The German Invasion Of Norway

This major history documents the German invasion of Norway, focusing on the events at sea. The first operation in which the air force, army, and navy worked closely together, Operation WeserŸbung included the first dive-bomber attack to sink a major warship and the first carrier task-force operations. Based on primary sources from British, German, and Norwegian archives, this book gives a balanced account of the reasons behind the invasion and showcases an unrivaled collection of photographs. As the definitive study of Germany's first and last major seaborne invasion, it offers a close look at an important but often neglected aspect of World War II.

“Tremendous . . . zeroes in on the critical first days of Weserübung and offers a minutely detailed account of the unfolding action.”—World War II This book documents the German invasion of Norway, focusing on the events at sea. More than most other campaigns of WWII, Operation Weserübung has been shrouded in mystery, legend and flawed knowledge. Strategic, political and legal issues were at best unclear, while military issues were dominated by risk; the German success was the result of improvisation and the application of available forces far beyond the comprehension of British and Norwegian military and civilian authorities. Weserübung was the first combined operation ever where air force, army and navy operated closely together. Troops were transported directly into battle simultaneously by warship and aircraft, and success required cooperation between normally fiercely competing services. It was also the first time that paratroopers were used. The following days were to witness the first dive bomber attack to sink a major warship and the first carrier task-force operations. The narrative is based on primary sources from British, German and Norwegian archives, and it gives a balanced account of the reasons behind the invasion. With its unrivalled collection of photographs, many of which have never before appeared in print, this is a major new WWII history and a definitive account of Germany’s first and last major seaborne invasion. “This is the author’s first book but he has a fine natural talent for maritime history. This is a magnificent work.”—Work Boat World “A very impressive piece of work that comes highly recommended.”—HistoryOfWar.org

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.

The air-sea-land forcible entry of Norway in 1940 utilized German operational innovation and boldness to secure victory. The Germans clearly met, and understood, the conditions that were necessary to achieve victory. The central research question of this thesis is: What lessons concerning setting the conditions for present day forcible entry operations can be gleaned from the successful German invasion of Norway in 1940? Forcible entry is the introduction of an aggregation of military personnel, weapons systems, vehicles, and necessary support, or a combination thereof, embarked for the purpose of gaining access through land, air, or amphibious operations into an objective area against resistance. This aggregation of military force attempts to set conditions that cripple the enemy’s ability to react decisively to, or interfere with, the forcible entry operation. The German emphasis on surprise and speed, an effective psychological campaign, and combined operations under a unified command in the invasion of Norway rendered the Norwegian and Allied intervention forces (including the Royal Navy which dominated the seas in the area) incapable of seriously interfering with the German forcible entry.

Armed with jokes, puns, and cartoons, Norwegians tried to keep their spirits high and foster the Resistance by poking fun at the occupying Germans during World War II. Despite a 1942 ordinance mandating death for the ridicule of Nazi soldiers, Norwegians attacked the occupying Nazis and their Norwegian collaborators by means of anecdotes, quips, insinuating personal ads, children’s stories, Christmas cards, mock postage stamps, and symbolic clothing. In relating this dramatic story, Kathleen Stokker draws upon her many interviews with survivors of the Occupation and upon the archives of the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the University of Oslo. Central to the book are four “joke notebooks” kept by women ranging in age from eleven to thirty, who found sufficient meaning in this humor to risk recording and preserving it. Stokker also cites details from wartime diaries of three other women from East, West, and North Norway. Placing the joking in historical, cultural, and psychological context, Stokker demonstrates how this seemingly frivolous humor in fact contributed to the development of a resistance mentality among an initially confused, paralyzed, and dispirited population, stunned by the German invasion of their neutral country. For this paperback edition, Stokker has added a new preface offering a comparative view of resistance through humor in neighboring Denmark.

[Includes 23 maps and 31 illustrations] This volume describes two campaigns that the Germans conducted in their Northern Theater of Operations. The first they launched, on 9 April 1940, against Denmark and Norway. The second they conducted out of Finland in partnership with the Finns against the Soviet Union. The latter campaign began on 22 June 1941 and ended in the winter of 1944-45 after the Finnish Government had sued for peace. The scene of these campaigns by the end of 1941 stretched from the North Sea to the Arctic Ocean and from Bergen on the west coast of Norway, to Petrozavodsk, the former capital of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. It faced east into the Soviet Union on a 700-mile-long front, and west on a 1,300-mile sea frontier. Hitler regarded this theater as the keystone of his empire, and, after 1941, maintained in it two armies totaling over a half million men. In spite of its vast area and the effort and worry which Hitler lavished on it, the Northern Theater throughout most of the war constituted something of a military backwater. The major operations which took place in the theater were overshadowed by events on other fronts, and public attention focused on the theaters in which the strategically decisive operations were expected to take place. Remoteness, German security measures, and the Russians’ well-known penchant for secrecy combined to keep information concerning the Northern Theater down to a mere trickle, much of that inaccurate. Since the war, through official and private publications, a great deal more has become known. The present volume is based in the main on the greatest remaining source of unexploited information, the captured German military and naval records. In addition a number of the participants on the German side have very generously contributed from their personal knowledge and experience.

In April of 1940, the peaceful and neutral country of Norway became a battleground between Germany, France, and England in their desire to control it for their own war objectives. The Battle of Norway and as the Germans called it, Operation Weseruebung, was the first major military operation in history to utilize naval, ground, air, and airborne forces in the assault phase of the attack. The German success in this operation provides an outstanding example of the application of operational art and the principles of war by Germany in the early stages of World War II. The principles of surprise and security were the most critical in this German military success. Operation Weseruebung included both the invasion of Denmark and the invasion of Norway. The first phase of the operation was the invasion of Denmark; its air bases were needed for the invasion of Norway, and it fell in a single day. The focus of this paper will be on the Norwegian portion of Weseruebung. German military planning took into account and exploited the operational factors of time, space and force, another key element in why this operation is worthy of further analysis and study. The operational lessons learned that could be applied from the belligerents' experiences further illustrate several important lessons that are applicable today. From the Germans one learns the importance of planning around apparent disadvantages, command and control as it relates to operational objectives and commander's intent, and the importance of initiative in military operations. From the British one learns the pitfalls of mirror imaging and that a lack of decisiveness can prove fatal in military operations. Lastly, from the Norwegians, one can see the importance of national defense for maintaining a nation's self-determination against outside belligerents.