German Invasion of Norway (1940): Operation Weserübung

The German invasion of Norway, codenamed Operation Weserübung, began on 9 April 1940, when German forces simultaneously occupied Denmark and landed at ports along the Norwegian coast. Norway, helped by British, French and Polish troops, fought for two months before the Allies withdrew and the last Norwegian forces capitulated on 10 June. The campaign gave Germany control of Scandinavia’s Atlantic coast and indirectly brought Winston Churchill to power in Britain.

Background

When the Second World War began, Norway declared its neutrality, as it had in the First World War. Its long coastline was strategically valuable, however. In winter, Swedish iron ore, vital to German industry, was shipped from the port of Narvik along sheltered Norwegian coastal waters to Germany.

Britain and France saw the ore traffic as a target and also considered sending troops through Norway to help Finland during the Winter War. In February 1940 the British destroyer HMS Cossack boarded the German supply ship Altmark in Norwegian waters and freed about 300 British prisoners, convincing Hitler that Norway could not or would not defend its neutrality. He ordered detailed planning for an invasion, led by General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst.

On 8 April 1940 the Royal Navy began laying mines in Norwegian waters, part of a British plan to disrupt the ore trade. The German invasion fleet was already at sea.

Denmark falls in a day

Early on 9 April German troops crossed the Danish border and landed at Copenhagen and other points. With no realistic prospect of defending its flat territory, the Danish government ordered a ceasefire within about six hours. Around 16 Danish soldiers were killed. Denmark kept its king, government and police for a time under occupation, a situation that later made possible the rescue of the Danish Jews in 1943.

The invasion of Norway

Also on 9 April, German forces landed by sea and air at Oslo, Kristiansand, Egersund, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik, and paratroopers seized airfields at Oslo-Fornebu and Stavanger-Sola. Surprise was largely achieved, and most of these places were taken within hours.

In the narrow Drøbak Sound south of Oslo, however, the old guns and torpedoes of the Oscarsborg Fortress, under Colonel Birger Eriksen, sank the new heavy cruiser Blücher with heavy loss of life. The delay allowed King Haakon VII, the royal family, the government and members of parliament to leave the capital, taking the national gold reserves with them.

That evening Vidkun Quisling, leader of the small Norwegian fascist party, announced on the radio that he had formed a government. On 10 April the German envoy Curt Bräuer asked the king to accept Quisling. Haakon refused, saying he would rather abdicate, and the government backed him. On 11 April German aircraft bombed the village of Nybergsund, where the king and ministers were sheltering; they survived.

The German navy also suffered on the first days. The light cruiser Karlsruhe was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Truant off Kristiansand on 9 April and had to be scuttled. The next day British Skua dive bombers of the Fleet Air Arm, flying from Orkney, sank the light cruiser Königsberg in Bergen harbour, widely regarded as the first major warship sunk by dive bombing in war.

The campaign in central Norway

The Norwegian army, poorly prepared and only partly mobilised, fought delaying actions under its new commander, General Otto Ruge. From mid-April British and French troops landed at Namsos and Åndalsnes, aiming to retake Trondheim in a pincer movement.

The Allied operation was hastily planned and lacked artillery, air support and proper equipment for snow. German aircraft controlled the skies and bombed the landing ports. By early May the Allies had evacuated both Namsos and Åndalsnes, and Norwegian forces in southern and central Norway surrendered.

Narvik

Fighting continued in the far north. German mountain troops under General Eduard Dietl had seized Narvik, but the ten German destroyers that carried them were trapped. In two naval battles of Narvik, on 10 and 13 April, the Royal Navy, including the battleship HMS Warspite in the second action, sank or forced the scuttling of all ten.

British, French, Polish and Norwegian forces then closed in on Dietl’s isolated troops. On 28 May Allied troops recaptured Narvik, often described as the first Allied land victory of the war. By then, however, the German offensive in France made Norway a sideshow, and the Allies decided to withdraw.

Allied withdrawal and capitulation

The Allied evacuation from northern Norway took place between 4 and 8 June. On 7 June King Haakon and the government left Tromsø aboard the British cruiser HMS Devonshire for exile in London. On 8 June the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious and the destroyers Ardent and Acasta, with the loss of more than 1,500 men.

On 10 June 1940 the remaining Norwegian forces capitulated. Norway was placed under a German Reichskommissar, Josef Terboven, while Quisling later headed a collaborationist government from 1942.

Key people

• Nikolaus von Falkenhorst: the German general who planned and commanded the invasion and later the occupation forces in Norway.
• King Haakon VII: Norway’s king, whose refusal to accept Quisling made him a symbol of national resistance.
• Otto Ruge: commander-in-chief of the Norwegian army from 10 April, who chose to stay with his troops and was taken prisoner.
• Vidkun Quisling: fascist politician whose attempted coup made his name a byword for “traitor” in English and other languages.
• Eduard Dietl: commander of the German mountain troops at Narvik, celebrated in Nazi propaganda as its hero.

Consequences

The campaign cost the German navy heavily: one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers and ten destroyers were sunk, and other ships were damaged. These losses weakened any later plans to invade Britain. Germany gained bases for U-boats and aircraft, secured the ore route and later used northern Norway to attack Allied convoys to the Soviet Union.

In Britain, frustration over the campaign led to the Norway Debate on 7–8 May 1940. Neville Chamberlain’s majority fell sharply, and on 10 May he was replaced as prime minister by Winston Churchill, ironically one of the main architects of the Norway operation.

Norway remained occupied until May 1945. Its government in exile contributed the large Norwegian merchant fleet to the Allied cause, and a resistance movement grew inside the country. The “Shetland bus”, a secret service of fishing boats and later submarine chasers, linked Norway with Britain, and in February 1943 Norwegian commandos sabotaged the heavy-water plant at Vemork, which the Germans needed for nuclear research. At the end of the war Quisling was tried and executed for treason in October 1945.

Timeline

• 1940, 16 February: the Altmark incident in Norwegian waters.
• 1940, 8 April: the Royal Navy begins mining Norwegian waters.
• 1940, 9 April: Germany invades Denmark and Norway; the Blücher is sunk.
• 1940, 10 April: first naval battle of Narvik; King Haakon refuses to appoint Quisling.
• 1940, 13 April: second naval battle of Narvik.
• 1940, 14–19 April: Allied landings at Namsos and Åndalsnes.
• 1940, 2–3 May: Allied evacuation from central Norway.
• 1940, 28 May: Allied forces recapture Narvik.
• 1940, 8 June: HMS Glorious is sunk during the withdrawal.
• 1940, 10 June: Norwegian forces capitulate.

Why it matters

Operation Weserübung was one of the first large operations in history to combine land, sea and air forces, including paratroopers. It shaped the war in the north for five years and, through the Norway Debate, helped bring Churchill to power just as Germany attacked in the west.