The Battle for Norway lasted for two months in 1940. The country had been neutral during the First World War and hoped to keep out of the Second. But neither side respected Norwegian neutrality. The Germans exported iron ore from Sweden, vital for their war machine, through the Norwegian port of Narvik. Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, came up with a plan to mine the waters off the Norwegian coast in order to harden the blockade against the Nazis.
The British Cabinet, reluctant at first, finally agreed to the plan and to send an Expeditionary Force to Norway. Meanwhile, Hitler ordered his generals to prepare an invasion. He hoped the country’s naval bases could be used against the British in the North Sea and the Atlantic, and to ensure Norway was not occupied by the Allies.
The plans of both sides came to a head in April 1940. Germany invaded on the ninth day of that month, having conquered and occupied Denmark in an operation that lasted only eight hours. In total, some 120,000 men, supported by a battalion of elite parachute troops, landed at several ports and airfields simultaneously. The capital, Oslo, was quickly overcome. An Allied force of about 38,000 men was landed in the north, but did not have the right clothing or equipment for mountain warfare. Meanwhile, the Cabinet dithered. General Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, wrote in his diary that he was ‘very upset at the thought of our incompetence’.
