Narvik Taken — the War Cabinet's Dilemma

General Antoine Bethouart and the British War Cabinet

While Dynamo unfolded in the Channel, a paradox was taking shape in Arctic Norway: the Allies were winning at Narvik. On 28 May 1940, after 7 weeks of fighting, the Allied Expeditionary Corps under General — French chasseurs alpins, the Polish , British units and the Norwegian 1st Division under Fleischer — captured Narvik. Dietl fell back into the mountains toward neutral Sweden, encircled.

It was the first Allied victory of any scale in the war. In theory Narvik would have allowed the Allies to cut off the Swedish iron ore and threaten the German position in the north. But simultaneously the French front was collapsing. On 28 May Leopold III capitulated. On 4 June, Dynamo ended. On 5 June Hitler launched Fall Rot — the final assault on France. The Allied position in Norway became strategically untenable: without France, the defence of Norway no longer made sense.

The British War Cabinet had to decide within days the fate of the Allies' most recent victory.