that "war had already started". Koht and the cabinet fled Norway's capital in the morning of 9 April. Even though Koht rejected Bräuer's initial contact, he did convince the cabinet to listen to further German proposals for negotiations later the same day. All Norwegian negotiations with the Germans ended after a failed attempt to capture the Norwegian king and government in Midtskogen early on 10 April. Koht was willing to take up the fight against the invaders. He wrote several key speeches, some of which were delivered by King Haakon VII, to convey staunch resistance to the German demands. Vital to the Norwegian effort to try to halt the German advance was assistance from the Allies, which Koht requested in the early hours of 9 April, although skeptical of the potential of Allied aid. When the rest of the government fled from Molde to Tromsø, landing on 1 May, Koht and Ljungberg (Minister of Defense) continued from there with the cruiser HMS Glasgow to London. Here, from 5 May they negotiated with British government representatives (Lord Halifax, Chamberlain and Admiral Philips) on British aid to Norway. Koht also made a radio speech from London on the BBC, broadcasting to Norway, and a speech on American radio. On 8 and 9 May he met Reynaud, Gamelin and Daladier in Paris. The Norwegian Ministers departed from London on 11 May, arriving back in Norway on 17 May. The talks with the Allies resulted in concrete promises and plans for large French reinforcements for the Norwegian front. These plans were however abandoned by the Allies on 24 May 1940, following the worsening situation for the Allies in France, and an evacuation decided. Koht was informed by British Minister to Norway Sir Cecil Dormer on 1 June that the Allied Forces had decided to retreat from Norway, owing to the difficult situation at the Western Front. In response to the Allied decision to evacuate, the cabinet sent Koht to Luleå in Sweden to try to reinvigorate a previously rejected plan to create a demarcation line between the Germans and Norwegian in Northern Norway. Swedish troops were planned to occupy Narvik. The plan was named the Mowinckel plan, after its initiator, the former prime minister Johan Ludwig Mowinckel. During a meeting with the Swedish minister of foreign affairs, Christian Günther, who was to act as a middle man with Germans in relation to the plan,