few days, but would not assist the Finns, while Ironside’s proposal would take months to prepare.
In a memorandum dated December 16 and considered by the war cabinet on December 22, Churchill attempted to secure approval for his scheme of mining Norwegian waters. In this memorandum he states:
The effectual stoppage of the Norwegian ore supplies to Germany ranks as a major offensive operation of the war. No other measure is open to us for many months to come which gives so good a chance of abridging the waste and destruction of the conflict, or of perhaps preventing the vast slaughters which will attend the grapple of the main armies… If Germany can be cut from all Swedish ore supplies from now onwards till the end of 1940, a blow will have been struck at her war-making capacity equal to a first-class victory in the field or from the air, and without any serious sacrifice of life. It might indeed be immediately decisive.6
However, Churchill knew that the mining would not cut Germany off from all Swedish ore supplies and he was already thinking about submarine mining of the approaches to Luleå and sabotage action (“methods which be neither diplomatic nor military”) at Oxelösund.7
The distinct possibility that the contemplated actions in Scandinavia would bring additional countries into the German camp and severely damage Allied reputations in the Dominions and among neutrals did not seem to worry Churchill. In a memorandum to the War Cabinet dated February 19, 1940, dealing with the stoppage of German traffic in Norwegian territorial waters, he wrote:
Finally I do not hesitate to say that if the worst case came to worst and Norway and Sweden joined Germany and invited their troops into their country to protect them, a step which would be fatal to their independence and also extremely unpleasant for them at the time, even so, a state of war with Norway and Sweden would be more for our advantage than the present neutrality which gives all the advantages to Germany for nothing and imposes all disadvantages upon us. Germany would then have to defend and victual the Scandinavian peninsula, thus diverting her strength and consuming her strained supplies. Our blockade would become far more effective, and using sea-power we could easily supply ourselves with varying temporary bases on the Norwegian coast.8
Some of these conclusions are certainly open to question. It is difficult to see how it would be more advantageous for the British to have the Scandinavian countries in the German camp rather than neutral. The loss of the large Norwegian merchant fleet and the raw materials coming from Norway and Sweden would certainly lead to a strained situation for the British, and seems a strange contention in view of Churchill’s emphatic statement two months earlier that “it cannot be too strongly emphasized that British control of the Norwegian coast-line is a strategic objective of first-class importance.”9 That the British forces would be able to establish and supply themselves at temporary bases on the Norwegian coast using sea power was a dangerous assumption.
Furthermore, it was unlikely that the Germans would need to move any forces into Sweden for that country’s defense. What they needed to move into Norway were primarily air and naval forces. This move, which was being urged by high officials in the German Navy, would immediately improve the German strategic position without a shot being fired.
While Allied policy was shortsighted, the military planning for carrying it out was ineffective. The expeditionary force would risk facing not only Norwegian resistance but also that of Sweden, a country with a large citizen army that was better trained and equipped than that of its neighbor to the west. In addition, the expeditionary force could expect to meet the full fury of the German armed forces, as well as those of the Soviet Union if the Allies made good on their promise to help the Finns.
It appears that the Allied policy makers had become so preoccupied with the importance of interrupting Germany’s importation of iron ore, and of embroiling that nation in military operations in Scandinavia, that they ignored realities and the obvious risks to themselves.
Chamberlain and Halifax came down on the side of Ironside. In this way, they demonstrated willingness to aggressively pursue the war and to bring help to the Finns, while winning precious time for their desired peaceful solution to the war. Such action was also in line with Chamberlain’s well-known anti-Soviet views and the views of the military leaders that supporting the Finns was necessary not only to prevent a Soviet attack on Norway and Sweden but also to protect Allied interests against possible Soviet aggression in other areas of the world. Churchill, on the other hand, had expressed considerable understanding for the Soviet demands vis-à-vis Finland, and he viewed a war between the Scandinavian countries and the Soviet Union as an advantage to the Allies, since it
