175: The Recapture of Narvik

Description

Listen

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 175 - The Invasion of Norway - The Recapture of Narvik. This week a big thank you goes out to Blake, Charles, David, and Kara for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members, you can find out more about becoming a member over at historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members. On May 7th the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain would speak before the assembled House of Commons in London, the topic of the day was the events that were occurring in Norway, and had been occurring for almost a month. The entire sequence of British decisions were up for discussion, but of particular note was the decision that had been taken to pull British troops out of central Norway, abandoning the entirety of southern and central Norway to the Germans. Chamberlain would say this: “It became clear to us that we could only maintain our forces in the Trondheim region by such a concentration of men and materials and aircraft as would have drawn off altogether an undue proportion of our total resources, and in these circumstances we decided that we could carry on the campaign in Norway, elsewhere, with greater vigour and effect. So, thanks to the skill and courage of all three Services, we successfully withdrew all our forces from the Trondheim area.” The decision to evacuate the British forces, even if Chamberlain tried to put a good face on it, would have important ramifications on the actions of all of the armies in Norway during the early weeks of April. This episode will discussion some of those ramifications, as the Norway campaign shifts from a desperate attempt to contain the Germans in southern Norway to an even more desperate attack to try and cling to any area of northern Norway. If there was any hope that northern Norway could be held, then the absolute first priority would be finally dealing with the German troops at Narvik, because without Narvik as a base of supply it would be impossible to keep the supplies and men in Norway that would be required to halt the German advance north.

Back in Norway, among the Norwegian government and military the actions of their allies up to the start of May had done nothing but cause an increased level of pessimism. They had been forced to evacuate to the city of Tromso in far northern Norway, with the civilian government arriving that Tromso on May 1 and then the remaining officers of Army High Command arriving on May 3. This was a moment in which all of the Norwegian leaders were trying to determine if there was any viable path forward to continue to resist the German advance. General Ruge, the head of the Norwegian military, would work on a memorandum on his way north to try and answer that very question, and every answer led back to the need for a renewed Allied response. Ruge specifically called out the need for more fighter aircraft to try and counter the almost complete air superiority that the Germans had enjoyed since the very beginning of their invasion. He would go so far as to say that German airpower was the most important factor in the defeat of the Norwegians in the south. Ruge would then meet with Fleischer near Narvik on May 6th, with the two officers determining a separation of duties that fit both their ranks and their overall situation. Fleischer, although technically under the command of Ruge, would have complete control of the Norwegian troops around Narvik. Ruge would focus all of his energy, and that of his staff, on coordination with the Allies and trying to acquire supplies and military equipment which was so desperately needed. This exact arrangement would not end up working out, mostly because Ruge just could not stay out of the events in Narvik, which was the only real area of continued Norwegian military resistance. The only good news for the Norwegians was that it would take some time for the German troops to reach the areas around Narvik. The only path for them to take on the almost 500 kilometer journey between Namsos and Narvik was along the road called Route 50, but it was in relatively poor position. There would also be many instances where the Germans would be forced to use ferries, all of which would slow them. In peacetime coastal ships were the way to move through this part of Norway, but the presence of the Royal Navy largely denied the use of such vessels to the Germans. After the Germans arrived on Namsos on May 4th they would begin their advance north with the 2nd Mountain Division. This division had originally not been assigned to actions in Norway but was added in late April due to concerns in Berlin that there were not enough German troops in Norway to successfully link up with those that were trapped in Narvik. The Norwegians began asking for help from the British and French, specifically to begin to man some of kind of defensive area to the south of Narvik to slow or maybe even stop the German advance north. The British just simply refused to land any kind of large force at this pint in the campaign. Instead they would land a series of five independent companies, made up of under 300 officer and men who were designed to work independently. They were then placed throughout the areas south of Narvik. While it was possible that these groups could slow the German advance, there was no possibility that they would be able to fully halt the German troops.

While there were efforts to slow the German advance, and the terrain was working against any kind of quick German move north, there were attempts to speed things along in unorthodox ways. One of this was through the use of a Norwegian coastal steamer, the Nord-Norge. This small ship was loaded up with personnel from the German navy and then as many German infantry troops as would fit. They brought with them a small artillery piece and some machine guns which were positioned on the steamer. The goal for this ship was to move north to the Norwegian city of Hemnesberg almost halfway between Namsos and Narvik. Once it got to its destination it was going to get the supplies and men that it carried ashore. This was a risky mission because it required an almost 500 kilometer journey along the coastal waters of Norway, and if it was discovered at any point there would be serious problems because it was just a coastal steamer, not a warship. But the luck of the little steamer would hold all the way to Hemnesberg, after almost a day of being at sea, but it would be after it docked that the timer would start ticking. Just over an hour after it had docked two British destroyers appeared and began their attack, quickly sinking the Nord-Norge with their guns. Most of the supplies and men got off the ship, but there were several wounded that could not be evacuated in time.

Back in London there was growing frustration at the lack of action from the military commanders around Narvik, this frustration was more than shared by the Norwegians who were simply flabbergasted that the British were refusing to really commit their firepower to action. They had complete control of the waters around Narvik, and a decent number of troops in the areas around Narvik and they just were not doing anything. One of the major challenges that Admiral Cork and General Mackesy would face during this period was a combination of unrealistic ideas from London and a push from the Norwegians for them to do literally anything. Back in London there were ideas that were communicated to Cork and Mackesy that were simply divorced from reality, like landing north or south of Narvik and then just marching the troops to Narvik, as if this was possible in anyway in the harsh weather and difficult terrain. But this did not prevent calls for action and so Admiral Cork decided that the only thing that could be done was to just launch a direct attack against Narvik, an action he had preferred a week before when the first British troops arrived in the area. Cork scheduled the operation for May 8th, and Mackesy planned on landing two battalions of troops just a few kilometers from Narvik itself so that they could immediately move over to the attack. Mackesy and Cork would get resistance from other British officers, with this resistance based on the excuses that there were a lack of boats to get the men ashore, the short hours of darkness so far north meant that the men would be exposed in their approach, and the troops in their open boats would be completely vulnerable to German air attacks. While these were all valid concerns, they fell largely on deaf ears. The fact was that there were 25,000 Allied troops in the areas around Narvik and they had to do something, and soon. There could be conversations around the particulars of what could happen, but something had to happen and soon. But there were some discussions about maybe using different troops, which is where the French came in.

The French General Bethouart was present and in command of of the 13th Demi-brigade which contained both Foreign Legion and Polish troops. Along with the shift of the units that would be executing the attack, the exact target also changed, because instead of landing close to Narvik the objective of the French attack would instead be the Norwegian depot at Elvegardsmoen. One of the members of the Foreign Legion, far more experienced in desert fighting in France’s African colonies that “Ah, it is all very difficult. We are used to traveling on camels across the desert, and here you give us boats, and we have to cross the water. It is very difficult but it will be all right. I think so.” Regardless of the confidence of some of the men, there were some serious problems that the French troops would have to overcome if they were going to be successful. The first was a simple lack of landing craft of any kind, which meant that they would have to be landed in two much smaller waves. The attack also had to be postponed due to a lack of transport space, as the ships that were going to be used to move the men into position were being used to move supplies to other French and British units scattered around northern Norway. On May 12 everything would be ready and the 1,620 assault troops would climb aboard the various watercraft that would transport them to the target. Before they went ashore there would be several hours of naval bombardment in the areas around the landing areas. This bombardment would take around 2 hours, and it would come at a cost in civilian lives. When they were planning for their attack it was understood that there were still Norwegian civilians in the areas that would be bombarded, and to try and minimize the number of civilian casualties General Fleischer would made radio broadcasts telling civilians to leave the area. These radio broadcasts risked a larger German response, but Fleischer and other Norwegian leaders believed that it would be worth it. The problem was that the radio broadcasts gave an incorrect deadline for the evacuation, stating that the civilians should all be out of the area by Saturday, but then the attack was delayed for a few days so many of them left their homes but then returned, putting them directly in the line of fire when the attack did begin on Monday. 17 Norwegian civilians would die during the bombardment and the fighting tha twould follow. What the French could not know is that the naval bombardment probably was not even necessary due to how weak the German defenders were in the area. Almost all of the German defenders had been moved out of the areas around Elvegardsmoen because they were needed to meet the French and Norwegian attacks to the north. This meant that when the landings started there were only a small number of German sailors, the survivors of the German destroyers that had been sunk during the second Naval battle, that were left defending Elvegardsmoen. The German sailors put up a limited amount of resistance before retreating. While losing Elvegardsmoen was a problem for the Germans, it was far less of a problem than it would have been if it has occurred even a few weeks earlier because the volume of supplies at Elvegardsmoen had been heavily depleted by the Germans during their period of occupation. The German leaders were well aware of how exposed they were and early in the morning of May 13th, as the attack began, orders were already given for the troops in and around Elvegardsmoen to retreat to the east. They would create a new defensive line that connected the defensive lines in the north to the fjord that was positioned to the south. Dietl would not learn of this move until early in the morning of May 14th due to faulty radio links, but once he was informed of the situation he was just glad that they had been able to successfully retreat from a very dangerous situation. In their post action report, the German officers on the scene generally attribute this fortunate series of events to French and Norwegian mistakes, not to their own brilliance. The fact was that there were now even more Allied troops in the areas north of Narvik, and they had been heavily supported by British naval fire which the Germans could not prevent in anyway, and yet somehow the German defensive lines were able to hold together, even if they had to give up territory to do so.

After the successful landing of the French troops, a conference would be held between British and Norwegian leaders at Harstad on may 16th. Both Ruge and Fleischer would attend, along with the British leader, General Auchinleck. There were two major concerns that the Norwegians wanted to bring to the British in the hopes that they could assist. The first problem was ammunition. The Norwegians had started the war with limited supplies, and the fighting over the previous weeks had made even basic rifle ammunition a problem. This problem was greatly exacerbated by the fact that most of the weapons used by Norwegian forces did not use the same ammunition as the Allies, which made resupply difficult. Due to this mismatch, the Norwegians also wanted weapons, not just ammunition, and they were told that both weapons and ammunition were on their way. While this was an accurate statement, those weapons would not end up in Norwegian hands because they were instead given to some of the British units that had a portion of their weapons in attempts to land at Bodo (Bo-da) which was to the south of Narvik and in the path of the German advance. The other Norwegian concern was that they wanted renewed efforts to stop the German advance as far south as possible. The Norwegian focus was on the city of Mo i Rana (Mo-ee-Rana) and the airfield that was nearby. Every airfield in Northern Norway was important to keep out of German hands, because all of them that were captured allowed for the Luftwaffe to move its air superiority even further north. Some units of the Scots Guards had already been sent to Mo i Rana, but Auchinleck stated that he would try and find more to send south. The Norwegian leaders would leave the meeting with at least some hope that the British agreed that they need to try and push troops south to hold off the German advance as far from Narvik as possible. But the commitments made by Auchinleck were flimsy, and would largely be overtaken by events. The one thing that may have had the greatest impact on the course of events, the commitment of air power was also slow in coming. There were Norwegian airfields that could have been used to base British aircraft out of, which were close enough to the fighting to be useful, but they would not really take advantage of any of them until the end of May, mostly due to a lack of willingness to commit more valuable air resources.

After the French landings were successful on May 13th the situation for the German defenders in the areas around Narvik got even more desperate. The supply and manpower situation was bad, and had no hopes of getting better, meanwhile there were countless small episodes of bombardments from British ships and there was theoretically the threat of a landing happening in a large number of areas along the coast. Dietl would inform High command back in Germany of how the situation was deteriorating and that he expected the Allies to launch an attack directly at Narvik in the coming days. At the same time, Dietl believed that they may not have to launch such an attack because of the continued threats in the north from the French and Norwegian forces that had been slowly grinding south. There would be a point where their advances would make Narvik no longer tenable for the German forces and they would have to give up the port and retreat further to the east and into the mountains. There were two pieces of good news. As the German front to the north continued to collapse south it became shorter, which made it easier to man which at least slightly alleviated the German manpower problems. The second, and more important to the overall course of the Norwegian campaign, piece of good news, is that the German invasion of France had started on May 10th. This would have a critical impact on the course of the Norwegian campaign in the weeks that followed as all eyes would shift to what was happing in Northern France. On the 13th it was still unclear how quickly the French would be defeated, with Guderian having only crossed the Meuse on the 12th and there still being some hopes that French counter attacks would restore the situation. But even if the campaign settled into a longer fight, it would inevitably pull focus and maybe even resources away from the French and British efforts in Norway. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that the final critical moment of the fighting around Narvik, and a major reason for the eventual Allied defeat in Norway, would come from the fact that they did not immediately attack Narvik and then launch an all out effort to eliminate Dietl and his command. This may have given them time to move all of the forces available south and stop the German push north at a point where Northern Norway was prevented from falling into German hands. There were plans to quickly move on Narvik, as early as May 19th, but as would so often happen those plans were delayed. The initial planning for the attack on the 19th was led by the French who collaborated with the British naval officers to prepare for the attack. But the 19th date would be pushed to the 23rd of May due to a lack of landing craft which were being used in efforts to get a nearby airfield up and operating land based aircraft. While it was lamentable that this delayed the French attacks, it was considered absolutely essential to get the airfield up and operating as quickly as possible due to increased German air activity. As the German forces continued to push north from central Norway the presence of German airpower over the Narvik theater increased with both ground support sorties and direct attacks on Allied installations around Narvik increasing. Carrier aircraft were able to meet some of these German efforts, and would also launch some direct attacks against German held airfields, but they were not enough to turn the tide. The new date of the assault would slip from the 23rd, to the 25th, to the 28th. At this same time the Norwegians and French would pause their attacks on May 22nd to allow their troops some rest and reorganization time. This was a very fortunate development for Dietl, whose entire goal by this point was just to buy as much time as possible. It appeared that these efforts to hold onto Narvik were starting to pay off because the Luftwaffe started to increase the flow of reinforcements that were flown into the Narvik area. During the first half of May only 133 men were flown in, but just in the last week of May 671 soldiers were brought in. Some of these men would parachute into the area, even though they had very little actual parachute training with troops from mountain regiments just given the briefest possible jump training before being dropped over Narvik. This was probably an area where the German method of parachute dropping was actually a benefit, even though it would cause so man problems during most operations. The German parachutes gave the jumper absolutely no control of where they were drifting or where they would land, this meant that even inexperienced parachutists could not cause themselves any problems. The end result was that instead of the 10% casualty rate that was expected among the mountain troop units that jumped there were actually only 2 very minor injuries. The combination of hundreds of additional forces arriving and the contraction of the total zone of German control meant that the possibility of further delaying the final collapse of the German positions was increasing.

After almost 10 days of delays, late in the evening of May 27th British warships entered the fjord near Narvik to begin their preparations for the landings. In preparation for the landings, Allied units in other areas around the front would launch their own attacks to increase pressure on the German defenders everywhere. About 5 minuted before midnight the landing craft carrying the French troops of the Foreign Legion would begin to make their final approaches to the landing sites which were being doused in naval fire. Several of the possible landing sites were covered by only weak German forces, a situation forced on them due to lack of any information that would reduce the number of possible landing areas. This meant that when the first wave came ashore they met almost no resistance. By 2:30AM both the second group of French Legionnaires and members of the Norwegian battalion that would follow them were ashore. The Luftwaffe would then arrive and began to bomb the assembled British ships and the landing craft. This would have two important consequences for the overall course of the landings. The first was that it delayed the arrival of more troops, as it was felt that the approaches were not safe enough. The second was that the total amount of available naval fire support was reduced to avoid any damage from the air. These two consequences, when combined allowed the Germans to launch a counter-attack which would slow the advance and allow more time for all of the other German troops in the Narvik region to retreat. By the middle of the day on the 28th even these problems did not prevent the French and Norwegians from taking Hill 79, an important area which allowed for a good view of the entire city, which was obviously being quickly abandoned by the Germans. The French commander, General Béthouart would send his official message at about 10PM on the 28th that the city was captured, the first city to be retaken by Allied forces during the war. It had cost around 150 casualties, almost entirely French, Norwegians, and Poles. The Germans would retreat out of the city and begin their fighting retreat along the rail line which ran to Sweden. And so by the end of May it had finally happened, the German invasion of Narvik on April 8th had finally been reversed and it was time for celebration. If the Allies could quickly eliminate the rest of the German resistance and then turn their troops south they could finally stop Germany’s advance north. Finally, they were in position to ensure the long term survival of some areas of Norway which would be invaluable in the fight ahead. Or they could just abandon them completely and give up on Norway, but surely they would not do that…right?