WW1 - Impact of Conflict - Jemi and Lou

On the pretext that Norway needed protection from British and French interference, Germany invaded Norway for several reasons: strategically, to secure ice-free harbours from which naval forces could seek to control the North Atlantic; to secure the availability of iron ore from mines in Sweden, going through Narvik; to pre-empt a British and French invasion with the same purpose; and to reinforce the propaganda of a "Germanic empire".

Norway was largely unprepared for the German military invasion when it came on the night of April 8–9, 1940

German forces attacked Norway by sea and air as Operation Weserübung was put into action. The first wave of German attackers counted only about 10,000 men, but Germany's luck in achieving complete surprise, and the lack of preparedness of Norway for a large-scale invasion of this kind, gave the German forces their initial success.[4]

Prior to the invasion, Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nazi party known as Nasjonal Samling ("National Gathering"), had tried to persuade Adolf Hitler that he would form a government in support of occupying Germans, although Hitler remained unreceptive to the idea. Hence, on the first day of invasion, Quisling made a broadcast at the NRK radio station and nominated himself as prime minister. This did not please the German authorities, who initially wanted the legitimate government to remain in place. Nevertheless, when it became obvious that the Norwegian parliament would not surrender, the Germans quickly came to recognise Quisling.

Norway was the most heavily fortified country during the war: several hundred thousand German soldiers were stationed in Norway, in a ratio of one German soldier for every eight Norwegians. Most German soldiers considered themselves fortunate to be in Norway, particularly in comparison with those experiencing savage combat duty on the Eastern Front.

The economic consequences of the German occupation were severe. Norway lost all its major trading partners the moment it was occupied. Germany became the main trading partner, but could not make up for the lost import and export business. While production capacity largely remained intact, the German authorities confiscated a very large part of the output. This left Norway with only 43% of its production being freely available.[5]

At the beginning of the occupation, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. At least 775 of these were arrested, detained, and/or deported. 742 were murdered in concentration camps, 23 died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder, and suicide during the war; bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 765, comprising 230 complete households. In addition to the few who survived concentration camps, some also survived by fleeing the country, mostly to Sweden, but some also to the United Kingdom.

About 80,000 Norwegian citizens fled the country during the course of the war. Since the Norwegian parliament continued to operate in exile in Britain, many of these exiles voluntarily came to serve in Allied military service, often forming their own distinct Norwegian units in accordance with the Allied Forces Act. By the end of the war these forces consisted of some 28,000 enlisted men and women.

In June 1940, some 13 warships and 5 aircraft of the Royal Norwegian Navy, including their 500 operating personnel, followed the King and parliament to Britain. Throughout the war, some 118 ships had served the Norwegian Navy, of which 58 were in active service by the war's end. By this time the Norwegian Navy had continuously and actively served Allied forces since the summer of 1940, and had suffered the loss of 27 ships and 650 men.

In order to develop and train an Air Force, a training camp known as "Little Norway" was set up near Toronto, Canada, on November 10, 1940. However, a unified Royal Norwegian Air Force was only founded as a separate branch of the military of Norway on November 10, 1944, a date before which it operated in two distinct branches — then known as the Royal Norwegian Navy Air Service and the Norwegian Army Air Service.

Norwegian fighters operating in RAF service accounted for a total 247 destroyed, 42 assumed destroyed and 142 damaged enemy aircraft. By the war's end, the Norwegian Air Force counted a total of 2,700 personnel and had suffered a total of 228 losses.

Norwegian forces; its size never exceeded more than 4,000 men

Towards the end of the war, in March 1945, Norwegian Reichskommissar Josef Terboven had considered plans to make Norway the last bastion of the Third Reich and a last sanctum for German leaders.

Throughout the war, Allied planners remained wary of the strategic significance of Norway. Commando raids were carried out in several locations; some with the intention of deceiving German commanders as part of Operation Fortitude North, others with the explicit aim of disrupting German military and scientific capabilities, such as sabotaging the German nuclear energy project.

During the five-year occupation, several thousand Norwegian women had children fathered by German soldiers in the Lebensborn program. The mothers were ostracised and humiliated after the war both by Norwegian officialdom and the civilian population, and were called names such as tyskertøser (literally "whores of [the] Germans").[7] Many of these women were detained at internment camps such as the one on Hovedøya, and some were even deported to Germany. The children of these unions received names like tyskerunger (children of Germans) or worse yet naziyngel (Nazi spawn). The debate on the past treatment of these krigsbarn (war children) started with a television series in 1981, but only recently have the offspring of these unions begun to identify themselves.

One such child is Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who eventually grew up and achieved fame as a member of the Swedish group Abba.[citation needed] Fritz Moen, the victim of the only known dual miscarriage of justice in Europe, was the child of a Norwegian woman and a German soldier.

Throughout the war years, a number of Norwegians fled the Nazi regime, mostly across the border to Sweden. These included Norwegian Jews, political activists, and others who had reason to fear for their lives. The Nazis set up border patrols to stop these flights across the very long border, but locals who knew the woods found ways to bypass them. These "border pilots", and people who hid refugees in their homes, were among those in the resistance movement who took the greatest risks.

About 50,000 Norwegians fled to Sweden during the war.

In the end, 37 people were executed by Norwegian authorities, 25 Norwegians on the grounds of treason, and 12 Germans on the grounds of crimes against humanity. 28,750 were arrested, though most were released for lack of probable cause. In the end, 20,000 Norwegians and a smaller number of Germans were given prison sentences. Seventy-seven Norwegians and 18 Germans received life sentences. A number of people were sentenced to pay heavy fines.

in the north of Norway, would have been very important to the Germans in easing the movement of iron ore to Germany.

Germany should seize Norway in a future war so that the German Navy of the future would have an easier time getting to the Atlantic

Much of the country was unpopulated and her small population meant that she had a small army.

The plan was to take the major cities, secure them and then fan out from each city so that each force joined up together at some point. Oslo, the capital, was to be attacked from both sea and air. Sola, a major air base near Stavanger in the south, was to be attacked by an air landing while the nearby city was to be attack by parachutists. Narvik, Trondheim and Bergen were to be attacked from the sea with troops being landed by warships.

Falkenhorst’s hope was that the Norwegians would be so overwhelmed by the attacks, that the government would surrender without too much of a fight. In  fact, German troops were ordered to only fire if fired at.