High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Operation Wunderland (German: Unternehmen Wunderland) was a large-scale operation undertaken in summer 1942 by the Kriegsmarine during the Second World War in the waters of the Northern Sea Route close to the Arctic Ocean. The Germans knew that many ships of the Soviet Navy had sought refuge in the Kara Sea because of the protection that its ice pack provided during ten months of the year. The naval operation to enter the Kara Sea during the summer thaw and destroy as many Russian vessels as possible was named "Operation Wunderland".