The British Army occupied Iceland in just one day during World War II

The British Army occupied Iceland in just one day during World War II

Operation Harpoon: Far away Iceland is a peaceful and peaceful country. If it were not for the raging European debt crisis that plunged it into a sovereign debt crisis, And Chinese businessmen want to buy large amounts of land and build hotels in the country. Maybe ordinary Chinese people have little impression of it. However, Iceland, located at the transportation hub of the northern hemisphere, is a battleground for military strategists.

In the early morning of May 10, 1940, Iceland, which had not yet been affected by the smoke of World War II, suddenly involuntarily became "forbidden" for others. When the Icelanders woke up from their sleep, British soldiers with live ammunition appeared in the capital Reykjavik.

On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany sent troops to Denmark and Norway. The Kingdom of Denmark fell within a day, and Iceland, a dependent state of Denmark, became the focus of competition between Germany and the United Kingdom. On April 10, the Icelandic Parliament declared independence, but Britain was worried that Iceland would fall to Germany. On May 6, Churchill publicly stated at a War Cabinet meeting that he would use a blitzkrieg to capture Iceland. Subsequently, the British War Cabinet approved Operation Harpoon, an invasion of Iceland. In the combat plan, the first wave of the British Expeditionary Force will all land in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, and first control senior Icelandic government officials, and then advance into the hinterland. However, at that time, the British army could hardly produce a decent map of Iceland, and few people in the army could speak about Iceland.

On the same day that the British War Cabinet made the decision to "blitz Iceland", the 2nd Battalion of the British Marine Corps suddenly received an order to complete the assembly within 2 hours. The British government also equipped this unit with many new weapons. Battalion Commander Humphrey. Major Quayle felt a little baffled at first, but after 50 minutes he understood - his unit was selected as the main force of the British expedition to Iceland. The 49-year-old British Army Colonel Robert Stengers was appointed commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force, under the jurisdiction of the 2nd Battalion of the Marine Corps and a small special forces. Colonel Stengers took another diplomat with him on the expedition. According to statistics, the total number of the expeditionary force was 7

46.

On the evening of May 6, the expeditionary force arrived in Greenock, Scotland by train. At this time, the soldiers did not know their destination. On the morning of May 7, the expeditionary force boarded the cruisers "Berwick" and "Glasgow". However, because the troops had many heavy weapons, the boarding process was delayed for a day. At 4 o'clock in the morning on May 8, "Berwick" and "Glasgow" sailed towards Iceland, and two other destroyers ("Dreadnaught" and "Luck") escorted them. The first attrition of the expeditionary force occurred during the voyage, when a soldier committed suicide.

At 1:47 on May 10, Iceland time, a seaplane took off from the "Bervik" to conduct reconnaissance of Iceland. However, this action caused great panic among Icelanders. Icelandic Prime Minister Herman. Jonathan quickly summoned the head of the National Police Force, Aina. Anades discussed countermeasures and found that this force only had 70 people.

At 3:40, an Icelandic policeman spotted a fleet heading towards Reykjavik and immediately reported it. Prime Minister Jonathan, who was discussing countermeasures with Anades, called the Foreign Minister to wake him up and asked him to lodge a protest with the British Consulate after dawn. However, before dawn, the British troops who came ashore had already begun occupation operations. They first seized the post office and took control of the telegraph equipment to prevent messages from reaching foreign countries. Icelandic Prime Minister Jonathan personally called British Consul Shephard at 6 a.m., but the reply he received was that British troops had landed and he hoped that the Icelandic government would "cooperate."

Knowing that something was wrong, Jonathan quickly ordered his men to burn important documents, but before they were done burning, British soldiers had already appeared in front of the Prime Minister's residence. The occupation of Reykjavik was without bloodshed, and then the British army marched to various parts of Iceland. Iceland's land area exceeds 100,000 square kilometers, and more than 700 British troops cannot be effectively suppressed. Therefore, a brigade of British troops (about 4,000 people) landed in Iceland again on May 17. The Icelandic government, which was under the "protection" of the British army, still protested. Icelandic Prime Minister Jonathan accused the British government of "brutally attacking a neutral country." British Prime Minister Churchill claimed that the Icelandic government would not be dissolved and that British troops would withdraw from Iceland after the war.

In June 1940, France was defeated by Nazi Germany, and Churchill was worried that Hitler would attack Iceland and continued to send more troops to Iceland. In less than two months, the number of British troops landing on the island reached 25,000. Perhaps out of consideration for the overall anti-fascist situation, the Icelandic government finally agreed to cooperate with the British army.

In July 1941, Iceland signed a joint defense agreement with the United States. During the war, 40,000 U.S. officers and soldiers were stationed in Iceland. This number even exceeded the total number of adult men in Iceland at that time (the total population of Iceland during World War II was only 120,000).