When in April 1940 forces of the German Wehrmacht commenced Operation Weserübung, the invasion and occupation of neutral Norway in order to protect Scandinavian ore resources and also deny them to Britain, Norwegian and Allied forces were taken by surprise.  While the invasion and subsequent occupation by the German military included many “firsts” of the war and was successful, it was also disorganized and took longer than expected and the Norwegian resistance surprised Hitler.

Focusing primarily on the naval operations, The Battle for Norway, April—June 1940, provides readers with an exceptionally detailed and well-documented volume that continues the history of the invasion begun in the author’s earlier volume The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940 (2009).  Using material from Norwegian, German, and British primary sources and archives as well as numerous secondary sources, the author presents a well-documented, balanced and thorough account of the events at sea during the German invasion.  The book provides a highly-readable and compelling narrative of the German invasion and failure to repulse it.  It covers strategic and operational perspectives of the campaign weaving them into a detailed, informative and readable narrative.

The early chapters of the volume are devoted to operations off southern and western Norway where there was an attempt to halt German advances out of the invasion ports.  The second portion of the book studies and recounts the British landings in central Norway and the challenges to them by sea, land, and air.  The use of frozen lakes for air operations by Germany and the Allies was something neither anticipated and one of the many improvisations of the campaign.

The third section of the work provides an excellent account of the Allied combined amphibious landings around the ice-free harbor of Narvik, the first such operation of the war.  One of the major challenges from a leadership perspective was that there was no unified commander for the operation with Norwegian and Allied forces retaining separate commanders (and there was no unity of command within British forces).

The final portion of the work evaluates the evacuation of Norway in Operation Alphabet and Operation Juno and the disastrous loss of the carrier HMS Glorious and destroyer escorts HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent with the combined loss of more than 1500 men.  By the time the sixty-one day campaign ended the British and German navies had suffered significant losses and most of the Norwegian ships had been sunk (e.g. Norge, Eidsvold), captured, or beached and scuttled (although some did escape and continue service).  For Germany, the losses were unsustainable and the surface fleet never again posed a similar threat and the focus of the Kriegsmarine shifted toward undersea warfare as Norway began five years of occupation.

The volume superbly recounts the naval operations on all sides. It also does an excellent job of contextualizing the events in Norway with other operations in Europe (both German and Allied) that resulted in reallocation of forces from Norway.  The author rightly concludes that although the campaign was a minor one compared to the rest of the war in Europe, it forever changed the history of the people of Norway.  The strategic importance of Norway increased following the German invasion of Russia in 1941 when northern Norway was used as a German staging area for attacks on the supply routes to Murmansk.  Losing Norway was not catastrophic for the Allies, but it did take away flanking options at the beginning of the fighting in France.  Further, the inability of the Royal Navy and RAF to sever German supply lines to Norway gave German forces advantages that significantly increased the likelihood of German victory and sent military and political shockwaves throughout London.

More than forty pages of detailed appendices as well as numerous excellent and unusual photographs and maps greatly enhance the volume.  Like its companion volume, The German Invasion of Norway, April 1940, the present volume is especially beneficial for readers limited to English and the two will become the standard study on the subject.  The book fills a void in naval studies of the Second World War and naval historians and enthusiasts will not be disappointed. It is an exceptional work.