The German attack on Norway and sinking of the KMS Blucher

[lyman]

Jon,

excellent write up,

Thanks!

[free1954]

great piece. thanks for posting,

[jon_norstog]

So a few more thoughts on the Oscarsborg fight. I would call it a strategic loss for the Germans, since it foiled their plans for a lightning strike that would capture the entire Norwegian government and force a capitulation. If the naval force had been able to force its way past Oscarsborg, the Germans would probably have been able to capture the entire government as they did in Denmark. They did try to follow up and capture the royal family, cabinet ministers and elected officials, sending a force of Fallschirmjaeger after them. This force was met by a road blockade ambush at Midtskogen, Norwegian regulars and armed locals, and turned back. This gave the Storting (parliament) enough time to meet at Elverum and issue the Elverum Proclamation which cut the ground from under Quisling and the Germans by authorizing executive government by the King and Cabinet until the Storting could meet again. It established resistance as the official position and put the legitimate government on a wartime footing. A new, more bellicose head of the armed forces was appointed.



Norway had strategic value for the Germans. They were heavily dependent on iron and nickel ore from mines in far north Sweden that were shipped out of Narvik. They needed Norwegian ports and airfields to operate in the North Sea and eastern north Atlantic, and once they invaded the USSR they needed those ports to interdict the Murmansk convoys. Apparently Hitler believed that the Allies would invade Norway first thing as a play to recover Europe. It would have been a crazy thing for them to do, but they did an equally crazy thing in 1943 by invading Italy instead of southern France.

The original plan was to blitz Norway, then draw down troops for other theaters. It did not work out that way. By the end of the war there were at least 400,000 combat troops occupying a country with a population of what? Five million? The Kriegsmarine suffered serious losses as well, a heavy cruiser and two cruisers, plus a lot of troopships and auxiliaries during the fighting, then further losses throughout the war. The Norwegian merchant marine mostly got out and were incorporated into the British sea transport system. The last Norwegian forces to surrender was the Telemark Infantry Regiment, an ad-hoc unit about 300 strong, organized and armed by Second Lt. Tor Hannevig, composed of a mix of regulars and Telemark hunters and farmers. They blocked the communications between Oslo and Bergen operating in the high country my family is from. They were never defeated, but gave up or went underground after the rest of the Norwegian military surrendered or disbanded.

KIA_ringerike.jpg

These two Telemark men were killed in a two-day battle at Ringerike, an airfield north and west of Oslo. The Germans had to bring in panzer units and Stukas at this fight. Their marker is in the yard of the church at Mo, where some of my family is buried.

The resistance continued. Within a year it had been penetrated by informers and provocateurs, then the Gestapo moved in and tortured, murdered or imprisoned as many as they could catch. The military arm of the resistance reorganized with a LOT of training, equipment and support from Britain. The civilian branch decentralized and used communication, passive resistance, slowdowns and sabotage to great effect. For the Germans, getting anything done in Norway must have been like trying to run through molasses or carry a big mattress up a set of narrow stairs. The Germans seized radio receivers, the Norwegians built new ones. The occupation went crazy with their RDFs, chasing transmitters. They couldn’t control the population and couldn’t seal off the coastline.

The Germans killed around 10,000 Norwegian civilians mostly on suspicion of resistance activity, in reprisals, or for not obeying the new masters. They killed about half of the Jews, and no one knows how many Saami. The resistance counted almost 1500 dead, including 255 women and girls. There were collaborators and profiteers, enough of them that a lot of people who should have been shot went to prison for a few years instead. Some collaborators and informers were shot by the resistance. In his book, “Skis Against the Atom”, my cousin said he performed a rather shocking number of these executions himself.

After the German surrender there was an accounting. An example of Norwegian justice is the sentencing of upper-level collaborators to hard labor, digging up the two-hundred plus bodies buried in mass graves in the Trandumskogen forest near the present Oslo International Airport. Quisling and a few others were executed; others got long prison sentences that were later commuted. In the end, the people of Norway had to move on.

Speaking of Quisling, he made a grab at power in the turmoil surrounding the German invasion, naming himself prime minister. Once the Germans were on the scene, they pushed him to the side. The real power was Reichskommisar Josef Terboven who gave orders to be carried out both by his own secret police and by a Norwegian collaborator government. Terboven had the common sense to commit suicide when the Reich collapsed. In the great atrium of Oslo’s city hall is a mural depicting the occupation and resistance and the final liberation.

Norway has a long history, most of it being a neglected province of some other country. It became independent in 1905, the first time since the 14th century. The old guys who sank the Blucher, Eriksen and Andersson, were young men in 1905. The resistance to the Germans is a kind of defining act for the national identity. When I was at Oscarsborg I ran into a wedding party – the couple was getting married at the fort! Big, beautiful Norwegian bride! The groom looked OK too. People brought their kids, there were guided tours, etc. On weekends there is a public transit boat (B-21) there and back from Oslo, the dock near City Hall.

Kopas_guns.jpg Kopas_gun_mount.jpg Kopas_camp.jpg

The Kopas battery is mostly an overgrown ruin, with one 10.5 cm gun left in place. It seems to be a local party spot. I found a campsite there with a fire ring and stayed there one night. There was plenty of firewood.

[blackhawknj]

Yes, Hitler became so obsessed with Norway as a strategic theater of war that hundreds of thousand of Wehrmacht troops were tied down there. The Allies took advantage of this in Operation Fortitude North by creating a fictitious British 4th Army, creating the illusion that it was training for an invasion of Norway, sending out messages requesting snow shoes, the "distinguished skiing instructor...." etc.

[jon_norstog]

Yes, Hitler became so obsessed with Norway as a strategic theater of war that hundreds of thousand of Wehrmacht troops were tied down there. The Allies took advantage of this in Operation Fortitude North by creating a fictitious British 4th Army, creating the illusion that it was training for an invasion of Norway, sending out messages requesting snow shoes, the "distinguished skiing instructor...." etc.

That's my thinking too. The Germans did draw down after D-Day, but they still had 400,000 in Norway when the Reich imploded. Some of the sources I read said it was 500,000 troops twiddling their thumbs there in 1944. My own thought is that Norway was punching way over its weight when it came to tying up German military resources.

jn

[m1ashooter]

Again thank you for this post.

[blackhawknj]

Despite his claims to the contrary, Quisling-along with all other collaborators-was not let in on the Germans plans. Goebbels dismissed him as a "theoretician and dogmatist", Speer quotes Hitler as saying of Quisling-along with Mussert and Frits Clausen-that they were mere "copyists."

[kj47]

This great history, thanks for posting Jon.

[jon_norstog]

Despite his claims to the contrary, Quisling-along with all other collaborators-was not let in on the Germans plans. Goebbels dismissed him as a "theoretician and dogmatist", Speer quotes Hitler as saying of Quisling-along with Mussert and Frits Clausen-that they were mere "copyists."

It looks like that to me, too. Quisling didn't have much say in how the Germans ran things in Norway, he was just there for window dressing. One more reason to shoot him, if you ask me. There were other collaborators who were more useful to the Germans, including management of the National Railway. Ship a trainload of Jews to a port of debarkation so they can go to Auschwitz? Can do!

A lot of policemen refused to carry out instructions from the Occupation - hundreds of them were sent to camps in Germany and many of them were killed. The Germans put together a collaborator police force to replace them. Some of those people received justice after the war, some did not. I could go on, dammit ...


jn

[blackhawknj]

The Patriotic Traitors by David Littlejohn covers the collaborators in Western Europe and has a very good chapter on Quisling and Norway.