During World War II, Hitler Plotted to Take One of Russia’s Most Vital Ports

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By Sebastien Roblin,The National Interest

The Soviet Navy during World War II is perhaps best remembered for its vigorous role in the doomed defense of the ports of Odessa and Sevastopol in the Crimean Sea. However, in the Arctic North, the Soviet warships would have a major impact on the course of the war in the opening months of the war with Nazi Germany. A ragtag fleet of destroyers and patrol boats, backed up by two stout-hearted rifle divisions, brought Hitler’s elite mountain troops skidding to a halt, preserving a vital supply line to England and the United States.

In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the Winter War. After initially suffering disastrous losses in the three-month-long war, Stalin managed to force the Finns into making territorial concessions. This ironically laid the groundwork for the German-Finnish alliance the Winter War had been meant to forestall. When on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the devastating German invasion of Soviet Union, German troops in the Arctic northern tip of Norway marched through Finnish territory to secure the vital nickel mines at Petsamo.

The next goal was the port of Murmansk, an important Soviet naval base and the most direct means by which convoys from the United Kingdom could deliver material aid to the beleaguered Soviet Union. Indeed, the Royal Navy almost immediately dispatched submarines, destroyers and aircraft carriers to the Arctic region. Still, the Nazi leaders did not expect the Soviet Union to last long enough for that aid to matter, so they committed only a modest force to the port’s capture.

Leading the assault was Gen. Eduard Dietl’s Mountain Corps Norway, consisting of two crack Austrian infantry units, the Second and Third Gebirgs (mountain) divisions. Both veterans of the campaigns in Poland and Norway, the Tyrolian Second Division was still associated with the old Habsburg aristocracy, while the Third was heavily steeped in Nazi ideology. Both of the lightly equipped units were thought to be ideal for handling the rocky Arctic tundra. The mountain units were reinforced by the Fortieth and 211th Panzer Battalions, the latter unit equipped with eighty-nine captured French Somua S-35 medium tanks and Hotchkiss H-38 light tanks. You can check out a map of the German plan here.

After spending a week moving from Kirkenes, Norway, to the staging point on the Finnish border, the German mountaineers launched their attack, codenamed Operation Platinfuchs (“Platinum Fox”) on June 29, overwhelming the machine gun battalions of the Twenty-Third Fortified Region. Spearheaded by French tanks, the Third Mountain Division managed to capture a bridge across the Titovka River, while to the North the Second managed to seal off the neck of the Rybachy Peninsula, but could not penetrate the defenses on the peninsula itself.