Hitler Strikes North

The Nazi Invasion of Norway and Denmark, 9 April 1940

Jack Greene, Alessandro Massignani

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781526781840
• eBook ISBN: 9781783469772
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

A detailed account of Germany's groundbreaking Operation Weserübung, the first three dimensional—land, sea, air—strategic invasion in history.
 
The German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940 brought a sudden and shocking end to the "Phoney War" in the West. In a single day, multiple seaborne and airborne landings established German forces ashore in Norway, overwhelming the unprepared Norwegian forces and catching the Allied Powers completely by surprise. Their belated response was ill-thought-out and badly organized, and by June 9 all resistance had formally ended.
 
The strategic importance of Scandinavian iron ore, shipped through the port of Narvik to Germany, was the main cause of the campaign. The authors show how Allied attempts to interdict these supplies provoked German plans to secure them, and also how political developments in the inter-war years resulted in both Denmark and Norway being unable to deter threats to their neutrality despite having done so successfully in the First World War. The German attack was their first "joint" air, sea, and land operation, making large-scale use of air-landing and parachute forces, and the Luftwaffe's control of the air throughout the campaign would prove decisive. Although costly, particularly for the Kriegsmarine, it was a triumph of good planning, improvisation and aggressive, determined action by the troops on the ground.
 
Making full use of Norwegian, Danish, and German sources, this book is a full and fascinating account of this highly significant campaign and its aftermath both for the course of the Second World War and the post-war history of the two countries conquered with such unprecedented speed.

CHAPTER 1

The Setting

Churchill and Hitler put their trust in bold and unconventional operations and, because of their inadequate defence policies, the Northern countries provided for outsiders open and tempting doors for such actions.

W. M. Carlgren¹

On 9 April 1940 Germany invaded Norway and Denmark. The German navy led this invasion, the only major amphibious operation that it would conduct in the Second World War and the first major ‘joint operation’ carried out in the history of the world. Its success would be a model for all joint operations that would follow into the twenty-first century.

Germany invaded primarily to protect the high-quality iron ore coming from Swedish mines, much of it transported in the winter months from the northern Norwegian ice-free port of Narvik. This resource was vital in producing the steel needed for Germany’s war machine. Without it, Germany would have had to severely reduce its war production. The loss of Narvik would also cut off the smaller amount of iron ore exported to the Allies. Speeding north on the night of April 8–9, in the teeth of a violent storm, 10 destroyers of Warship Group 1 carried 2,000 troops charged with securing Narvik.

This mission was the longest of eleven missions for the German navy that night fielded against Norway and Denmark, in addition to independent German army and air force (Luftwaffe) operations. Commodore Friedrich Bonte, commander of all German destroyers, led Warship Group 1. He flew his flag on the destroyer Wilhelm Heidkamp. Also in the Heidkamp was Major General Eduard Dietl, commander of the 3rd Mountain Division.

The 3rd Mountain Division was the German army’s only veteran unit in the initial invasion forces. It had seen some minor action in the Polish campaign of 1939. But this force represented only a stripped down Alpine regiment, with elements of mountain engineers and mountain signals battalions. Also boarding the destroyers were a few German marine coast defence personnel, some Luftwaffe AA personnel and several naval communication staffers. Some of these men would be lost overboard in the heaving seas and most arrived very seasick. Valuable military equipment that was not properly lashed down was also damaged or lost in the gale-force winds and seas battering the German destroyers.

Warship Group 1 reached the more southern point of Lofoten Islands off Narvik at about 23:00 on 8 April and entered the Vestfjord–the outer approach to Narvik. By midnight the force was well inside the fjord where the waters were calmer, a welcome relief to the many thoroughly seasick mountain troops. At 03:20 on 9 April, the Norwegian patrol vessel Kelt reported that nine German destroyers, travelling at high speed, had passed through Vestfjord and entered the Ofot Fjord. The tenth German destroyer was straggling behind, but the German destroyers were all in Norwegian territory, steaming for the port of Narvik.

What had brought Germany, Norway and Denmark and the allies to this point so early in the Second World War?

In 1940 Norway was a constitutional monarchy led by King Haakon VII, king since independence in 1905, with a population of some 2,964,000. It is a long, narrow country–Oslo is closer to Paris than it is to Norway’s own North cape. Bounded in the far north by a short border with Finland, Norway shares most of its border to the east with the more populous Sweden. To its south lies the Skagerrak and Denmark, while to the west are the Norwegian and North Seas. Until the eve of the Second World War, when the Soviet Union came to pose a real threat in the light of the 1939–40 Russo-Finnish War, Norway had prepared its chief military defences against Sweden.

The physical nature of Norway is important when discussing the coming campaign. Norway is a long, narrow country with the majority of its population located in the south in relatively small centres. Very mountainous with little cover, half of the land is at an elevation greater than 2,000ft. There is only one major river, the Glomma River that roughly parallels the Swedish border and empties into the Kattegat near the Swedish border. It played a very minor role in the campaign. While Norway had a vibrant maritime industry, including robust sea communications, it had inadequate and slow land connections. Only 3 per cent of Norway was under cultivation. With trees present at lower elevations, most of the Norwegian valleys held only small homes and villages.²

The Norwegian interior is quite mountainous with several peaks 5,000 to 6,000ft, with large glaciers. There is a large uplifted interior plateau with a depression around the Trondheim area. This plateau has many deep-cut valleys from water and glacier activity and numerous mountains. This extends toward the west where it falls into the sea. The average elevation of Norway is 1,500ft. Because Norway lies so far north, the tree line is at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000ft.

There are three major cities in Norway. The capital and largest city is Oslo, followed by Bergen and Norway’s second largest economic engine, the ancient capital of Trondheim.³ The latter two cities were linked by rail to Oslo. Outside of Oslo most roads were narrow and unpaved.⁴ The Oslo region was the heart of the nation and its primary farming and industrial centre. It was also the hub of all the railways and roads that were the transportation network for both Norway and for communications with Sweden. Trondheim lies in the centre of Norway, but north of it are sparsely populated and even more rugged lands.

Norway operated a small armaments complex centred in the town of Kongsberg, a few miles west of Oslo. Norway also manufactured and assembled some warplanes at Kjeller airfield, north-east of Oslo, and built small warships at Horten in the lower Oslofjord.

Stavanger in the south was an important city with a small seaplane base. Sola, 8 miles to the south-east, was a relatively large and modern civilian airfield that also operated military aircraft and had the distinction of being the nearest continental airbase to the vital British naval base of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. Sola would be an important strategic position during the campaign.

Isolated far to the north was Narvik, set deep inside a fjord and with a population of about 10,000 people. The outer fjord was known as the Vestfjord and was protected from the west by the Lofoten Islands. Narvik was the railhead for the shipment of high-quality iron ore from Sweden during the winter months when the Baltic was frozen. Narvik’s ore was shipped almost entirely within territorial waters through ‘The Leads’ to the hungry German war factories. The Leads is a series of numerous islands that allow ships to travel almost totally between the coastline and islands the length of Norway’s western coast and importantly in wartime remain within territorial limits. This coastal route contains upwards of 150,000 rocky islands of various sizes jutting out of the sea. The British knew German merchant ships used this safe route and as one British author of that time correctly put it, ‘German war vessels also had, we claimed, used that route.’⁵

The invasion of Norway came about because of this iron ore. Sweden and Germany in the course of the early part of the Second World War made a series of quota adjustments, primarily in the flow of ore from Baltic ports, which is often missed in many studies on this war. In the full course of the war Germany received significant amounts of the iron ore that was needed for its war machine from Sweden.⁶

North of Narvik lie minor ports, small coastal fishing villages and many islands, while in the Finnmark region that borders Finland there is a significant Finnish minority. At the time of the German invasion, Norway had its strongest force, the 6th Field Brigade, consisting of four mobilised infantry battalions and supporting units, located in the far north to guard against a Soviet incursion. This force had been deployed in response to the Soviet-Finnish ‘Winter War’ that had just concluded in March 1940.

In April Scandinavia is cold, dark and, as one moves west to east from the relatively milder coastal areas, temperatures drop and snow becomes heavier. The winter of 1939–40 was one of the coldest on record. During the campaign there was anywhere from a 6in to 3ft of snow on the ground, with more in the higher elevations and away from the coast. One British veteran of the campaign considered one March in Norway worse than when he served in Somalia, Ethiopia and Burma.⁷ Thaw in central Norway does not begin until May, and lingers into June in the north. Vegetation changes to a more arctic variety as one proceeds inland and north.

Between Trondheim and Oslo there are two major land routes, essentially long river valleys allowing north to south movement and this would shape the course of the fighting in Norway. One is the Gudbrandsdalen (or Gudbrandsdal) and the other to the northeast is Østerdalen. Both are areas of uplift, narrow valleys and difficult terrain, though the latter is more open and the valleys are not as steep. The Gudbrandsdalen goes from dombås via Lillehammer to Oslo, while Østerdalen is from Røros through Elverum to Oslo and lies closer to the Swedish frontier. Both routes also contained the strategic railway connecting Oslo with Trondheim, rejoining together at Støren just outside Trondheim. The reader may refer to the map of Norway (see p. xvi) and the two rail lines to understand where the two important inland valleys are. Farming was a carried on in these valleys but was not extensive.⁸

This central part of Norway would define the fighting withdrawal that first the Norwegians, later joined by the British, would undertake during the month of April. In this war there were no wide fronts; instead, narrow valleys created powerful defensive positions at choke points into and out of these areas. Destroyed bridges, explosive-induced landslides and felled trees lying across the rough roads were a part of the landscape that April in those two valleys. This resulted in having only small numbers of troops at any point in combat and this, in turn, would keep the overall losses relatively light during three months of almost continuous skirmishing punctuated with some heavy fighting.

These same mountains create numerous and deep fjords, Norway’s distinguishing coastal feature. Oslofjord leads to Oslo and has gentler slopes than the fjords of the west coast. The remaining fjords, with the exception of Trondheim because of the depression in which it is set, tend to be sharp, high and with deep waters. North of Bergen is Sognefjord, 136 miles long and up to 4,290ft deep, the largest and deepest. Although naval mines are one of the important defensive weapons employed by a weaker naval power, they were not extensively used in this campaign. Norway had an extensive stock of them but they were not placed until after war broke out. They are essentially shallow water weapons and the depth of the fjords made them difficult to mine.

In September 1939, Norway had the fourth largest merchant fleet in the world, including many modern tankers that would prove vital in the coming war years. In mid-November, Norway had chartered its largest merchant ships to Great Britain, which while financially rewarding had angered Germany. Britain also received substantial shipments of iron ore and nitrates from Norway and Sweden.

Norway also supplied domestically produced iron ore (only about one-tenth of Swedish production and not of high quality), wood pulp, fish (especially herring) and whale oil to Germany. Beginning in 1936 Germany had increased the importation of these items to stockpile them in the event of war. By establishing a benchmark for the importation of these items, the increase would be viewed when the war came as ‘normal trade’ and therefore technically could not be interfered with by the Allies in a blockade. Norway was also a producer of aluminum made from bauxite from Yugoslavia, as well as some minor amounts of other important minerals.⁹

But it was the Swedish iron ore shipped through the Norwegian port of Narvik that was the issue driving Germany and the Allies towards war over Norway.

Early in the war the Allies wanted to hurt Germany’s war economy on two fronts. One was to try to deprive it of oil, primarily from the Romanian fields, and the other was to cut or completely curtail the supply of Swedish iron ore. One of Britain’s first actions with the outbreak of war was to prepare for coming to the aid of Norway if it was invaded, and after the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, plans were developed to aid Finland and secure the Swedish ore fields (and the route through Narvik) at the same time. Cutting off its supply of iron ore was viewed as a potentially powerful blow against Germany’s industrial machine.

When it came to the sinews of war both Great Britain and Germany had a benefit of economy of scale. As major powers they had in the interwar period invested in defence to a degree that could not be matched by tiny powers such as Norway. These two great powers possessed communications and intelligence services that dwarfed those of Norway.¹⁰

As early as a week before the outbreak of war the British Foreign Office was making enquiries about the vital ore trade that Sweden maintained with Germany, part of that trade being the shipments via Narvik in northern Norway. Winston Churchill, who had become First Lord of the Admiralty ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Plates
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 - The Setting
• CHAPTER 2 - Iron Ore and Casus Belli
• CHAPTER 3 - Rivals
• CHAPTER 4 - Norwegian Defence Preparations
• CHAPTER 5 - Nazi Planning
• CHAPTER 6 - Opening Moves and Painful Collisions
• CHAPTER 7 - The Fall of Denmark
• CHAPTER 8 - The Seizure of Oslo
• CHAPTER 9 - Littoral Operations in Action
• CHAPTER 10 - Narvik
• CHAPTER 11 - The Aftermath: Allied Reactions and German Exploitation
• CHAPTER 12 - A Tale of When Deterrence Failed
• Chronology Leading Up to War
• APPENDIX 1 - Order of Battle–Denmark
• APPENDIX 2 - Order of Battle–Germany
• Glossary of Terms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index