Great Britain to Attack Norway on way to fighting Russia (WWII)

Factual Questions
1

I was chatting with my Norwegian friend a couple days ago and he mentioned that during WWII, the British intended to go to Finland and fight the Russians, going through Norway, regardless of whether the Norwegian army would let them.

How likely was this scenario? Was Russia conquering nations on the side during WWII besides just fighting the Germans? I know they ended up with a bunch of countries after the war, but all of those had been occupied by Germany (I think?)

And if fighting off Russia was really in the cards, why didn’t we (the US or Britain) go ahead and keep on after Germany fell?

2

It sounds like your friend is confusing elements of the Winter War. Check out the paragraph on Franco-British Assistance. Aiding the Finns was only incidental to the whole plan, and they weren’t going to fight the Norwegians to make it happen.

In any case, from the period between the German invasion of Poland and the Soviet entry into WW2, the USSR invaded Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and grabbed chunks of Poland and Finland. All of these countries got more or less screwed by the settlements at the end of the war, but I always felt particularly bad for Finland.

3

In 1939, the Soviet Union signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany that cleared the way for the invasion and Fourth Partition of Poland. (Most people forget that 1922-39 Poland held half of Belarus and a large chunk of northwest Ukraine. The USSR took this, right up to the Brest-Litovsk line, in 1939, and never surrendered it. A secret clause of the Pact gave the USSR a free hand in Latvia and Estonia, with Lithuania falling in the German sphere of influence.

At the same time, Stalin made significant territorial demands on Finland – which extended within 25 miles of Leningrad at the time. In exchange for this, the original proposal would have given Finland a significant chunk of Russian Karelia. (Basically, it was, take the meandering roughly north-south Russian-Finland boundary – give us (USSR) land at the north and south, and we’ll give you some in the middle.) The Finns rejected this and commenced the Winter War (winter of 1939-40) – in which the Finns made a surprisingly good showing, leading Stalin to beef up his army. Eventually the USSR won, and got its territorial concessions (without the proposed Karelian exchange land). This was the war in which the UK debated whether to back the Finns.

For the record, Norway was neutral – but Germany was using that neutrality to buy high-grade Swedish iron ore from the Finnmark ore fields in northernmost Sweden – Kiruna and Gallivare. While in summer the Swedes could ship this out through the port of Lulea, on the Gulf of Bithynia, that was frozen much of the year, and shipments went to Narvik in Norway, which was, if not precisely ice-free, navigable year round. Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) observed that blocking Swedish ore shipments would severely cripple German armaments production – especially with Lorraine behind the Maginot Line in hostile France. Since British sympathy for the Finns as free and underdogs defending themselves from the Soviet menace (the common view, whether or not true) required access to Finland, the idea of getting there through northern Norway therefore killed two birds with one stone in his mind.

After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, the Finns launched the “Continuation War” in 1941 – which was ended in 1944 by an effective status quo ante bellum armistice later turned into a treaty – one of the few the USSR kept punctiliously. Finland remained a free nation ostentatiously neutral and officially almost pro-Russian during the Cold War years – something that has caused some internal debate since.

Big picture: Britain (and France) wanted to help Finland against a USSR allied with Hitler. After Hitler invaded the USSR, the latter became our ally, and Finland therefore our enemy de jure, though Mannerheim (Finnish President) and Churchill had an understanding that there would be little or no actual fighting, the “state of war” being something the UK needed to do officially to support its ally the USSR.

4

Add to above: German ships were using “the Leads” – Norwegian territorial waters, mostly between coast and islands – to get the ore to Germany without facing the Royal Navy, which was barred from entering neutral Norway’s territorial waters. While violating Norway’s neutrality was not quite kosher, there were arguments that the Germans were already doing it.

With its usual flair for doing the right thing at the wrong time, Chamberlain’s British Cabinet postponed taking decision on landing at Narvik until (a) the Finns had been defeated and (b) the Germans were ready to spring their surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway. It was a photo finish to take Narvik – and the Germans won the race.

5

That answers my main question. I’ll have to ask him to find something that says otherwise so we can track its sources back.

It seemed odd that the Allies would be willing to go so far as to attack a neutral country to fight off Russia, but then go ahead and cede a bunch of countries to Russia at the end of the war.

6

Good summary. But didn’t the Soviets start the war?

7

Yes they did. The Russians justified the invasion with an incident called the shelling of Mainila

8

As opposed to what alternative? The United Kingdom (and the United States) didn’t give Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union; they never had it to begin with.

The choices were to recognize that the Soviet Union had already occupied Eastern Europe and didn’t need anyone’s permission in order to stay or to start a new World War. The British realized they did not have the resources to fight another war so they had to accept reality.

9

As opposed to calling Stalin the new enemy and fighting him off just as much as they did Germany.

10

Did you miss the part where I said Britain didn’t have the resources to fight another war? Heck, they really didn’t have the resources to fight World War II - if they hadn’t received foreign assistance they would have collapsed by 1945.

11

Yes, but presumably they would have been able to figure out in 1940 that fighting the combined forces of Russia (, Norway,) and Germany would be a tremendous task. I don’t envision little Britain as having the gumption to go ahead with such a plan any more in 1940 than they would in 1945, and thus it pinged my :dubious:-meter.

I’m not saying that it seems likely for them to attack Russia. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem more likely for them to do it in 1940 than 1945, hence why I posted the OP.

12

It stemmed more from a mentality of “Do summat. Do good if tha can, but do summat” which was prevailing at the time. Aid to Finland could do nothing to injure Germany, or shorten the war, but it was an initiative of sorts. Ideally they hoped Norway would acquiesce in the passage of Allied (because the French were coming as well) troops across its territory. As it happened the whole thing took so long to organise that Finland’s resistance was at an end before it could start.

13

Their situation was better in 1940 than it was in 1945. In 1940, France was still in the war and the fighting had been minimal. Germany had conquered Poland with unexpected ease but hadn’t done anything else. The Soviet Union had attacked Finland but was initially held to a stalemate. So France and the United Kingdom thought it might be possible to open a limited second front in Finland against the Soviets at minimal risk of being defeated by the Red Army or attacked by the Wehrmacht.

Things were very different in 1945. Six years of fighting had exhausted the British economy. Taxes were doubled during the war but by 1945, over half of British spending was based on borrowed money. Britain sold virtually all of its available assets during the war. Manpower had gotten low enough by 1944 that active units were being disbanded in order to supply reinforcements to other units. Britain had already told the Americans that if the 1944 invasion failed and was repulsed, they would not be able to gather enough forces to participate in a second invasion.

Basically, the British had no plan for winning the war after the French surrender. Their strategy was to remain on the defensive, stage limited attacks against the Axis where it was possible, and hope that the strategic situation would change either due to a internal collapse in Germany or an American or Soviet entry into the war. I’m not knocking Britain for this. Personally I give the United Kingdom great credit for continuing to fight under such unfavorable circumstances - most nations would have given up.