How did German control of Norway Denmark and the Low Countries benefit Hitler?

Answer 1

Several ways. Germany's only seacoast is in the north of Germany, on the Baltic Sea. The only way out of the Baltic Sea into the Atlantic and all the oceans of the world is a narrow passage between Denmark to the south and Sweden and Norway to the north. The part of this passage lying east of Denmark, between Denmark and Sweden, is the Kattegat, and the part lying west of Denmark, between Denmark and Norway is the Skagerrak. In some place this passage is only a few miles wide. Control of Denmark by a hostile power would prevent German ships from reaching open water from their bases in northern Germany on the Baltic. Germany depended on her submarines to fight the Battle of the Atlantic, in an effort to starve Great Britain out of the war, Britain being an island nation dependent on imports arriving by ship just to feed her people.

But the reason Germany attacked Norway was to secure the supply of iron ore from Sweden. Iron ore is used to make steel, and Germany had no large source of iron ore of her own. Germany was completely dependent on Swedish iron ore from which to make steel, necessary for almost all the weapons a military requires - guns, tanks, ships, artillery shells, and many, many other things. The Swedish iron ore comes from mines in northern Sweden. During the winter the northern Baltic is frozen, and the iron ore went out by railroad, going west from Sweden across the border into Norway. The trains carried the ore to a Norwegian port, where it was loaded on ships, and from there it went south down the coast of Norway, then turned left into the Baltic (through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat) and on to ports in northern Germany. Without this iron ore Germany would soon lose the war. The British realized this and planned to invade Norway to stop the flow of iron ore to Germany, but the Germans, nervous about securing this essential supply, also had a plan to occupy Norway. The two forces arrived at about the same time and fought over Norway for a time, until the Germans won and the British were ejected from the country. Norway and Denmark remained in German hands until the war was over.