The
next major event to play into the happenings of World War ll were very daring
from a military standpoint. A decision by Adolf Hitler was made to invade the
countries of both Denmark and Norway. There
was a great amount of thought that came into the decision of taking over these
countries. They knew that this would not necessarily have a significant effect
on the actual outcome of the war, but they figured it would make a good
standpoint and demonstration of the modernization this war had to offer. This
decision struck the United States as well as Great Britain with a “strategic
threat”. Theoretically, it brought Germany into a position where they could unexpectedly
strike outward on from the main lands of Europe toward countries such as:
Greenland, Iceland, and possibly North America.
As
to the actual warfare of this invasion, German forces were very smart about
things and planned it out quite strategically. Because of the local garrisons
orders from Norway’s pro-fascist former foreign minister Vidkun Quisling, to
allow the Germans the land unopposed, the Germans took full advantage of this
when deciding how to enter the territory. They decided to slipped through the
mines that Britain had laid around the Norwegian ports.
Hours
after the invasion, the German minister had demanded that they do surrender.
With the Norwegian government refusing, the Germans chose to respond with a
parachute invasion and the establishment of a puppet regime which was led by
Quisling, the foreign minister of Norway. After this act, his name soon became
the synonym of “traitor.” With this, the Norwegian forces declined and refused
to accept the German rule in the hands of the Quisling government and decided
to keep fighting alongside the British troops. However, with an accelerating
amount of German offense in France including a large amount of troops, and
fatalities of many citizens led to Britain transferring thousands of soldiers
from Norway to France, resulting in the actual conquering of Norway for the
German armed forces. Ultimately- they had just received another victory.
King
Christian X, the leader of the army in Denmark knew that they were no match for
the German army from the very beginning. While they tried to defend them, they
soon found out there was no way they could fight or beat off a German invasion.
This led to the country of Denmark surrendering, and letting Germany take over.
At this point and time, Hitler was feeling very successful and added a second
and third conquered nation to his fair game.
No comments:
Post a Comment