Word: norwegians
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...version was that Norway's customs authorities at Bergen went aboard the Altmark but, honoring her service flag, did not search her. Norwegian officials claimed that the ship was stopped first outside of Trondhjem Fjord, did not call at any port. A Norwegian gunboat was assigned to escort her through Norway's territorial waters as she made for her home port, Hamburg...
...British Navy has sharp-eyed friends in Norway. The Altmark had not proceeded more than 100 miles south of Bergen, closely hugging the craggy, fjord-bitten coast, before three big British reconnaissance planes swooped low over her. Soon after, with express Admiralty orders to do so, into Norwegian waters from their stations on North Sea patrol raced a British cruiser and five destroyers. The destroyer Intrepid halted the Altmark, but while Captain Philip Louis Vian of the senior destroyer Cossack had words with the Norwegian gunboat's commander, the Altmark slid into Joesing Fjord, a deep, narrow, dead...
After dark came the Admiralty's command: go in and rescue the Altmark'?, prisoners, with or without Norway's permission. Captain Vian at once took his Cos sack into the fjord again. He went aboard the Norwegian gunboat Kjell, invited her commander to lead a British boarding party which would find out for certain about prisoners on the Altmark. The Norwegian declined, but went aboard the Cossack, which proceeded up the moonlit fjord to its precipitous end, where the Altmark had got fast in pack...
...this Altmark affair, international law was fractured. First, Great Britain argued that Norway violated international law when the Altmark was allowed to pro ceed through neutral waters with concealed prisoners of war. Moreover, said Britain, the Norwegian authorities obviously shut their eyes to the Altmark'?, true character. The British Admiralty, in ordering a raid in neutral waters, certainly was breaking international law right & left, regardless of its excuses. While Berlin snarled horrendous but vague threats of reprisal at both Britain and Norway, the London Times heartily observed that the Battle of Punta del Este would have lacked a fitting...
Norway was good and mad. Early this week Norwegian Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht, in a special statement before the Storting, let Great Britain have a piece of the Norseman's mind: "Lord Halifax was of the belief that the Altmark had been in Bergen although the ship had not been in any Norwegian harbor. ..." Further snapped Foreign Minister Koht: ". . . The British Government is of "the opinion that it can neglect ordinary international law. . . . The [Norwegian] Government cannot believe that the British Government, when having thought the case over, will not acknowledge that it is in open conflict with...