The German navy entered the Second World War with two motives for an invasion of Norway. As early as 1934 Hitler had connected the planned expansion of the German navy with the need to protect the Scandinavian ore trade. Just over half of that iron ore was shipped to Germany from Narvik, in the far north of Norway. Although the naval war staff believed that Norwegian neutrality was the best protection for the ore trade, Admiral Raeder, the commander-in-chief of the navy, favoured a more aggressive stance. His second motive for intervening in Norway was to acquire naval bases that could be used to outflank the British naval blockade of Germany. During the First World War the Royal Navy had been able to block the channel and the northern entrance to the North Sea to German shipping, and the blockade had played an important role in the final German defeat. Bases in Norway would outflank the easiest blockade route, from the Shetland Islands to the west coast of Norway.
Soon after the start of the war, Raeder suggested that German should acquire submarine bases on the Norwegian coast, possibly with the aid of the Soviet Union. The situation changed with the start of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union at the end of November 1939. There was now a real chance that the British and French might occupy northern Sweden and Norway as part of an effort to help the Finns. Work began on a plan to pre-empt that move in January 1940. On 13 January, at the same time that the Naval War Staff were examining an existing army study, a Special Staff N (North) was formed within the Wehrmacht High Command to prepare an invasion plan. On 5 February they were renamed special staff Weserübung (Weser Exercise), and on 21 February General von Falkenhorst was placed in command of the operation.
Work was well under way on the planned invasion before the Altmark incident of 16 February. The Altmark had been a supply ship for the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. She was attempting to return to Germany carrying prisoners of war captured by the Graf Spee, and was illegally using Norwegian waters in an attempt to sneak past the British blockade. This was a blatant breach of Norwegian neutrality, and the British responded by sending the destroyer Cossack into Norwegian waters to search the Altmark (also a breach of neutrality, but only after the Norwegians had failed to enforce that neutrality).
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