World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF GERMANY (North): Into Norway

It had been four and a half years since the Wehrmacht swooped down on thunderstruck Norway in April 1940. Now, as the Nazi sun was sinking, the first little sliver of Norway was freed. Last week, far north in the Arctic, where Norway borders on Finland, the Russians pounded over the line in pursuit of the Germans, then took over the iron-ore port of Kirkenes, used by the Germans as a submarine and air base against the Allied northern sea route to Russia, and fought on some 15 miles westward.

For Norway, liberation was liberation, and the reaction was prompt. King Haakon and Prime Minister Johan Ny-gaardsvold in London broadcast an order to their people to cooperate with their Soviet allies, recalled that Norway and Russia had signed an occupation agreement five months ago (Norwegians will take over in their territory “as soon as the military situation permits”). To Moscow they radioed “warmest greetings.”

Large-scale Norwegian liberation may await either voluntary German withdrawal or British landings in the south. Russia was primarily interested in chasing Germans out of Finland, and the Russian pursuit was expected to go little farther than the Tana River, some 70 miles west of Kirkenes. The Russian drive will also free the Murmansk supply route from German air attacks.

The Germans have already trundled the bomb-damaged hulk of the battleship Tirpitz from Altenfjord south to Tromsö, where the R.A.F. found it and hit it again with a six-ton bomb.