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War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production 349

Posted by Hemos from the destroy-the-methods dept.
Freshly Exhumed writes "Its doubtful you know the name of Einar Skinnarland, but his sabotage over several years repeatedly thwarted Nazi plans to exploit Norway's heavy water production capabilities for their atomic bomb research plans. Skinnerland recently passed away in Canada and his daring exploits are recounted here. Details of some of the raids on the production facilities can be found on pafko and Stephen's Study Room. So many 'what if?'s and suspicions have swirled around the Nazi atomic bomb program that this man's efforts seem crystal clear for a change."
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War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production

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  • Please, no Godwin's Law jokes (Score:4, Funny)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:38PM (#5310142) Homepage Journal

    "Hemos mentioned Nazis in the subject line. Therefore, by the Godwin's Law rule, the discussion is over almost before it's started."

    Think again. The Godwin's Law FAQ [faqs.org], section II.2, discusses this.

    • Evidently in france the thought police come after you for even thinking about nazis. What a shame really, they don't realize certain things should never be forgotten or it will happen again.

    • Good book (Score:3, Informative)

      by KeatonMill ( 566621 )
      There is a very good book out there written by the man that developed the codes that Skinnarland used. While the focus is on wartime codes and the internal struggles in the British War Department, it still contains good information about Skinnarland, and is a very good read It is called Between Silk and Cyanide [amazon.com] by Leo Marks.
    • I'll also point out that mentioning communism has the same intelligent conversation ending abilities.

      dmaxwell's Parallel to Godwin's law goes something like this:

      In an online discussion involving software development or licencing, the probability that someone will make a comparison to communists, Soviet Russia, or communism approaches one.

  • Hitler's anti-semitism did him the most harm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by asmithmd1 ( 239950 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:40PM (#5310148) Homepage Journal
    Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb shows clearly and ironically that Hitler drove many Jewish physicists out of Germany in the '30s including Einstein. If he would have let them keep there posts he almost certainly would have had the bomb before the US.

    • Beyond that. . . (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      He didn't let the phyiscists who remained use what he termed "Jewish Physics." Which, as it happens, was the *correct* physics.

      It turns out, according to documents that only came to light about 10 years ago, the Japanese were probably actually much closer to building a bomb than Germany because, even though they started late and worked slowly, they were heading down the proper path to pull it off.

      KFG
    • The important lesson of World War II is that it's OK to slaughter your own civillians but not those of your neighbor. If it weren't for Poland, would the war in Europe really have happened?
    • A huge proportion of the GNP of the Third Reich, especially in its last years, that went towards the development and production of "terror weapons", mainly guided missiles (the V1 and V2).
      The only military justification of this effort would be if the Nazis also had atomic bomb capability since one ton of payload wouldn't otherwise justify the cost of the missile.
      After the war, investigation of internal memos of the ministry of technology written in 1938, dismissed the possibility of commiting resouces into development of atomic weaponry as "Jewish Science".
      Thus the undoubtable engineering excellence of the Pienemunde group was (thankfully) rendered mostly harmless by the bigotry of their leaders.

  • What matters is not who was going to get the bomb (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aerojad ( 594561 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:41PM (#5310155) Homepage Journal
    What matters is that eventually, the cursed thing was used. Go ahead and say it was to save x number of troops or y politcal plans, or anything else, but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.

    • Re:What matters is not who was going to get the bo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:47PM (#5310185) Journal
      Maybe it matters a slight amount that the thing was used by a democratic nation to end a dreadful war launched against them rather than by the Nazis to achieve world domination in a war of their own making?
      • If you've ever read any of the historical happenings of the day, Japan wasn't really as big a menace as the US made them out to be. As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it.

        What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary.

        So the US dropping that bomb was 100% a power trip. And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war. The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc. Yadi yada. Read up on some history...

        • Japan should have immediately surrended after the 1st bomb. They are solely responsible for the 2nd dromb being dropped. They were too busy trying to rally the citizenry to defend the homeland. Rather than protecting their people, they put them in jeopardy.

          • Stupidity on the part of a dramatically weakened enemy you'd be able to defeat quickly anyway doesn't justify mass murder of civilians.

            The direct responsibility of the destruction caused by a weapon lie with whoever uses it, no matter how much indirect responsibility other involved parties may have.

            Nothing forced anyone to use the second bomb.

          • The bombs were dropped three days apart.

            Japan had practically ceased existing at that point. Your comparison is analogous to blowing a bomb in a busy intersection, waiting 10 minutes, and then opening fire on the terrorists/civilians in the area that are still looking for severed pieces of their bodies around the place.

            Your argument would have been acceptable if Japan was still bombarding San Fransisco at the time, and the US was having heavy casualties.

            No, it wasn't. Like I originally said, at the time of the incident, the war was pretty much over, and the world was in a state of stupor... no major battles were being fought.

            The second bomb can best be described as an act of vingilantism on the part of the US. You should also read the recent article that was posted on slashdot about the captain of the Enola Gay, and how the order came to drop the second bomb.

            It's one thing to justify yourself (as a country) in current political affairs, it's another thing entirely to try and justify facts of 50 years ago when the whole world knows more or less exactly what happened: it makes you look foolish and conceited.

            • "Your argument would have been acceptable if Japan was still bombarding San Fransisco at the time, and the US was having heavy casualties."

              San Francisco? No. But the Japanese still held on to the Asian mainland and was massacring Chinese civillians (like they'd been doing since 1932) essentially right on up until Hirohito set foot aboard the USS Missouiri.

              But people who are stuck with a Eurocentric viewpoint on history tend not to know that.

              "no major battles were being fought."

              Cheng Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Dong would disagree.
              • Oh sorry, I being a Eurocentric person tend to forget that the US is asia's saviour, over and over during the past half century...

                Really, all I can do now, is quote some big lebowsky because I'm too irrate at your mother theresa point of view. "Smokey, this is not Nam, there are rules".

                For your information, I *am* european, but I like many others find both the french and the british to both be whimps, and ultimately the cause of WWII.

                My only difference from you sir, is that I don't try to justify their actions.

                See my last post [slashdot.org] for my final words. I don't need to expend any more energy on such a useless topic regardless of whether it's with intelligent people or not... it's not like what we're saying has any sway on anything.

        • There WAS that little incident called "Pearl Harbor." America doesn't get mad, it gets even. Or it tries to finish what it's daddy couldn't.
          • Exactly my point in my other post [slashdot.org]. The second bomb was an act of vigilantism.

            And on a side note, America didn't get even, Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed hundreds of thousands of people and basically razed two cities. Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency.

            And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost, if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so...

            Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less. It was definitely much less cruel then what the US has been doing in the middle east, and far east too for the past half century.

            That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)...

            Know your history, and you can see many very striking paralels...

            Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?

            • And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost, if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so...

              And if nations want to surprise attack them while engaged in diplomatic talks, then those nations will have to bear the consequences of their actions.

              • Re:What matters is not who was going to get the bo (Score:5, Insightful)

                by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:51PM (#5310508)
                Oh I see.

                So you are acting a-la US acts when Russian hacker gets tried in US soil for un-crime commited in Russia?

                You must be really naive if you think Diplomatic talks degenerate because of bad manners at the tea table.

                The cards are always down, it's all about how much one is willing to bend over and grab their ankles.

                And the US lately, has become the master pimp of the world... expecting anyone and everyone in their sight to bend over and grab em.

                Well fuck you! It's about time you realized it doesn't work that way... You have a current world crisis going on just because of said behaviour. Just sit and watch how the US will go in like the First of the Ninth Air Cav even after the UN says "no". The world isn't your playground...

                Like I said before, it's one thing to think you're right in an argument, and something else completely to try and justify glaring events of 50 years past.

            • Re:What matters is not who was going to get the bo (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @06:15PM (#5310646)
              Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...

              "Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."

              Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.

              " And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"

              On US territory.

              "if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."

              Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.

              "Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."

              They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.

              "That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"

              You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.

              Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.

              "Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"

              The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.

              Your metaphor is strenuous at best.
            • Hiroshima and Nagasaki were BOTH of major military importance to the Japanese which made them candidates for bombing.

              Hiroshima contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, "Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor."

              Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries.

              Also you might want to realize that without using the atomic bombs the invasion of Japan was to take place on Dec 1, 1945. It was to start with the invasion of the Island of Kyushu (Operation Olympic). The invasion was projected to cost the lives of some 245,000 Americans, and 1,000,000 Japanese, far more than died in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

              The Japanese had no plans on surrender and the reason no major battles were taking place is because the Japanese were consolidating their forces for 'Ketsu-Go'; the plan to defend their homeland.

              As part of Ketsu-Go, the Japanese were building 20 suicide take-off strips in southern Kyushu with underground hangars. They also had 35 camouflaged airfields and nine seaplane bases. On the night before the expected invasion, 50 Japanese seaplane bombers, 100 former carrier aircraft and 50 land based army planes were to be launched in a suicide attack on the fleet.

              The Japanese had 58 more airfields on Korea, western Honshu and Shikoku, which also were to be used for massive suicide attacks. Allied intelligence had established that the Japanese had no more than 2500 aircraft of which they guessed 300 would be deployed in suicide attacks.

              In August 1945, unknown to Allied intelligence, the Japanese still had 5651 army and 7074 navy aircraft, for a total of 12,725 planes of all types. Every village had some type of aircraft manufacturing facility. Hidden in mines, railway tunnels, viaducts and in basements of department stores, work was being done to construct new planes.

              Additionally, the Japanese were building newer and more effective models of the Okka, a rocket propelled bomb much like the German V-1, but flown by a suicide pilot. When the invasion became imminent, Ketsu-Go called for a four-fold aerial plan of attack to destroy up to 800 Allied ships.

              While Allied ships were approaching Japan, but still in the open seas, an elite force of 2000 army and navy fighters would take off to fight to the death to control the skies over Kyushu. A second force of 330 non-combat pilots were to attack the main body of the task force to keep it from using fire support and air cover to protect the troop-carrying transports. While these two forces were engaged, a third force of suicide planes was to hit the American transports.

              As the invasion convoys approached their anchorages, another 2000 suicide planes were to be launched in waves of 200 to 300, to be used in hour by hour attacks.

              American troops would be arriving in about 180 lightly armed transports and cargo vessels. The Japanese defenders would be the hardcore of the home army. These troops were well fed and well equipped. They were familiar with the terrain, had stockpiles of arms and ammunition, and had developed an effective system of transportation and supply almost invisible from the air. Many of these Japanese troops were the elite of the army, and they were swollen with a fanatical fighting spirit. Japan's network of beach defenses consisted of off-shore mines, thousands of suicide scuba divers attacking landing craft, and mines planted on the beaches.

              You say in your post "Know your history, and you can see many very striking paralels..." I think before you look for any parallels you should first learn your history and find out exactly WHY things happened the way they did. If after knowing of what awaited in Operation Olympic and then Operation Coronet you still come to the same conclusion.... I say we're damn lucky you're not in any decision making capacity.

        • Re:What matters is not who was going to get the bo (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:51PM (#5310511)
          "As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."

          Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!

          If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.

          " What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."

          I disagree, for the reasons stated above.

          If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima [amazon.com] that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.

          "And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."

          The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.

          "The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"

          What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.

          "Read up on some history..."

          Hypocrite.


    • > but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.

      I agree, and it's unfortunate that that genie can't be put back in the bottle.

      However, the curmudgeon in me can't help pointing out that the world was already a scary & dangerous place. Only the tiniest fraction of the ~50,000,000 people who died during WWII died as a result of atomic bombs.

      And we've darn well kept our hand in at the killing since then, too.

    • The japanese had pilots willing to pilot their planes into anything deemed a target. I don't think that the era 1945 to present holds a monopoly on the world being a scary and dangerous place.

      ostiguy
    • and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since

      You have to be kidding me right? The world is no more scarry than it was before the bomb was used. In fact one could argue that its less scarry. Look at the cold war. Heres a situation that very well should of been WW3. It had everything that WWI and WW2 had except for the war. Never underestimate the power of mutal destruction. Currently (and the last 40 years or so) we invade countries that we don't fear (Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, etc), because they have no risk of hurting the homeland. However do you think the US would pick a fight with the Chinese or Russians (or even North Korea, when was the last time we invaded them, no matter how "evil" they are)? No. And why is this? Because they could nuke as as badly as we could nuke them. The atomic bomb as been used more a tool of peace (albiet a threatening peace) then it has as a tool of war.

    • Clausowitz said that war had to be horible, otherwise we would not fear to engage in it.

      As horifying as The Bomb is, it is for exactly this reason that it is the greatest tool for peace.

      The sheer terror of what would happen if a nuclear power were to launch is unthinkable, so is agression against them...

      Note this only applies to democracies, or other goverments that are remotly concerned with the loss of their citizense lives.

      It's a theory... I'll bet you $1,000,000 dollars it works?!

    • but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.

      Funny, and here's me thinking all along that the reason we didn't fight WW III against the Russians is that the bomb made it unthinkable, and that it is only because of this that we have had 58 years without a world war, instead of the 21 we had between WW I and WW II.

  • Hitler, and the bomb (Score:5, Informative)

    by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:44PM (#5310167) Homepage Journal
    The japanese decided it was a bad idea to persue the atomic bomb (heavily) because of the shortage of deuterium. The germans and the french had the nice little plant, Norsk Hydro in Norway, to make enough of the stuff to have a burgeoning atomic program, fortunately there was enough sabotage that Hitler didn't get the bomb. Especially since he already had an excellent delivery system.
    • One guy I know says the reason he believes in god is because the nazi's never got the bomb. But really, it's just a bunch of human goodness.

  • Todays wars are boring (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:55PM (#5310223)
    Ah, yes.. WW2.. nobody had the bomb, nobody had real technological advantages and the enemy was in fact a civilized western high tech country with lots of resources. Those were the times!

    It's a pity todays so called "wars" are more like playing starcraft with unlimited resources against an AI set on "easy". I don't think I'll watch the Iraq thing on TV when it starts. A few old star trek episodes will provide better entertainment.

    • skip bomb dam! coolest weapon (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @06:40PM (#5310783)
      The reason the heavy water plants were in norway and not back in the reich-land was they were co-located near easy access to electric power--hydro power. this was needed to product the heavy water.

      Bombing a dam is damn hard. seen from the air they are very small targets. And they are concrete and over built. even if you hit the top you have not done much damage. to destroy the dam you have to hit is near the bottom where the water pressure is high. hence the need for a raid on the ground: to hard to hit.

      Enter the skip bomb [pbs.org]. the Skip bomb is a spinning cyllindric bomb [simscience.org]dropped in the water above the dam. it skips, skips, skips and slams in to wall of the dam. but it does not explode. instead the back spin makes it claw its way down the side the dam where it detonates near the bottom.

      there's lots on the web on this, including . http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_nazidams/ [simscience.org]

    • "It's a pity todays so called "wars" are more like playing starcraft with unlimited resources against an AI set on "easy"."

      You just described pretty much all the wars from 1815 right on up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Then 1861 happened.

      You just described pretty much all the wars from 1865 right on up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Then 1914 happened.

      "... doomed to repeat," yadda yadda yadda.

  • Quick! (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Saturday February 15, 2003 @04:56PM (#5310229) Homepage
    Somebody think of a Microsoft angle to this story!
  • People like that guy keep my cynicism at bay. Keeping people like him somewhere in the back of your mind will give you hope for humankind when otherwise you'd give in to pessimism, and a snide outlook.

  • Mentioned in "Between Silk and Cyanide" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ted Stoner ( 648616 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:09PM (#5310280)

    Mr. Skinnarland was mentioned several times in Leo Marks book "Between Silk and Cyanide". One of the many heroes just recently getting their due.

    He trained in England with the SOE, crossing paths with Mr Marks who trained operatives in the use of codes.

    Marks died in the last year or two also.

    • Skinnarland used to communicate with SOE using a transposition cipher. This encryption was carried out by hand by a fairly tedious algorithm. Skinnarland was just about the worst agent SOE had to deal with - he would repeatedly make mistakes in his enciphering. Leo Marks was one of the people back in Britain who had to decrypt the erroneously encoded messages. As you might imagine - decrypting an incorrectly encoded message was a horrendously difficult task and Marks seems to have spent much of his time during the war dealing with his messages. In fact, Marks had so much trouble with these messages he dubbed anything indecipherable a 'Skinnarland'!

    • Marks died in the last year or two also.

      According to some sources, WWII veterans in America are dying at the rate of 1000 a day. In a few years, that rate will decrease dramaticly as there will be few vets left, and it will go on for years until "the last WWII vet" appears on the news.

      If you know any of these guys, don't wait too long to thank them.

  • now _this_ is "stuff that matters"!

  • Makes me proud to be a 'wegian (Score:5, Informative)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:13PM (#5310299) Journal
    Just a few links on the subject;
    http://www.pafko.com/trips/norway/n10/ - about the sabotage
    http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/heavy.htm - about heavy water and it's use
    http://www.lawzone.com/half-nor/haukelid.htm - about Knut Haukelid; another of the heroes from Telemark
    http://www.390th.org/warstories/Rjukan.htm - about how the USAF tried and failed to knock out the heavy water plant

    I know, I gotta learn proper html

    • I've visited both places, it helps to get some perspective of what must have happened there. (It also helps to have Norwegian family who get taught about this in school to tell you about it) Norway doesn't have the most welcoming terrain. To most people Norway doesn't even factor into their thoughts of WW2 and this is sad, things could have been a whole lot worse if it wasn't for their resistance to occupation.
  • Thank God somebody did the right thing. Too bad is wasn't my countrymen. After WWII, the United States made a Devil's pact with Reinhard Gehlen [karljones.com] -- absorbing Gehlen's spy apparatus into the US spy apparatus. (Or ... was it the other way around?)
  • I love how history gets re-written. The Nazi's were never building a bomb, they didn't even think it was possible (the captured German scientists were amazed when they heard the US had developed an atomic weapon). The Nazi's were actually trying to build an atomic reactor to power a large battleship or something of that ilk.
  • Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler's Bomb, by Dan Kurzman, ISBN 0-8050-3206-1

    Aside from an interesting quote from Werner Heisenberg [slashdot.org], it gives a lot of information about the efforts at sabotaging the heavy water processing plant. If you can find a copy, it's well worth the price.

  • ...get it?

  • He's an evil man (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Those explosions surely killed some people. It would have been better for them to hold a peace march in front of the plant.

  • Movie Based on This (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kenshin ( 43036 ) <`ac.skrowranul' `ta' `nihsnek'> on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:25PM (#5310356) Homepage
    A few months ago I saw an old movie based on this exact story. It wasn't a documentry, and it was actually very good. Full of action and suspense, but without all that Hollywood junk.

    I can't remember what it was called, but it was on Canada's "History Television" cable channel.
  • I don't see his name in the cast of The Heroes of Telemark [imdb.com].

  • Intrepid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lunartik ( 94926 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @05:53PM (#5310525) Homepage Journal
    A Man Called Intrepid [amazon.com] by William Stevenson recounts the war from the aspect of the clandestine serivces in the US and UK. It shows how Churchill was consulting the Crown before he was technically back in power, but received permission to start working on means to defend England. It talks about Roosevelt's involvement in the defense of Britain from an early stage, before the public knew about it or would support such actions.

    The book talks about the repeated raids on the heavy water factories, the code-breaking process, the creation of the OSS, the establishment of a backup British Government in NYC in case London fell, etc. There is also the appearance of such notables as Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and Aldous Huxley, working in British Intelligence.

    Some of the stories of radio operators dropped into Europe, captured, tortured and killed, could and should be made into movies or books in their own right.

    Intrepid, by the way, was the code name of the man chosen by Churchill to be a liason with Roosevelt in the early stages (before lend-lease, before Pearl Harbor, etc)
    • Also, Einar Skinnarland is listed in the index [amazon.com] of the book (although he only appears on two pages).
    • Reading about the clandestine operations run by the Allies is always really fun. Operation XX (double-cross, get it) in particular was amazing. One man, code-named Garbo, got Hitler to believe that the entire Normandy invasion was an extensive feignt for an invasion at Calais. Hitler held back reinforcements for days.

      Another squad put an abrasive in axle grease to effectively sabotage Nazi transportation.

      And a radio operator was captured and forced to send Nazi messages. There was a fail-safe system in which all uncoerced messages contained a deliberate error, so that a perfect message would mean the sender was compromised. However, the people at base forgot about this protocol and kept on sending people to their deaths. Then the radio operator started to send "compromised" in parts at the end and beginning of messages but to no avail. When two POW escaped to friendly territory and warned them of the radio operator's fate, he was forced to send a message that they were in fact German spies. They were executed.

      Really good reading.
      • One of the most interesting parts in Intrepid was the story of how the Nazis forged some documents to feed Stalin's suspicions that his military staff was compromised. He excuted many of his top officers, a move which contributed to Germany's successes in advancing into Russia.

  • Pleas have a look at this node on Everything2.com [everything2.com]. It is a short piece I wrote up on the bombings and the massive attempt to thwart Hitler's atomic ambitions.

  • This is the guy who sank a ferry full of people. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @07:18PM (#5310945) Homepage
    This guy was responsible for planting a bomb on a ferry full of people in a neutral country. The bomb went off over the deepest part of the lake, as planned, and all the passengers were killed.

    This man was a terrorist. And, one could argue, a "cowardly terrorist" - he didn't go on the boat and go down with it. He'd done other things more classically heroic, but the bombing of the ferry Hydro was not an act of heroism. At best, it was militarily necessary.

  • One of the members of the Norwegian Resistance, Oluf R. Olsen, wrote an excellent autobiography called "Two Eggs On My Plate." It was published in 1954, but it can be found in used bookshops. If you want to know more about the bravery and character of Norwegians during WWII, see Jan Baalsrud's autobiography, "Defiant Courage." Baalsrud's incredible and harrowing journey was confirmed by historian David Howarth in "We Die Alone," which can be found on Amazon.com. Hollywood also told the story, but not very well: Heroes of Telemark [imdb.com]. Truly, there were giants in those days...
  • Yes, that's right. I get angry when people give too much credit to minor characters in the effort to disrupt German heavy water production. Of far more importance was Col. Robert Hogan, US Army Air Force and his team of saboteurs when they were able to destroy a secret shipment into Luft Stalag 13 in 1944. Yes, they were able to convince the camp kommandant, who happened to be a bumbler that the heavy water was in fact, water from the Fountain of Youth and could grow hair on his bald pate by drinking it which prevented the Germans from removing it right away. They were able to destroy this shipment which happened to be the purest that the dirty Nazi's could generate and single handedly prevented a nuclear catastrophe in Europe as well as saved the war for the Allies. Sorry, but when people give Skinnarland more press than Hogan and his heroes I get all mad and stuff.
  • I think that a recent episode of the History Channel's Greatest Raids covered some of his work against the Norsk Hydro factory in Telemark, Norway.

    bcl

  • Pretty Inconsequential (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gz718 ( 586910 ) on Saturday February 15, 2003 @09:12PM (#5311513)
    The Germans weren't even close to making the bomb so the raid on the Norsk Hydroelectric plant and other destruction of heavy water didn't really make a difference.

    First, heavy water is not the only moderator available to someone who wants to make a chain reaction (the first US pile used very pure carbon) and heavy water isn't used in an atomic weapon (although it is used in a thermonuclear weapon but you have to crawl before you can run.)

    Second, the Germans didn't even have the explosive material to make a bomb. In an atomic bomb you can use either plutonium or enriched uranium. The Manhattan Project got it's plutonium from the residue of a self-sustaining chain reaction and the Germans hadn't even completed a self-sustaining chain reaction by the war's end, hell they weren't even close. Heisenberg kept insisting on creating these elaborate designs of natural uranium for the pile such as concentric spheres or huge disks which took a lot of time and labor to produce when the best configuration for a chain reaction is small cyclinders which was the only configuration the Manhattan Project ever used. Using enriched uranium was just out of the question for the overworked German war machine. America had the money and resources to build gaseous diffusion plants and centrifuges, but what with fighting two fronts Germany had better things to do with its money and Heisenberg was not really pushing for more resources since he couldn't convince himself let alone Hitler that they would be able to produce a bomb.

    And then had they somehow had a chain reaction they would have to extract the plutonium (not easy), then they still have to construct the bomb (not easy), and figure out a way of delivering it (not easy.) For more information I highly recommend the Richard Rhodes book, Making of the Atomic Bomb.

  • Nazi heavy water artifacts are on display. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 15, 2003 @10:11PM (#5311867)

    I have seen the Nazi heavy water artifacts. (and other artifacts) For many years in the 1980's the University of Michigan had ampules of heavy water (double ended sealed glass vials) on display in the old chemistry building in central quad area on main floor toward the east. Lots of universities have interesting artifacts in display cases, including the worlds smallest MOVINGmotor at caltech and other exibits.

    The nazi heavy water display was fascinating because the vial had pretty high quality white stickers with red swastika prominently on them. The display would not have been complete without the sticker obviously.

    The german heavy water exhibit looked cool.

    At that time the Univ of Michigan harbored Dr Mengeles lab book results (and luftwaffe freezing of human spine in artic temp brine, and decompression tests on humans) and was in the flack.

    I noticed hundreds of rare Nazi books being stolen or defaced one by one from the MASSIVE collection (yes massive) grad student library at the Univ of Michigan . The book that I thought was the most fascinating was a german book of all uniforms for a particular year... I was shocked by the futuristic and overly high-tech look of the White winter SS officers uniform (formal version?). It looked like it hopped out of a start trek movie. It was a small book, but it too was stolen or removed many years later when I tried to take a glance at it and perhaps color photocopy it to prove to people how futuristic and out of place that uniform looked. All the books were in german , row upon row, and I did not know a word of german.

    The librayy entrance of the library had a display on vigilante vandalism... jews and arabs were detroying each others books each week and leaving destoyed volumes (sometimes with graffitti) in the building itslef, but sometimes stealing them. I asked them why the religious zealots were desroying each others "indfidel books" and they told me THAT IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE DESTRUCTION OF ATHIEST BOOKS BY CHRISTIANS. I replied "huh?"and they said, that christians steal, or check out and "lose" all the most provocative athiest books and that they REFUSE TO RESTOCK and REORDER THEM. They had so few it was an easy targert goal to work on I assume, as opposed to the muslim and jewiosh works.

    I then asked a country librarian about censorship destruction of books by religious nuts, especially books in athiesm and they concurred that it is common.

    Lots of closed minded people despise Germans and their Nazi era-engineering, as much as despise books on athiesm. People should learn from the past. Not celebrate acts ofsabotage for sabotage's sack. Trusted patrons in a Library, and trusted workers at a hydroelectric plant that extracts heavy water, should not be celebrated for treachery and sabotage. It is a form of dishonesty. And truly just people hate dishonesty .

    Reposted because the first one got modded -1 by an idiot.

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