PLOTTING THE STRIKE NORTH

Ahead of his push west, Hitler launched a pre-emptive assault on neutral Scandinavia to secure iron ore supplies and Nazi control of the North Sea

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On 14 December 1939, far-right Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling was invited to a secret meeting with Adolf Hitler. The encounter took place in the newly finished Reich Chancellery in Berlin. With its towering 17ft (5m) doors, gargantuan statues and lofty ceilings, this monument to the might of National Socialism was designed to both impress and subjugate those who visited it. “On the long walk from the entrance to the reception hall,” its architect Albert Speer would later recall Hitler saying of it, “they’ll get a taste of the power and grandeur of the German Reich!” The building certainly had the desired effect on Quisling. By the time his chat with Hitler was over he’d agreed to betray his country, setting in motion a series of events that would condemn it to five years of brutal Nazi occupation.

Hitler had been encouraged to take the meeting with Quisling by Erich Raeder, the grand admiral of his Kriegsmarine. By then, the war was only a few months old. Hitler had conquered Poland and was now focusing his attention on planning the blitzkrieg that would soon sweep through Western Europe. Raeder’s concerns over who controlled the North Sea, however, had got him thinking. If the Kriegsmarine were to have any hope of accessing the world’s oceans, it would need to control the North Sea. Keeping Norway’s naval bases out of Allied hands, Raeder argued, was essential to achieve that aim.