174: The Snows of Narvik

Description

In the areas around Narvik the fate of northern Norway would be decided.

Listen

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 174 - The Invasion of Norway - In the Snows of Narvik. This week a big thank you goes out to Harry, Scott, and Liz for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members. You can find out more by going to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. Last episode discussed the fighting that would occur in central Norway as the Germans continued to push their troops north against primarily Norwegian defenses, who did receive some assistance from the British and French. This episode will once against shift focus to northern Norway and the fighting that would occur on land around Narvik, where British, French, and Norwegian troops would all attempt to take back some of the territory that the German troops had captured during and after they had landed at Narvik in the opening hours of the campaign. The fighting in this area of Norway was very different than the fighting that occurred further south, where the Germans generally had the advantage in terms of equipment and firepower. Because of the way in which the German troops have arrived in Narvik, aboard destroyers, and the limited supplies that had reached them after the landing, the German defenders were forced to scrounge for their ammunition and supplies, with the captured Norwegian supplies being critical to continued German resistance. However, these supplies would not last forever and so as the days went by the situation for the German troops in and around Narvik began to look quite bleak, made worse by the actions of their enemies. This episode will look at all of the events that would occur in the areas around Narvik during the last 3 weeks of April after the German invasion had occurred.

As soon as the overall scope of the German invasion became clear, the Norwegian commander in Northern Norway, General Fleischer began to act on his own initiative. This included his decision to order a general mobilization of northern Norway and to take overall command of all Norwegian troops in the north, both of which were done without consulting with the Norwegian government, although they would later support both actions. In both cases, Fleischer made these choices because he believed that he had to find some way to attack the German positions around Narvik, because time was absolutely not on his side. His reasoning for this was because the Germans in the south would eventually push their way northwards towards his command, and eventually they would be able to establish a land connection to the German troops in Narvik. Fleischer did not believe that there was anything that he could do to stop this outcome unless he was able to take back control of Narvik and use it as a base for supply and Allied reinforcement. To accomplish this proactive strategy Fleischer would first target several areas around Narvik, trying to push back some of the gains that the Germans had made outside the city before finally targeting the forces inside Narvik directly. During this time a large portion of his forces would be tied down trying to prevent the Germans from establishing a connection with Sweden, which was less than 30 kilometers from the center of Narvik. The concern, and this would turn out to be a completely valid concern, was that if the Germans were able to reach the Swedish border they would be able to access supplies from Sweden. The situation with Sweden was interesting, at the national political level there was willingness to work with the Germans, although not exactly enthusiastically. However, at a lower level, particularly near the Norwegian border there was a willingness and enthusiasm to assist the Norwegians in their fight against Germany. This meant that when the Norwegian troops retreated from Narvik, with only what they could carry, they were able to quickly obtain supplies from Swedish military units across the border. This, along with the efforts of the Norwegian defenders meant that the Germans were not able to capture the railway into Sweden with their initial attacks, and when they began renewed attacks in the days that followed they found that the Norwegian defenders were capable of a strong defense.

The early days of the invasion were a mixture of successes and worrying developments for the Germans. By April 12th, just a few days after the landings had taken plan it was clear that there would not be any chance of a quick march to the Swedish border. Over the next five days the fighting would continue until they were able to reach the Swedish border, however by that point several decisions had already been made in Berlin. Due to how the Norwegian defenses were shaping up in Central Norway there was some concern in Germany that they would not be completely successful in the overall invasion of Norway, which left them with two options. The first was to pour in more troops and supplies to try and overwhelm the defenders, but if this was unsuccessful it would leave even more German resources in Norway, and possibly trapped due to the losses that the Navy had suffered so far in the campaign. The other option was to take the path of caution, and even to reduce the number of footholds they had in Norwegian territory, with the forces at Narvik the clear outlier in terms of how far they were from any possible assistance. This led to all kids of ideas floating around among the German leaders, with the two primary possible courses of action being a simple retreat into Sweden, which would prevent them from being defeated at Narvik but would cause them to be interned at least for some period of time. The other option would be to retreat up to strong defenses positions along the Swedish border, and from there they would mount a defense as long as possible. One of the options that Hitler advocated for was a simple retreat to the south, but that was strictly impossible due to the terrain. The eventual orders that were dispatched to Dietl, the commander of the forces at Narvik, was that his men should hold onto Narvik as long as possible and then they would retreat to positions along the Swedish border, with the goal of destroying any useful facilities that could be used by the Allies in Narvik. To this end, a demolitions expert was brought in via a plane along with the written orders to Dietl. Another change would also be sent along with this order, and this moved Dietl and his forces directly under the command of OKW, which Hitler directly controlled, which meant that essentially Hitler had taken over command of the operations in Narvik. In terms of the full story of the war this is not a huge deal, because Hitler would later take over personal control of the entire German military, but at this time it was somewhat exceptional. Due to the loss of so many German destroyers in the naval actions in the days after the invasion, efforts would be made starting on April 12th to supply the German troops at Narvik from the air. The first of these efforts would see a Ju-90 drop ammunition over Narvik on April 12th, with a much larger effort being made on April 13 when 11 Ju-52s landed on a frozen lake to the north of Narvik. These aircraft would land successfully, bringing with them 100 men and 4 75mm artillery pieces, the problem came when they tried to take off the next day. After they had landed the top layer of ice on the lack had thawed, and then overnight it once again froze, trapping most of the aircraft in place until they could be freed from their frozen positions. Over the next several days there would then be several drops and other landings made on lakes and other frozen waters to try and bring some supplies to the isolated German garrison. These were all relatively small efforts, in comparison to what would be required to fully supply the German troops in the city as they were fighting their way to the Swedish border. The good news is that they would reach the border, and from this source they were able to obtain a large amount of supplies, with the one restriction being that the Swedish government would not allow the Germans to transport weapons or ammunition over the Swedish border, but at least it solved food, medicine, and other non-explosive challenges that the German troops were having.

While the fighting between the two armies was continuing in the areas around Narvik, out to sea there were discussions among the British leaders about what precisely they should be doing to assist. Unlike in some other areas of Norway there were some real options for the British and French around Narvik because this was the area where they were also planning to land troops before the German invasion interrupted those plans. This meant that just days after the invasion started there was already a group of troop transports carrying two brigades of troops, the 24th Scots Guards and the 146th Brigade, to Harstad, which was to the northwest of Narvik. The 146th would be rerouted to Namsos north of Trondheim to participate in the planned attack around that city, although it would eventually be cancelled. This left just the Scots Guards at Harstad. Admiral Cork was the senior British officer present at this time, and on April 14th he came up with a plan to use the Scots Guards and about 200 Royal Marines to make an assault on Narvik on April 15th. Cork believed that the combination of troops and overwhelming naval superiority would allow for the British to quickly assault into Narvik and eject the Germans before they could further strengthen their positions or receive additional supplies. General Mackesy, the senior Army officer present at Harstad was far less optimistic about what could be accomplished with the troops in the region. Mackesy would lay out his concerns to Cork after the received information about the plan. Mackey’s resistance to the planned assault essentially put an end to the idea because the specific instructions that Cork had from the Admiralty were “We think it imperative that you and the General should be together and act together and that no attack should be made except in concert.” When all of the troops and naval forces arrived near Harstad by April 15th there were 9 destroyers and the battleship Valiant and then two destroyers, the Southhampton and the Aurora. This was a considerable collection of naval firepower, and they were at least for a few days free of the threat of U-boats after the sinking of the U-49. On the 16th an additional set of men arrived, although they were support troops instead of combat forces. They then started the next phase of their mission…organizing all of their stuff. One of the challenges that had caused Mackesy to resist the idea of a quick landing at Narvik was that none of the supplies for the men of the Scots Guards was loaded on their transports in a way that would facilitate landing in a combat situation. Stuff just was not in the right place or prepared, and in the case of the ships that arrived at Harstad there was a good amount of supplies that belonged the 146th Brigade which had been diverted to Namsos. This is a great example of what would be proven many times throughout the war: there was a major difference between loading transports for combat unloading and loading transports for a leisurely unloading. Things had to be organized differently and placed in different positions on the ship. One of the additional challenges faced at Harstad its that it was not very good as a naval base, and so a different anchorage was chosen at Skanland, which was to the south of Harstad.

After troops began landing at Harstad on the 15th Cork and Mackesy would meet in person for the first time. Cork was shocked with what he found out about the situation within the British ground forces. He found out about the fact that they were not prepared for any kind of opposed landing, which explained Mackesy’s apprehension with the previous day’s plan to assault Narvik directly. Cork would also learn that Mackesy had been specifically ordered not to land troops against any opposition at all. This gets to the heart of one of the major problems that the British leaders around Narvik at this stage of the operation would be working through, the complete lack of unified command. There was no single officer in charge of the British forces around Narvik, Mackesy was getting orders from the War Office, Cork was often just getting messages directly from Churchill, and even when they did not directly contradict one another they were never truly in sync. Another major problem that would continue to cause problems was the fact that none of the troops that were in Harstad were prepared for operations in mountainous or harsh winter conditions.

This was a problem because they were in Northern Norway, above the Arctic circle, in mid-April the terrain was very mountainous and it was very much still winter. The final major challenge for the ground forces is that just like they had some of the equipment that belonged to the 146th Brigade at Namsos, some of the equipment for the Scots Guard had been sent to Namsos instead of Harstad. Just an absolutely logistical disaster really. Most of the blame for this has to come back to the confusing set of actions taken by British leaders in the days leading up to the German invasion, with plans for an unopposed landing cancelled at the last minute, then reorganized in response to the German invasion. Norwegian officers would also be present at Harstad to liaise with the British, and their hopes and dreams of the great military might of Britain did not match up with what they saw in front of them. The troops seemed to be in good spirits, but without any training or equipment for the conditions that they found themselves in. To make matters worse, they pointed out to Mackesy that the conditions would actually get worse in the later parts of April and early May due to the thaw that would happen during that time, turning whatever roads might be passable in mid April into streams of mud.

In the days that followed there was a lot of pressure from London, particularly from the Admiralty and Churchill to execute some kind of landing. Two factors pushed all participants to quick and decisive action. The first was the fact that some British ships were going to have to head off soon for other action and for refuelling, this included the Warspite which was still in the area after the Naval battles of Narvik. This pressure would result in Mackesy eventually agreeing to a landing, but only if the naval bombardment was clearly successful at suppressing the German defenders. This would move forward on April 24th when a collection of British ships including the Warspite, three cruisers, and a destroyer would move into position to bombard the Germans at Narvik. The plan was to land on battalion of ground troops from the old cruiser Vindictive as soon as it was clear that they could land and would not face insurmountable resistance. The naval bombardment would continue for 3 hours, and well the results were pretty disappointing. For listeners who plan to listen to most of the episodes of this podcast, you are going to get very tired of me saying how disappointing naval bombardments in preparation for amphibious landings are. During the three hours of bombardment the Germans would suffer precisely zero fatalities, and it was just in general hard to tell what kind of effect the shelling was having. This caused Mackesy and Cork to call off the landing.

After the Germans had reached the border, Fleischer prepared for a counter attack to try and restore the previous situation. To do this he planned to attack from the north, with the plan for the attack to begin on April 23rd but then the action was delayed, mostly to allow troops to get into proper position which was delayed due to the weather. The weather problems continued, with the snowstorm almost cancelling the attack before it even started. Fleischer decided to move forward with the attack and the results would be disappointing right from the start. The units involved were generally disorganized due to the weather and the disruption of their movements, and even for Norwegian troops who were more prepared than anybody for such conditions there were still problems. Ski troops were sinking into snow up to their knees, in some areas visibility was almost non-existent. Even worse, the Germans would retreat from their forward positions right before the Norwegian attack began, which resulted in the primary Norwegian efforts being made against German troops that no longer existed. Most of these challenges should have offset by the large numerical advantage that the Norwegian forces had during their attacks, with almost 10 times the number of troops committed, but the weather would prove to be simply too strong of an adversary and the Norwegian attacks would fail before they really got started.

After the failed Norwegian offensive on April 23rd there would be a brief pause while the next operation was prepared, an operation in which the Norwegians would be joined by French reinforcements. These French troops would be 2 battalions of Chasseurs Alpine, or mountain troops. They would join in the next Norwegian actions by attacking from the west as the Norwegians continued to focus on attacking from the north. There overall objective in these attacks was the city of Bjerkvik and Elvegårdsmoen, with the goal of attacking it from two directions. There would be some successes when the attack began, with both the French and Norwegians have some success and being able to move towards their objectives. However, problems would quickly develop due to the inability of the attackers to account for all of the areas that the Germans were defending. Fleischer wanted to focus his troops on the final objective, and therefore decided not to focus on reducing every German strong point that was not directly in his path, which in some cases was just fine, but when he bypassed the German positions at Gressdal it became a problem. German reinforcements would arrive at Gressdal and due to its position along the Norwegian route of advance, continued German fire made further advances difficult. The most important moment came when the Germans were able to occupy the Snaufjell mountain, which was perfectly positioned to prevent the Norwegians and French from being able to meet up. German troops on the mountain were able to lay fire down on all of the attacking units, and the French were able to slowly make progress in pushing them off the mountain, but progress was very slow. Eventually the attack would slow due to determine German resistance and the continued horrible weather that made any major attacks very difficult. In such an environment a tremendous amount of effort went in to just keeping the units supplied and men keeping themselves alive. The German commander, Dietl, would say that during this time the Norwegian troops that his men were facing were superior to his own in terms of mobility and equipment, and their marksmanship was exceptional but they often failed to achieve their objectives due to a lack of aggressiveness. This probably came down to their lack of military experience. The one good thing that would happen due to these attacks in the north was that the Germans would move troops away from the waterline and push them into positions in the north to meet the continued attacks. This was really important because in May there would be an amphibious assault launched against the German positions which would prove to be the decisive moment of the fighting around Narvik. And so while the Norwegians and the French did not achieve their objectives, they did still contribute to the upcoming success.