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Andreas Winker refers to the conquest of Norway as a "questionable" victory. From a naval standpoint, I would dispute this point heartily. By gaining control over Norway, the Third Reich forced any blockade by the Royal Navy to move itself so far away from the North Sea as to be effectively useless. Furthermore, possession of the northern coasts aided the Germans in their attacks on convoys to the Soviet Union, once that nation was allied with Great Britain. Norway would have also provided a suitable base for operations for the German U-boat fleet had the Wehrmacht not won its stunning and unexpected victory over France. For an argument on how the conquest of Norway might have aided the Germans during the First World War, I suggest the following work be consulted: Wolfgang Wegener, _Die Seestrategie des Weltkrieges_ (Berlin, 1929), also available in English as _The Naval Strategy of the World War_, Holger Herwig, trans. (Annapolis, 1989). Wegener was a naval officer in the Kaiserliche Marine who wrote three papers in 1915 highly critical of the navy's emphasis on battleships. He expanded on those papers to produce this book. While I do not agree with all of his arguments, especially as applied to the First World War, his contention that the occupation of Norway would help outflank another blockade was proven true in the Second World War. David H. Olivier Ph.D candidate Department of History University of Saskatchewan
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