During the Atlmark incident in 1940, the Brit war criminals violated Norwegian neutrality. Hitler could then justify invading Norway. Have the Brits ever apologized for violating Norwegian neutrality?
07.06.2025 13:05
Operation Wilfred
The Allies (British/French) were keen to stop the Germans from getting iron ore from Sweden. Remember what the Foreign Office Under-secretary said:
It would be correct for not only the UK but also France to offer an apology. Doubt any formal apology will ever come though. But remember the allies at the time (Britain/France) were being led by inept politicians. In the chain of events that followed the Altmark Affair and before the event were a series of comedy shows that failed to gain an audience!
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Umm. Same exact issue is now facing the Ukraine!!
The Ofotbanen railway was electrified in 1923. An electrified railroad is an easier target to stop traffic with just a few precise hits on the electrical distribution system. The Ofotbanen had a serious of tunnels that could have been bombed again stopping traffic flow. And finally, the Norddalsbrua bridge which was 180 m pendulum pillar bridge near the border with Sweden was designed to be easily destroyed with high explosives.
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The British Under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Orme Sargent, wrote:
There were other methods available to stop or greatly reduce the iron ore shipments through Narvik than going to the extreme knee jerk reaction of an invasion of a neutral nation.
During the German occupation of Norway at least 742 Jews were exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps and even more were just shot on sight! The Nazi's naturally confiscated a large portion of Norway's industrial, mining, agriculture output for themselves. The Germans eventually had between 300,000 to 400,000 troops located in Norway.
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The above assumption is both false, ignorant and especially foolish. (more on that later)
Trying in vain to do something to stop the onslaught from Nazi Germany and communist USSR, the Allied High Command hatches a plot to invade neutral Sweden through equally neutral Norway to get troops, supplies, war material to Finland. Both Norway and Sweden refuse any passage rights to the French/British. This plan would have also involved occupying both Iceland and Denmark's Faroe Islands.
"Our desire to assist Finland is only a pretext to justify our occupying Northern Sweden. The original object of a Scandinavia expedition was to prevent Germany from obtaining the Gällivare iron ore, because we believed that by depriving Germany of this, we should bring her to her knees within a few months".
Next on September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland eventually shredding that nation especially after the communist crony empire of the Soviet Union back stabs Poland and invades Poland from the East. Poland eventually loses about 10 million of its population!
"that from the moment she took the field against Poland until her victory over France, Germany could not have done without Swedish iron ore. If the mines of Lapland had ceased working, the blast furnaces of the Ruhr would have shut down too."
Narvik's iron ore shipments were preeminent up until the 1940 fiasco! Actually from 1940 onwards iron ore shipments through Narvik became an embarrassment to the allies. The Ofotbanen railway was built between 1898 and 1902 specifically to transport iron ore from Sweden's Gãllivare and Kiruna mines to the ice-free port of Narvik.
The Altmark had some 299 British sailors stuffed down in a hold. On the 3rd inspection the Norwegians heard the sailors banging out some tunes in the hold. They were fortunate the Germans didn't shoot them. I did not know this, but during this time frame (1940) transporting prisoners through a neutral power’s territorial waters wasn’t illegal. Yeah, for real! The British did the same thing by taking German prisoners through the Panama Canal.
Supposedly the Norddalsbrua bridge had guards at either end manned 24/7 just for that purpose. Uhm Supposedly! And the entire Ofotbanen has a length of only 43 miles in Norway. What does any of this have to do with the invasion of Norway and Swedish iron ore exports via Narvik?
"Our desire to assist Finland is only a pretext to justify our occupying Northern Sweden"!
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The Japanese Empire starts the Pacific side of World War on July 7, 1937, by faking an incident on the Marco Polo Bridge. The USA takes the lead in trying to coerce the Japanese to stop the war. That results in Pearl Harbor!
"There exists a series of events in which each event was caused by the previous one"
The Altmark then left for Germany. The German captain decided to hang out in a Norwegian Jossingfjord before trying to sneak the rest of the way back the der Fatherland. This was to be no sanctuary for the German ship. The Norwegian Navy had inspected the Altmark like 3 times but found nothing that violated neutrality regulations.
The dictator led U.S.S.R. saw the West as being confused in diplomacy, weak in military strategy, distracted by politics, removed from reality and at times cowardly! So, on November 30, 1939, Putin invades Finland. Stalin's recently purged army is given a few setbacks by the Finish armed forces in a heroic defense!
This is a rather preposterous statement that does not hold up to scrutiny. As Rolf Karlbom states "In 1938 and 1939, the quantity of raw material required by the German steel industry amounted to 36 to 37 million tons. The total for 1940 is only 29 million tons."
Plan R3 (Started March 12, 1940 - cancelled)
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The major concept behind all these Scandinavian adventures was stopping the Nazi war machine by denying Swedish iron ore to Germany. And yes, we all understand that before the invasion and occupation of France that Germany received a large portion of its iron ore from France.
The fact is that German iron and steel production did take a huge plunge in 1940 due to the cut off ore from France starting in the third quarter of 1939 and running until about the second half of 1940 when France was occupied. But the fact remains that Germany did not receive its iron ore from 1 single source.
We can surmise 2 horrible aspects from this statement:
C. In 1940 total German iron ore consumption fell a couple million tons (disruption from Scandinavian events).
Oops! Edit: That was supposed to be Sinister Stalin not Puking Putin
Ultimately iron ore exports to Germany from Sweden were reduced from a series of events including Sweden finally agreeing to reduce iron ore shipments plus for Sweden to stop using its navy to escort German ore ships heading south out of the port of Lulea to Germany.
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Then there was the Altmark Affair on February 15, 1940 @ 22:20 (10:20PM):
It was not just Norway but Denmark also but much less so than Norway!
After the disastrous initial invasion of Finland resulted in so many setbacks for the USSR, Stalin re-enforced his army assaulting Finland and the Fins began to fall back to the point of collapse. In February 1940, the renewed Soviet offensive broke through the Mannerheim Line and Finland was about to become another Soviet Republic!
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Plan R4
End Notes:
The Allies (British/French) placed far too much emphasis on the Narvik railroad and especially the terminal at Narvik and thus have a rather delusional thought process that by shutting down the ore terminal at Narvik, all iron ore shipments to Germany would cease and thus the German armament factories would shut down and Germany would surrender.
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Norway suffered due to the inept allied leadership.
1. The Allies (British/French) were never serious about assisting Finland.
The very first line:
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A. Germany was recovering from the deprivations of the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression.
Chamberlain proposed Operation Royal Marine which was a scheme to put floating mines (airborne laid) into the Rhine River around the Rhineland i.e., the industrial Ruhr. Also, at Narvik, the Indreled, or Inner Leads were to be mined. The French were scared to death about angering the Germans, so they relented on the mining of the Rhine River.
"The deception with tact, just what are you trying to say?"
When Narvik was bombed, and the port facilities destroyed the Germans and the Swedish just started to ship more stockpiled ore through the port of Lulea in northern Sweden during the late spring / summer periods when the port was not ice bound.
One Thing Leads to Another just means:
This was supposed to be a short 3 paragraph answer. But it’s 103 degrees outside again! And me being a “old fart” just kept typing and spell checking . . . and spell checking and spell checking . . . . to no avail.
Buuuut. Rolf Karlbom in his mostly excellent “Scandinavian Economic History Review states”:
The Allies (France & Great Britain) basically do nada, nothing, zilch! Labeled as the Phony War in Great Britain, the Drôle de guerre in France and the Sitzkrieg in Nazi Germany.
The combined navies of Great Britain and France were more than powerful enough to inject enough soldiers into the occupied port of Petsamo (now Pechenga, USSR - - - oops I did it again it's not the USSR it's Novo USSR!). Bullies are only bullies until faced with a stronger foe. A bully like Stalin & Company when faced with a determined re-enforcement of Finland would probably wet his trousers, cry to mama and slither his way back to Moscow!
The Royal Navy royally "Punked" the captain of the German cruiser Graf Spee in South American waters. The Graf Spee's oiler and supply ship was made into a brig for the merchant seaman that had been taken aboard when the Graf Spee sunk their ships. When the Graf Spee's captain was made a fool by Royal Navy guile he scuttled his ship.
Eventually the Bully of the USSR forced small Finland into the turd like Moscow Peace Treaty. Yeah right! Peace for Moscow but turds for Finland. Finland lost its port of Petsamo and large portion of Lapland. Finland had to snuggle up with Nazi Germany due to the fact that the allies just left Finland bayoneted to a tree by the Soviet murder factory!
Remember that song by the Fixx "One Thing Leads to Another" back in 1982? Uhm nope! Maybe you don't. I can cause I am a Registered Old Fart.
Some historians and a bucket load of apologists will state that the British/French invasion was in response to the German invasion which might be true. Buuuut, why were the Germans invading in the first place? That leads us right back to that song:
D. Imports from Sweden were never more than 1/3 of Germany's total.
Examining the chart above it is apparent that:
This comically and utterly nonsensical operation was planned for February 12, 1940. In total it would involve the entire Scandinavian Zone as invading the Faroe Islands would involve Denmark one way or another.
After the French neutered Operation Royal Marine, the mining plan went ahead as Operation Wilfred. Eventually the link between mining the Rhine and the Narvik Leads was dropped on Churchill’s advice. Then on April 3 the War Cabinet gave permission for the Royal Navy to lay minefields inside Norwegian waters.
The reduction of iron ore shipments from Sweden was also greatly reduced by the Allies (RAF/USAAF) transportation plan which bombed the railroads/ports and infrastructure for the importation of iron ore imports. Sweden finally ended its trade with Nazi Germany in November of 1944 when the end of the war only 5 months away!
The British decided that landings would be needed after the mining operation of Operation Wilfred. This was a stated attempt to forestall any possible German landings in Norway. The allies thought that by occupying Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik the Germans would relinquish the occupation of Norway to the Allies.
The British/French fiasco in Norway eventually led to some 10,200 plus Norwegians losing their lives in the conflict or while imprisoned. Well over 140,000 mostly POWs were forced to work in Norway which led to many dying while under the hand of the evil Nazi occupiers.
So, what started this entire process?
Right!
"One Thing Leads to Another"
B. German domestic production of iron ore grew rapidly up until 1940 then stagnated.
R4 was to be executed "the moment the Germans landed in Norway 'or showed they intended to do so".
2. Stopping the Nazi war machine by denying Swedish iron ore was built on a false premise.
Operation Royal Marine (April 5, 1940, but delayed to the 8th)
E. From 1940 to 1943 domestic iron ore production was the greatest by volume.
The Altmark Affair was by no means the single reason for the German invasion of Norway. The British Royal Navy sent in a destroyer and rescued the trapped crewmen! Buuuut the Germans were furious about the Altmark Affair, and this included Heir SHitler. This event had totally pissed off the German due to the Norwegians for allowing it to happen in their neutral waters. This event also helped cement the fact that the Germans believed the Norwegians were not going to enforce neutrality regulations and this only increased Hitler’s narcotic induced paranoia that the Norwegians were in fact in league with the Allies.