Norwegian campaign
Norwegian campaign (1940). Norway and Sweden, having opted to remain neutral in 1939, found themselves key suppliers of iron ore and other metals, vital for the Axis war machine. Difficulties arose when the ore was transported through Norwegian territorial waters (chiefly the port of Narvik) using German shipping, which went against the prevailing conventions of war. Britain and France resolved in early 1940 to mine Norwegian inshore waters and land troops at Narvik and other ports to strangle this flow of raw materials. Suspicions were afoot that Germany was in any case planning to occupy Norway, to protect her economic interests.
The mining went ahead directly, but before Allied troops could be landed, the Germans invaded Denmark on 8 April and Norway on the 9th, but were surprised to encounter opposition since the collaborator Vidkun Quisling had suggested that Norway might fall without a fight. The cruiser Blücher covering an amphibious landing force was sunk off Oslo, but Norway's capital fell to the first ever combat use of airborne forces, which captured the airport and then the city. Other airborne troops seized Stavanger, while Bergen (though with the loss of the cruiser Königsberg), Kristiansand (with the loss of the Karlsrühe), and Trondheim were also captured. Narvik, where ten German destroyers quickly landed 2, 000 mountain troops under Lt Gen Eduard Dietl' fell almost without a struggle.
Before the German warships could leave, a Royal Naval destroyer force attacked them, sinking two and damaging five. Three days later another flotilla, led by the battleship Warspite, sank the remaining vessels, crippling the tiny Kriegsmarine (which had possessed only 22 destroyers) and stranding Dietl. Although the powerful Royal Navy deployed several vessels off the Norwegian coast to support the mining, German air power proved decisive: the first occasion in which air power cancelled out naval power. In mid-April, in poorly planned operations, Anglo-French forces landed 12, 000 men at Namos and Andalsnes, north and south of Trondheim respectively, but were unable to be resupplied due to the attentions of the Luftwaffe, and were driven back by German ground troops. Both were evacuated by 2 May. Another overwhelming Allied force landed to retake Narvik on 13 May but was more frustrated by disagreements between army and navy commanders than by any opposition from Dietl's mountain troops. Although the port was captured a fortnight later, Dietl had been supplied by air (Norway was the first campaign where aerial supply was an influential factor) and managed to tie down a large Allied-Norwegian force. Under constant Luftwaffe bombardment and unable to sustain the Narvik force due to the invasion of France, all Allied troops were evacuated from Narvik on 8 June, but much valuable equipment and stores had to be left behind.
The Norway campaign was the first genuinely tri-service campaign to be fought by either side, and the Wehrmacht high command (OKW), really for the only time in the war, provided an effective tri-service command and planning organization. By contrast, Anglo-French command and control in Norway was disastrous, with little tri-service co-operation. But the German surface fleet suffered such crippling losses as to virtually remove it from consideration during the planning of SEALION, the ‘river crossing’ for which the aerial battle of Britain was a necessary preamble. The next German tri-service operation, in Crete, was to lead to yet more shocking losses despite once again enjoying aerial superiority, and they abandoned the form of warfare in which they were the pioneers and which had shown such promise. The British learned the lessons and returned the favour in North-West Europe. The Norwegian campaign redounded little to the credit of the Allies. It was, however, to their advantage that it provoked the replacement of PM Chamberlain by Churchill, and that it left the Germans with a northern flank which swallowed up a large garrison for the whole war.
— Peter Caddick-Adams
