Norway was ready to sacrifice Finnmark
In case of an attack by the Soviet Union, the Norwegian plan was to give up the northernmost county of Finnmark and establish a new state border near Tromsø, a new book on Cold War relations reads.
The book written by retired mayor-general Gullow Gjeseth reads that the Norwegian plan was to destroy all infrastructure and settlements in Finnmark and pull back to Lyngen, near the city of Tromsø, in case of an attack by the Soviet Union. The region was not to be defended, but be used as buffer area. Major military forces were subsequently to be mobilized along the new border.
Gjeseth has been given access to classified documents from the Cold War period, newspaper Aftenposten reports.
-They had plans for a mass destruction with all buildings, roads, bridges and ports being torn down and burnt, Gjeseth told the newspaper. The destruction was to be made by the local population itself before evacuation. The retired mayor-general now works as a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Defence Studies.
The plans were laid only few years after the Nazi German troops pulled out and destroyed the area in 1944. Finnmark was still not back on its feet and reconstruction was still ongoing. When liberating the region from the Nazis in 1944, the Soviet Union kept its troops on Norwegian territory only a few months before pulling them back across the border east of Kirkenes.
The Norwegian military analysts expected that the Soviets would attack from the sea and that tanks would roll in from the south and east via Finland.
