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Eighty years ago, Chamberlain is finally held to account for his dismal record

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The wheels completely fell off the British operation in southern Norway. It had achieved nothing and the forces involved had suffered severe casualties. They had been entirely outclassed by the Germans both in the land and the air. The only option to escape complete destruction was a rapid and full evacuation; the northern element of the British forced embarked at Namsos, where it had landed. The only saving grace for the British that this was accomplished smoothly with little interference by the Luftwaffe . It was a major military humiliation. After only three weeks on shore the British army had withdrawn leaving most of Norway to its fate.  In the north of the country around Narvik the British and French fought on rather more successfully, helped by the presence of two squadrons of RAF fighters, which provided the air cover that had been sadly lacking around Trondheim. But this was only a very modest compensation. Inevitably the government had to face a debate in
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Eighty years ago, the British land in Norway in a campaign worthy of the debacles of the eighteenth century

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British involvement in the Norwegian campaign got firmly under way. Even though Britain had had adequate intelligence of the German invasion plan, the operations were largely improvised. Before the invasion Britain had been working on plans to land in the north of the country – under the pretext of assisting the Finns against the USSR – and block exports of iron ore to Germany. This was a pet project of Winston Churchill and he was at odds with the desire of British generals to focus on Trondheim in the centre. In the event the British divided their forces between both zones.  Recapturing Trondheim from the Germans became a political priority, advocated by the Norwegian government as proof that Britain meant business. The British began by considering a seaborne attack up the fjord. This was briefly championed by Churchill in an unhappy echo of his plans for the Dardanelles in 1915. This was dropped and the British opted for a poorly focused land operation. Separate army briga
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Eighty years ago, the British campaign in central Norway nears collapse but Franco-British relations get a big fillip

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The British campaign in central Norway more-or-less collapsed in the face of its own stratgical incoherence and German units operating on internal lines. The Germans had near complete air superiority; British supply bases were devastated by the Luftwaffe . The British were commanded by General Adrian Carton de Wiart, a much decorated veteran of the First World War in which he had been severely wounded eight times; it was said of him that he had one eye, one arm and, surprisingly, only one Victoria Cross. But bravery was not enough. The British abandoned Trondheim as an objective; it had been chosen on purely political grounds anyway. The evacuation of the southern component of the force began from Andalsnes and the northern element fought a successful rear-guard action in difficult terrain at Kvam, but in London the decision had been taken to pull out of the central region entirely.  The information reaching London was fragmentary and confused, but the opposition did not hav
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