Chapter 1: Lessons of the Great War.
I am Mister Teodor Maxmillian Tangen. No that is not me on the picture, that is our King Haakon. Now you see when mr. Hitler got elected to power our king said that we will have war in the end of the decade. Now it is 1939 and war have not yet erupted. But I am of the same opinion as our king and our government are not. I were therefore specifically hired by our king to talk some sense into our government. War will soon be upon us and we need to prepare for it.
In case you do not know it is the 14th of August 1939. Our government refuse to believe that we will be an obvious target for the war, but we will. Mr. Hitler himself have openly said that he will not face the same fate as in the Great War. That is he will get free sea access and use our land as a leverage to the United Kingdom. Even during the Great War the German Kaiser Wilhelm resided with his yatch, as you can see, in Norway. The British intended to sink his ship, but they escaped. Even then our fleet were active in the Great War even if we were neutral. We were the fourth largest maritime force, and is still among the greatest, and 49% of our tradefleet got lost. 2000 sailors lost their lives, no other power in the Great War lost more civilian sailors than us. And if we are to believe from the lessons of the Great War both Germany and UK intend to bring us to their side by force if necessary.
As you can see one of my first course of action were to guarantee the indepence of Finland. That is because that dreadful Stalin most likely want to spread communism and see Finland as an integral part of Russia as it were until the Great War. Now this did cost me some poltical power and perhaps I should only send voulenteers to Finland. But we Nordic and neutral nations need to stand together against Fascism and Communism! My actions even moved Canada so much that they are sending us kind words every day.
Now another reason for why we might end up in war is because of Sweden. No they do not intend to invade us. They have respected that we became independent in 1905, we were strong then and they respected that. We even engaged in a minor arms race! But in Kiruna Sweden got a lot of natural resources. Currently those can only be shipped to, and through, our port of Narvik. This make Narvik vital for both Germany and UK. This is a reason for why Narvik and Sweden may become vital in the upcoming war. While we're talking about trade, as you can see we are currently important oil from UK and steel from Sweden. This is because of our re-armament, which I will come back to later. I chose to deal with Sweden as they are right next to me, and UK over Germany simply because the British are much more edible and reliable.
It have been much talk of politics, so let me introduce you to it. This is our government. AP, Labor Party, have a massive majority. That is not weird considering the second greatest party the Conservatives have disapperead. Now the Socialist AP suddenly turned Conservative, I can only assume they and the Conservatives merged to one great party. Now I do not have that much political pwoer anymore, I lost much in order to recruit new generals, admirals and hire advisorsand so on. But as you can see our economy is based upon a civilian one. That is no surprise of course, but I intend to turn it into an economy geared for war and have greater conscription.
For companies I chosen Raufoss to research new small arms and Norsk Hydro to better synthethise oil which we will need. I will come back to that. I also hired Konrad Stundlo as our foremost theorist. He will research various military tactics and strategies.
For the general staff I chose Kristian Laake as the chief of the Army. The reason is he focus on the defense, the other guy on the offensive. When the commies or nazis come we need to defend not attack. For the navy I chose Henry Diesen since he focus on traditional ships, the other guy focused on carriers. We have none! Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen is the chief of our mighty airforce, and he will focus on bad weather. That is great as we have lots of bad weather in Norway. I am sure Stalin and der Luftwaffel tremble at the thought of Norwegian fighters in blizzards. Now I also employed Wilhelm von Tangen-Hansteen as part of the Military High Command. He focus on infantry, the backbone of our armed forces. When I get more political power I will convince the pacifist to hire more military men and to gear our economy and conscription toward war.
So this is the grand Norwegian army in 1939. I organised the army into two groups: Northern Army and Souther Army. The Northern Army is composed of two infantry divisions, one brigade and one dragoon regiment. Their primary goal is to protect the border against USSR and aid eventually aid Finland. Their goal is also to protect Narvik. They are led by General Fleischer who is experienced and even a trickster and winter expert - perfect for the conditions of northern Norway and Finland! In the south I had to spend political power in order to hire a new general. He is fresh from the War Academy, but he will do for now. The Southern Army is composed of three infantry divisions and two dragoon regiments. Their task is to protect the major cities and industrial areas in the south. Other actions I did were to add a batallion of artillery in the infantry divisions. In hindsight I should perhaps only made support elements and not entire batallions. This of course cost political power. I also gave the order for both armies to excercise and prepare for war. It is good to see that all my men doing pushups and squats! This will make them strong!
Now for the Sea Defense, or Navy as you may call it, is grand but old. Currently we have the Norge Class as our Heavy Cruisers. At the current speed however they take five years to produce, but they are the pride of our fleet and we currently have four of these monsters. We also have Destroyers named Draug Class, named after Norse Zombies. Then it is the B Class which is our submarines. We saw the horrors of the German submarines during the great war as they sunk 49% of our convoys. I intend to focus on them in the future to repel invaders coming on the high seas.
Other than that our Navy is divided into three districts. 1. District is the grandest with plenty of submarines and heavy cruisers. They are based in the port in southern Norway and led by Admiral Corneliussen. 2. District is based in Bergen and is led by Admiral Sunde and is composed of three destroyers. District 3 is in northern Norway and is composed of two heavy cruisers and two submarines and led by Admiral Hauge. District one is supposed to protect Oslo, 2 is to protect Bergen and western Norway and 3 is to protect Narvik. I had to use political power to employ Admiral Sunde and Hauge too. Admiral Corneliussen is experienced and said to spot others faster than normal.
Now behold our great airforce. As you can see it is bad weather, so it was wise of me to hire that guy to be chief of the air force. Now we currently only have two wings north of Oslo. Those are fighters and tactical bombers, and all are outdated. This is troublesome as in Norway alone we got two major flight zones and three more along the coast. We need to improve our air force, we can not rely on blizzards alone.
Then it is reserch. I ordered the scientists to develop new weapons. Our rifle Krag Jørgensen is fine and dandy, but we need to modernize our army. So Raufoss is developing new submachine guns and anti-tank weapons. Interesting times! Also it is a shame that Norway the land of the mountains don't have soldiers specialized in mountain warfare. We need to be prepared when the German and Austrian Gebirgsjäger assault us. Lastly our military scientists are developing new ways of defense when we are invaded, and to think of new doctrines. We have too much old weapons, planes and ships, so at the very least our thinking need to be new!
As you can see our industry is not the best. We too felt the effects of the great depression, and after that the Communists took over in the form of the Labor Party. Then they split due to the dreaded USSR, and now AP is even more moderate as they have gone conservative. Still they did manage to build a potent enough industry, but mostly focused on civilian goods. I aim to transform it into a greater military power. And as you know Norway have no oil. We are not oil nation at all. So I am focusing on building oil refineries to gain oil we need for our production. Also our infrastructure is OK enough, but could be better in middle and northern Norway. Also we have no radar stations to listen to the chatting of the Swedes, and no AA batteries. We need to imrpove on this aswell if we are not to lose an invasion from land, sea and air by the Commies or Nazis.
Finally it is what I have ordered the workers to produce. That is submarines and convoys. Submarines is the key to controlling our fjords, and you can never have enough convoys (I think). We are also producing artillery for our new artillery battalions and our divisions out in the field training need new weapons and support gear. Initially I produced Submarines and Destroyers and airplanes, but they costed to much oil and steel. However now I have more oil and steel from trading with Sweden and Britain.
So this is how the Norway is in August 39. The world is getting more tense, and I am sure Germany, USSR or UK will invade us. And we need to be prepared for that. But to sum it up: We are low on manpower, little political will and outdated army, navy and airforce and industry. I intend to reform our entire system before the war break lose. I am optimistic, but if I can't reform and transform society and our military until then only God and great courage can save us!