War in the Arctic: Storm in the North

The Arctic: a featureless expanse of permanent ice, but even here the fury of World War II raged. A battle for mineral resources and strategic interests. Between 1940 and 1945, tens of thousands of soldiers fought above the Arctic Circle in temperatures as low as -60 degrees, abandoned to their fate and forgotten by the outside world. In 1940, German forces occupied Denmark and Norway virtually overnight. Securing control of northern Europe was vital for the Nazis: without the iron and nickel resources of Scandinavia, Germany could not have fought for more than 12 months. When the invasion of the Soviet Union began in 1941, part of the German force was deployed in Scandinavia to penetrate Soviet territory from the north.