Nazi v. Norse

Somewhere in the snow-blanketed mountains of eastern Norway, north of Oslo, King Haakon VII and his Government found sanctuary last week. The fugitive Government released in Stockholm a White Book telling how King Haakon was on the verge of making a deal with his "protectors" last fortnight which would have put the Allies in the position of invaders instead of saviors, how it fell through because Hitler redoubled his demands.

The object of the Nazis was to master the richer, more populous and comparatively more negotiable southern part of the country before help could reach the Norse. In this they early succeeded.

Around Oslo and the southeast the going was fairly easy up to the end of the war's second week. Here was the major portion of the invaders' forces, here the faintest hearts in defenders. An early fugitive over the Swedish border was General Carl Johan Erichsen, chief of the 1st Norwegian Division, victimized, he insisted, by false orders to his troops to surrender. Major Hoch Nielsen, commandant of the key fortress at Kongsvinger, was deposed by his men when he failed to order stout resistance. A band of 135 Finnish war veterans--volunteer Swedes and Finns as well as Norwegians--stood a desperate six-hour siege. They manned even an old muzzle-loading cannon, which recoiled 18 feet and had to be hauled back into place after every shot. Nazi shock troopers finally blasted them out with mortars and flame.

In the Fossum forts, southwest of Oslo, Norse garrisons fought bitterly. Elsewhere the Nazi juggernaut rolled comfortably from town to town, in its own lorries and commandeered busses. With the occupation of Sarpsborg and Halden it reached the lower Swedish border and threatened Sweden's flank behind her main southern defense zone.

At week's end the Norse were backed up to the north end of Lake Mjoesa, and almost to Rena on the Glomma River. Their chance of surviving by guerrilla warfare until the Allies came--shooting down on valley highways from ambushes along the hills--was endangered by a shortage of materiel. The Germans had captured the country's most important ammunition factory, at Kongsberg, arsenals at Nittedal and Raufoss, a powder factory, 1,000,000 rounds of rifle ammunition. This was bad news because Norway's Krag-Jorgsen rifles (6.5 mm.) will not shoot the 7.7-mm. bullet used by the Allies.

In the West the Germans did not even originally have easy going. Norse resistance around Bergen was stiff. This week the Allies began to land in force. When British troops were reported advancing as far south and as far inland as Hamar to turn back the German juggernaut, the campaign, largely out of Norwegian hands, entered its next phase.

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