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To my father
In Norway, three great power lines cross: the German, the Russian and the British.
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On 19 September, Churchill for the first time drew the attention of the War Cabinet to the issue of Swedish iron ore to Germany. He fully supported the recently initiated negotiations for chartering the Norwegian merchant fleet, but urged diplomatic pressure be applied to halt German ore traffic inside the Norwegian Leads. Failing this, Churchill said, he would be compelled to propose more drastic measures such as ‘the laying of mines inside Norwegian territorial waters [to] drive the ore-carrying vessels outside the three-mile limit’. The Cabinet accepted the importance of the ore import for Germany, but would give no support to try to sever it, beyond diplomatic means. First of all, German ore ships leaving Narvik had virtually ceased after the outbreak of war. Secondly, the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoS) had two weeks earlier stated in a note to the War Cabinet that in view of Norway’s economic importance to Germany, Berlin was unlikely to violate Norwegian neutrality, unless provoked by an Allied intervention or an interference with the iron-ore supplies. Last but not least, there was fear of negative reactions from the USA and other neutral countries if Britain were to violate Scandinavian neutrality.
By mid-November, the Admiralty had developed plans for how and where the Royal Navy could ‘. . . control the approaches to Narvik by naval forces in order to divert German iron ore imports to Great Britain.’ On 30 November, Churchill brought to the War Cabinet a report he had received a few days earlier from the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), concluding that ‘complete stoppage of Swedish exports of iron ore to Germany would, barring unpredictable developments, end the war in a few months’ – a conclusion based on the complete and sustained severing of the whole Swedish ore supply, not only that through Narvik. Churchill asserted that during the coming winter the Baltic would be closed by ice and the export confined to the Leads, where even small minefields would force the ore ships into international waters where the Royal Navy could intercept those bound for Germany.
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