I have always wondered this. Anyone care to cliffnotes or give a detailed summary of what Norway’s role in WW2 was?
Thanx !
Google “Quisling” and you will get the answer.
Norway spent most of World War II occupied by Germany.
Norway was invaded in the Spring of 1940 by Germany, and fought bravely to retain its independence, but was overrun quite rapidly, owing to the disparity between the Norwegian Army and the Wehrmacht troops sent to take it over.
The government and the king escaped to Great Britain and fought the war from there, with IIRC one division of troops spirited out on the “Shetland Ferry” – ships making the run at night between the Shetland Islands and the Norwegian coast. There was a very active Resistance, which among other things was able to sabotage the German efforts to create an atomic bomb – something for which the whole world owes them great thanks, IMO.
But the most important thing was that the Norwegian Merchant Marine, fourth largest in the world, continued to fight alongside England – light ships guns mounted on merchantmen, who were invaluable in transporting supplies throughout the war.
The Norwegian spirit was best shown in an official stamp printed by the government in exile in England – a sidewalk with three words scrawled on it in chalk, chosen to be Norwegian but intelligible to English speakers as well: VE VILL VINNE!
Germany occupied Norway in April 1940. Norway resisted long enough for its government to go into exile. Germany wanted the iron ore from Norway but it really wanted the heavy water from the primiere heavy water plant in the world: Norsk Hydro at Vemork. This was necessary to do their studies on the atomic bomb. (In the US the scientists used pure carbon for the same purpose.) The plant was a cascade, somewhat like a series of locks, in which each successive pool contained a higher concentration of heavy water. The Germans took the plant.
The British were determined to sabatoge the plant, but it was a fortress. The first attempt was a failure. The second attempt met with little resistance, since the Germans lightly guarded the structure that they regarded as an impenetrable fortress. An explosion destroyed all eighteen cells, and the men escaped.
The Germans immediately started to repair the plant, bringing back stores of heavy water from Germany to speed restoration of the cascade. When the plant was in full operation, more heavily guarded, the English sent an air raid to destroy parts of the plant.
The Germans decided to move the plant to Germany, along with all the heavy water that was at the plant. Knut Haukelid and Alf Larsen interfered with their plans, blowing up the ferry that carried the heavy water.
These events in Norway may have made the difference in whether Germany got the bomb before the US. It’s hard to say.
Oops, I got scooped partially.
I forgot to mention my source: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
In addition to the book cited by gtbiehle above, I just wanted to add a couple of other sources for those interested in the Norwegian Resistance attacks on the Hydro Norsk heavy water plant in Norway’s Telemark region in 1943:
(Book) - Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler’s Bomb by Dan Kurzman
(Movie) - The Heroes of Telemark (1965), starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris. Although it’s definitely an adaptation rather than literal truth, it gives a good feel (IMHO) for what must really have happened.
My great-uncle was shot down by the Nazis during a bombing raid over Norway. The Resistance kept him alive and eventually transported him back to the UK. He owed the Norwegians his life, notwithstanding their bread made with sawdust instead of flour.
-Apoptosis
Minor nitpick: Norway was not itself a significant producer of iron ore, but owing to the Gulf Stream, its ports were ice-free. Therefore Swedish ore from Kiruna and Gallivare (mining communities in the large ore range in northernmost Sweden) was shipped across the border by rail and transshipped onto freighters at Narvik, Norway. (Sweden remained neutral during the war, retaining its independence in the face of Nazi expansionism by a willingness to freely sell to Germany the raw materials it needed provided that it was left alone.)
One absolutely immense contribution of the Norwegain resistance was that it compelled the Germans to keep very large numbers of troops there.
The Germans kept 400000 troops there both to tie down the population of 4millions, and to keep the threat of a northern invasion at bay.
The threat posed by the Norwegian resistance, which was pretty much across the majority of the population, meant that any potential invasion would had had massive and very effective support, from intelligence to sabotage, and in a country where local knowledge and terrain were absolutely crucial it meant Germany had no option but to station such a large occupying force.
Even with such number of occupiers, the German forces stationed in Norway were unable to prevent very serious sabotage to their most important military research programs.
When Overlord was underway those troops would have been at the very least, a serious resource upon which Germany might have been able to draw upon but were fortunately tied down.
The reality is even more surprising, because there may well have been even more German forces occupying Norway than those 400k, since these were what remained when Germany capitulated, and it seems very likely that there must have been some redeployment away from Norway before that.
Mounted on merchantmen? How light were these guns, exactly? The size of a Stinger or a Blowpipe?
I like this thread because when you look at the number of casualties by country involved in the war it looks like WWII basically passed over Norway, in the European theater only Denmark & Luxembourg had lower civilian/military totals as far as casualties are concerned. But it was really a very, very important battleground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_casualties_by_country
Good question, for which I don’t have an answer. Naval historian Dopers? I know they were much the same guns as those mounted on British merchantmen (coming from the same source), if that’s any help.
British merchantmen certainly had weapons as large as 4" mounted, these were unenclosed single barrel weapons.
It would not be at all difficult to put sponsons onboard for this purpose.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/annemariepurnell/dems.html
I also know that they had Bofors and Oerlikons fitted to them too.
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/exhibitions/boa/selfdefence.asp
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/atlantic/convoy.aspx
Early on in the war very many merchantmen were sunk by submarine guns rather than torpedoes but once these ships were armed and in convoy this changed to torpedo sinkings
Added to this, there were far too few escort vessels available, and so some merchant ships were fitted with guns as were trawlers and sloops to eke out this shortfall.
Here there is mention made of the US ‘Liberty’ ships, look at the guns on that then !
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2003/02/mil-030201-nns01.htm
Another reason that so many German troops were kept in Norway was the fact that Hitler was conviced that Norway might be the invasion site for the second front. This was re-inforced by the deception methods of the Allies. As well as the fictitious First Army Group under Patton in East Anglia ( pointing to an invasion near Calais ) there was as similar phantom army based in Scotland , the natural jumping off point for Norway. In reality this amounted to a few radio trucks which drove around creating a lot of radio traffic. The “turned” spies also fed false information back to Germany hinting that Norway was going to be invaded.
Oh … I thought that a merchantman was, you know, an actual dude, not a ship! It was strange to imagine a dude lugging a big gun around like that.
Not strictly related to the OP, but I did want to mention this story. One of my, and then my son’s, favorite childhood books was this one, about the bravery of the children of a Norwegian town, who placed themselves in real danger to prevent the occupying Germans from looting the town’s gold.
Norway’s most important contribution was the merchant navy which was the third biggest in the world and IIRC even bigger in terms of oiltankers.
Norway had a navy and an airforce in Britain which was part of the British forces.
The Norwegian army was supposed to be used in an invasion of Norway and therefore most of it never saw action. IIRC some however fought in the Netherlands in 1945.
Norway did get through the war with small civilian losses but when the Germans left Finland and retreated through Finnmark they burnt everything and evacuated the people.
If you want to see a movie about the heavywater action you should rather see Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water (1948) . Could however be difficult to find.
While looking for details on the Norwegian underground’s successful work to inform the RAF on the location of the battleship Tirpitz, I came across the site of the Norges Hjemmesfrontmuseum, which has a pretty comprehensive summary of the war in Norway. I can see little to add to it.
Northern Norway was liberated by the Russians… but the majority of the country was still occupied at the end of the war.
Kirkenes was liberated by the Russians but for the 1000km between Kirkenes and Tromsø the Germans burnt everything and evacuated everyone.