The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,712
- Jun 27, 2007
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Denmark and Norway are odd examples, since the whole occupation of the Norway was a German reaction to Franco-British plans put forward by Churchill in September 1939 to the War Cabinet to occupy Norway and deny the Germans of Swedish ore transports, and which were initiated the same time the Germans set in motion their own counter-plan.
Decision To Invade Norway and Denmark
I find it odd. The British seeked to overrun and occupy a neutral country, they failed and now they blame it on the ones who thwarted their plans..
It is odd, 'cause it's not true. The British planed to land in Norway in an attempt to help the Finns. This with knowledge and cooperation of the Norway government.
The Norwegian were (rightfully so) concerned about their neurtral status and made an official complaint to the UK government. This and the Finn's surrender made that the plan was definately off in march 1940.
Nevertheless, the Nazi's saw this as an easy excuse to invade Norway in April and used as thus.
Don't understand the thinking Kurfurst.
The RAF was tactically and strategically defeated at dunkirk?
The Royal Navy suffered permenent losses?
The Slovaks were happy to be ruled by a Nazi puppet government?
Why did both Halder and Brauchitsch oppose Hitler stopping the tanks and why did the tanks attack Dunkirk a few days later when they realised the evacuation was happening?
The Luftwaffe failed in its objective to destroy the BEF or stop the evacuation.
So they wanted to land in Norway to help the Finns...
The Franco-British plan was to use the Finnish war as an excuse to occupy Norway and cut Germany away from Baltic trade. It first wanted to use the Russo-Finnish war as pretext, then it aimed to abuse Norwegian neutrality by mining Norwegian waters, in hope to provoke the Germans and then, 'react'.
Qui bono? Who benefits? For the Germans, Scandinavian neutrality was a perfect state, since they were interested in maintaining trade with these countries to obtain important strategic resources and products. The Allies were interested in breaking that trade route.
The whole story can be read in detail here :
Decision To Invade Norway and Denmark
'the plan was definately off in march 1940' :
...The signing of the peace treaty between Russia and Finland in Moscow on the night of 12 March put an end to the Allied plans. The Germans observed British submarines concentrated off the Skagerrak on the 13th, and an intercepted radio message setting March as the deadline for preparation of transport groups indicated that the Allied operation was getting under way. But another message, intercepted on the 15th, ordering the submarines to disperse revealed that the peace had disrupted the Allied plan. ...
.. Although Hitler was probably in large part influenced by his gambler's instinct and his disinclination to abandon an operation once it had been prepared and he thought it could be carried off successfully, he was more nearly right in his estimate of Allied intentions than he knew. On 21 March Paul Reynaud became the head of a French Government committed to a more aggressive prosecution of the war; and a week later, at a meeting of the Supreme War Council, the Scandinavian question again came under consideration. The new Scandinavian undertaking was to consist of two separate but related operations, WILFRED and Plan R 4. WILFRED involved the laying of two mine fields in Norwegian waters, one in the approaches to the Vest Fjord north of Bodo, and the other between Ĺlesund and Bergen, with the pretended laying of a third near Molde. It was to be justified by notes delivered to Norway and Sweden several days in advance protesting the inability of those nations to protect their neutrality. The supposition was that WILFRED would provoke German counteraction, and Plan R 4 was to become effective the moment the Germans landed in Norway "or showed they intended to do so." Narvik and the railroad to the Swedish frontier formed the principal objectives of Plan R 4. The port was to be occupied by one infantry brigade and an antiaircraft battery, with the total strength to be built up eventually to 18,000 men. One battalion, in a transport escorted by two cruisers, was to sail within a few hours after the mines had been laid. Five battalions were to be employed in occupying Trondheim and Bergen and in a raid on Stavanger to destroy Sola airfield, the largest in Norway and the closest to the British Isles. The plan depended heavily on the assumption that the Norwegians would not offer resistance; and, strangely, the possibility of a strong German reaction was left almost entirely out of account. [41]
this alleged terror
of the Allied fairy tale they were fighting an evil regime that sought the annihilation of millions of human beings.
talking about a lunatic which, as depicted by the allies
The responses from the most of you are a strange mixture of double speech, contradictions and deliberate blindness.
The responses from the most of you are a strange mixture of double speech, contradictions and deliberate blindness.
The responses from the most of you are a strange mixture of double speech, contradictions and deliberate blindness.
Every year on the 5th of may, we (the Netherlands) have liberation day. We invite allied vets from the US, the commonwealth, Poland etc. to honour them for their part in liberating the Netherlands. This has been held EVERY year since WWII 62 times already. So your statement above again proves your "deliberate blindness" or isn't it deliberate and are you just blind?.As far as i know, there has been no official ceremony where the nations of the world would gather to thank the Allied Powers for saving them from Nazi Germany. Ungrateful bastards.
Your question...which you answer yourself below.Now i file a few more questions for you to play with.
If Hitler was that relentless cheater, who would always reverse his deals, betraying governments that did trust him, with a thirst for conquest and blood no deed could quench, then answer this:
(1) Why did he not invade Spain? He and Franco were having kind of a good relationship, but for several reasons Spain did not officially enter the war...why did he just not send an army detachment to occupy Spain and seize, say, Gibraltar which was essential to the Brits when it came to access the Mediterranean?
I do not think Spain had an army that could withstand the impact of a Wehrmacht ramming.
(2) And talking about a lunatic which, as depicted by the allies, only cared about adding more trophies in his private quarters...why not Portugal?
Oh crap...if i go for France, then i might as well go for the whole Iberic Peninsula package, it would definitely look cool in my trophy rooms.
(3) Why did he not occupy the whole continental France? I know what you are going to say, yes: he wanted to place a puppet Government to simulate things.
(4) More on France: (discussed ad nauseam)
-Why did he not try to seize the powerful French capital vessels such as Richelieu, Jean Bart, Strasbourg and Dunkerque, plus a number of cruisers and modern destroyers?
I mean not a single unit of the French navy, of any type or displacement was ever seized by the Germans...how come?
If after Dunkerque -and as most of you so boldly suggest- he was seeking the "surrendering" of England, why did he not attempt to seize any French navy units which could have strengthened German naval assets for the so-called "See Lowe"? Any explanations?
- Why did he never attempt to occupy or control French colonies in North/NorthWest Africa? I think that in the mind of such lunatic, it would be an ego boosting experience to have German soldiers rising Nazi flags on African soil.
Very good example of your double speech and contradiction. So you accuse us of the very thing which you do yourself in the same post.Hitler hated to see the strenght of the Heer getting scattered across vast regions of land; he would have preferred to save everything for his main plan, which was the attack against the USSR.
Every year on the 5th of may, we (the Netherlands) have liberation day. We invite allied vets from the US, the commonwealth, Poland etc. to honour them for their part in leberating the Netherlands. This has been held EVERY year since WWII 62 times already. So your statement above again proves your "deliberate blindness".