Workshops and sawmills

Author: Arvid Petterson

The German Lapland Army had one battalion stationed in Karasjok from the summer of 1940. After the battalion was sent east in the spring of 1941, the number of Germans varied. There could be as many as 1,000 soldiers, prison guards and construction workers in the area.

When the road between Karasjok and Ivalo was completed in 1942, Karasjok became central to the German front in the Soviet Union. Men and supplies could be transported from the ports in Porsanger to the German front east of Finland and along the Arctic road, between Ivalo and Petsamo. Large depots were built to store supplies, ammunition and fuel.

The number of vehicles on the road increased and long columns of trucks used the road to and from Finland. The demand for repairs and automobile workshops was huge.

The removal of timber from Karasjok’s forests had been very limited before the war, as the locals were keen to ensure regrowth by means of good silviculture, and the place had its own forest wardens. Even though most of the German barracks were produced in southern Norway during the war, the extraction of pine from the forests doubled many times over. The sawmills in Karasjok had to increase their productivity because the Germans needed local timber for their many construction works in Karasjok.

When the German troops were retreating from the Litza front and the front east of Finland in the autumn of 1944, there could be as many as 15,000 soldiers in the area at any one time. The Lapland army had only three routes out of those areas: across Sør-Varanger, via Ivalo and Karasjok and through Skibotn. The sea road was practically cut off due to allied naval forces.

The Germans used scorched-earth tactics while retreating from the area during November and December of 1944. The barrack camps were burned down and the new bridge was blown up on 6 November. The large ammunition store at Madijavrre was blown up, scattering the landscape with a lot of unexploded ammunition.

Source:

Gamst, Thorbein: Finnmark under hakekorset (English: Finnmark under the Swastika), 1984