Festung Europa by Jon Kacer

Author:Jon Kacer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sea Lion Press

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The foreign reaction to the Reich’s apparent panic over the failure of Operation Condor was initially subtle, although parts of it became public knowledge within weeks of the battle. Perhaps the most damaging to the immediate Nazi war effort was the announcement by Sweden that it would not be renewing iron ore contracts beginning with August shipments to German companies due to better prices being offered for ore by US Steel and a partnership of British Steel firms. While presented as a purely business decision, it was the first of a series of steps taken by Sweden to alter its foreign policy from neutrality with a reluctant preference for the Reich to neutrality with a slight lean toward the West. Despite thunderous threats to Stockholm, Berlin’s leader found that their ability to punish the Swedes was extremely limited. Orders to SS units in northern Norway to attack Swedish positions were, in the main, responded to with requests for fuel and other supplies that would allow Panzer units to withdraw from the defensive line being held against the Allies to the North where they could strike against the Swedes. In the rare cases where SS units actually attempted to move against the Swedes as ordered they found themselves targeted by Allied air assets or repulsed by Swedish forces (these short, sharp fights included the combat debut of the Carl Gustav anti-tank weapon by Swedish troops).

While the Swedish action was open for all to see, there were also other, far more subtle activities in Madrid and in Lisbon where Spanish and Portuguese diplomats found themselves being used as messengers for trial balloons sent by the Fascist Governments of Belgium and Denmark, as well as more substantive discussions with the Finnish Government (these Finnish overtures resulted in the August 17 Memorandum of Understanding between Finland and the Allies which effectively moved the Finns into the status of neutrals, cutting the final reasonably secure overland connection between the Reich and SS forces in Norway).

At the same time as the diplomatic flurry of activity on the Iberian Peninsula, the Apostolic Nuncio to Her Majesty’s Government in London presented a letter from the King of Italy to the Prime Minister. The specific contents of this letter are still unknown, having been placed into the British Government Archives for a period of 75 years, but the letter is widely seen as a first halting effort by the Italian Government to begin a dialogue for a negotiated peace. As the Allies had, as early as 1942, proclaimed that any surrender would be accepted only if it was unconditional, it is unclear why the Calallero government (which had succeeded Mussolini upon Il Duce’s death following his 1953 heart attack) would have made such a proposal. Perhaps the release of the original letter and the related British Government documents in 2033 will shed light on this curious matter.

The various Allied government were clearly encouraged by these cracks appearing in the edges of “Fortress Europe”, although the encouragement was more than

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