Hess, Wilhelm Arctic Front

The Advance of Mountain Corps Norway on Murmansk, 1941

A volume from the series Wehrmacht im Kampf (Wehrmacht in Combat). In 1941, military operations were carried out by large units along the northern coast of Scandinavia for the first time in the history of warfare. A modern army suddenly invaded this remote and inhospitable region, which at that time did not yet have the significance it would later acquire in the Cold War strategy on the Polish border. The Arctic Front was the northernmost theatre of the war that Germany waged against Russia. For four years, German troops from all branches of the Wehrmacht fought side by side with Finnish border troops. The climax of the war on the Arctic Front was the deployment and advance of the German Mountain Army of Norway in the summer and autumn of 1941. Under the command of Mountain General Eduard Dietl and consisting of the 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions, the Mountain Army advanced from occupied northern Norway, gathered in the Petsamo Corridor in northern Finland and invaded Russian territory to capture Murmansk. However, it did not achieve its objective. This report on the operation was written by Wilhelm Hess, quartermaster of the Mountain Guard Corps Norway. It is based on his personal experiences of the conditions and actions on the Arctic front, describing and analysing the environment, the course of events and the reasons for certain decisions. In addition to describing the course of the Mountain Guard Corps' operations, Hess provides insights into how the terrain, the supply situation and the warfare at sea affected these operations.