Fail Weserübung: Icy Allied Victory

Hyperion

Banned
If Norway is held it was the Norwegian Army and its shore batteries that stopped the invasion in an early stage. They probably had support from the allied navies and some allied air support. Allied ground troops won´t arrive sooner than in OTL and would be probably less numerous because the Norwegians already have the situation under control.

Unless the Fall of France is somehow butterflied away, the allied victory in Norway might not last long. The Germans need the iron ore less since they now control the french, belgian and luxembourgian deposits but in case they decide they need it anway or can not tolerate the British at the northern flank. The British would have a hard time. They have one dozen ill-equipped and one dozen ill-equipped, understrenght and not well trained divisions.

The Swedes better announce a full mobilisations because I see a few dozen germany divisions send to Baltic ports. That´s outside the range of both the RAF and the RN, so the Germans would have secure SLOCs for an invasion of Sweden. Given the superior quality and quantity of Wehrmacht ground forces I doubt Sweden and Norway would survive a full scale assault.

Very, very, unlikely.

Depending on how the attack fails, you could be looking at most of their warships and a lot of transports, ie the stuff that would be needed to carry an invasion, being sunk.

Kind of hard to invade when you have no means whatsoever of getting your troops there to begin with.
 
One of the reasons Norway was even attempted in the first place is because the Germans had cracked the Admiralty cipher codes that allowed them to place most of the RN fleet and read emergency traffic. This gave them a 1-2 days advantage over the RN. Infact thats why the RN changed their Naval cypher codes in the summer of 1940. If the Admiralty does second guess itself, then B-Dienst would have gotten wind of that and diverted the more vulnernable invasion ports along the west coast of Norway, thus avoiding Narvik catastrophy. The invasion routes through Denmark and across the short sea route to Norway were fairly secure for the Germans since the LW would dominate the skys. It would be extremely difficult for the RN to interdict such an invasion fleet without suffering alot of warships damaged ,sunk or crippled.

Historically the Germans sent about 150 vessels in the invasion fleet of which about 2/3 were naval vessels and the rest were mostly small steamers. The bulk of these were in the south. Germany had access to > 800 steamers/merchant ships at the start of the war, so invasion of Sweden would be doable, just by mining a barrier between the north of Denmark and Sweden across the Skagerrak sea [ ~ 50km] and patroling with swarms of Stuka.

For the above situation to change , B-Dienst would have to not crack the codes so quickly after the war began....but even then, they would still be able to read about 1/4 of the naval traffic and most of the British merchant navy code any way.
 
With only one modest POD not only would the invasion of Trondheim have failed but the Kriegsmarine would have lost both battlecruisers, one heavy cruiser and four of the remaining destroyers.


esl, once the RAF have fighters in Norway following a failed invasion 'swarms' of the Luftwaffe's 300-350 Stukas become easy prey.

Not to mention this vision you have of Germany casually and on extremely short notice laying substantial minefields 30 miles in length with a surface fleet already shattered in the failed Norwegian campaign.

Of course, if Germany is invading Sweden and forfeiting the Battle of Britain I'm sure the British will manage to live with that, especially if the invasion fails, as it is likely to.
 

Markus

Banned
Had Weserubung gone south badly, it is quite likely that the KM is going to take even heavier losses than the crippling ones OTL. If that is the case, the Swedish navy might not need British help to hold them off. They had a number of modern cruisers and destroyers, and some old predreadnaughts and coastal defense ships. Which doesn't sound like much until you look at what the germans had left, which was quite a bit less OTL, let alone greater losses.

Swedens Navy was in a much better shape than Norway´s. I count two old, torpedoboat size DD and eight new ones.

But I´m also seeing a number of problems.
The KM would have suffered crippling losses only if it ran into the RN, who happened to be clueless about what was going on. Norwegian shore batteries with the exception of Fort Oscarsborg would have probably "just" chased off the KM task forces. But the real problem is geography. From the island of Rügen to Sweden its a mere 50 nautical miles. Ok, the Channel is even narrower but how many Hurricane Squadrons and radar stations did Sweden have? And it get´s much, much worse. The Öresund between Denmark and Sweden is so narrow, light field artillery can fire across it.
 
I shall add my 2 cents which is that Sweedish steel wont be flowing into German factories which could damage war production
 
With only one modest POD not only would the invasion of Trondheim have failed but the Kriegsmarine would have lost both battlecruisers, one heavy cruiser and four of the remaining destroyers.


esl, once the RAF have fighters in Norway following a failed invasion 'swarms' of the Luftwaffe's 300-350 Stukas become easy prey.

Not to mention this vision you have of Germany casually and on extremely short notice laying substantial minefields 30 miles in length with a surface fleet already shattered in the failed Norwegian campaign.

Of course, if Germany is invading Sweden and forfeiting the Battle of Britain I'm sure the British will manage to live with that, especially if the invasion fails, as it is likely to.


With out further modifications to the Pod covering intell, their would be no failed invasion. The norther legs of the invasion would be diverted south as reinforcements. It would go on from the south since the RN would be unable to interdict this and would be invested in the North of Norway anyway. The RAF could only deploy a token force so while they could beat off air challenges to the north, they don't have the range or numbers to interfer in the south....thats about 1000km away from Narvik to Oslo & 400km from Trondheim to Oslo.


The RN is not going to smash anything, just chase them off , unless they can counter German intel advantage. As pointed out stronger Norwegian resistance would just be met by stronger German effort. It would just take longer to secure the south , and cost more to drive up and capture the northern Norwegian bases but it would be done. Same end result, but fewer German naval assets lost and more troop/LW losses.
 
esl, if the Germans lose the Trondheim force, including Germany's only capital ships, not to mention the heavy cruiser Hipper, four of Germany's very few remaining destroyers and the ships already in Trondheim, then the Allies get port and air facilities much closer to Oslo.

The British also considered storming Bergen which would have further harmed the Kriegsmarine while gaining an airfield to threaten German bombers at Stavanger. With news of the victory off Trondheim and the destruction of both German battlecruisers the cautious British commander on the spot may feel no choice but to do the correct and courageous thing.

Also having fully functonal airfields makes it much easier to send fighters to those fields or push on to other fields closer to Oslo still in Norwegian hands. It was not that the RAF lacked resources so much as that they were wary of sending aircraft without a single proper air field to base them at.

There were, of course, no northern legs of the invasion following the original action on April 9th, 1040 to be diverted further south. All subsequent forces had to go north via Denmark to southern Norway so the degree to which a total German wipeout of German ships at Narvik, Trondheim and even Bergen impacts on subsequent logistics and reinforcements is uncertain and probably not a crippling factor.

As for stronger Norwegian(and Allied) resistance being met by a stronger German effort, the Germans don't have many resources to spare beyond the divisions committed(and the Wehrmacht bitterly sending a single mountain division) due to the attack in the West coming up. If the Germans manage to take southern Norway including Oslo with a corps-level forces then they win at greater cost but if the first attacks leave Germany with the equivalent of a reinforced brigade in the extreme south, the fleet shattered and more than half the initial wave gone they probably give up.


Now, if an intelligence POD is what you want, the Wehrmacht hated and opposed the invasion of Norway so if the British cop wise to the plan then they've got the perfect excuse to cancel an operation they hated to begin with...


Markus, but Sweden is stronger than Norway and not mobilizing after the invasion has begun, the KM and German merchant marine has taken some degree of losses, presumably more serious than OTL, and Sweden has easy access to support if it requests British aid so will Germany even try invading yet another friendly neutral and vital trade partner? Also, given the need for every available unit in the West will Germany consder the weakened units intended for Norway adequate to invade Sweden successfully?

Or, more likely, will Germany just leave Sweden alone in return for guarantees that Swedish trade will continue unhindered with a Swedish effort to get around any possible 'issues' shipping iron ore through Narvik?
 

Markus

Banned
Markus, but Sweden is stronger than Norway and not mobilizing after the invasion has begun, the KM and German merchant marine has taken some degree of losses, presumably more serious than OTL, and Sweden has easy access to support if it requests British aid so will Germany even try invading yet another friendly neutral and vital trade partner?
Also, given the need for every available unit in the West will Germany consder the weakened units intended for Norway adequate to invade Sweden successfully?

With the Oresund just 4,000 meters wide at the narrowest part increased naval losses would have litte effect on an invasion of Sweden.
I´m not advocating an immediate invasion but one after the Fall of France. Then the Wehrmacht has plenty of divisions with nothing to do and the UK can offer no assistance to Norway and Sweden anymore.
 
With the Oresund just 4,000 meters wide at the narrowest part increased naval losses would have litte effect on an invasion of Sweden.
I´m not advocating an immediate invasion but one after the Fall of France. Then the Wehrmacht has plenty of divisions with nothing to do and the UK can offer no assistance to Norway and Sweden anymore.

While I agree with you completely on technicalities of the invasion (this would be, unlike Seelöwe, an operation more akin to river crossing) the problem is that the strategic prize of Sweden, the Kiruna iron ore fields, are 1885km's away from Helsingborg taking the shortest route from present day GoogleMaps. The Swedes, or if they failed to do that, the British could demolish the machinery, railroad and Luleå port facilities quite well before Germans would be able to reach the iron ore fields. An amphibious operation to Luleå directly would not help much, as there's the Boden Fortress on the way from Luleå to Kiruna. (Today the said complex serves as an impressive tourist sight.)

Then again, Sweden would be most happy to stay out of the war at least until the Allies could provide a suitable defense for her (circa 1943-1944 if the rough OTL outline is there.).
 
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