Hitler’s Pre-Emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940, Henrik Lunde [new ebook reader TXT] 📗

6 Colonel Sundlo is also mentioned in Admiral Raeder’s operational directive of March 6, 1940. It states that the military commandant in Narvik, Colonel Sundlo, is friendly and that it was not expected that he would create any difficulties for the Germans.

7 Dickens, Battles in the Fjords, p. 32.

8 Captain Steen writes that the outgoing message from Norge identified the ships as German and implies that it somehow was muddled at the 3rd Naval District. General Sandvik writes (Operasjonene, vol. 1, p. 104 n. 52) that the message from Norge “was made to agree with the message” from Michael Sars, which simply identified the ships as “foreign”. We will probably never know for sure where the mistake occurred since Norge’s message log went down with the ship.

9 “Rapport fra sjefen for Norge og Ofotavdelingen til Kommanderende Admiral av 20 april 1940,’ 4.

10 Steen, Norges Sjøkrig 1940-1945, vol. 4, p. 88.

11 Witness statement by Captain Siem on April 22, 1947, as quoted in Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1, p. 107 n. 58.

12 Steen, Norges Sjøkrig 1940-1945, vol. 2, p. 124, vol. 4, p. 64, and 89. Torkel Hovland, General Carl Gustaf Fleischer. Storhet og fall (Oslo: Forum-Aschehoug, 3rd edn, 2000), p. 78) reports that the General Staff order came at 0330 hours, the same time given by Lindbäck-Larsen.

13 Lindbäck-Larsen, Rapport, Section 4:3. It is likely that General Fleischer received this information 30 minutes earlier since he had a telephone conversation with Colonel Mjelde at 2130 hours, five minutes after Mjelde’s headquarters received the message from the General Staff. See also Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1, p. 99.

14 Spjeldnæs’ testimony in Colonel Sundlo’s trial on April 19, 1947, quoted in Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1, p. 101.

15 Dietl and Hermann, General Dietl, p. 72.

16 Hovland, Fleischer, p. 79. The source given for this description is Nils Ryeng, De fem trojanske hestene i 1940.

17 Despite these instructions and the fact that their unit went on alert the previous evening, we find that Co 2’s commander and executive officer spent the night at their quarters in Victoria Hospice, about one kilometer from their headquarters. Likewise, Major Spjeldnæs apparently stayed at his quarters in Bromsgård.

18 The sources give a confusing summary of how Co 2 was deployed. We know that it had an assigned strength of about 150. Forty-two soldiers were away from Narvik. Another six were involved in preparing the quarters for the units arriving from Elvegårdsmoen. The harbor defense force that was located in its quarters numbered about 20. The company reserve numbered 30-40 soldiers, depending on which source is used. That leaves 42-52 soldiers not accounted for. I believe these were also assigned to posts in the harbor area between Fagernes and Framnes. The NCO in charge of the harbor guards located in their quarters refers to them as “the remainder of the defense force.” The explanation is probably that this force is in addition to 36 soldiers that Steen states were sent to occupy posts along the three kilometers long waterfront. These troops were probably deployed some time between 2000 hours when Colonel Sundlo placed Co 2 on alert and ordered the bunkers occupied and 2330 hours when he ordered that an officer be sent to each of the bunkers. This still leaves from 6 to 16 soldiers not accounted for. Some of those were probably cooks and runners. It is also possible that the detail preparing quarters for the arriving units involved more than six men.

19 Spjeldnæs testimony on April 19, 1947 as quoted in Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1 p. 110 and n. 60.

20 Loc cit.

21 Quoted in Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1, pp. 116-117.

22 Verbal report by Colonel Sundlo to the Military History Division on May 1, 1958 as reported in Steen, Norges Sjøkrig 1940-1945, vol. 4, p. 95.

23 The sequence of events that led to the surrender is that found in the official Norwegian histories of land and naval operations in North Norway in 1940 as well as in some German accounts. A number of the more popular and widely read accounts of these events deviate from the earlier histories without offering any new evidence.

24 Ottmer, Weserübung, p. 96. It seems obvious that Ottmer relied on secondary Norwegian sources to arrive at these conclusions.

25 Sandvik, Operasjonene, vol. 1, pp. 186-187.

26 The court decided unanimously “the defendant’s [Sundlo’s] actions pertaining to the surrender under the prevailing conditions can not be considered punishable. The conditions had reached a point where a completely superior enemy surrounded the defendant and his troops. All defensive means must be viewed legally as taken, despite the fact that they were not activated, and every possibility of breakout or timely assistance had to be viewed as hopeless. The defendant had to make an immediate decision and weight the probable catastrophic results of resistance at that point against the duty to uphold the country’s and own honor … Accordingly, the accused is acquitted of point II of the prosecution’s accusation and, similarly, he is found not guilty with respect to paragraph 83 of the penal code …”

27 The Germans noted the failure of the Norwegian defense plans to use their troops to the best advantage and to exploit the difficulties presented by climate and geography. Karl Ruef writes “But also the natural advantages of the whole countryside around Narvik, the steep mountains, the flanking possibilities for infantry weapons, the lack of roads, the narrows and passes, the railroad tunnels, the knowledge of the terrain, the winter mobility of their own troops, the proximity of supply depots, all that the Norwegians failed to exploit.” (Odyssee einer Gebirgsdivision. Die 3. Geb. Div. im Einsatz [Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 19760).

28 O. Munthe-Kaas, The Campaign in Northern Norway. An Account of the Norwegian 6th Division’s Advance Against the Germans in the Narvik Area April 9th–June 9th, 1940 (Washington, D.C.: The Royal Norwegian Information Service,