GIGANTIC CONSPIRACY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 117, 16 April 1940, Page 7

GIGANTIC CONSPIRACY

STORY OF GERMAN CONQUEST BRIBERY, AUDACITY AND TREASON (United Press Association.-—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) Received April 16, 10.35 a.m. NEW YORK, April 15. A copyright article in the Chicago Daily News by Leyland Stowe, from Stockholm, for the first time gives the story behind Germany’s paralysing twelve-hour conquest of Norwayon Tuesday last. He says the Norwegians still have not the slightest conception of how the tragedy happened. Oslo and the seaports were not captured by means of armed force. They were seized as the result of a gigantic conspiracy ranking among the most audacious and best-oiled political plots in the last century. By bribery, the infiltration of Nazi agents, and the treason of a few highly-placed army and civilian officials, the Germans built a Trojan horse, spiked the navy’s guns, and reduced the fortresses to impotence.

FAKED ORDERS. It is most reliably stated that German troopships sailed on the night of April 4—three days before the British mined the Norwegian coast; also, that the German generals strongly opposed the invasion on the grounds that communications would bo dangerously exposed. Continuing, Leyland Stowe says'that on the night of April 5 the German Legation at Oslo invited two hundred influential people to see a film of the destruction of Poland, after which the Minister explained that it was a peace, not war, film, since it showed that nations electing peace saved their people from suffering. Three and a half hours before the Norwegian Foreign Minister (Professor .Koht) received the ultimatum on April 9 the commanders of three Norwegian warships at Horten were ordered, ostensibly by the Foreign Office, to land crews unarmed and not to oppose the Germans. Meanwhile the mines in the Oslo Fiord narrows were disconnected, enabling German penetration. A cruiser, believed to be the Emden, and two submarines reached Horten half an hour before Professor Koht received the ultimatum. The Norwegians were helpless, but the minelayer Olaf Trygvason. which, returning unexpectedly for repairs, had not received the faked orders blocked the entrance and torpedoed the cruiser and one submarine.