page_title: Operation Weserübung
section_title: Encircling of Sweden and Finland
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Weserübung / Encircling of Sweden and Finland
caption_attribution_description: English: During the Winter War, Franco-British support was offered on the condition their armed forces be given free passage through neutral Norway and Sweden instead of taking the difficult passage through the Soviet-occupied Petsamo.
context_page_description: Operation Weserübung was the code name for Germany's assault on Denmark and Norway during the Second World War and the opening operation of the Norwegian Campaign. The name comes from the German for "Operation Weser-Exercise", the Weser being a German river.
  In the early morning of 9 April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and invaded Norway, ostensibly as a preventive manoeuvre against a planned, and openly discussed, Franco-British occupation of Norway known as Plan R 4. After the occupation of Denmark, envoys of the Germans informed the governments of Denmark and Norway that the Wehrmacht had come to protect the countries' neutrality against Franco-British aggression. Significant differences in geography, location and climate between the two nations made the actual military operations very dissimilar.
  The invasion fleet's nominal landing time, Weserzeit, was set to 05:15.
context_section_description: Operation Weserübung did not include a military assault on (neutral) Sweden because there was no need. By holding Norway, the Danish straits and most of the shores of the Baltic Sea, the Third Reich encircled Sweden from the north, the west and the south. In the east, there was the Soviet Union, the successor of Sweden's and Finland's archenemy, Russia, on friendly terms with Hitler under the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. A small number of Finnish volunteers helped the Norwegian Army against Germans in an ambulance unit.
  Swedish and Finnish trade was dependent on the Kriegsmarine, and Germany put pressure on neutral Sweden to permit transit of military goods and soldiers on leave. On 18 June 1940, an agreement was reached. Soldiers were to travel unarmed and not be part of unit movements. A total of 2.14 million German soldiers, as well as more than 100,000 German military railway carriages, crossed Sweden until that traffic was suspended on 20 August 1943.
  On 19 August 1940, Finland agreed to grant access to its territory for the Wehrmacht, with the agreement signed on 22 September. Initially for transit of troops and military equipment to and from northernmost Norway but soon it included transit for minor bases along the transit road that eventually would grow in preparation for Operation Barbarossa.
caption: Iron ore is extracted in Kiruna and Malmberget and brought by rail to the harbours of Luleå and Narvik. (Borders 1920–1940)
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