Norwegian campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 8th of April 1940, British destroyers began laying mines in Norwegian coastal waters. By the following morning, German troops were already storming Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik simultaneously. The Norwegian Campaign had begun, and it would last until the 10th of June 1940, reshaping the governments of both Norway and Britain before it was over.

  How did a neutral country find itself at the centre of one of the war's most consequential early battles? Why did Germany, thousands of kilometres from its own borders, risk its entire navy on a single audacious operation? And what became of the king, the government, and the tens of thousands of troops left to hold the line against an overwhelming force? Those questions run through every phase of what happened in Norway over sixty-three days of fighting.

• 2. Iron Ore and the Arctic Route

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  Narvik sits inside the Arctic Circle, but in the winter of 1939-1940 it was arguably the most important port in the world. Through it flowed the Swedish iron ore that Germany needed to keep its steel mills running, especially when the Baltic Sea froze over and the southern sea lanes were closed.

  Grossadmiral Erich Raeder had been raising the alarm inside the German high command throughout 1939, warning that if the Royal Navy established bases at Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik, the North Sea would be effectively closed to Germany. The Kriegsmarine would be exposed even in the Baltic. Norwegian bases would also allow German U-boats and surface ships to break the British blockade line and attack Atlantic convoys, while reconnaissance aircraft could range far into the North Atlantic.

  For the Allies, the calculus was similar but inverted. Churchill wanted to mine the Norwegian coastal waterways, forcing ore ships into international waters where the Royal Navy could intercept them. The plan, called Operation Wilfred, was accompanied by Plan R 4, which anticipated a German reaction and prepared Allied forces to occupy Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger in response. Both sides were reaching for the same geography at the same moment.

• 3. Vidkun Quisling and Operation Weserübung

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  On the 14th of December 1939, Grossadmiral Raeder introduced Adolf Hitler to Vidkun Quisling, a former Norwegian defence minister and leader of the Nasjonal Samling party. Quisling proposed pan-Germanic cooperation and warned of an Allied invasion. Four days later, he met Hitler again to discuss the threat in detail.

  That second meeting was enough. Hitler ordered the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to begin investigating invasion plans immediately. The first comprehensive plan, Studie Nord, was completed by the 10th of January 1940. On the 27th of January Hitler ordered a new, more elaborate plan, Weserübung, to be developed. Work began on the 5th of February.

  The plan that emerged was extraordinarily ambitious. Six primary targets across Norway were to be seized simultaneously by amphibious landings: Oslo, Kristiansand, Egersund, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik. Fallschirmjäger paratroopers would capture the airfields at Fornebu outside Oslo and Sola outside Stavanger. The operation required nearly the entire surface strength of the Kriegsmarine and would be timed to coincide with the occupation of Denmark, whose airfields were essential to controlling the Skagerrak.

  Urgency sharpened after the Altmark incident of the 16th of February 1940, when HMS Cossack entered Norwegian territorial waters and boarded the German auxiliary ship, freeing 299 British prisoners of war. The boarding party killed seven German sailors in hand-to-hand combat. On the 21st of February, General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst was placed in command of the land-based invasion forces. Official approval was signed by Hitler on the 1st of March.

• 4. The First Morning, the 9th of April

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  At about 23:00 on the night of the 8th of April, the German torpedo boat Gruppe 5 was confronted by the Norwegian patrol vessel Pol III at the entrance to the Oslofjord. Pol III's captain opened fire with a single gun and collided with the torpedo boat. He was killed in the exchange and his ship set on fire.

  Further north, the ten German destroyers carrying General Eduard Dietl's 2,000 Gebirgsjäger troops into the Ofotfjord found their way unobstructed. HMS Renown, the British battlecruiser that should have been guarding the Vestfjord entrance, had been diverted to search for the destroyer Glowworm. The two Norwegian coastal defence ships in Narvik harbour, Eidsvold and Norge, were old but capable of taking on lightly armed destroyers. A brief parley was held with Eidsvold's captain, Odd Isaachsen Willoch, then the Germans opened fire and sank her with three torpedoes. Norge entered the fight but her gunners were inexperienced and she was sunk before she could score a hit. The commander of Narvik's land forces, Konrad Sundlo, then surrendered the town without further resistance.

  The most consequential failure of the entire campaign happened in the Oslofjord. The heavy cruiser Blücher was leading Gruppe 5 toward Oslo when Oscarsborg Fortress opened fire at point-blank range. Every shell hit. Blücher was crippled and then sunk by 40-year-old torpedoes launched from land-based tubes. She carried much of the administrative personnel intended to run the occupation of Norway. The delay this caused gave the royal family, parliament, and the national treasury several hours to flee Oslo. The Norwegian capital fell less than twelve hours after the loss of Blücher, but the king and government had already gone.

• 5. The Battles of Narvik

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  Captain Bernard Warburton-Lee of the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla learned from locals at Tranøy Municipality, about 80 km west of Narvik, that the German force numbered between four and six destroyers plus a submarine. He signalled the Admiralty his intention to attack at dawn on the 10th of April, and was approved.

  At 04:30 that morning, Warburton-Lee led his flagship and four other destroyers into the Ofotfjord under heavy fog and snow. The British found five German destroyers at anchor in Narvik harbour. Three passes were made; two German destroyers were sunk, one disabled, and six tankers and supply ships sent to the bottom. The German commander, Commodore Friedrich Bonte, was killed when his flagship went down. Then Warburton-Lee chose to make one final attack. German destroyers converging from the north and west caught the British force at 06:00. Warburton-Lee was killed. HMS Hardy was beached after severe damage, and Hunter and Hotspur were both critically damaged.

  The Second Battle of Narvik came on the 13th of April, when the battleship Warspite and a powerful escort force entered the Vestfjord under Admiral Whitworth. A Swordfish floatplane from Warspite scouted ahead and, aside from locating two German destroyers, also sank U-64, the first submarine kill ever achieved by an aircraft. The German destroyers had run out of fuel and ammunition and were gradually pushed back into the Rombaksfjord. By 18:30 the surviving German crews had abandoned and scuttled their ships, and the British were making their way out of the cleared fjord.

• 6. The Norwegian Government Fights Back

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  On the 9th of April, Vidkun Quisling seized a radio broadcasting station and announced himself as the new Prime Minister of Norway. His coup government lasted until the 15th of April, when the Supreme Court of Norway appointed an Administrative Council to handle civilian administration of occupied areas and Quisling resigned.

  The Norwegian government meanwhile moved to Elverum on the evening of the 9th of April. Parliament passed the Elverum Authorization, giving the cabinet sweeping emergency powers until parliament could meet again under normal conditions. All German demands were rejected. On the 10th of April, King Haakon VII personally refused to accept the German demand for recognition of Quisling's government.

  The same day, Colonel Otto Ruge was promoted to major general and appointed Commanding General of the Norwegian Army. He replaced the 65-year-old General Kristian Laake, who had been heavily criticized for passivity in the opening hours of the invasion. Defence Minister Birger Ljungberg faced his own criticism for having failed to explain the mobilization procedures to his cabinet colleagues, a miscommunication that caused the initial call-up to go out by post rather than by public declaration, costing critical days.

  Ruge understood that the Germans, now holding every major city, port, airfield, and arms depot, could not be expelled by force alone. His strategy was to fight delaying actions, buying time for Allied reinforcements to arrive. On the 11th of April, German bombers struck Elverum for two hours, leaving the town centre in ruins and 41 people dead. That same day, 11 Luftwaffe bombers attacked Nybergsund in a direct attempt to kill King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, and the cabinet.

• 7. Allied Failure in Central Norway

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  Operation Hammer, the plan to retake Trondheim with a three-pronged Allied attack, was scaled back before it was even launched. Planners judged a direct assault on the city too risky, so only the flanking forces landed: Mauriceforce at Namsos to the north, and Sickleforce at Åndalsnes to the south.

  Mauriceforce, led by Major-General Adrian Carton de Wiart, landed at Namsos on the 14th of April. During the transfer to destroyers in the narrow fjord, much of their supplies and even the brigade commander went missing in the confusion. On the 20th of April, German aircraft bombed Namsos and destroyed most of the town centre along with large portions of the Allied supply storage. De Wiart pushed 130 km inland to Steinkjer regardless, but on the 21st and the 22nd of April the Luftwaffe bombed Steinkjer, leaving four-fifths of the town in ruins and more than 2,000 people homeless.

  To the south, No. 263 Squadron RAF set up on the frozen lake Lesjaskogsvatnet on the 24th of April to challenge German air supremacy. Most of the squadron's aircraft were destroyed by German bombing the following day. The four surviving Gladiators were out of operation by the end of the 26th of April. Setnesmoen army base was bombed and knocked out on the 29th.

  By the 28th of April, the Allied leadership ordered all British and French forces in southern and central Norway to withdraw. Sickleforce escaped from Åndalsnes at 02:00 on the 2nd of May, just hours before German troops captured the port. When Mauriceforce evacuated from Namsos the same day, two of their rescue ships, a French destroyer and a British destroyer, were sunk by Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers. The central campaign's collapse is considered one of the direct causes of the Norway Debate in the British Parliament, which led to Neville Chamberlain's resignation and the appointment of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

• 8. Northern Norway and the End

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  In northern Norway, the Norwegian 6th Division under General Carl Gustav Fleischer faced the Germans at Narvik while keeping significant forces in eastern Finnmark to guard against a potential Soviet attack. The Allied force assigned to recapture Narvik was initially split by a fundamental disagreement: Admiral of the Fleet William Boyle, the 12th Earl of Cork, wanted an immediate assault, while the commander of the ground forces, Major-General Pierse Mackesy, had been ordered to avoid any area strongly held by the Germans.

  On the 15th of April, Royal Navy destroyers escorting Convoy NP1 forced a German U-boat to surface and scuttle in the Vågsfjorden. Documents recovered from the sinking submarine detailed the dispositions, codes, and operational orders of all U-boats in the Norwegian area, giving Allied convoy planners a significant advantage. French forces made an amphibious landing at Bjerkvik on the 13th of May; naval gunfire destroyed most of the village and killed 14 civilians before the Germans were dislodged.

  By late May the Battle of France had begun in earnest, and the strategic calculus shifted entirely. A British, French, and Polish expeditionary force of 38,000 troops had achieved moderate success in the north but could not be sustained. King Haakon VII and his government, which had been operating out of Tromsø as the de facto capital since the 1st of May, escaped to the United Kingdom. Elements of the Norwegian military who could not be evacuated fought on from abroad. The campaign officially ended on the 10th of June 1940, with Germany in occupation of the entirety of Norway. The country would remain under German occupation until the 5th of May 1945.