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The Saving of the Norwegian Fleet in World War II Barry Farber Can you handle one more unbelievable story from World War II? I had such good luck with my last one that, like a gambler in heat, I can't resist doubling my bet and rolling again. Regular readers may recall that a little over a year ago I found myself facing an audience of Serbs in a Brooklyn park commemorating the anniversary of the liberation of the "unknown" concentration camp of Jasenovac. I suddenly remembered a story I'd read in a book entitled "From the Land of the Silent People" by war correspondent Robert St. John. It was a story I'd dropped from my repertoire because, with the sobriety of middle age, I decided it was simply unbelievable. It's the story of the "Diaper Rebellion" of March 1941. Prince Paul, the regent of Yugoslavia, had signed a pact with Hitler, in effect joining the Nazi team just like Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. The pact didn't last overnight. The third-graders – the 9-year-old children – of Belgrade marched out of their classrooms and demonstrated on the streets, shouting: "Better war than the pact! Better death than slavery!" That has a great catchy rhyme in Serbo-Croatian. They were then joined by the older students, then the faculty, the trade unionists, retired military, and finally citizens of all kinds. The growing crowd forced the ouster of the government and the renunciation of the pact and eventually the destruction of Yugoslavia by Nazi forces – but with a lot of honor! At the end of the war, Yugoslavia was on the winning side. To my amazement and delight, many in that Brooklyn crowd could verify the fact of the Diaper Rebellion and some had even taken part. I know I'm pressing my luck, but this one you've got to hear. I got it first-hand from Walter Lemon, who owned something unusual: a private, non-governmental short-wave radio station before World War II, WRUL, with offices in New York and powerful transmitters in Scituate, Massachusetts. He sold time to missionary groups broadcasting in indigenous language to South America and offered shows on things like stamp collecting in languages like Norwegian. Those shows didn't bring in any revenue, but the U.S. government, long before there was a Voice of America, subsidized WRUL, figuring who knows when America might need a voice that could be heard afar. On April 9, 1940, the Germans struck northward, occupying Denmark and Norway. At that time Norway, a country of only 3 million people, had the third-largest fleet of merchant ships in the world. Hitler wanted that prize: more ships than any other country except Britain and America and a coastline that went up as close to the North Pole as anybody would want to get.
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The instant the Germans landed in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, special squads of German troops barged into the homes of the ship owners and bundled them down to Radio Oslo in overcoats thrown over their pajamas and bedroom slippers. There, gun to their heads, they were ordered to order all their ships to return immediately to the "New [Nazi-occupied] Norway" or the nearest German, Italian, or Japanese port. You might ask, "Wouldn't the hundreds of ships' captains realize this was an order issued under duress and coercion by an invader-aggressor and go instead to an Allied port?" Not necessarily. In fact, far from it. Norway's last diplomatic protests had been directed to England, not Germany, for violation of neutral Norwegian waters by British warships. No. The German move was credible and brilliant. Walter Lemon, a nice guy trying to make a buck in an offbeat branch of radio, suddenly became a major player in a World War II drama. Lemon got a call from Norway's ambassador to Washington, Wilhelm Munthe de Morgenstjerne, begging Lemon to let him come onto WRUL's shortwave transmitters and countermand the orders from Oslo in the name of King Haakon and the Free Norwegian Government. America was still neutral in 1940, but not at all sympathetic to Nazi Germany. Lemon said, sure. Whatever you want. Ambassador Morgenstjerne got on that shortwave station and urged all Norwegian ships to ignore their orders to head for Nazi or Japanese ports and head instead for the nearest British, American, or neutral port to await further orders from a legitimate Norwegian authority, not the Quisling (Nazi) regime in Oslo. I asked Lemon what the chances were to reach any significant number of Norwegian ships with that message. Norwegian ships at sea didn't usually listen to WRUL for breaking news on stamp collecting. Right you are, said Lemon, but all they needed was one or two Norwegian ships to get the message and then relay it to every other Norwegian ship in the world.
And that was easily achieved. The result: MORE than 100 percent success. How can there be more than 100 percent success? NOT ONE SINGLE NORWEGIAN SHIP obeyed the Nazi order and delivered itself to Germany, Italy, or Japan. Okay, that makes 100 percent success. How does it become MORE than 100 percent? One Norwegian ship that happened to be in Tokyo Harbor when it got the WRUL message steamed OUT of Tokyo unimpeded by the couldn't-care-less Japanese. (Somebody should grab a Ph.D. by writing about how little love there was between Japan and its Nazi-German allies during World War II. I interviewed a German submarine captain who surfaced in Japanese-occupied Singapore during the war looking for fuel. The Japanese told them: "Look. We're not going to imprison you because you're technically our friends. However, we're very busy and we've got no time or gasoline to spare, so get lost!" They beached their sub on Borneo and waited out the war as high-tech Robinson Crusoes, with power generators from the submarine and other niceties like silverware and handguns to poach edible wildlife.) British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said the Norwegian merchant fleet was worth 1 million fighting men to the Allied cause! Was it Ben Jonson who said: "I know not what the truth might be. I tell the tale as t'was told to me"? This is what I heard from Walter Lemon, the owner of WRUL. Do you dare me to send this to a Norwegian newspaper and get their take on it? I can't promise I will, but I do promise to let you know what they say, if I do!
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