Friday, February 15, 2019

Norway

What went wrong in Norway? - Some Very Norsepicious Plans - Drach > .
1940-2-17 Altmark ⤑ WW2 Battle for Norway - Animarchy > .
24-7-1 P00ti lost Ruscia's Arctic dominance to Xina & Baltic NATO forces | Forces > .

40-4-13 on 
Kampf um Norwegen - Feldzug 1940 > .
Norway 1940 + >> .

Nordic Front - Finland & Scandinavia .. 
Invasion of Norway & Denmark ..

 > Sweden >>
24-2-27 How Sweden Could Easily Crush a Russian Invasion - Icarus > .

WW2 - Week by Week >> .

Fallschirmjäger - Germany's Finest > .

Ray Mears - The Real Heroes of Telemark
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9pMBAGDqeF1NvdiD4FsTaayfPs7UvJ6I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistorta_vivipara

Bistorta vivipara is a synonym of the accepted species name Persicaria vivipara (L.) Ronse Decr. It is a perennial herbaceous flowering plant in the knotweed and buckwheat family Polygonaceae, commonly known as alpine bistort. It is common all over the high Arctic through Europe, North America, and temperate and tropical Asia. Its range stretches further south in high mountainous areas such as the Alps, Carpathians, Pyrenees, Caucasus, and the Tibetan Plateau.

The bulbils are rich in starch and are a preferred food for rock ptarmigans (Lagopus mutus) and reindeer; they are also occasionally used by Arctic people.

Alpine bistort is a perennial herb that grows to 5 to 15 cm (2 to 6 in) tall. It has a thick rhizomatous rootstock and an erect, unbranched, hairless stem. The leaves are hairless on the upper surfaces, but hairy and greyish-green below. The basal ones are longish-elliptical with long stalks and rounded bases; the upper ones are few and are linear and stalkless. The tiny flowers are white or pink in the upper part of the spike with five perianth segments, eight stamens with purple anthers and three fused carpels. The lower ones are replaced by bulbils. Flowers rarely produce viable seeds and reproduction is normally by the bulbils, which are small bulb-like structures that develop in the axils of the leaves and may develop into new plants. Very often, a small leaf develops when the bulbil is still attached to the mother plant.

https://youtu.be/IqkVvSJ7BGg?t=3m51s

The Battle for Norway 1940 color 2:56
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFQsK48uEgY


The Battles of Narvik were fought from 9 April to 8 June 1940 as a naval battle in the Ofotfjord and as a land battle in the mountains surrounding the north Norwegian city of Narvik as part of the Norwegian Campaign of the Second World War.

The two naval battles in the Ofotfjord on 10 April and 13 April were fought between the British Royal Navy and Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, while the two-month land campaign was fought between Norwegian, French, British, and Polish troops against German mountain troops, shipwrecked Kriegsmarine sailors and German paratroopers (Fallschirmjäger) from the 7th Air Division. Although defeated at sea off Narvik, losing control of the town of Narvik and being pushed back towards the Swedish border, the Germans eventually prevailed because of the Allied evacuation from Norway in June 1940 following the Battle of France.

Narvik provided an ice-free harbour in the North Atlantic for iron ore transported by the railway from Kiruna in Sweden. Both sides in the war had an interest in securing this iron supply for themselves and denying it to the enemy, setting the stage for one of the biggest battles since the Invasion of Poland.

Prior to the German invasion, British forces had considered Narvik as a possible landing point for an expedition to help Finland in the Winter War. Such an expedition also had the potential of taking control of the Swedish mines and opening up the Baltic for the Allies. French politicians were also eager to start a second front as far away from France as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Narvik

Norway 1940: The Battle for Central Norway > .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kcv9A2hoLM .

"Survival, Norway winter"


In 1942 two German battle-cruisers, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau, put into a French port for repairs and became trapped there, targets to be bombed at will by the RAF. It was only a matter of time before they would attempt an escape. Churchill ordered that the ships must not reach Germany, and that they must be destroyed. The plan to do so was called Operation Fuller. However, when the moment came to put the operation into action, the plans were locked in a safe and the only man with a key was away on holiday. What happened next was a series of one farcical mistake after another which allowed the two German ships to sail right up the English channel and home to Germany. The programme also features Operation Eagle Claw, the clandestine operation ordered by President Carter in 1980 to free the American hostages held in the Tehran embassy. The newly formed Special Operations Group, Delta Force, began planning a daring rescue. However, inter-service rivalry intervened, with tragic results when the American aircraft carrying the rescue teams crashed into each other in the Iranian desert.

We have long saluted military genius and bravery. But the other side of the coin is military incompetence – a largely preventable, tragically expensive, yet totally absorbing aspect of human behaviour.

From the Crusades to Vietnam, history is littered with examples of stupidity, obduracy, brutality and sheer breath-taking incompetence. Lack of communication, technological failure and a misplaced sense of superiority have led to the deaths of thousands of ordinary soldiers, let down by their masters and betrayed by arrogance. Using a combination of history, human interest and archive footage underpinned by powerful story-telling, Great Military Blunders charts man’s folly and cruelty in a series of stunning debacles, spanning almost a thousand years of conflict.


Bismarck: WW2 - ExCr >> .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYv-GC8DgMk&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CpF0wJeXpZAJp6A-sQ_M3A .


Wiping out Heligoland after WW2 > .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxiatvbOek

The Battle of the Heligoland Bight was the first "named" air battle of the Second World War, which began the longest air campaign of the war, the Defence of the Reich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Heligoland_Bight_(1939)

The island of Heligoland is a geological oddity; the presence of the main island's characteristic red sedimentary rock in the middle of the German Bight is unusual. It is the only such formation of cliffs along the continental coast of the North Sea. The formation itself, called the Bunter sandstone or Buntsandstein, is from the early Triassic geologic age. It is older than the white chalk that underlies the island Düne, the same rock that forms the white cliffs of Dover in England and cliffs of Danish and German islands in the Baltic Sea. In fact, a small chalk rock close to Heligoland, called witt Kliff (white cliff), is known to have existed within sight of the island to the west until the early 18th century, when storm floods finally eroded it to below sea level.

Heligoland's rock is significantly harder than the postglacial sediments and sands forming the islands and coastlines to the east of the island. This is why the core of the island, which a thousand years ago was still surrounded by a large, low-lying marshland and sand dunes separated from coast in the east only by narrow channels, has remained to this day, although the onset of the North Sea has long eroded away all of its surroundings. A small piece of Heligoland's sand dunes remains—the sand isle just across the harbour called Düne (Dune). A referendum in June 2011 dismissed a proposal to reconnect the main island to the Düne islet with a landfill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heligoland

Attack on Enemy Warships at Heligoland
On 3rd December ['39], shortly before noon, 24 Wellington aircraft, engaged on a reconnaissance in force into the Heligoland Bight, located a number of enemy warships lying off Heligoland. The aircraft proceeded to attack in sections of three and dropped thirty-nine 500-lb, semi-armour-piercing bombs from heights between 7,000 to 10,000 feet. One of the larger ships appeared to be hit by three bombs, while one of the smaller was closely straddled, if not actually hit by two bombs. Cloud prevented accurate observation of other attacks. Photographs were taken, but, owing to weather conditions, only indifferent results were obtained. From the depth of water in which it appears that the ships were lying it is probable that the majority of the vessels were destroyers; but it may well be that the enemy gunnery training ship Brummer, which was towed into Emden in a damaged condition on the 4th was among those hit. Heavy and fairly accurate A.A.fire was encountered. Our aircraft observed about 20 enemy fighters which seemed reluctant to attack; seven or eight aircraft followed the returning bomber formation without attempting to close. Only in one instance does a serious attack appear to have been made by a M.E.109, which, it is thought, was shot down. Two British aircraft were hit by A.A.fire, but all returned safely to their bases.
http://ww2today.com/the-raf-attack-heligoland-the-war-in-finland

Heligoland Goes Up: Destroying Hitler's Sea Base (1947) | British Pathé
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtatVS-Tk3c

silent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq7z-41V9p0
Deutsch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fkpQOr2Fbw
Primitive survival skills >> .
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbAkNwJLYBsqEziEOWijTRyeAnuGvmbPw . 
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Sunday, February 10, 2019

Saboteurs – Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage



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40-9-17 Sea Lion Postponed


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Sealion

.
Sealion - Hitler Unable To Invade Britain | War Stories > .
Operation Sea Lion: Hitler's Daring Plan to Invade Britain... | WarsofTheWorld > .
Goering's False Promise: Why Operation Sea Lion Failed | War Stories > .

? Sealion ?

[Life under a Nazi occupier] is, to be sure, a question that can never be definitively answered and, since Britons can never know how they would have acted under the heel of Nazi oppression, they are likely to continue speculating about it. Perhaps that is the one characteristic that truly does separate Britons from other Europeans.
https://aeon.co/essays/the-many-counterfactual-histories-of-nazi-britain .



https://history.blog.gov.uk/category/second-world-war/
 Timewatch - Operation Sealion (BBC 1998)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux-J8B8fURk

Great Blunders of WWII: Operation Sea Lion (The Mission That Never Was) 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya4Xod9Qq3o

What if Operation Sea Lion actually Happened? - mapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWKJwi1QNw8

What if? Hitlers Britain 1of2 The Nazi Occupation of Britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJFmRBoG0Ms

What if? When hitler invaded Britain- Non Academic docudrama from 2004
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NnsRCt8TGM
What if? Hitlers Britain 2of2 The Secret of the British Resistance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECi-1JXq2Yc
Hitler's Britain - Alternate History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXESMPPK7rc

What if? Alternative History - Operation Sealion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXESMPPK7rc

German battle plan - Operation Sea Lion map
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion#/media/File:OperationSealion.svg
Operation Sea Lion - Wikipedia

 40-8-17 Naval Blockade of British Isles ..  

Planning for Invasion

For a 12-month period after May 1940 the threat of invasion exercised those in power. Their discussions emphasised the need for decisive leadership and clear instruction. However they also showed just how difficult these were to achieve when facing a threat which had previously been inconceivable.

The threat of invasion had been discussed in government since October 1939. It was not until spring 1940, however, that it was treated as a serious possibility. The disastrous Norwegian campaign of April 1940 focused attention. And the Nazis’ rapid advance into Western Europe after 10 May pushed the matter to the very top of the government’s agenda. It was for this reason that the ‘Invasion of Great Britain’ was discussed on 19 occasions during the first three weeks of Winston Churchill’s premiership.

The withdrawal from Dunkirk served to underline the perilous situation that Britain faced. Although the evacuation of troops was a success, large amounts of equipment had been lost and military leaders feared that Hitler would seek to exploit the confusion caused. Plans were hastily drawn up to meet the imminent threat of invasion. A Home Defence Executive was established, men were encouraged to join the recently-formed Local Defence Volunteers (better-known as the Home Guard), road signs were removed, and large parts of the South East were designated as Defence Areas.

One of the greatest difficulties facing the government was the need to explain the situation to the public. This was the responsibility of the Ministry of Information’s ‘Emergency Planning Committee’. Formed on 22 May 1940, five days before the first troops left northern France, it called for swift action to counter public apprehension. The War Cabinet agreed, and invited the Ministry to prepare a publicity campaign. It was asked to include a series of instructions explaining the steps that should be taken in the event of an invasion.

The Ministry of Information did not attempt to do this alone. Instead it worked with the Home Defence Executive of the War Office and the Home Office-led Ministry of Home Security in an effort to ensure a consistent message across government. The main outcome of their discussions was a leaflet with the unimaginative title ‘If the Germans Invade Great Britain’. It included a mixture of practical instructions and generic advice. It was stressed, for instance, that ‘In the event of an invasion … you must remain where you are. The order is “STAY PUT”’. This was the first of seven ‘rules’ which also included warnings against rumour, the need to keep watch, and advice for constructing road blocks.

The collaboration between the Home Security, Home Defence and the Ministry of Information was not without its difficulties. The civil authorities’ main aim was to stop ‘responsible people’ from ‘running away’ unnecessarily and were unwilling to countenance any form of civilian resistance. The military wanted to ensure that Defence Areas were kept clear for troops and privately hoped ‘inessential’ civilians would be evacuated. The Ministry of Information, by contrast, wanted to ‘rouse the public’ by including an instruction for anyone behind enemy lines to: ‘Do everything in your power to render [the German troops’] position difficult. Be clever. Be brave’. Such were the differences in approach that the original draft was deemed ‘entirely unsuitable for publication’ by its primary author!

These differences spilled over into the War Cabinet. Ministers were well-aware that their French counterparts had been unable to stop a flood of refugees from leaving Paris, and that this had made it more difficult for French forces to operate during the battle of France. Yet it was feared that the appearance of support for active resistance would encourage reprisals and could not be justified under international law. Thus while it was thought that advice about road blocks and the defence of factories could be retained in a shortened form, the instruction to ‘harass the enemy’ was deemed ‘unsuitable for incorporation in a document of this character’. It was replaced with the less evocative clause: ‘Think before you act. But think always of your country before you think of yourself’.

The revised text bore the hallmarks of compromise. Its tone oscillated between confident assertions that any invading force would be ‘driven out’ and dire warnings that ‘If you run away … you will be machine gunned from the air’. Many questions also remained unanswered. How, for example, did you make a car ‘useless to anyone except yourself’ when removing the ignition key was not enough? What did it mean for ‘Managers and workmen [to] organise some system by which a sudden attack can be resisted’? And when would ‘more detailed instructions’ arrive? None of these questions were answered before the leaflet was released under the title If the Invader Comeson 18 June 1940. Fifteen million copies of the leaflet – one for every household – were distributed during the next three days. This effort was supported by a publicity campaign. Poster-sized versions of the leaflet were sent to local authorities, Winston Churchill was persuaded to broadcast a version of his ‘Finest Hour’ speech on the BBC, the Minister of Information gave a press conference on the theme of ‘Fortress Britain’, and General Sir Hugh Elles (Commander in Chief of Civil Defence) broadcast a plea to ‘get the pamphlet into your system’. The press also got involved. For instance, the Daily Express urged readers to ‘Do what you are told’, while the Daily Mirrortook the uncompromising line that anyone found ‘refugee-ing about the roads … deserves to be shot’. Most other newspapers reprinted the seven rules in full.

The public’s reaction was more complicated. Anecdotal reports from the Ministry of Information’s Home Intelligence division suggested that the leaflet was generally well received. Despite being deemed a ‘little too wordy’ in Tunbridge Wells, it was described as ‘clearly written [and] easily understood’ in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and thought to be ‘a good idea’ by many in London. But an opinion poll undertaken using a representative sample found ‘evidence of the fact that the leaflet has not been taken seriously’. It estimated that 60% of the public had read the leaflet but that 20 %t had ‘not bothered’ as they saw ‘the threat of invasion as a joke’. A non-official report by Mass Observation was even more critical. It thought that the tone was ‘out of touch with common sense’ and treated the public as ‘blithering idiots’.

This mixed response did not come as a complete surprise. It had been recognised before publication that the instruction to ‘Stay Put’ was liable to be misunderstood, and it was less than a week before the Ministry of Information pushed for ‘more categorical orders, reasons and instructions’. Military sources conceded that many questions had been left unanswered and that the British public wanted to be told what was occurring. It was agreed that a second leaflet was needed to clarify that people should ‘[Stay put] unless given orders to the contrary’.

Officials within the Ministry of Information sought to use this opportunity to stress the publicity value of resistance. They argued that any order would fail unless it gave civilians ‘some prospect of being able to defend themselves’. However neither the Ministry of Home Security nor the Home Defence Executive were willing to amend their stances. The result was that all three departments again pursued their own approach, providing alternative drafts of a leaflet called Stay Where You Are for the War Cabinet. The former diplomat Harold Nicholson, who wrote one version, complained that it was ‘absurd to expect people to stay in their homes without telling them what to do’. His senior colleagues in the Ministry of Information eventually decided that their only option was to surrender responsibility for the leaflet to the Home Office.

Fifteen million copies of Stay Where You Are were distributed at the very end of July 1940 at a cost of £13,433. The focus remained on the need to ‘Stay Put’ but the tone was more active than before. So it was stressed that the public should ‘not attempt to join in the fight’ but noted that: ‘You have the right of every man and woman to do what you can to protect yourself, your family, and your home’. Such instructions was soon criticised for being ‘so indefinite as to be of little value’.

‘Beating the Invader’

Britain was not invaded in the summer of 1940. However this did not signal an end of the debate over how best to communicate the threat. Indeed the subject came back onto agenda in January 1941 as part of a thorough review of the government’s civil defence arrangements. The Ministry of Information were again asked to produce a leaflet which would ‘interpret and amplify’ If the Invader Comes and Stay Where You Are. The result was 15 short paragraphs that offered practical advice in a question-and-answer format. Car-owners were for the first time told to put their vehicles out of action by ‘Remov[ing the] distributer head and leads and empty[ing] the tank’.

The final leaflet was distributed in late April 1940 with the optimistic title Beating the Invader. Given what had come before, it is fitting that the delay was due to Winston Churchill’s dislike of the term ‘Stay Put’ and a disagreement with the War Office. It is similarly fitting that the leaflet was almost abandoned when concurrent attempts to ‘rouse the public’ through new posters and press advertisements was deemed to have failed. All of those involved believed that the government needed to show decisive leadership and offer clear instructions. Yet the experience of invasion publicity in the Second World War shows just how difficult it was to achieve these ends when facing a threat that many had hoped to avoid.

Further Reading

You can find out more about the history of the Ministry of Information at http://www.moidigital.ac.uk

Operation Sea Lion - Unternehmen Seelöwe

Operation Sea Lion, also written as Operation Sealion (German: Unternehmen Seelöwe), was Nazi Germany's code name for the plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Following the Fall of France, Adolf Hitler, the German Führer and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, hoped the British government would seek a peace agreement and he reluctantly considered invasion only as a last resort if all other options failed. As a precondition, he specified the achievement of both air and naval superiority over the English Channel and the proposed landing sites, but the German forces did not achieve this at any point during the war and both the German High Command and Hitler himself had serious doubts about the prospects for success. A large number of barges were gathered together on the Channel coast, but, with air losses increasing, Hitler postponed Sea Lion indefinitely on 17 September 1940 and it was never put into action."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion#/media/File:OperationSealion.svg
German battle plan - map
https://plus.google.com/103755316640704343614/posts/W8rwrdNYq81

What if Germany Had Invaded Britain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFpd8_-nkH8

Timewatch - Operation Sealion (BBC 1998)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux-J8B8fURk


https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/new-zealand-sniper-clive_hulme.html

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-two/world-war-two-in-western-europe/operation-sealion/

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/operation-sea-lion-hitlers-cancelled-invasion-britain-20294

MHV playlists
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK09g6gYGMvU-0x1VCF1hgA/playlists



Invasion Publicity during the Second World War .




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44-8-25 Siegfried Line Campaign 45-3-7


Battle of Normandy - mfp >> .
Battle of Germany - mfp >> .
Battle of the Bulge - mfp >> .

Siegfried Line Campaign (Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine), was a phase in the Western European Campaign of World War II.

This phase spans from the end of the Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord, (25 August 1944; close 30 August 1944) incorporating the German winter counter-offensive through the Ardennes (commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge) and Operation Nordwind (in Alsace and Lorraine) up to the Allies preparing to cross the Rhine in March of 1945. This roughly corresponds with the official United States military European Theater of Operations Rhineland and Ardennes-Alsace Campaigns.
....

.... 
The Allies crossed the Rhine at four points. One crossing was an opportunity taken by U.S. forces when the Germans failed to blow up the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen; another was a hasty assault; and two crossings were planned:
After crossing the Rhine, the Allies rapidly advanced into Germany's heartland. The end of World War II in Europe followed soon after. 

Battle of the Bulge 1944 - Ardennes Counteroffensive - K&G > .
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sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...

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