Transcript The Norwegian Campaign

The Norwegian Campaign
Hitler strikes north!
Hitler’s gamble
• A few months into WW2, Hitler took a
strategic gamble.
• Hitler knew that Swedish iron ore was vital
to the German war effort and this was
transported through Norwegian territorial
waters
• German control of Norway would also
make the Allied blockade of Germany
easier to break.
Hitler’s gamble
• There were also signs that the Allies would
not be bound by Norway’s neutrality (As
shown by the Altmark incident)
• Hitler decided that he would use the full
force of his navy to land forces from Oslo
to Narvik which could then protect the
coastal waters by which the iron ore was
transported.
The Risks!
• Germany’s navy was very inferior to the
Royal Navy
• The greatest asset the Germans had was
that of air power.
• The Germans had 400 bombers
specifically trained in marmite operations
and it was hoped that these would keep
the British at bay
The Germans land troops
• The British decided in April to mine the
coastal waters so that the German
shipping would be disrupted.
• The Admiralty decided to concentrate its
efforts at stopping the Germans at sea, so
disembarked troops earmarked for landing
in Norway.
• German troops landed on Norwegian soil
the next day
The Germans land troops
• The German operation was generally
successful, but did not go entirely according to
plan.
• At Oslo the brand new heavy cruiser Blucher
was sunk by Norwegian coast defences in Oslo
Fjord.
• This delayed the occupation of the capital, and
allowed the members of the Norwegian
government and royal family to escape.
Attack and counter attack
• Blucher's sister ship, Hipper, was also damaged
when she was rammed by the British destroyer
Glowworm, but she was still able to help take the
city of Trondheim.
• The light cruiser Karlsruhe led the assault on
Kristiansand, but was sunk later that same day
by the British submarine Truant. Her sister ship,
Konigsberg, was damaged by Norwegian shore
batteries at Bergen, and was finished off by
British Skua naval dive bombers flying from the
Orkneys the next day.
Attack and Counter attack
• The Germans were able to take the
northern city of Narvik
• The British Admiralty refused to mount a
powerful counter attack and sent a
destroyer flotilla
• This was later joined by a bigger British
force which annihilated the German force,
mainly due to the fact that there was no
German air cover this far north
Attack and counter attack
• The main Allied counter-attack came at
Trondheim, with a two-pronged attack from
Namsos in the north and Andalsnes in the south.
• Stuka dive bombers from Fliegerkorps X
dominated the region, supporting the better
equipped German ground forces in defeating the
Allies.
• The deployment of fighters from the carriers
Glorious and Ark Royal, as well as RAF
Gladiator fighters from a frozen lake, could do
little to help.
Narvik
• The troops had to be evacuated.
• It was still hoped that northern Norway might be
held, to deny the Germans their iron ore.
• Narvik was occupied by a mixed force of
mountain troops, reinforced by the crews of the
destroyers that had landed them, and a
parachute battalion dropped in from the air.
• An Allied force of British, French, Norwegian and
Polish troops was built up, and land-based air
cover was provided by a squadron of Gladiators
and one of Hurricanes, flown from carriers.
Narvik
• Narvik was finally taken on 28th May but
divisions between the allied armies had
delayed the operation and the situation in
the Low Countries changed things
significantly.
• The decision to evacuate had already
been made!
• The evacuation was marred by the loss of
the British aircraft carrier Glorious
Evacuation
• The British evacuation fleet suffered
losses but importantly so did the Germans.
• By the end of the campaign the German
navy had only three cruisers and four
destroyers operational.
• This was not enough to mount a serious
challenge to the Royal Navy in the
Channel and thus helped prevent an
invasion of Britain
Evaluation
• Although Germany succeeded in pushing
back the British blockade line, it never
found Norway to be the asset it had hoped
for. And although the territory later
provided a base from which to attack Allied
Arctic convoys to the USSR, Norway's
defence tied down more forces than the
country's strategic usefulness merited.
Britain’s strategic failure
• Norway was, however, also a major
strategic failure for the British. This was a
campaign that should have played to
British strengths. Instead it brought out
one of the major weaknesses of the
contemporary Royal Navy - its incapacity
to contest command of the air off a distant
shore, due to its lack of radar control and
high performance fighters.
Britain’s strategic failure
• Even before the campaign was over, it was
perceived to have gone so badly that there was
a vote of no confidence in the British Parliament.
The government suffered a reduced majority,
and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
resigned.
• The main architect of the Norway campaign, the
British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston
Churchill, who had been responsible for many of
the mistakes of the campaign….