Norway changes its submarine rules

On 1 February 1917, the day Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare, Norwegian newspapers were discussing new rules on foreign submarines. A royal resolution of 30 January amended the decree of 13 October 1916 and was to take effect from 6 February. The British chronology of the war records under 1 February that Norway prohibited all foreign submarines from using its territorial waters. The text of the resolution, printed on 30 January by, among others, the daily Dagbladet, says something different, however. The ban still applied to the warships of the belligerent states. Warships of neutral states could enter Norwegian waters, as before, only by day, in good visibility, on the surface and with their flag hoisted.

The new rules relaxed the old ones on two points. A belligerent submarine that entered Norwegian waters still exposed itself to attack without warning. The exception provided for in October, however, had been worded so clumsily that it was not clear whether a submarine could seek shelter from a storm and because of damage, or only when saving human life. Now it was stated explicitly that it could do so for any of these three reasons. The submarine then had to travel on the surface, under its flag and flying an international signal explaining why it had appeared, and leave as soon as that reason ceased. Secondly, the rules no longer covered merchant submarines, such as the German Deutschland, which in the summer of 1916 had crossed to America. At the same time the navy was instructed to treat every submarine as a warship unless it was certain that it served commercial purposes.

The change was the price of a settlement with Germany. In the autumn Berlin had regarded the October decree as directed solely against itself and dictated by England, and the German minister in Kristiania, Michahelles, had demanded its withdrawal. According to the Norwegian historian Wilhelm Keilhau, who studied the files of the Norwegian foreign ministry, Germany was, however, interested above all in trade, especially in Norwegian fish, which under an agreement of August 1916 went mainly to the British. The Foreign Minister, Nils Claus Ihlen, played for time. On 2 December the government, in a secret instruction to the navy, adopted the interpretation of the exceptions that Germany wanted, and on 23 January 1917 it concluded a provisional trade agreement with Germany. In it Norway undertook not to ban the export of nickel, molybdenum, carbide, ferrosilicon, calcium nitrate and canned fish before 1 March. The resolution of 30 January made public what had been agreed in December. Germany had approved its content in advance, and on 9 February Michahelles declared that his government considered the matter closed. Keilhau observed that after the threats of October, Berlin was in the end satisfied with a change that amounted mainly to inserting the single word “or” into a clumsily constructed sentence.

The government of Prime Minister Gunnar Knudsen had more serious worries in those weeks. Since the beginning of January Britain had been withholding coal exports to Norway in order to force it to stop selling pyrites to Germany. When on 31 January Germany announced its blockade zones, Ihlen asked Michahelles whether ships in them would be sunk without warning. He was told that this had to be reckoned with, because every ship in the closed area would be regarded as hostile. On 1 February the Bergenske shipping company suspended sailings from Bergen to Newcastle, the fastest passenger and mail connection between Russia and Britain. In the following days Norway declined to follow the example of the United States, which broke off relations with Germany on 3 February, and decided, together with Sweden and Denmark, to protest against the German blockade.

The rules themselves had little military significance. German submarines did not sail through Norwegian waters on the surface, and submerged they could pass through them heedless of the Norwegian patrol boats. Ships under the Norwegian flag, meanwhile, were paying an ever higher price. According to Keilhau, in March 1917 Norway lost more than 106,000 tons of shipping, more than France and the United States combined, and in April more than 102,000 tons. The dispute over whether Norwegian waters were really closed to German submarines lasted until the end of the war.