Norwegian campaign

Norwegian campaign. On 9 April 1940 Germany invaded Norway, and after a campaign that lasted two months the German forces had occupied the whole country. The assault is a prime example of a successful strategic and tactical surprise. Another salient feature is the combined use of air, sea, and naval forces—including paratroopers. The success of the enterprise secured German access to Swedish iron ore and other valuable raw materials from Scandinavia, as well as valuable bases for Germany's submarine warfare in the battle of the Atlantic and for air-sea operations against the Arctic convoys to northern Russia (see Arctic convoys). But the cost was high, as up to 350,000 German troops were required to occupy the vast, 323,000 sq. km. (125,000 sq. mi.) area and guard the coast against an Allied invasion.

During the Finnish–Soviet war France and the UK had been preparing an expeditionary force to seize control of the port of Narvik—the only all-weather outlet for Swedish iron ore—under cover of aid to Finland. Rumours about such preparations led the Germans to plan counter-moves which would amount to a full-scale occupation of Denmark and Norway (WESERÜBUNG). The Soviet–Finnish armistice on 13 March led to the abandonment of Allied preparations, but Raeder, the chief of the German Navy, persuaded Hitler that WESERÜBUNG should be carried out as soon as possible, before the assembled naval forces had to be dispersed. The final order was given on 2 April, and the first supply ships left port the following day.

In the meantime the Anglo-French Supreme War Council, giving in to pressure to break the inactivity of the phoney war, had decided to lay mines on the Norwegian coast to force German ore vessels from Narvik out into the open seas where they could be attacked by the Royal Navy. The mines were laid in the morning of 8 April, by which time minor British forces had also been embarked on warships to counter possible German retaliatory moves against Norway. During that day it gradually dawned on the British Admiralty that a major German operation against Denmark and Norway was on its way, independent of Allied plans.

The surprise achieved by the Germans was due to three factors: first, the lack of real intelligence clues to the German operational plans and preparations; second, the complete absence in Norway of anything that could properly be called organs for the collection and analysis of military-political intelligence; third, the inability of decision-makers to free themselves from the established perception that a major German assault on Norway was rendered unthinkable by the superiority of British naval power in the area and any small-scale attacks would only be mounted in retaliation against major British violations of Norwegian neutrality. This perception, and particularly its latter component, led to a concentration of attention by Norway on the actions and intentions of the western Allies, and excluded consideration of the possibility that a German assault might occur independently of any Allied move.

A combination of flawed intelligence and strategic prejudice also explains why the British were taken by surprise. Convinced, like the Norwegians, that a major German assault on Norway was impossible in the face of British naval superiority, they were predisposed to interpret incoming reports of large-scale moves of German warships as indicating a break-out into the Atlantic. The success of the German invasion was thus due to a double surprise: the strategic surprise of launching an operation which went contrary to the rules of naval warfare, and tactical surprise in the actual execution of the assault.

The invasion (see Map 77) was carried out through a simultaneous assault on a number of the most important coastal cities, from Oslo in the south to Narvik in the north. Airborne troops were used for the two main airports at Oslo and Stavanger; for the rest the forces were carried on warships, with supplies and reinforcements brought in by merchant ships and aircraft. By the end of the morning the Germans had secured control of such major towns as Kristiansand, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik, severely curtailing mobilization efforts in those areas. The partly mobilized navy, with mostly old vessels, and the inadequately equipped coastal forts, were soon overwhelmed by the superior strength of the German Navy. The only serious setback for the Germans occurred in the Oslo fjord, where the vanguard of the invading force, the cruiser Blücher, was sunk by the guns and torpedoes of the Oscarsborg fortress.

King Haakon VII (1872–1957) and the government, which at 0530 had rejected a German ultimatum to surrender, profited from the respite provided by the sinking of the Blücher to escape to the interior of the country. Initial despair about the futility of an armed struggle against the invader gradually disappeared in the wake of Vidkun Quisling's attempted coup d'état in the evening of 9 April, and of British promises of armed help. A new German ultimatum the following day was turned down, after which the government began to organize a somewhat improvised military resistance.

A new C-in-C, Major-General Otto Ruge, drew up a campaign plan based on a fighting retreat while organizing his forces and awaiting the promised assistance from France and the UK. But Allied assistance was weak, poorly organized, and slow in coming. A fixation on Narvik, and the fear of losses due to German air superiority, led to the abandonment of British plans for a naval assault to reconquer Trondheim in central Norway, and forces landed further south as part of a pincer movement against that city had to be sent to reinforce Ruge's southern front. By the end of April Allied forces had been evacuated from southern Norway, and the remaining Norwegian forces in the area capitulated on 3 May.

The king, the government, and the Norwegian High Command now moved to the Tromsø; area in northern Norway. Here substantial Norwegian, French, Polish, and British troops were engaged in trying to eject the Germans from Narvik. Successful actions by British warships on 10 and 13 April (see Narvik battles) had eliminated the German naval force in the Narvik area, but cautious Allied commanders opted for a gradual advance in difficult terrain towards the town. On 28 May the port was successfully reconquered by French and Norwegian troops, and the German forces under Maj-General Eduard Dietl were pushed back towards the Swedish frontier. But by then the German offensive in the West (see FALL GELB) had forced the Allies to decide to abandon the campaign in Norway. Allied troops were evacuated at the beginning of June, and on 7 June the king and his government departed for the UK and exile.

Of the total losses in connection with the Norwegian campaign the heaviest were suffered by the Germans—about 5,500 men, more than 200 aircraft, and a number of their most modern warships, a loss from which the German surface navy never quite recovered. The British lost nearly 4,500 men, of whom about 1,500 went down with the aircraft carrier Glorious and her two destroyer escorts when they were sunk by the Scharnhorst on their way back to the UK. About 1,800 Norwegian lives were lost, and French and Polish losses amounted to about 500.

Olav Riste

Bibliography

Adams, J. , The Doomed Expedition: The Campaign in Norway 1940 (London, 1989).
Derry, T. K. , The Campaign in Norway (London, 1952).
Moulton, J. L. , A Study of Warfare in Three Dimensions: The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 (Athens, Oh., 1967).