More than half a month before Lin Jun was awarded the title of "Air Marshal", the war machine of Germany in the west started again, and this time their target was Norway in Northern Europe!

Norway is strategically important in the northwest of Scandinavia, as Lin Jun told Stalin, because Germany has no direct outlet to the Atlantic, it can only enter the Atlantic Ocean through the North Sea, bypassing the British mainland, and it needs a safe outlet to the sea. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

The mighty Royal Navy laid out a tight blockade across the narrow North Sea during World War I, leaving the German Ocean Fleet trapped in its home harbor and unable to do anything.

Erich Raeder had a long-term view, and in view of historical experience and geographical facts, believed that in order to deal with the superior British navy, Germany would have to find a way to obtain a base in Norway in order to break through the British blockade in the North Sea and gain unhindered access to the Atlantic Ocean - apparently he did not anticipate how terrifying the Third Reich's ground assault capabilities were.

And there was another important reason why Germany wanted to attack Norway: iron ore!

Norway's neighbor Sweden is extremely rich in iron ore, but iron ore is mainly distributed in the northern high-latitude region of Lapland, where the iron ore content is as high as 60-70%, which is the most critical raw material for the production of high-quality steel.

Of the 15 million tonnes of iron ore consumed in Germany last year, 11 million tonnes were imported from Sweden, and in warmer months, the iron ore could be transported from northern Sweden across the Baltic via the Gulf of Bothnia to Germany. In wartime, this transport line will not be a problem either, since the Baltic Sea has been effectively blocked, and British submarines and ships cannot get in.

But the demand for steel in the war is not determined by the seasons, and the war machine driven by Germany is like a bottomless pit that can never be fed - as long as the Gulf of Bothnia freezes in winter, the transport ships cannot be navigated at all, and the iron ore of Sweden can only be transported by rail to the Norwegian port of Narvik, which is closest to Lapland (the port of Narvik is located on the southeast shore of the Oufortfjord on the coast of the Norwegian Sea, only more than 30 kilometers east of the Swedish border, and is the largest port city in Norway in the Arctic Circle. An important outlet to the sea in northern Finland. There are more than 10,000 people in this port city. It is an ice-free port that is navigable even in winter. and then by sea to Germany. The entire route runs from north to south along the west coast of Norway, making it strategically vulnerable to British attack.

Steel is bones, oil is blood - in order to obtain a stable steel supply line, the German occupation of Norway will not only ensure the safety of iron ore transportation, but also control shipping in the North Sea region.

Some things were helpless: the Soviet Union wanted to strike while the iron was hot to get Bessarabia backed, and the side effect was to force Romania to find a strong backer, and the result could only be that Germany get a stable source of oil supply.

This would have made the British government realize that it was essential to control Norway and even Sweden, a small and weak country like Norway that was a bargaining chip in peacetime and miserable in war years a prey to great power rivalry - both Britain and Germany had plans to invade Norway at about the same time (and the British were obviously not so just). ）。

The British had planned to land in Navik in March, but for a series of reasons, the landing plan was cancelled, and a great opportunity was lost. If Norway were to be attacked in March, Britain would still have enough troops and enough strategic initiative.

On April 1, 1940, Hitler decided to start a military campaign to occupy Denmark and Norway in the early hours of April 9, codenamed 'Operation Weser'. Targeting Norway, Lieutenant General Falkenhorst, commander of the 21st Army, commanded a joint operation of the navy, army, and air force to carry out a surprise attack, landing simultaneously in the six major Norwegian ports of Oslo, Christian, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik from south to north.

In the six landing sites, except for the port of Stavanger, which was occupied by paratroopers, the remaining five ports were carried by the navy and the army for amphibious landing attacks, and more than 10,000 German troops were divided into five groups to attack five ports. The first stage was to seize ports and airfields, the second stage was to attack inland, to occupy Norway in its entirety, and to prepare for anti-landing and counterattack operations against the possible landing of Anglo-French forces in the second stage.

The reason why Germany chose this time for a full-scale attack on Norway was because it was only in early April that the German ports on the Baltic coast began to thaw. In order to solve Norway as soon as possible, Raeder can be said to be desperate, he mobilized almost the entire naval forces of the three empires into this new battlefield, mobilized 370 large and small warships, and even two new battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau joined the attack.

The Germans formed the first group of the German Navy with 10 of the 14 destroyers that could be put into operation, under the command of Rear Admiral Paul Friedrich Bent, commander of the Rear Admiral Destroyer Fleet, and was responsible for the most difficult and dangerous task of capturing the port of Narvik.

The main task of the first German naval formation was to sink any Norwegian warship in the port of Narvik and transport the 3rd Mountain Infantry Division, commanded by Vice Admiral Edward Dieter, to the Norwegian landing site and return.

On April 3, the German military operation began. , an advance convoy of supply ships and tankers left the German port. Three days later, the attack fleet also left Germany and headed for various ports in Norway.

In the early morning of April 6, 1940, Dieter led the divisional headquarters, the headquarters of the 139th Regiment and a part of the air defense personnel to set off by train, arriving at the embarkation site in the afternoon of the same day, and the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 139th Regiment also arrived here at sunset, and the Germans set off on the Weser River that night, aiming for Narvik, 1,200 miles away. Each destroyer carried 200 mountain or coastal artillerymen, and the first group of destroyers was joined by the transport ship Launfeldz, two battle cruisers, and a bunch of auxiliary ships. On the same day, the tanker Jean-William also departed from Murmansk in the Soviet Union to support the German occupation of the port of Navik.

The attack was postponed at the same time that the British troops boarded the ship and set off north, and an unexpected battle was about to be staged.

There was no suspense in the early battle on land, and the Norwegian defenders were no match for the German elite landing force at all, and then an interesting scene was staged for Lin Jun, and the reason can probably only be said to be the butterfly effect:

In Lin Jun's memory, according to the pre-war battle plan, the Germans could return when the first formation of the Navy delivered General Dieter's 3rd Mountain Infantry Division to the landing site, but due to fuel problems, the return time was delayed. The German Navy organized three tankers to resupply Rear Admiral Bent's destroyer, but unexpectedly the tanker was hit by Norwegian coastal guards on its way to Narvik, one tanker was sunk, and the other did not reach Narvik due to meteorological and hydrological conditions. In the end, only one tanker staggered all the way to the port of Narvik. But this fuel was a drop in the bucket for Bent's ten destroyers. Bent could only remain in Narvik and wait for new supplies. It was this unforeseen turn of events that changed the fate of the German Navy's 1st Formation, which was to suffer a devastating blow against the Belated Royal Navy fleet.

But now God is probably on the side of the Germans, the area controlled by the Norwegian shore artillery is foggy, and the "blind" shore artillery units did not find the same "short-sighted" German cruise ship, which allowed the first formation to return on time. The British naval formations, which arrived late, saw the empty harbor and the city of Narvik, where it was fighting.

It was a great gift for the German Navy, but it was a disaster for Dieter - to fight with a force of about 3,000 men and a constant stream of reinforcements from the British!

The British landed on the same day, and the Royal Navy had come to attack Norway, and treated the Norwegian cities as unkind to the Germans - bombing the already small Narvik into ruins with naval guns, much to the misery of the elite of the German 3rd Mountain Division.

The British organized an Allied army, and the British, French, Norwegian, and Polish armies continued to attack the German army, and the Allied forces exceeded 20,000 at their peak, while General Dieter had only 3,000 under his command!

Fortunately, Dieter was experienced and did not fight with the Allies in Narvik, and after a week of hard fighting with the Narvik Alliance, he decisively adopted the most familiar combat method of the mountain infantry - retreating on his own initiative and entering the Norwegian mountains and forests to fight a mountain battle.

Hitler, who was in Berlin, learned of the critical situation of the 3rd Mountain Division and ordered Goering to use air support, airdropping a battalion of paratroopers and a steady stream of supplies to support Dieter.

There was snow and ice in the Norwegian mountains in April, and the German mountain infantry were very familiar with the snow and rugged terrain, because they were originally from the mountains, and there was a view everywhere in winter, not to mention that the symbol of the mountain hat on their heads was the symbol of the snow and the mountains - the edelweiss.

The Germans were doing what they did best, and the troops from Britain knew nothing about how to fight in the icy and rugged environment - something strange and unfamiliar to their infantry tactical codex!

The elite of the German army, less than 4,000 men, created this miracle, they are still fighting, and the Allies have nothing to do with them! In the direction of Namsos, the troops of the 2nd and 1st Mountain Divisions urgently advanced from the ground towards Narvik to support the Allied brethren who were fighting hard.

The Allied lines began to become less secure, and the Allies had to prepare to abandon their military operations in Norway - on May 10, the Germans finally launched a general offensive to the west after more than half a year of preparation.

"The Kyiv exercises are ready to be suspended, let's see how the Germans fight a big offensive war in depth." Upon hearing that the sit-down battle on the Western Front had been broken, Stalin immediately informed Voroshinov. (To be continued.) )