Okay, so I've been doing some more frantic thinking and plotting about this and I
think I've come up with a semi-plausible framework for all of this. I'm conscious that at some point I just have to go "I'm writing this, minutiae be damned" otherwise I'll enter a self-doubt spiral, but I do want it to not have too many holes to poke in it
(I have a new-found greater level of respect for all SLP authors now btw, especially yourself and Roem, not to mention
@Thande and
@iainbhx - I'm tying myself in knots over a relatively minor change, I don't know how the hell you guys figure this stuff out)
So I think it's fairly realistic that, in the last few hours of his life, if Hitler was reminded of Norway and the fact that 350,000 troops were sitting pretty doing nothing, and that the Norwegian resistance had always been a thorn in his side, his shattered sanity could go 'let it all burn' - after all, he tried to get von Choltitz to burn Paris in 1944 when he was in far better condition, and made some pretty good attempts to wreck Berlin before Speer called off the worst of it.
And for Norway, there is no Speer or von Choltitz. Instead you have
Reichskommissar Terboven and SS-Leader Rediess - and even for dedicated Nazis they're depraved fuckers - even skimming their Wikipedia entries makes me feel faintly nauseous at times. Terboven
dynamited himself for fucks sake, which is a pretty fanatical way to go even for the Nazi hierarchy, so I absolutely buy that if Hitler said
Norwegen verbrennen then they'd be strapping on the flamethrowers before he even finished speaking, especially as they've got nothing to lose - they're Subjects 1 and 2 for Nuremberg and they know it. General Bohme could be in the role of spoiler, but I have plans for him.
Now I'm not imagining this to be a long-running campaign - by its very nature this is going to be a short but hideous fight - models would be Warsaw 1944 and what was proposed to be done to Paris in '44. A week, ten days at most. There aren't an inexhaustible number of SS after all, and as
@David Flin says there's going to be a huge number of your average Hans and Fritz' who are going to fight back, even if only to stop being associated with the nutters.
But given that the Doomsday planning had been in place for months, and 1st Airborne was ready to go by 1st May, it seems logical that if the SS and whoever they've got with them (Quisling and co. maybe, with some Wehrmacht) are dynamiting, burning, and shooting anything and anyone they can get their hands on; Milorg are desperately fighting back and screaming for help; and King Haakon is urging Churchill and Alanbrooke to
do something my people are dying then I can see 1st Airborne and anything else they've got being sent into Oslo and Stavanger asap to do whatever they can. "Let them fight" is absolutely a valid point, but I don't think it would stand if Rediess is recreating Warsaw But It's Snowy
Does that seem at least semi-plausible?
