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Operation Weserübung (German:Unternehmen Weserübung[ˈveːzɐˌʔyːbʊŋ],transl. OperationWeser Exercise, 9 April – 10 June 1940) was the invasion ofDenmark andNorway byNazi Germany duringWorld War II. It was the opening operation of theNorwegian Campaign.
In the early morning of 9 April 1940 (Wesertag, "Weser Day"), German forces occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, ostensibly as a preventive manoeuvre against a planned Anglo-Frenchoccupation of Norway known asPlan R 4, which developed as a response to a German invasion of Norwegian territory. After the rapid occupation of Denmark, in which the Danish military was ordered to stand down as Denmark's government did not declare war with Germany, German envoys informed the governments of Denmark and Norway that Germany's forces had come to protect both countries against Anglo-French attacks. Significant differences ingeography, location andclimate between the two nations made the actual military operations very dissimilar.
The invasion fleet's nominal landing time,Weserzeit (Weser Time), was set to 05:15.
By the spring of 1939, theBritish Admiralty began to viewScandinavia as a potentialtheatre of war in a future conflict withNazi Germany. However, theBritish government was reluctant to engage in another land conflict on the continent in the belief that it would repeatWorld War I. Therefore, the British began to consider navalblockades against Germany if war broke out. German industry was heavily dependent on the import ofiron ore from mines inSwedish Lapland, and most of that ore was shipped through the ice-free Norwegian port ofNarvik.[6] Control of the Norwegian coast would serve to tighten a potential blockade against Germany.
In October 1939, the chief of theKriegsmarine, Grand-AdmiralErich Raeder, discussed withAdolf Hitler the danger posed by potentialAllied bases in Norway and the possibility of Germany pre-emptively seizing those locations. TheKriegsmarine argued that a German occupation of Norway would allow control of the nearby seas and serve as a platform for staging submarine operations against the Allies.[6] However, the other branches of theWehrmacht were not interested, and Hitler issued a directive stating that the main effort would be a land offensive through theLow Countries.
Toward the end of November 1939,Winston Churchill, as a new member of theChamberlain war ministry, proposed the mining of Norwegian waters inOperation Wilfred. This would force the ore transports to travel through the open waters of theNorth Sea, where theRoyal Navy could intercept them. Churchill assumed that Wilfred would provoke a German response and that the Allies would then implementPlan R 4 and occupy Norway. Though later implemented, Operation Wilfred was initially rejected byNeville Chamberlain andLord Halifax for fear of an adverse reaction among neutral nations such as the United States.
The start of theWinter War between theSoviet Union andFinland in November 1939 changed the strategic situation, so in December 1939, the United Kingdom and France began serious planning for occupying northern Norway and Swedenunder the guise of sending aid to Finland. Their plan called for a force to land in Narvik, in northern Norway, the main port for Swedish iron ore exports and then to take control of theIron Ore Line railway between Narvik andLuleå in Sweden on the shore of theGulf of Bothnia. This would also allow Allied forces to occupy the Swedish iron mines in Lapland. The plan received the support of both Chamberlain and Halifax. They were counting on the co-operation of Norway, which would alleviate some of the legal issues, but stern warnings issued to both Norway and Sweden by Germany resulted in strongly negative reactions in both countries. Planning for the expedition continued, but the justification for it was removed after theMoscow Peace Treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union had been signed in March 1940 and ended the Winter War.
Following a meeting withVidkun Quisling from Norway on 14 December,[7] Hitler turned his attention to Scandinavia. Convinced of the threat posed by the Allies to the iron ore supply, Hitler ordered theOberkommando der Wehrmacht to begin preliminary planning for an invasion of Norway. The preliminary plan was namedStudie Nord and called for only onedivision of German troops to carry out the invasion.
Between 14 and 19 January, theKriegsmarine developed an expanded version of this plan. It decided upon two key factors: surprise was essential to reduce the threat of Norwegian resistance (and Allied intervention), and faster German warships, rather than comparatively slow merchant ships, should be used as troop transports. That would allow all targets to be occupied simultaneously. The new plan called for a fullarmy corps, including a mountain division, anairborne division, a motorized rifle brigade and two infantry divisions. The target objectives of the force were the Norwegian capital,Oslo, and other population centres:Bergen, Narvik,Tromsø,Trondheim,Kristiansand andStavanger. The plan also called for the swift capture of the Kings of Denmark and Norway in the hope of triggering a rapid surrender.
On 21 February 1940, command of the operation was given toGeneralNikolaus von Falkenhorst. He had fought in Finland during the First World War and was familiar withArctic warfare, but he would have command of only the ground forces, despite Hitler's desire to have a unified command. The final plan was codenamed "Operation Weserübung" on 27 January 1940. The ground forces would be the XXI Army Corps, including the3rd Mountain Division and five infantry divisions; none of the latter had yet been tested in battle. The first phase would consist of three divisions for the assault, with the remainder to follow in the next wave. Three companies offallschirmjagers would be used to seize airfields. The decision to also send the2nd Mountain Division was made later.
Almost allU-boat operations in the Atlantic were to be stopped for the submarines to aid in the operation. All available submarines, including some training boats, were used as part ofOperation Hartmut in support of Operation Weserübung. Initially, the plan was to invade Norway and to gain control of Danish airfields by diplomatic means. However, Hitler issued a new directive on 1 March that called for the invasion of both Norway and Denmark. That came at the insistence of theLuftwaffe to capture fighter bases and sites for air warning stations. TheXXXI Corps, formed for the invasion of Denmark, consisted of two infantry divisions and the 11th motorized brigade. The entire operation would be supported by the X Air Corps, which consisted of some 1,000 aircraft of various types.
In February, the Royal NavydestroyerHMS Cossackboarded the German tankerAltmark in Norwegian waters. The crew ofCossack overpowered the tanker's crew and rescued Britishprisoners of war onboard the ship, whose presence Norwegian authorities had repeatedly ignored. Both the attack and the transportation of prisoners of war into Norwegian waters byAltmark violated Norway's neutrality. Hitler regarded the incident as a clear sign that the Allies were also willing to violate Norwegian neutrality, which made him become even more strongly committed to invading Norway.[6]
On 12 March, the British decided to send anexpeditionary force to Norway just as the Winter War was winding down. The force began boarding on 13 March, but it was recalled and the operation cancelled because of the end of the Winter War. Instead, the Chamberlain war ministry voted to proceed with the mining operation in Norwegian waters, followed by troop landings.
On 5 April 1940, the long-planned Operation Wilfred was put into action, and a Royal Navy squadron led by thebattlecruiserHMS Renown leftScapa Flow to mine Norwegian waters. The first German ships set sail for the invasion on 7 April 1940 at 3:00 a.m. The mine fields were laid in theVestfjorden in the early morning of 8 April. Operation Wilfred was over, but later that day, the destroyerHMS Glowworm, which detached on 7 April to search for a man lost overboard, was sunk byKriegsmarineheavy cruiserAdmiral Hipper and two destroyers belonging to the German invasion fleet. On 9 April, the German invasion was under way, and the execution of Plan R 4 was promptly started.
Strategically, Denmark's importance to Germany was as a staging area for operations in Norway. Considering its status as a minor nation bordering Germany, it was also seen as a country that would have to fall at some point. Given Denmark's position on theBaltic Sea, the country was also crucial for the control of naval and shipping access to major German and Soviet harbours.
At 04:00 on 9 April 1940, the German ambassador to Denmark,Cecil von Renthe-Fink, called the Danish Foreign MinisterPeter Munch and requested a meeting with him. When the two men met 20 minutes later, Renthe-Fink declared that German troops were then moving in to occupy Denmark to protect the country from Anglo-French attacks. The German ambassador demanded that Danish resistance cease immediately and that contact be made between Danish authorities and the German armed forces. If the demands were not met, theLuftwaffe would bomb the capital,Copenhagen.
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As the German demands were communicated, the first German advances had already been made, with forces landing on a regular commercial ferry inGedser at 03:55 and moving north. GermanFallschirmjäger (paratrooper) units had made unopposed landings and taken two airfields atAalborg, theStorstrøm Bridge as well as the fortress ofMasnedø, the latter being the first recorded attack in the world made by paratroopers.[8]
At 04:20 local time, a reinforced battalion of German infantrymen from the 308th Regiment landed in Copenhagen harbour from the minelayerHansestadt Danzig, quickly capturing the Danish garrison atthe Citadel without encountering resistance. From the harbour, the Germans moved towardAmalienborg Palace to capture the Danish royal family. By the time the invasion forces arrived at the king's residence, theKing's Royal Guard had been alerted and other reinforcements were on their way to the palace. The first German attack on Amalienborg was repulsed, givingChristian X and his ministers time to confer with the Danish Army chiefGeneral Prior. As the discussions were ongoing, several formations ofHeinkel He 111 andDornier Do 17 bombers roared over the city droppingleaflets headed, in Danish,OPROP! (proclamation).
At 05:25, two squadrons of GermanMesserschmitt Bf 110s attackedVærløse airfield onZealand and neutralised the Danish Army Air Service bystrafing.[9][page needed] Despite Danishanti-aircraft fire, the German fighters destroyed ten Danish aircraft and seriously damaged another fourteen, thereby wiping out half of the entire Army Air Service.[9][page needed]
Faced with the explicit threat of theLuftwaffe bombing the civilian population of Copenhagen, and with only General Prior in favour of fighting on, King Christian and the entire Danish government capitulated at approximately 06:00, in exchange for retaining political independence in domestic matters.
The invasion of Denmark lasted less than six hours and was the shortest military campaign conducted by the Germans during the war. The rapid Danish capitulation resulted in the uniquely-lenientoccupation of Denmark, particularly until the summer of 1943, and in postponing the arrest anddeportation of Danish Jews until nearly all of them were warned and on their way torefuge in neutral Sweden.[10] In the end, 477 Danish Jews were deported, and 70 of them lost their lives, out of a pre-war total of Jews and half-Jews at a little over 8,000.[11]
The military headquarters of the operation was in Hotel Esplanade in Hamburg, where orders were given to, among others, the air units involved in the invasion.[12] Norway was important to Germany for two primary reasons: as a base for naval units, including U-boats, to weaken Allied shipping in the North Atlantic, and to secure shipments of iron ore from Sweden through the port of Narvik.[6] The long northern coastline was an excellent place to launch U-boat operations into the North Atlantic to attack British commerce. Germany was dependent on iron ore from Sweden and was worried, with justification, that the Allies would attempt to disrupt those shipments, 90% of which originating from Narvik.
The invasion of Norway was given to the XXI Army Corps (GeneralNikolaus von Falkenhorst) and consisted of the following main units:
The initial invasion force was transported in several groups by theKriegsmarine[13]
Shortly after noon on 8 April, the clandestine GermantroopshipSS Rio de Janeiro was sunk offLillesand by the Polish submarineORP Orzeł, part of the British 2nd Submarine Flotilla. News of the sinking reached the Norwegian government in Oslo too late to do much more than trigger a limited, last-minute alert. Late in the evening of 8 April 1940,Kampfgruppe 5 was spotted by the Norwegian guard vesselPol III.Pol III was fired at; her captainLeif Welding-Olsen became the first Norwegian killed in action during the invasion. German ships then sailed up theOslofjord leading to the Norwegian capital, reaching theDrøbak Narrows (Drøbaksundet).
In the early morning of 9 April, the gunners atOscarsborg Fortress fired on the leading ship,German cruiser Blücher that had been illuminated by spotlights at about 04:15, beginning theBattle of Drøbak Sound. Two of the fortress guns were 48-year-old GermanKrupp guns (nicknamedMoses andAron) of 280 mm (11 in) caliber. Within two hours, the badly damaged ship, unable to manoeuvre in the narrow fjord from artillery and torpedo hits, sank with the loss of 600 to 1,000 men. The threat from the fortress (and the mistaken belief that mines had contributed to the sinking) delayed the rest of the naval invasion group long enough for theRoyal Family, theCabinet andmembers of Parliament to be evacuated, along with thenational treasury. On their flight northward by special train, the court encountered theBattle of Midtskogen and bombs atElverum andNybergsund. As the King and his government were not captured, Norway never surrendered in a legal sense to the Germans, making theQuisling regime illegitimate. TheNorwegian government-in-exile based in London remained an Allied nation in the war.
At 7:06 p.m. five Norwegian fighters were sent into battle against 70 to 80 German aircraft. German airborne troops landed at theOslo airport Fornebu,Kristiansand airport Kjevik, andSola Air Station – the latter constituting thefirst opposed paratrooper attack in history.[6] Among theLuftwaffe pilots landing at Kjevik wasReinhard Heydrich. Vidkun Quisling's radio-effectedcoup d'etat at 7:30 p.m. on 9 April was another first.[14] At 8:30 p.m. the Norwegian destroyerÆger was attacked and sunk outside Stavanger by tenJunkers Ju 88 bombers, after it had sunk the German cargo shipMS Roda.[15]Roda had been carrying a clandestine cargo of anti-aircraft guns and ammunition for the German invasion force. Bergen, Stavanger,Egersund, Kristiansand,Arendal,Horten, Trondheim and Narvik were attacked and occupied within 24 hours. Ineffective resistance by the Norwegian armoured coastal defence shipsNorge andEidsvold took place at Narvik. Both ships were torpedoed and sunk with great loss of life.[15] On 10 April theFirst Battle of Narvik took place between five British destroyers and the landing force of ten destroyers of theKriegsmarine. Both parties lost two destroyers and on 13 April a second British attack by the battleshipHMS Warspite and a flotilla of destroyers sank the remaining eight German destroyers, which had been trapped in Narvik because of lack of fuel.[16]
The towns of Nybergsund, Elverum,Åndalsnes,Molde,Kristiansund N,Steinkjer,Namsos,Bodø and Narvik were bombed some tactically and others terror-bombed. The main German land campaign advanced northward from Oslo with superior equipment; Norwegian soldiers with turn-of-the-century weapons, along with some British and French troops, in theNamsos campaign delayed the invaders for a time before yielding; this was the first land combat between the British Army and theWehrmacht in World War II. At Narvik, Norwegian and Allied forces under GeneralCarl Gustav Fleischer achieved the first tactical victory against theWehrmacht in the war. German forces then recovered and in theBattle of Gratangen overran the Norwegian defenders. The King and his cabinet evacuated from Molde to Tromsø on 29 April, and the Allies evacuated from Åndalsnes on 1 May. Resistance in Southern Norway came to an end.
Hegra Fortress in theBattle of Hegra Fortress held on until 5 May, and this battle was of Allied propaganda importance, like Narvik.King Haakon VII,Crown Prince Olav, and the Cabinet Nygaardsvold left from Tromsø7 June aboard the British cruiserHMS Devonshire to represent Norway in exile. The King returned to Oslo on the same date five years later. The Norwegian Army in mainland Norway capitulated on 10 June 1940, two months afterWesertag. That made Norway the occupied country that had withstood a German invasion for the longest time before succumbing. Despite the surrender of the main Norwegian forces, the Royal Norwegian Navy and other armed forces continued fighting the Germansabroad andat home until the German capitulation on 8 May 1945.
In the far north, Norwegian, French and Polish troops, supported by the Royal Navy and theRoyal Air Force (RAF), fought against the Germans over the control of the Norwegian harbour Narvik, important for the year-round export of Swedish iron ore. The Germans were driven out of Narvik on 28 May, but the deteriorating situation on the European continent made the Allied troops withdraw inOperation Alphabet, and on 9 June, the Germans recaptured Narvik, which was abandoned by civilians because ofLuftwaffe bombing.[citation needed]
The 1941Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, and the 1940 German invasion of Norway have been argued to be preemptive, with the German defense in theNuremberg trials in 1946 arguing that Germany was "compelled to attack Norway by the need to forestall an Allied invasion and that her action was therefore preemptive".[17] The German defence was to attempt to refer to Plan R 4 and its predecessors. However, it was determined that Germany had discussed invasion plans as early as 3 October 1939 in a memo fromAdmiral Raeder toAlfred Rosenberg whose subject was "gaining bases in Norway".[18] Raeder had begun by asking questions such as "Can bases be gained by military force against Norway's will, if it is impossible to carry this out without fighting?"[18] Norway was vital to Germany as a transport route for iron ore from Sweden, a supply that the United Kingdom was determined to stop. One British plan was to go through Norway and occupy cities in Sweden.[a][b] An Allied invasion was ordered on 12 March, and the Germans intercepted radio traffic setting 14 March as deadline for the preparation. Peace in Finland interrupted the Allied plans.[c]
Two diary entries byAlfred Jodl dated 13 and 14 March did not indicate any high-level awareness of the Allied plan but also that Hitler was actively considering puttingWeserübung into operation. The first said, "Führer does not give order yet for 'Weser Exercise'. He is still looking for an excuse".[18] The second: "Führer has not yet decided what reason to give for Weser Exercise".[18] It was not until 2 April 1940 that German preparations were completed and the Naval Operational Order forWeserübung was issued on 4 April 1940. The new Allied plans were "Wilfred" and Plan R 4. The plan was to provoke a German reaction by laying mines in Norwegian waters, and once Germany showed signs of taking action, UK troops would occupy Narvik, Trondheim, and Bergen and launch a raid on Stavanger to destroySola airfield. However, "the mines were not laid until the morning of 8 April, by which time the German ships were advancing up the Norwegian coast".[22] The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg determined that no Allied invasion was imminent and so rejected the German argument that Germany was entitled to attack Norway.[18]
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