740.0011 EW/4–3045: Telegram
The Ambassador to the Norwegian Government in Exile (Osborne) to the Secretary of State
[Received 8:43 p.m.]
Noweg 71. Acting Foreign Minister Terje Wold sent for me this afternoon.
1. He said he had received a note from Christopher Warner, head of the Northern Department of the British Foreign Office, stating that on April 21 the Secretary temporarily in charge of the British Legation at Stockholm had informed the Swedish Foreign Minister of the British Government’s regret that the Swedish Government had refused to comply with the request contained in the Norwegian aide-mémoire of April 12; and that on April 26 the British Minister to Sweden urged the Swedish Foreign Minister not to commit the Swedish Government, at the secret meeting of the Swedish Riksdag to be held on April 27, to a negative course in connection with the Norwegian request.
[Page 81]Mr. Wold again expressed the hope that the U.S. Government would give similar support in Stockholm to the Norwegian Government’s démarche.
2. Mr. Wold said that the Norwegian Minister in Stockholm had recently been approached by a prominent Swedish businessman in close touch with the Swedish Foreign Office, who submitted a detailed plan for the surrender, under certain conditions, of the Wehrmacht in Norway, which the Minister had reported to the Government here. He had been instructed in reply to tell the intermediary that nothing but unconditional surrender would be acceptable and that in any case arrangements relating to German surrender were a matter for the Allied military authorities to deal with.
Mr. Wold expressed considerably more optimism than hitherto concerning the possibility of German surrender in Norway.