Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940
An “excellent” history of the often overlooked WWII campaign in which Hitler secured a vital resource lifeline for the Third Reich (Library Journal).
 
After Hitler conquered Poland and was still fine-tuning his plans against France, the British began to exert control over the coastline of neutral Norway, an action that threatened to cut off Germany’s iron-ore conduit to Sweden and outflank from the start its hegemony on the Continent. The Germans responded with a dizzying series of assaults, using every tool of modern warfare developed in the previous generation. Airlifted infantry, mountain troops, and paratroopers were dispatched to the north, seizing Norwegian strongpoints while forestalling larger but more cumbersome Allied units.
 
The German navy also set sail, taking a brutal beating at the hands of Britannia, but ensuring with its sacrifice that key harbors would be held open for resupply. As dive-bombers soared overhead, small but elite German units traversed forbidding terrain to ambush Allied units trying to forge inland. At Narvik, some six thousand German troops battled twenty thousand French and British until the Allies were finally forced to withdraw by the great disaster in France, which had then gotten underway.
 
Henrik Lunde, a native Norwegian and former US Special Operations colonel, has written the most objective account to date of a campaign in which twentieth-century military innovation found its first fertile playing field.
"1111498730"
Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940
An “excellent” history of the often overlooked WWII campaign in which Hitler secured a vital resource lifeline for the Third Reich (Library Journal).
 
After Hitler conquered Poland and was still fine-tuning his plans against France, the British began to exert control over the coastline of neutral Norway, an action that threatened to cut off Germany’s iron-ore conduit to Sweden and outflank from the start its hegemony on the Continent. The Germans responded with a dizzying series of assaults, using every tool of modern warfare developed in the previous generation. Airlifted infantry, mountain troops, and paratroopers were dispatched to the north, seizing Norwegian strongpoints while forestalling larger but more cumbersome Allied units.
 
The German navy also set sail, taking a brutal beating at the hands of Britannia, but ensuring with its sacrifice that key harbors would be held open for resupply. As dive-bombers soared overhead, small but elite German units traversed forbidding terrain to ambush Allied units trying to forge inland. At Narvik, some six thousand German troops battled twenty thousand French and British until the Allies were finally forced to withdraw by the great disaster in France, which had then gotten underway.
 
Henrik Lunde, a native Norwegian and former US Special Operations colonel, has written the most objective account to date of a campaign in which twentieth-century military innovation found its first fertile playing field.
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Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940

Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940

by Henrik O. Lunde
Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940

Hitler's Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway, 1940

by Henrik O. Lunde

eBook

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Overview

An “excellent” history of the often overlooked WWII campaign in which Hitler secured a vital resource lifeline for the Third Reich (Library Journal).
 
After Hitler conquered Poland and was still fine-tuning his plans against France, the British began to exert control over the coastline of neutral Norway, an action that threatened to cut off Germany’s iron-ore conduit to Sweden and outflank from the start its hegemony on the Continent. The Germans responded with a dizzying series of assaults, using every tool of modern warfare developed in the previous generation. Airlifted infantry, mountain troops, and paratroopers were dispatched to the north, seizing Norwegian strongpoints while forestalling larger but more cumbersome Allied units.
 
The German navy also set sail, taking a brutal beating at the hands of Britannia, but ensuring with its sacrifice that key harbors would be held open for resupply. As dive-bombers soared overhead, small but elite German units traversed forbidding terrain to ambush Allied units trying to forge inland. At Narvik, some six thousand German troops battled twenty thousand French and British until the Allies were finally forced to withdraw by the great disaster in France, which had then gotten underway.
 
Henrik Lunde, a native Norwegian and former US Special Operations colonel, has written the most objective account to date of a campaign in which twentieth-century military innovation found its first fertile playing field.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781612000459
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Publication date: 01/10/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 616
File size: 16 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Henrik Lunde, US Army (ret.) was born in Norway and came to the United States as a child following World War II. After graduating from the University of California he accepted a US Army commission, and in addition to earning a degree in international relations from the University of Syracuse, he is a graduate of the Army’s Airborne, Ranger, and Pathfinder courses as well as the Command and General Staff College and the US Army War College. Much of Colonel Lunde’s troop assignments were in airborne divisions or in Special Forces. Highly decorated on the battlefield, he served three combat tours in Vietnam, and afterward in the Plans and Policy Branch of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. His last Army assignment was Director of National and International Security Studies at the US Army War College. Lunde currently lives in Florida.

Table of Contents

Preface & Acknowledgments

Prologue
1. Allied Plans–Flawed, Inadequate, and Hesitant
2. German Plans—Bold, Imaginative, and Reckless
3. Ignored Warnings—Ships Passing in the Night
4. Narvik Area Defenses
5. The German Attack on Narvik
6. Destroyer Battle
7. Confusion and Disarray
8. Beachhead Consolidation and Second Naval Battle
9. The Narvik Front, April 13–26
10. Campaigns in the South
11. The Norwegian-French Offensive, April 29–May 12
12. 2nd Mountain Division to the Rescue
13. The Bjerkvik Landing and the Mountain Offensive
14. The Loss of Nordland Province
15. The Week that Lost the Campaign—Strained Relations
16. Time Runs Out
17. Evacuation, Armistice, and Disaster
Epilogue

Maps
Command Structures
Operational Code Names
Bibliography
Index
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