written by Chris Chiller
Hitler, in 1940, faced a problem. The Allied blockade of the North Sea off the German coast was hampering his ability to send out submarines and freight or to receive supplies. He needed access to Norwegian steel and to ports that did not become ice-bound. Seizing Oslo, the seat of Norway’s government, seemed like a solution. To make this work Germany would need direct access to Norway with the shortest possible sea crossing.
Hitler’s plan was to capture two brothers and force them to capitulate to Germany. The brothers were King Christian X of Denmark and King Haakon VII of Norway. Both kings were the sons of King Fredrick VIII of Denmark. If both could be captured, the Nazi regime could replace the governments of their respective nations with handpicked collaborators who would do as the Nazis pleased.
What happened next would rival the storyline of a Hollywood suspense film with a King as the action hero.
On the evening of April 8, 1940, the German army entered Denmark and quickly captured King Christian, forcing him to capitulate and accept that his country must cooperate with the German occupiers. That meant a reorganization of the Danish government and society to fit the Nazi model of a corporate state, a hierarchy with the state atop all non-government groups. Christian was free for a time and tried to rally resistance but was later jailed for his efforts. Hitler had successfully followed the first half of his plan.
Early the next morning the German cruiser Blücher and two smaller ships tried to sail into Oslo Fjord with the mission of capturing the King and members of parliament. Their plan was undone when they came in sight of the fort at Oscarsborg, an island that looked straight down the narrow channel of the Oslofjord.
News of the invasion of Denmark had reached the Norwegians. At 4:19 on April 9, the fort’s cannons began booming. The noise in that narrow channel must have been deafening as the Blücher fired back. Fort Oscarsborg scored a direct hit on the Blücher. It sank with the crew and about 800 soldiers tasked with taking Oslo. This setback allowed the Norwegian royal family to escape to the inland town of Hamar, along with prominent members of the Norwegian Parliament. The second half of Hitler’s plan, the capture of King Haakon and the Norwegian government, had failed.
Meanwhile, another ship carrying Hitler’s preferred Norwegian collaborators was sunk a few hours later with no survivors. Hitler was left with a bloviating Norwegian sympathizer, Vidkun Quisling. There was a reason Quisling was not Hitler’s first choice. He was not a strong leader but collaborated because it looked like his only path to power. His fascist governing principles only worked with the backing of a brutal German military.
Hitler’s emissary delivered articles of surrender to Haakon on April 10th which contained a demand that the king appoint Quisling as prime minister. That day, the king met with his ministers and others from parliament, and told them he would abdicate if they voted to accept these articles. As this was going on, Quisling back in Oslo was staging a coup, premature according to the Nazi schedule, and taking over the machinery of the Norwegian government. He gathered the remaining members of parliament who had not gone with the king, and got them to vote to accede to all Nazi demands. To this day Norwegians view Quisling with disgust, and using quisling as a pejorative in an argument is a short path to a black eye.
On the evening of the 10th, Haakon took a call from the Hamar chief of police informing him that German troops were on the way. The royal family relocated twenty miles away to the town of Elverum, but the decision had been made to protect prince Harald, heir to the throne. Harald’s mother, Crown Princess Martha took Harald and his sisters across the border to Sweden, which was neutral and that April was under no Nazi invasion threat. Crown Prince Olav stayed with his father to continue to resist.
The next day, April 11, the Luftwaffe heavily bombed Nybergsund, believing they could eliminate the king and his government. The King had traveled northeast to Nybergsund to escape the bombing of Elverum. All in his party had a narrow escape through the snow into the woods around the town. One can picture them listening to the sound of aircraft and bomb blasts echoing off the surrounding mountains as they made their way through the icy spring snow.
While they were only 16 miles from Sweden, the Swedish government warned that they would be detained and imprisoned if they tried to cross the border. The King and his party fled north to the town of Molde where they were repeatedly bombed. There were British forces in the area and the Norwegians left under British protection on the cruiser HMS Glasgow and moved 1,000 kilometers north to the small village of Tromsø.
On the first of May, Tromsø was declared the provisional capital of Norway in an attempt to delegitimize Quisling’s Nazi regime. The Allies and loyal Norwegian troops retained control of the north until the Nazis pushed through allied forces in the battle for France. The decision was made to pull troops out of Norway to try to defend western Europe. On June 7 King Haakon, Prince Olav, and Haakon’s cabinet boarded the HMS Devonshire to sail to England. The King and his party were not out of danger. German ships engaged and sank a British aircraft carrier and two destroyer escorts near the cruiser Devonshire with the loss of over 1500 men. Haakon’s crossing was another narrow escape.
Crown Princess Martha found Sweden’s maneuverings for neutrality perilous for her family. In August, Martha and her children were picked up by an American ship and spent the rest of the war under American protection in Maryland.
Finally reaching London, Haakon established a government in exile to continue leading the Norwegian resistance. Through the war, Haakon regularly made speeches that were broadcast by the BBC World Service. He also had pins made that were inspired by his monogram. They, along with Norwegian flag pins, were symbols of the resistance early in the Quisling regime.
The Nazis soon realized what these symbols meant, and a law was issued threatening jail time for anyone wearing them. What would the Norwegians still loyal to the king find as a symbol to bind them together?
The answer came initially from students who saw the humble paper clip binding their papers together. The paperclip was also usable as a symbol because a Norwegian inventor, Johan Vaaler, had received a patent for a paperclip in 1899.
If that shape is unfamiliar to you, it might be because Vaaler never succeeded in producing his paper clips in quantity. Vaaler was apparently unaware that the GEM company in England had been producing the shape familiar to the world since the 1870s. GEM had never filed for a patent so Vaaler seems to have not known about their product. An additional irony is that just before Vaaler received his patent, an American company filed for a patent for the first machine to bend steel wire into the double loop Gem design.
Nevertheless, Norwegians of every sort soon began wearing paperclips on their lapels or collars or sleeves to show their resistance to fascism. Imagine a busy street in Oslo with people scurrying to their appointments or shopping, nodding to other paperclip wearers. The people soon knew that they weren’t alone in their loyalty to King Haakon.
King Christian in Denmark spent much of the War in jail and Danish resistance never organized to the extent that Norway was able to achieve.
The paperclip provides an important clue for June and Karl in book three of the Admiral Inn Mysteries, A Pirate in the Ice. As June read the newly discovered journals on Lars Nilson, the Admiral for whom the inn is named, she discovered a paperclip on the June 25th, 1940 entry. The paperclip denotes Lars’ support of Haakon and shows a great break with his father, the pirate of the book title.
One last coda to the paperclip story: in 1989, the city of Sandvika, Norway, erected a monument to Vaaler’s paperclip. It is in the shape of a GEM paperclip. I think there are times we must honor the intent rather than the item given in appreciation.
These are the Facts of Fiction.
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