Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940

by Henrik O. Lunde

  Group Adlhoch started its attack at dawn on April 15 with two battalions along the road that led north from Hønefoss. The attack was stopped by the 1/5th Inf after heavy fighting. Colonel Adlhoch’s report to the division that evening reads in part: “Both battalions have suffered heavy losses. The position is unfavorable since the enemy dominates the terrain with their heavy weapons. Have committed the last regimental reserve. The attack will be continued in the morning.”1 The message went on to request artillery, air, and tank support. Six tanks and some mountain troops were provided overnight.

  The Norwegian 1/5th was relieved by the 2/5th during the night. The German attack resumed on April 16 after a 30-minute mortar bombardment. The two battalions again attacked along the road but this time they had tank support. The Norwegians, with two companies forward, had no effective weapons against tanks and these were able to drive into the Norwegian positions. The right flank company was able to disengage before it was overrun but was overwhelmed in its new positions 500 meters further back. At that point, the position of the left flank company became untenable. Tanks appeared in its rear and forced a withdrawal. The unit was scattered and only a few soldiers reached friendly lines. A counterattack by the battalion reserve failed. The battalion commander was killed and the unit was scattered. The destruction of the 2/5th Infantry made the positions of other units opposing Group Zanthier untenable and forced a general withdrawal.

  Group Adlhoch captured Fluberg on April 19. One battalion turned east on April 20, along the road to Gjøvik. Group Zanthier advanced north through the middle of the area between Randsfjord and Lake Mjøsa and captured Tobru, about halfway between Fluberg and Gjøvik. Group Nickelmann continued along the west shore of Lake Mjøsa and captured Gjøvik on April 19. One battalion continued north in the direction of Vingnes the next day.

  The Germans were stopped temporarily at Bråstad, about six kilometers north of Gjøvik. Heavy fighting took place from Bråstad westward on April 20 and 21. Several Norwegian units were isolated, but the Germans were held in check by committing every available reserve, including staff and support personnel. Colonel Dahl, who commanded Norwegian forces between Lake Mjøsa and Randsfjord, decided to retire to new defensive positions near Fåberg on April 21.

  In the area between Sperillen Lake and Randsfjord, Major Daubert’s forces made progress against the reserve battalion of the 6th Inf Regiment after capturing Hallingby at the southern end of Sperillen on April 14. Bjørnevika, near the northern end of the lake, was captured on April 16. Group Daubert reached the vicinity of Bagn on April 18. There followed three days of hard fighting with Norwegian forces, reinforced by units from the 4th Field Brigade that had arrived in the area to the west of Bagn.

  The reserve battalion of the Norwegian 6th Inf had marched and fought for nine days and the 1/10th of the 4th Brigade relieved it on April 18. The Norwegians overwhelmed a German company on April 21 after heavy fighting. The Germans lost 13 killed, 19 wounded, and 65 prisoners. Major Daubert concluded on April 20 that his two battalions could not break Norwegian resistance and he withdrew his forces to Hønefoss where they arrived in the evening of April 21. From there they joined Group Adlhoch in the Fluberg area.

  The Failed German Airborne Assault on Dombås

  The Germans realized soon after their landings that the link-up with other bridgeheads in south and central Norway would not be as easy and quick as they had hoped. Von Falkenhorst was frustrated at the inability of his two divisions to trap and destroy major elements of the 2nd Norwegian Division. Rumors of planned Allied landings at Åndalsnes and Namsos reached the Germans on April 13. To speed the link-up with the forces in Trondheim and trap Norwegian units in Gudbrandsdal, the Germans attempted an airborne operation in the Norwegian rear at Dombås. This was an important road and railroad junction, where the routes from Oslo to Trondheim intersected with those leading west to Åndalsnes.

  The airborne operation was launched on April 14 in haste, without adequate intelligence, no time for planning, in unfavorable weather, and with inadequate forces. Fifteen German aircraft carried the reinforced Co 1, 1st Airborne Regiment (185 men). The company commander had the only map of the Dombås area, which was at a scale of 1:100,000. Dombås is located in the mountains but the German paratroopers had no winter or camouflage clothing. The soldiers had provisions for only three days and ammunition was limited to what they carried. The element of surprise was lost when one aircraft was shot down near Lillehammer by Norwegian antiaircraft fire.

  The German aircraft had little time to find suitable drop zones since they had to return to Oslo before dark and because they were receiving heavy fire from Norwegian forces. The paratroopers were dropped in six different locations over a 30-kilometer area around Dombås. Not a single platoon was able to assemble all its personnel. The return of the German aircraft turned into a catastrophe. Only seven aircraft returned to Oslo. The rest were shot down or forced to make emergency landings as they ran out of fuel.

  Unfortunately for the Germans, the operation took place near the location of the 2/11th Inf. The Norwegians had moved this unit to Dombås to take part in the planned Allied operation against Trondheim. The German commander, Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt, assembled 63 paratroopers who entrenched themselves south of Dombås. The rest were killed, captured, or missing. Schmidt’s men managed to block the road and railroad from Oslo to Trondheim for five days. They repelled two Norwegian attacks before the badly wounded Schmidt surrendered on April 19 when his men ran out of ammunition and supplies. Göring had refused to reinforce the paratroopers despite urgent requests. He was incensed because a court martial was ordered for one of his top generals in Norway for having launched the poorly planned and ill-prepared operation. The charges were eventually dropped due to Göring’s intervention.

  While the Dombås operation was a German failure, it had a profound psychological effect on Norwegian and Allied commanders. A number of units that could have been used more productively in other tasks were employed to guard against the threat posed by this new tactical innovation.

  Still hoping for an early link-up with forces in Trondheim, von Falkenhorst planned a second airborne operation on April 16 in order to bypass the Norwegian defenses in the Lake Mjøsa area. An infantry battalion and an airborne company were to land on the ice at the northern end of Lake Mjøsa, capture Lillehammer, and advance to Dombås. The operation was cancelled after the Luftwaffe refused to participate because of “technical difficulties.”2

  Operation Hammer Is Abandoned

  The MCC decided on April 13 to make Trondheim the priority objective in central Norway while at the same time keeping Narvik as a high priority. The plan called for attacks from north and south in conjunction with a direct attack in the fjord. Two Canadian battalions would land near Agdenes and capture the coastal batteries. The 15th Infantry Brigade (withdrawn from the 5th Division in France) would land at the village of Hell, near Værnes Airfield, on April 22. The 147th Brigade constituted the reserve for the operation. The 15th Brigade (Hammerforce) would link up with British and French forces moving south from Namsos (Mauriceforce). The 148th Brigade would land at Åndalsnes (Sickleforce) and move to Dombås. It had a dual mission. First, by threatening Trondheim from the south it was hoped that German forces would be drawn from that city at the same time as the direct attack was carried out. Second, the 148th would be in a position to assist the Norwegians in the south. The overall Allied operation against Trondheim, codenamed Hammer, was to be commanded by Major General F. E. Hotblack.

  Problems plagued the planned operation from the start. General Hotblack suffered a heart attack in London on April 17. The commander of the 15th Brigade, Brigadier General Berney-Ficklin, was promoted and designated as Hotblack’s replacement. Simultaneously, the main attack in Trondheimfjord was delayed until April 24. Berney-Ficklin and most of his staff were injured in an airplane crash at Scapa Flow on April 19. Major General Paget took Berney-Ficklin’s place but the attack in Trondheimfjor
d was cancelled by the end of the day.

  The British naval staff believed that the shore batteries at the fjord entrance could be dealt with easily. Admiral Forbes was informed about the planned operation on April 14 and asked for his opinion. Forbes warned the Admiralty that they should expect heavy losses in ships and troops from German air attacks. Churchill asked him to reconsider. Forbes replied that he saw no serious difficulties if, among other things, he was given sufficient forces, the troops were carried on warships, and he was given a large number of landing craft. Forbes was surely aware that there were only ten landing craft in Great Britain.3

  The Joint Planning Committee (JPC), which had viewed Trondheim as the key to Allied operations in Norway, prepared a paper on April 15 at the request of the chiefs of staff. It argued against a direct attack and recommended that the main efforts to capture Trondheim be made by the forces landed at Namsos and Åndalsnes. The JPC met all day on April 16 and produced a new version of the paper. The JCP members now concluded that Trondheim, if recaptured, could not be held because of German air power.

  The chiefs of staff initially overruled the JCP but on April 19, they advised the MCC against a direct attack on Trondheim. Admiral Forbes’ views were now known and these weighed heavily on the JPC. There can be no doubt that the only serious objection to the operation was the exposure of the Home Fleet to German air power. However, the potential rewards of a direct attack were great and it is not obvious why the British concluded that the danger to the navy in an attack on Trondheim, after seizing the shore batteries, was greater than the danger faced in the waters around Namsos and Åndalsnes. The air staff was against all operations in Norway. They felt that any ground operations in that country were doomed to fail unless they had adequate air support and they viewed the diversion of air assets from France and Britain as an unjustified squandering of precious resources.

  The effectual abandonment of the operation against Trondheim doomed operations in southern and central Norway to failure. Those who maintain that Ruge was responsible for the abandonment of Hammer because he diverted the forces intended as the southern pincer to shore up the front to the south, fail to consider the discussions in Great Britain that led to its abandonment. The operations from Namsos and Åndalsnes were designed to draw German forces away from Trondheim, thereby facilitating the quick capture of the city and Værnes Airfield by a direct attack. The two pincer movements lost their rationale when the direct attack was abandoned. The direct approach was abandoned before Ruge requested that the forces landed in Åndalsnes be used in the south. This is demonstrated by the order Brigadier Morgan received from General Ironside while at sea on April 17 (see later in this chapter).

  There was virtually no chance that the Allies would be able to cover the long distances from the landing sites at Namsos and Åndalsnes to Trondheim through a snow-covered landscape against eight German infantry battalions. If the two battalions of the 148th Brigade had turned north at Dombås, they would most likely have been trapped by the northward German advance, which would have cut them off from their base at Åndalsnes.

  The Second Crisis in the German High Command

  The Allied landings in central Norway that began on April 14, the slow progress of the German drives from Oslo, and the failure to come up with a political solution acceptable to the Norwegians threw the German leadership into a second command crisis. For his failure, Ambassador Bräuer was recalled on April 17 and retired from the diplomatic service. Göring painted a picture of widespread guerrilla warfare in Norway, argued for strong measures against the population, and complained that the navy was not doing its part in transporting troops to Norway. A close friend of Göring, Josef Terboven, came to Berlin on April 19 and Hitler appointed him Reich Commissioner in Norway.

  The OKW wanted to avoid repressions against the civilian population that could bring on an extended campaign against the Norwegians. Keitel and Jodl were interested in limiting Terboven’s powers and sharply delineating von Falken horst and Terboven’s respective spheres of authority. This led to an argument between Hitler and Keitel on April 19 that became so heated that Keitel stomped out of the room. Jodl notes in his diary, “We are again confronted with complete chaos in the command system. Hitler insists on issuing orders on every detail; any coordinated effort within the existing military command structure is impossible.” The military’s worries about the delineation of authority between von Falkenhorst and Terboven continued, as did worries that the latter could take actions that would stiffen Norwegian resistance. Jodl writes on April 20 that, “We must do nothing to cause the Norwegians to offer passive, still less active resistance. That would simply be to play the game of the English…”

  The OKW planned to transfer the 11th Motorized Brigade to Norway from Denmark. Hitler cancelled the transfer of the 11th Brigade on April 21 and instead ordered the 2nd Mountain Division to Norway. He also planned to send the 1st Mountain Division but the transfer of the latter was cancelled when a linkup with the forces in Trondheim was achieved.

  Still very apprehensive about the forces in Trondheim, Hitler proposed on April 22 to send a division to that city using the two ocean liners Bremen and Europa. Raeder regarded this as completely out of the question. The whole fleet would be required to escort the two ships and the likely outcome would be the loss of the ocean liners, the fleet, and the division. Raeder’s arguments convinced Hitler to give up on the idea. Instead, he directed the employment of all means to open the land route between Oslo and Trondheim. The Germans had established an air-bridge from Oslo to Trondheim on April 14. In addition to needed supplies, the airlift brought one engineer and five infantry battalions to Trondheim by April 20.

  The British Arrive

  By April 20, the Germans had reached the approximate line between Rena and Dokka where General Ruge planned to mount his main defense. The situation, however, was not to the general’s liking. The delaying actions had not been as effective as hoped and had failed to inflict heavy losses on the attacker or win the necessary time to organize a proper defense. However, they provided the delay necessary for Allied assistance to arrive. This assistance, however, was inadequate, not well planned, and carried out hesitantly.

  The fighting that took place in a large number of hard-fought small-scale delaying actions in eastern Norway is largely ignored in the English literature. While the Germans suffered higher numbers of killed and wounded than the Norwegians, the latter had far more troops captured and missing. This was primarily due to German use of tanks and their air dominance. German armor quickly penetrated and overwhelmed Norwegian defensive positions before an orderly withdrawal was possible. The scattered defenders were captured, had great difficulties rejoining their units, or failed to do so. Ruge’s forces were badly depleted, exhausted, and demoralized by their helplessness against German armor and air power.

  Ruge’s greatest disappointment had to do with the lack of Allied assistance. His operational directive of April 15 assumed quick and effective Allied assistance and stated as much at the outset. This assumption, in turn, was based on the personal promise received from the British Prime Minister on April 14. This promise was not kept. Furthermore, the Allies never informed him where they intended to land and what their plans were. He would have been far more dismayed if he had known the true state of Allied confusion and lack of preparedness.

  The “great strength” that Chamberlain had promised turned out to be about 1,000 troops from the 148th Territorial Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Morgan. This brigade consisted of two battalions, the 1/5th Leicestershire and the 1/8th Sherwood Foresters. It was embarked on two cruisers destined for Stavanger on April 6. The troops were offloaded in a hurry on April 7 and lost much of their equipment in the process.

  On April 13, the brigade was ordered to Namsos and was already embarked on the transport Orion in the evening of April 16 when new orders arrived. The 146th Brigade was now underway to Namsos and the 148th was ordered to disembark from Orion,
board five warships, and proceed to Åndalsnes. The order to disembark was carried out at night in great confusion. Colonel Dudley Clarke, who took part in the operation, describes the scene:4

  In the original haste to get off to a quick start, goods of every kind had been stowed in the holds in the order in which they arrived, with each following consignment piled in on top. Now reserves of food and ammunition were mixed with unit equipment and skis for the Norwegians; bicycles and sappers’ tools lay with medical provisions, while such things as the long-range wireless equipment as often as not was split between two holds. There was never a chance of sorting this out in the dark and getting it into the right ships in time, so the plan was being adopted of skimming the top layers from every hold and loading them in turn into each warship as she came alongside.

  The results were simply disastrous for this poorly trained militia force. One-half of the Leicestershire battalion and other essential units were left behind because of space limitation. These troops, about 600 men, followed two days later and arrived in Åndalsnes on April 21. When the warships reached open sea, it was realized that most of the brigade’s communications equipment, mortar ammunition, vehicles, as well as essential antiaircraft equipment were left behind. There was no artillery and no provisions for air support. When the maps were unfolded, they were all for the Namsos area.