The Norway Campaign in World War Two

Hitler's gamble

A few months into World War Two, in April 1940, Adolf Hitler made a huge strategic gamble. He and his strategists knew that Norwegian coastal waters were vital for the transport of Swedish iron ore via Narvik to German blast furnaces. And, more generally, recognised that German control of Norwegian waters would make breaking the Allied blockade of Germany a little easier.

Germany had also seen the signs that the British would not necessarily be bound by Norway's neutrality, and could hinder the process if they were so minded. The British position was made fairly clear when Royal Navy seamen boarded the German naval auxiliary Altmark, in Norwegian waters, to free the prisoners on board, and the Allies had indeed for some time been making plans for aggressive action to plug the gap in their blockade.

Hitler's plans in the face of this situation were decisive. The idea was that the whole strength of the German navy was to land powerful forces all the way along the Norwegian coast, from Oslo to Narvik, to protect the coastal waterways along which the iron ore was transported.

This was risky in the extreme. Germany's navy was greatly inferior to the Royal Navy in all categories, and even if the troops succeeded in getting ashore, helped by the element of surprise, it was quite possible for them to be cut off subsequently.

Only one thing might prevent disaster - German air power, in the shape of Fiegerkorps X. This unit contained about 400 bombers, whose crews had been specially trained in maritime operations, and it was hoped that these could keep the British at bay.

German troops land

Delays to the German occupation of Oslo enabled Royals and politicians to escape  © By April the British had changed their plan, and reduced it to a relatively less complex mining operation. Then, as luck would have it, both the British and German operations went ahead at almost the same time. British mine-laying began early on 8 April, but was disrupted by news of major German fleet movements.

The Admiralty, on its own initiative, decided that all strength should be diverted to dealing with the German fleet at sea, and troops already aboard British cruisers and intended for the likely landings were disembarked. Hitler's troops landed on Norwegian soil the following day.

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 Fiord. 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. She was the first major warship ever to be sunk by aircraft.

In the far north, at Narvik, the ten most modern German destroyers were able to get their troops ashore, sinking two Norwegian coast defence vessels in the process. The senior British officer in the area was WJ Whitworth, Vice Admiral of the Battlecruiser Squadron in HMS Renown. He had fought a fleeting engagement with the German fast battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau early on the 9th but the Germans, after being hit several times, had used superior speed to get away.

Unfortunately the Admiralty did not give Whitworth the opportunity to mount a powerful counter attack on the Germans at Narvik, and only a single destroyer flotilla was ordered in by London on 10 April. This consisted of Captain BAW Warburton-Lee's five 'H' class vessels.

Narvik

These sank two of the German destroyers in Narvik harbour and damaged three others, but were engaged by the remaining five German ships. The British flotilla leader Hardy was sunk (Warburton-Lee was awarded the first Victoria Cross of World War Two) as was HMS Hunter. Whitworth led in a more powerful force in the battleship Warspite three days later. She and the nine accompanying destroyers annihilated the rest of the German flotilla.

Whitworth had this kind of freedom of action because German air power had still not reached so far north. Less happy was Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet, who first encountered Fliegerkorps X on the afternoon of 9 May, off southern Norway. Although during this attack only one ship, the destroyer Gurkha, was sunk, Forbes thought that the danger was such that he could not operate his surface forces in these waters. His carrier Furious had no fighters, and the anti-aircraft guns of the fleet provided insufficient protection, contrary to what pre-war thinking had led him to expect.

The main Allied counter-attack came at Trondheim, with a two-pronged attack from Namsos in the north and Andalsnes in the south. But reinforced by Stuka dive bombers, 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. The troops had to be evacuated, with two Allied destroyers, one British and one French, being sunk off Namsos and a British sloop at Andalsnes.

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.

Evacuation

Despite successes, Allied forces withdrew from Norway in 1941  © After delays caused by divided counsels, Narvik was finally taken on 28 May, but the decision to evacuate it had by that time been made. The German victories of that month in France and the Low Countries had transformed the strategic situation, and had left the Allies with little alternative. In any case, the withdrawing Germans had done a comprehensive job of destroying the iron ore facilities.

The evacuation was marred by the loss of the British aircraft carrier Glorious which, with an escort of two destroyers, was returning ahead of the rest of the fleet carrying evacuated Hurricane fighters. The carrier was caught by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and sunk with gunfire, although Scharnhorst was torpedoed and seriously damaged by the escorting destroyer Acasta.

Shortly afterwards Gneisenau was also torpedoed by the submarine Clyde, and by the end of the campaign the German navy had only three cruisers and four destroyers operational. This was not a force that could contest the command of the Channel to cover a cross-Channel invasion, and in this way the Norwegian campaign probably helped save Britain.

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.

In addition to the other losses, the cruiser Effingham was wrecked and the anti-aircraft cruiser Curlew bombed and sunk near Narvik, while a French cruiser was seriously damaged. A total of seven British destroyers was lost, plus one French and one Polish. Given Allied superiority in numbers these losses were not too serious, but the sense of failure was real.

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, was the main beneficiary of these political events. He was the favoured candidate to take over as prime minister, and thus became Britain's war leader. Such are the ironies of history.

Find out more

Books

Naval Operations of the Campaign in Norway edited by D Brown (Frank Cass Publishers, 2000)

The Campaign in Norway by TK Derry (Imperial War Museum , 1985)

Narvik, Battles in the Fjords by P Dickens (Naval Institute Press, 1996)

Norway 1940 by F Kersaudy (St Martins Press, 1991)

Norway 1940, The Forgotten Fiasco by J Kynoch (The Crowood Press, 2002)

The Norwegian Campaign of 1940 by JL Moulton (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1966)

About the author

Dr Eric Grove is a lecturer in naval history at Hull University, and works as a naval history consultant and presenter for television documentary programmes. His publications include Vanguard to Trident: British Naval Policy since World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1987), and The Future of Sea Power (Naval Institute Press, 1990).