On 28 May 1940 Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces retook Narvik, the iron-ore port in northern Norway that German troops had seized on 9 April. The attack began at midnight, with landings north of the town and a Polish advance from the south, and that afternoon Norwegian soldiers entered Narvik. It was the first time in the war that the Allies had recaptured a town from the Germans. But the Allies had already decided to leave Norway to meet the German offensive in France, and by 8 June Narvik was in German hands again.
The ore port
Narvik mattered because Swedish iron ore was shipped to Germany through it. On 9 April 1940 ten German destroyers carried mountain troops under Eduard Dietl into the Ofotfjord, sank the Norwegian coast defense ships Eidsvold and Norge in a snowstorm, and took the town, which its Norwegian commander surrendered without a fight. British destroyers attacked on 10 April, and on 13 April a stronger British force sank all the remaining German destroyers. Their crews went ashore and, armed with captured Norwegian equipment, added some 2,400 to 2,700 men to Dietl's force.1
Over the following weeks Norwegian troops of the 6th Division under General Carl Gustav Fleischer fought the Germans in the mountains north of the town. British forces landed at Harstad from 14 April, and between 28 April and 9 May French and Polish troops arrived under the French general Antoine Béthouart. On 13 May French Foreign Legion troops landed at Bjerkvik. The Polish Independent Highland Brigade, which had landed at Harstad on 8 May, took over the Ankenes sector south of Narvik in mid-May.2
The attack of 28 May
The final assault began at midnight on 27 to 28 May. Norwegian and French troops crossed to the north side of Narvik while Polish troops attacked from the south. Store norske leksikon describes strong German resistance as the attackers fought their way up toward the heights of Taraldsfjell, and Norwegian soldiers took the town that afternoon. The Poles, who attacked the Ankenes peninsula in the night of 27 to 28 May, captured Ankenes the same day and the head of the Beisfjord on the evening of 30 May. The Institute of National Remembrance gives the brigade's losses in Norway as 97 killed, 21 missing, 7 captured and 189 wounded.3
According to the Narvik War Museum, the Germans blew up the harbor before they withdrew. Dietl's troops fell back east along the railway toward the Swedish border, where, as the Narvik War Museum puts it, they faced the choice of surrender or escape into Sweden.4
A victory given away
The recapture came too late. On 24 May, four days before the assault, the Allies had already been ordered to evacuate northern Norway, because the troops were needed against the German offensive in France. The Norwegian government was told on 1 June, the Allies left between 4 and 8 June, and German troops marched back into Narvik on the evening of 8 June. King Haakon VII and the government sailed for Britain on 7 June, and the Norwegian forces in the north capitulated on 10 June.5
Norway's armed forces describe the recapture as the first defeat on land the Wehrmacht suffered in the war, and the Narvik War Museum calls it Hitler's first defeat. Store norske leksikon is more cautious: Dietl's force was not destroyed and held Narvik until 1945, so it calls the battle a tactical Allied success but a strategic loss. It adds that the ten destroyers Germany lost in April were a large share of its small fleet, which may have weighed against an invasion of Britain later that year. The part played by the Polish brigade is told in our article on the Battle of Narvik.6
Also on this day
- 1754: Battle of Jumonville Glen. Virginia troops under the young George Washington, with Mingo warriors of the Half King, attacked a small French party led by Jumonville in western Pennsylvania.
