"Another Norwegian campaign is due to open. ... It will be waged against the War Cabinet in the House of Commons. . . . Chamberlain will be under fire," wrote the London Daily Mail last week as the full gravity of the Norwegian debacle filtered through the blackout of official information. That Hitler had succeeded in snatching a neutral state from under the very muzzles of British naval guns could not be denied, and Neville Chamberlain's Government teetered on the brink of its worst political crisis. Millions of Britons wanted to know, said Laborite Ellen Wilkinson, how Hitler could seize Norway "with 1,500 men and three brass bands."
The first blast of criticism was set off by Liberal Leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, big Scottish landowner, Legion of Honor hero in World War I and among Winston Churchill's closest advisers. Mentioned among the ginger groups as a possible Prime Minister because he did a good job as Secretary of State for Scotland in Ramsay Macdonald's Cabinet and yet stands well with the Tories, Sir Archibald demanded a "grand inquest." "I hope," he thundered to an Edinburgh audience, "that it is not too late for craven and irresolute counsels to be suppressed. ... I am amazed at the false prophets telling us that Hitler missed the bus, that we have turned the corner and that we are now ten times more confident than six months ago. That reminds me of the prophesy that Munich meant 'peace in our time.' "
"Successful Retirement." After dodging two attempts to smoke him out by pleading the necessity of secrecy, Prime Minister Chamberlain finally delivered a sketchy "interim" report to a sullen, worried House of Commons. Stripping the speech of reassuring forensic shocks, stupefied M. P.s learned: 1) that although aware "for many months" of German transport and troop accumulations at Baltic ports, the Allies were unprepared for a northern Nazi thrust, the troops assembled for aiding Finland having been dispersed; 2) that the mining of the Norwegian waters on April 8 coincided purely by "curious chance" with the Nazi coup; 3) that although the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway on April 8, the first British naval forces did not land at Namsos until April 14 and the first British troops arrived at Åndalsnes only on April 17; 4) that the British Navy had not succeeded in interrupting a steady stream of German reinforcements across the Skagerrak, but the Nazi Air Force had prevented the Allies from landing tanks or artillery in South Norway; 5) that the Allied troops had executed a "successful retirement."
Cold comfort next day, when it was learned that the Northwestern Expeditionary Force had pulled out of Namsos as well as Åndalsnes, were Chamberlain's assurances that "although in the face of overwhelming difficulties in the situation, it has not been possible to effect the capture of the town [Trondheim], I am satisfied that the balance of the advantage up to the present lies with the Allied forces."