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This isn’t the first book on this campaign I’ve reviewed. Geirr Haarr produced an excellent two-volume study of the campaign in 2009-10, with the first volume largely focusing on the naval war, the second on the land campaigned that followed. However each volume is larger than this book, and between them they come to around 900 pages. Greene and Masignani have produced a work that is probably better suited to the general reader.
The authors focus on the early part of the campaign allowing them to cover that area in great detail. A key theme is the ineptness of the Norwegian response to the outbreak of the Second World War. In the pre-war years the left wing government feared that the military might attempt a coup (given that some officers do appear to have sided with Quisling, that clearly wasn’t a hollow fear). In contrast the army feared that the far left would attempt the same. As a result the government underfunded the military, while for much of the 30s the Army made sure that different parts of weapons were kept in different places, so if revolutionaries seized one arsenal they wouldn’t be able to use the weapons in it. This policy had changed by 1940, but plenty of items were still out of place leaving some weapons useless when the Germans invaded. The government failed to mobilise enough men after the outbreak of war, so the coast defences that did exist were often undermanned or even un-manned. The initial reaction to the German attack was muddled, meaning that some of the coastal defences that were manned and armed didn’t open fire, or opened fire too late. What might have been achieved was demonstrated by the sinking of the German heavy cruiser Blucher during the attack on Oslo. If all of the coastal defences had been manned and active, the naval part of the German invasion could have ended in disaster, or at least given the Norwegians time to mobalise properly.
The authors make a convincing argument that the battle was won by Germany on the very first day, when their forces seized all of the major cities of southern Norway, along with Trondheim and Narvik. Most of the Norwegian army was thus meant to be mobalising in the places that had been lost meaning that the Norwegian army never fully came together. On the German side the planning was excellent, allowing them to successfully seize all of their targets in a single day, despite the massive distance between Narvick and Oslo. We see how air power gave them a massive advantage, with the British limited to either their pretty dreadful carrier aircraft or a relative handful of Hurricanes. In constrast the Germans were able to commit a powerful airforce, taking advantage of the quick conquest of Denmark to fly shorter ranged aircraft into Norway. The Royal Navy found that its anti-aircraft guns were inadequate, both in numbers and in design – the main AA guns of many destroyers couldn’t reach a high enough elevation to fire at dive bombers!
The authors focus on the Norwegian resistance to the invasion. This saw a significant force gather in central Norway, and even briefly link up with the British and French during their ineffective intervention. However even here we see the Germans adapting more successfully to the Norwegian landscape, often outflanking Norwegian positions by crossing mountainous terrain. The British and French intervention was very badly planned and implemented – this was their first active campaign of the war, and it rather showed. Several chances to recapture key ports before their German conquerors had got properly established were missed. It took so long to recapture Narvik that the German invasion of France had already begun by the time it fell! At sea the Royal Navy’s response was poor (apart from at Narvik), with a low point being the loss of the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, returning home across a warzone with an escort of only two destroyers and no air patrols in place.
This is an excellent single volume history of this campaign, supported by an analysis of what went wrong with Norway’s attempts to maintain her neutrality, and what she learnt from those mistakes in the post-war period.
Chapters
1 – The Setting
2 – Iron Ore and Casus Belli
3 – Rivals
4 – Norwegian Defence Preparations
5 – Nazi Planning
6 – Opening Moves and Painful Collisions
7 – The Fall of Denmark
8 – The Seizure of Oslo
9 – Littoral Operations in Action
10 – Narvik
11 – The Aftermath: Allied Reactions and German Exploitation
12 – A Tale of When Detterence Failed
Author: Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: Frontline
Year: 2013