7 Dec.
45
given orders to the Air Force to
make use of Norwegian bases for air warfare against Britain. That is the
lst of March. And this is the memorandum which was produced as an excuse
on the 9th of April. The last two paragraphs of the German memorandum to
Norway and Denmark, the Court may think, are a classic Nazi combination
of diplomatic hypocrisy and military threat. They read:
"The
Reich Government thus expect that the Royal Norwegian Government and
the Norwegian people will respond with understanding to the German
measures and offer no resistance to them. Any resistance would have to
be and would be broken by all possible means by the German forces
employed, and would therefore lead only to absolutely useless
bloodshed. The Royal Norwegian Government are therefore requested to
take all measures with the greatest speed to ensure that the advance
of the German troops can take place without friction and difficulty.
In the spirit of the good German-Norwegian relations that have always
existed, the Reich Government declare to the Royal Norwegian
Government that Germany has no intention of infringing by her measures
the territorial integrity and political independence of the Kingdom of
Norway now or in the future."
What
the Nazis meant by the protection of the Kingdom of Norway was shown by
their conduct on the 9th of April. I now refer the Court to Document
TC-56, which will be Exhibit GB-93, which is a report by the
Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Norwegian Forces. It is at the beginning
of the document book, the last of the TC documents.
I will not
trouble the Court with the first page of the report. If the Tribunal
will turn to the second page:
"The
Germans, considering the long lines of communications and the threat
of the British Navy, clearly understood the necessity of complete
surprise and speed in the attack. In order to paralyze the will of the
Norwegian people to defend their country and at the same time to
prevent Allied intervention, it was planned to capture all the more
important towns along the coast simultaneously. Members of the
Government and Parliament and other military and civilian people
occupying important positions were to be arrested before organized
resistance could be put into effect and the King was to be forced to
form a new government with Quisling as its head."
The
next paragraph was read by the learned British Attorney General in his
speech and I will only refer to the last paragraph but one: