The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was the high command of the armed forces of Nazi Germany. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Reich War Ministry and had oversight over the individual high commands of the country's armed forces: the army, navy, and air force.
Rovaniemi is a city and municipality of Finland. It is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland, and its southern part Peräpohjola. The city centre is situated about 6 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle and is between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara, at the confluence of the river Kemijoki and its tributary, the Ounasjoki. It is the second-largest city of Northern Finland after Oulu, and, together with the capital city Helsinki, it is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism.
Lapland is the largest and northernmost region of Finland. The 21 municipalities in the region cooperate in a Regional Council. Lapland borders the region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders the Gulf of Bothnia, Norrbotten County in Sweden, Troms and Finnmark County in Norway, and Murmansk Oblast and the Republic of Karelia in Russia. Topography varies from vast mires and forests of the South to fells in the North. The Arctic Circle crosses Lapland, so polar phenomena such as the midnight sun and polar night can be viewed in Lapland.
Operation Alphabet was an evacuation, authorised on 24 May 1940, of Allied troops from the harbour of Narvik in northern Norway marking the success of Operation Weserübung and the end of the Allied campaign in Norway during World War II. The evacuation was completed by 8 June.
The 6th SS Mountain Division "Nord" was a German unit of the Waffen-SS during World War II, formed in February 1941 as SS Kampfgruppe Nord.
Operation Silver Fox from 29 June to 17 November 1941, was a joint German–Finnish military operation during the Continuation War on the Eastern Front of World War II against the Soviet Union. The objective of the offensive was to cut off and capture the key Soviet Port of Murmansk through attacks from Finnish and Norwegian territory.
Mountain Corps Norway was a German army unit during World War II. It saw action in Norway and Finland.
The matter of German troop transfer through Finland and Sweden during World War II was one of the more controversial aspects of modern Nordic history beside Finland's co-belligerence with Nazi Germany in the Continuation War, and the export of Swedish iron ore during World War II.
Lothar Rendulic was an Austrian army group commander in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Rendulic was one of three Austrians who rose to the rank of Generaloberst in the German armed forces. The other two were Romanian-born Alexander Löhr and Erhard Raus from Moravia.
Non-Germans in the German armed forces during World War II were volunteers, conscripts and those otherwise induced to join who served in Nazi Germany's armed forces during World War II. In German war-time propaganda those who volunteered for service were referred to as Freiwillige ("volunteers"). At the same time, many non-Germans in the German armed forces were conscripts or recruited from prisoner-of-war camps.
A panzer corps was an armoured corps type in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II. The name was introduced in 1941, when the motorised corps were renamed to panzer corps. Panzer corps were created throughout the war, and existed in the Army, the Waffen-SS and even the Luftwaffe. Those renamed from ordinary motorised corps retained their numbering.
The Interim Peace was a short period in the history of Finland during the Second World War. The term is used for the time between the Winter War and the Continuation War, lasting a little over 15 months, from 13 March 1940 to 24 June 1941. The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed by Finland and the Soviet Union on 12 March 1940 and it ended the 105-day Winter War.
The Petsamo–Kirkenes offensive was a major military offensive during World War II, mounted by the Red Army against the Wehrmacht in 1944 in the Petsamo region, ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland in accordance with the Moscow Armistice, and Norway. The offensive defeated the Wehrmacht's forces in the Arctic, driving them back into Norway, and was called the "Tenth Shock" by Stalin. It later expelled German forces from the northern part of Norway and seized the nickel mines of Petsamo.
The Battle of Rovaniemi was an event during the 1944 Lapland War. The actual fighting between the components of the Finnish Armoured Division and Finnish 3rd Division against the troops of the German Twentieth Mountain Army took place at the vicinity of the town of Rovaniemi. The notoriety of the encounter derives from the near-total destruction of the town.
The Kirkenes–Bjørnevatn Line, or the Sydvaranger Line, is a 8.5-kilometer (5.3 mi) long railway line between Kirkenes and Bjørnevatn in Sør-Varanger, Norway. Owned by the private mining company Northern Iron, the single-track railway is solely used to haul 20 daily iron ore trains from Bjørnevatn Mine to the port at Kirkenes. It was the world's northernmost railway until 2010, when the Obskaya–Bovanenkovo Line in Russia went further north.
During World War II, the Lapland War saw fighting between Finland and Nazi Germany – effectively from September to November 1944 – in Finland's northernmost region, Lapland. Though the Finns and the Germans had been fighting together against the Soviet Union since 1941 during the Continuation War (1941–1944), peace negotiations between the Finnish government and the Allies of World War II had been conducted intermittently during 1943–1944, but no agreement had been reached. The Moscow Armistice, signed on 19 September 1944, demanded that Finland break diplomatic ties with Germany and expel or disarm any German soldiers remaining in Finland.
Johannes Hähle was a German military photographer who served in the Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops during World War II.
Operation Nordlicht was a German operation during the end of World War II. After Finland had made peace with the USSR, the Germans planned to fall back to defense lines built and equipped in advance across Finnish Lapland. During the operation, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gave an order to move from Operation Birke to Operation Nordlicht on 4 October 1944. That meant that instead of evacuating everything and then fortifying on the strong defensive positions, the German 20th Mountain Army was to retreat according to a set timetable to a new defense line in Lyngen, Norway. The Germans retreated using scorched-earth tactics and destroyed almost all buildings and all boats in Finnmark, thus denying the enemy any facilities in the area. The same tactics had already been used in Finnish Lapland. The retreat ended on 20 January 1945. A detailed account of 'the Nazis' scorched earth campaign in Norway' by Vincent Hunt includes statements by eyewitnesses, photographs taken at the time and a map of locations and prisoner of war camps.
Arvi Kalsta was a Finnish Jaeger captain, the founder of the Nazi Finnish People's Organisation and a businessman. In the 1930s, the Finnish Nazis who belonged to his supporters were called Kalstaites.
