The Locations of TBA - Trondheim, Occupied Norway

Let's continue our little tour of the playgrounds of Wolf Hunt. This time we're off to the fjords of Norway!

The Locations of The Burning Ages

-
03: Trondheim, Occupied Norway 1940

First, a bit of the historical background. Norway was important to Germany for two primary reasons: as a base for naval units, including U-boats, to harass Allied shipping in the North Atlantic, and to secure shipments of iron-ore from Sweden through the port of Narvik. The long northern coastline was an excellent place to launch U-boat operations into the North Atlantic in order to attack British commerce. Germany was dependent on iron ore from Sweden and was worried, with justification, that the Allies would attempt to disrupt those shipments, 90% of which originated from Narvik.

Heavy Cruiser KMS Hipper in Norwegian waters.

The new French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, took a more aggressive stance than his predecessor and wanted some form of action taken against Germany. It became a race between the Allied and German intervention forces. Churchill was a strong agitator for attacking and occupying Norway, because he wanted the battles and fighting moved away from Britain and France to avoid devastation of their territory, as in the last war. He saw the way into Germany from the north. It was agreed to utilise Churchill's naval mining plan, Operation Wilfred, designed to remove the sanctuary of the Leads and force transport ships into international waters where the Royal Navy could engage and destroy them. Accompanying this would be Plan R 4, an operation where, upon almost certain German counteraction to Operation Wilfred, the Allies would then proceed to occupy Trondheim and Bergen, and destroy the strategically important Sola Air Station near the city of Stavanger.

In what was probably the first combind Sea-Air-Land operation in the history of warfare, German troops attacked neutral Norway on 9 April 1940. The German invasion force outnumbered both the Norwegian Army and the Allied intervention force sent around the same time. Fighting only came to an end when the collaps of the western front on the European continent was imminent. The Germans staged paratrooper raids to take control of the main Norwegian airbases and launched attacks against vital Norwegian coastal defense installations such as forts and old coastal defense ships. Troops hidden on freighters were landed at neuralgic positions; of the coastal defense, only those guarding the fjord leading to Oslo, the capital, were effective, sinking the heavy cruiser KMS Blücher.

Axis & Allied military operation in
Southern Norway, 1940.

Despire being outnumbered and deserted by the Allies, Norway fought on until 22 June 1940.

  

* * *

Most German soldiers considered themselves fortunate to be in Norway. Despite British commando raids and a growing resistance movement, it was one of the more quiet and "pleasant" postings to serve at. However, the occupation brought with it many restraints for the civilian population. The seas were German-controlled, and much of Norway's merchant fleet had escaped into Allied hands. Combined with a general drop in productivity, Norwegians were quickly confronted with scarcity of basic commodities, including food. There was a real risk of famine.

Many if not most Norwegians started growing their own crops and keeping their own livestock. City parks were divided among inhabitants, who grew potatoes, cabbage, and other hardy vegetables. People kept pigs, rabbits, chicken and other poultry in their houses and outhouses. Fishing and hunting became more widespread. Gray and black markets provided for flow of goods. Norwegians also learned to use ersatz products for a wide variety of purposes, ranging from fuel to coffee, tea, and tobacco.
Which, of course, means that if you're someone with great access to scarce goods, like, say, an enterprising German soldier, you can make life nice for you and your buddies. And then there are the ladies... We get our first glimpse at Norway and the situation there when a couple of joyriding Kriegsmarine soldiers and two Norwegian girls find their way to the remore fjord FMG Brandt and FMG Emden are anchoring in.

Fjords. Norway has hundreds of them. Many are navigable.

Less than thirty meters to their left side, steep cliffs were falling down to the deep blue and green of the North Sea, and maybe less than half a mile away two massive gray ships sat in the middle of it, side by side. Ships which were not flying the Kriegsmarine flag. He stared at their shapes, blinked, then stared again for a second before his brain kicked in again. Those were no German ships, which left very little doubt that they were hostile. “Get down on your ass!” he snapped at Koppi as he violently yanked the reverse gear into position and put his foot down. The car made a lunge backwards, the motion almost throwing his comrade off his feet and outside before he bumped into an overgrown ditch. Frantically, he switched gears and put his foot down again. Howling and screeching the car tore up dirt and grass, the rear tires spinning in the moist ground. [Wolf Hunt]

Considering they had detected the NATO ships, Captain Hallwinter couldn't let the get away.

“Shit, shit, shit!” He stopped and tried a slower, more thorough approach, trying to keep a sober mind while the two ships seemed to grow in his field of view.
With agility one never would have expected from stocky 'Koppi' the soldier jumped out of the car, having found his senses again, and pressed his heels into the ground, putting all his own weight against the car's rear. “On my mark,” he yelled with pearls of sweat running down his forehead.
Hermann Joseph cleared his mind and concentrated on Koppi's voice, shutting out the frightened banter of the girls on the seat behind him.
“One!”

An armed variant of the NH-90 Multipurpose Helicopter.
Note how the missile racks for guided munitions
resemble old unguided rocket launchers.

He put the right gear in, ready to let the clutch slip.
“Two!”
He carefully balanced both his feet as to reach the steady state between clutch and gas pedal.
“Thr-”
With the sound of clapping thunder a sleek machine rose from below the cliffs in the blink of an eye, the wind of its spinning propellers flattening the grass in a wide circle around it and beating against his eyes. He gaped at it, painted dark gray and all rounded edges – and cannons pointing at them. Hermann tried to say something, scream something, but his voice had but the fraction of the power of that which thundered over the fjord that very moment.
“Stop your engine and leave the car. Down on the ground. Now!” followed by what the small part of his mind which was not paralyzed believed to be Norwegian, “Stopp motoren og forlat bilen. Ned på bakken. Nå!”
Unable to react to the words he just stared at the machine in disbelief and shock, not noticing that the fields around him suddenly were bristling with activity. Soldiers in what looked like padded camouflage clothes and helmets were surrounding the car as if the earth had just spat them out.
With a ribald curse Koppi let go of the car and began to fumble with the holster of his service pistol. With nimble movements that belied their somewhat sturdy appearance two of the soldiers were at him before he could pull the weapon, one driving the butt of his strange looking rifle into Koppi's stomach. He grunted painfully, then hit the ground with a dull thud as the second soldier hammered his own weapon's butt against the back of Koppi's head.
Only peripherally did Hermann Joseph realize that the thundering noise was gone again, and he drew his eyes off the sight of Koppi's crumbled body, out to the fjord. The gray machine was descending onto the larger of the two ships. Catching a glimpse of it from the side, he felt his blood freeze in his veins: the gray specter sported an iron cross! Germans? But how?
Something poking into his ribs brought his attention back to where he was. One of the soldiers had put his rifle right against his solar plexus, staring into his eyes.
“I hope you have a bit more sense in you than that fucker.”
His German was flawless, and his eyes were unforgiving. [Wolf Hunt]

The capture of this quartett sets in motion the events which lead us to Trondheim, the third-largest city of Norway.

Trondheim during the occupation.

A little more than 50,000 people lived and worked there on the southern shore of the Trondheimsfjord at the mouth of the river Nidelva, with the red-painted wood houses so typical for Scandinavia forming the outskirts around the old city center and its multistory Gründerzeit houses and large riverfront storehouses. A drone had made a flyover this morning, taking pictures and sending back a video feed, but it had been inevitable to scout the city in person one way or the other if they wanted to make contact. [Wolf Hunt]

And contact they have to make, for their plan hinges on linking up with the dormant German resistance of the time, a group comprised of high profile politicians and officers in the OKW, the High Command of the Wehrmacht. But their presence calls the German security services into actions, especially after it has become clear that the disappearance of the two joyriding soldiers isn't simply a case of desertion. Enter the Geheime Staatspolizei: the Gestapo.

Actually that's not what the Gestapo did the whole time.
Despite its earned bad reputation, the Gestapo more often
than not worked little different from a normal police force.

Sipping a cup of coffee – real coffee, not that awful ersatz brew – the Hauptsturmführer looked across Trondheim's open harbor and its splendid old patrician houses from one of the high windows of his office. He had been a commissioner with the criminal police before the Nazis had gotten into power, and since he had joined the SS in 1935 he had quietly made his way up the ranks. And after the state security police forces had been consolidated and placed under the central command of Reinhard Heydrich, already chief of the party Sicherheitsdienst SD, he had put his talents to use in hunting down communist agitators and infiltrators within the manifold organizations of the Reich. He still thought of himself as a SiPo member, even though that organization had since then made way to another batch of acronym agencies. He found the fixation of the current powers-that-be with acronyms amusing, even though it often bordered on making his work tedious, a feeling anyone trying to read official correspondence could follow.

A much more typical Gestapo officer
than that creepy guy from the first
"Indiana Jones" movie.

Right now the alphabet soup agency he was commanded by was the RSHA, the Reich Main Security Office, which headed the Gestapo, the secret state police which he was a part of. God, thinking about the twists and turns made his head spin! Still, he liked his job. It was intellectually challenging, and he got to work with many competent people who shared his background in solid police work, unlike that rabble of bumbling amateurs that Heydrich personally had built up. Not that anybody was crazy enough to tell that to the man's face... [Wolf Hunt]

The NATO-Germans infiltrate the Wehrmacht base in Trondheim to gain access to a man who can get them into contact with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, a central figure of the German resistance and the man in charge of Abwehr, the German military espionage apparatus. Disguised as a civilian, Jennifer Ahrendts succeeds in fooling the guards and finds out their contact's position. But disaster looms when she leaves the compound again.

Germany was employing a veritable army of local collaborator in many of the occupied territories. Norway was no exception. In fact, with the so-called Rinnan Gang it featured one of the most infamous of these groups. As Jennifer Ahrendts leaves the compound to return to the hiding place of their car, a member of the group follows her there.

Base "DORA" at Trondheim was one the largest Kriegsmarine
bases in the northern Atlantic. The massive, virtually impregnable
Uboat shelters would not yet have existed in 1940.

Olaus Hamrun had been following the woman for the better part of the last hour. She certainly was attractive, but that was not the sole reason she had raised his interest. His boss, Henry Rinnan, had spread their gang out all over Trondheim and its vicinity, but he had had a special job for him. Hamrun had a nigh photographic memory, and he had taken a long look at all the female clerks at the base. This one was new, and that was always... intriguing. He kept a habit of finding out where those women lived, studied their habits, even went through their trash sometimes. After all, who knew what could come from it? And who would somebody else believe anyway – a local clerk girl or a man in league with Henry Rinnan and the German Gestapo? He chuckled at the thought. Oh yes, these were certainly smashing times. [Wolf Hunt]

Jennifer gets captured, but the NATO-Germans are able to establish the contact they came to Trondheim for in the first place. There is a little powerplay between the Gestapo leader of Trondheim and Henry Rinnan, and they decide to use Ahrendts to lead them back to her "base", not knowing what they are getting into.

Henry Rinnan at his trial. He was of the few
people Norway sentenced to death after the
end of WW II. He receives far more poetic
justice in "Wolf Hunt" at the hands of the
very regime he decided to support.

Nobody would ever have called Henry Rinnan attractive. The Norwegian traitor was short, measuring barely 160 centimeters, and his forehead appeared too large in relation to his narrow face with its deep-set eyes. A loner and liar by nature, his career so far had been everything but glorious. A thief and a reject of the Winter War between the USSR and Finland he had driven trucks for the Norwegian army during the short course of the war. But now he was working for the Gestapo. In fact, he considered himself something of an independent contractor, bringing people to the job he himself recruited and led. [Wolf Hunt]

Heavily armed and mobile, the command sent to find the base of operations of the captured Commander Ahrendts is nonetheless completely unprepared for what awaits them. Having set up a trap of overlapping zones of fire with weapons whose power by far exceeds that of the SS, SD and Nazi-collaborator forces, Captain Hallwinter and his crew are able to rescue their comrade and eliminate the direct threat to them. But the whole affair forces them to change locations once more to avoid detection by Axis and Allied forces, and it arouses the interest of a man as dangerous as no other in Nazi Germany: Reinhardt Heydrich, Head of the RSHA and all Nazi security forces.

Reinhardt Heydrich, Chief of the SD and the
Gestapo, Head of the Reich Main Security Office
and the man believed by many to be the most
likely successor to Adolf Hitler

[Scene Abridged] But above all Heydrich was dutiful - and vain. All their differences aside, Best had a good grasp on how to play the man. “That was beautiful, director, and I must apologize for interrupting you.” He quickly crossed the space between the door and the the chair in the middle of the room on which the director of the RSHA, the Reich's main security office, had sat during his play. It was essential to put his superior's mind on the task at hand to avoid his ire. “There has been an incident in Norway that has blown the boundaries of what we ordinarily have to deal with,” he handed Heydrich a folder with a report and several dozen photographs. Best knew Heydrich would devour every line and picture in the file, but he also knew his duties. “We've lost what amounts to ninety percent of the RSHA's effective strength in central Norway in one single blow, sir.”

“The Führer must not know of this, Best. Do you understand? It would reflect badly on us.”
Best gave him a solemn nod. What Heydrich had, of course, meant was that it would hurt his own standing with Hitler in the constant scheming that was endemic to Nazi organizations. Everybody was constantly digging up and hording dirt on somebody else. But Best had to agree with Heydrich here, least he risked getting more involvement from the direct higher echelon, one Heinrich Himmler. Heydrich at least was a pragmatist, not as mystic! Better keep a tight lid on the affair. “I can keep this contained,” he agreed. “What are our next steps, sir?”
Heydrich looked up at him. “Get me a plane and a SS security detachment. I'm taking the matter into my own hands. I'm going to Norway.” [Wolf Hunt]

* * *

This brings us to the end of Part 3 of this little series. I hope you enjoyed these little peeks into the plot of my novel Wolf Hunt and the extra information I provided. The next time on "The Locations of The Burning Ages" we'll be looking at 04 - Fort Stanton, USA.

The copyrights to all used photographs remain with their respective owners. No infringement is intended.