War history, History | Tells a new story about why Germany attacked Norway

Spurkeland shakes the story we have learned at school that the Germans took Norway because our coast was so important to them, and that the British and the Allies were just our friends and co-conspirators.

The lecture he will give at Skien library on 8 April is called: “‘Get the Germans north’: Allied invasion plans aimed at Norway and Sweden in the spring of 1940”. Briefly, it is about Britain and France making plans for several military operations and partial occupation of Scandinavia in 1940. The strategic aim was primarily to entice or provoke Hitler to move against Norway and Sweden. In this way, they hoped to split up the German forces, so that they would not be able to wage war on the Western Front and the Balkans.

Became a doctor as a pensioner

– There are plenty of sources that indicate that the Allies wanted to create a theater of war in Scandinavia and that they thought it could become “the decisive theater of war,” says Trond Spurkeland (77).

– Do you think that Germany would not have attacked and occupied Norway, if they had not been lured into it by Great Britain?

– My stable tip is that Hitler would not have attacked Denmark and Norway in April 1940, if it was not because he knew about the British plans. But it is possible that he had attacked us later, says Spurkeland.

The historian is from Nordhordland, but has lived in Skien since 1978. Among other things, he has been a teacher at Gulset secondary school and office manager for the Education Association. After he retired in 2010, he obtained a doctorate in history. His thesis is about exactly the same thing that he is now going to lecture about; how Norway and Sweden were pawns in the British war strategy from autumn 1939 to 9 April 1940.

Planned operations against Norway

In connection with his doctoral work, he made 14 visits to the National Archives in London, among other things, and gained access to source material that few others have researched. He states, among other things, that the Germans had very good knowledge of the British and allied plans, but the British knew almost nothing about what Hitler’s Germany was planning.

According to Spurkeland, the British had seven operational plans against Norway and Sweden in the spring of 1940 – among other things to target the export of iron ore from Kiruna via Narvik to Germany. Some plans were implemented while others were not. In any case, it was far too small and complicated to stop “Operation Weserübung”, which was the Germans’ code name for the massive invasion of Denmark and Norway.

Among NS people there was a widespread belief that the Germans occupied Norway to prevent Britain from doing so. This is confirmed to some extent through Spurkeland’s research.

– I have been invited to speak about this for NS descendants, but I have declined; I don’t want to be identified with them, says the historian.

There will be free admission to his lecture at the library on Monday, and he counts all history-lovers as his target group.