It seems (to me) that a major problem that the German Navy had (in prosecuting the U-Boat wars against GB), was the lack of convenient bases. German subs were based at Brest, on the French atlantic coast. They had to travel a good 800 miles, through waters patrolled by the Royal Navy, to reach their North Atlantic hunting grounds. Had the Germans captured Iceland, they could have operated out of Rejkjavik, and posed a much dealier threat to the North Atlantic convoys.
Could the Kriegsmarine have pulled this off?(Assume it would be done in the final days of the Batlle of France)?
They already had Norway, which provided some benefits for the Kriegsmarine and as a base for long range bombers, but the manpower Germany had to expend to secure that long coastline proved to be a burden.
You answer your own question without realizing it, Ralph: in three words, the Royal Navy. Germany would have had to move an expeditionary force directly across waters intensely patrolled by the Home Fleet, and did not have the strength to do it safely. Especially in June 1940, before the Bismarck came online, Germany’s naval force was the two battlecruisers, two Panzerschiffe (“pocket battleships”), two or three heavy cruisers, and one superannuated battleship that had been converted to a training vessel. Britain had more battleships alone than the Kriegsmarine had surface ships of all kinds, not to mention aircraft carriers (Britain had four, Germany had the keel of one under construction laid down in Kiel).
Britain occupied them first!
They acted after Germany occupied Denmark, who ruled Iceland at the time.
here’s a wiki page on it.
With regards to naval power in modern times, Germany’s curse has been to be bottled up in the North Sea with Britain as the cork. Germany would have needed a navy actually stronger than Britain’s just to make up for the geographic disadvantage.
The British didn’t go in until May 1941, letting the Danish/Icelandic garrison be the defense until then. Since Ralph suggested the Fall of France (end of spring 1940) as the date he was looking at, the British (or later American) force was not yet present.
If Hitler had had a navy capable of opening and maintaining a supply channel sufficient to invade and hold Iceland, he wouldn’t have needed Iceland. His Navy could have secured the English Channel long enough to launch Operation Sea Lion and invade Britain. That was the whole problem, though: the Kriegsmarine couldn’t keep the channel clear to launch an invasion fleet; the Luftwaffe didn’t dare offer cover for the army without naval supremacy.
The amphibious invasion of Norway was pretty much at the limit of Germany’s naval abilities. And an amphibious invasion of Iceland would have been a lot more difficult.
Well, since Japan easily took Kamchatka, the strategic need for occupying Iceland was greatly diminished. This is why Germany, through its Afrikakorps, focused on the infamous Brazil-North Africa corridor (long regarded as the backdoor of North America).
Denmark didn’t rule Iceland. It was an independent country, which just happened to have the same king. And they asked Denmark to manage foreign affairs for them. The later ended of course once the Germans occupied Denmark and the former ended in 1944 when Iceland dropped the king and became a republic. (Follow your link.)
Right, Iceland had the exact same relationship with Denmark as Canada/Australia/New Zealand/South Africa had with the United Kingdom at the time.
Icerland was a colony of Norway – but that was close to a thousand years before that. It became an autonomous country loosely related to the Norwegian kings, was included with Norway in the Kalmar Union, and when Norway was detached from Denmark and attached to the Swedish crown after the Napoleonic Era, Iceland remained united with the Danish crown. It declared full independence in 1918, sharing a crown with Denmark, then became a republic in 1942.
My inept wording, sorry.
I was rushing a bit.