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a whole host of tweets.
Ainging Crush". Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Gerry's here too and I guess it's a new year because I just had the spirit of John Strickland pass through me when I welcome everybody.
Did you hear that enthusiastic hey?
Yeah, a little bit of a...
Well not a COA, I guess just sort of updating is this is our first recording of the new year and we had our longest break ever, you know, I think everyone knows we take a nice long Christmas break but this year it stretched into November and so we been gone for a long time.
Yeah. And I'm like, do I even know how to do this anymore?
Yeah, same here, I keep making this sound whenever I move.
Oh don't do... don't do that.
I can't help it! It's just, I'm that rusty.
And also this topic, it's good, but it's...
We'll try and keep it as streamlined and easy to understand as possible.
There's a lot of moving pieces.
Sure. And there's a lot of Norwegian names that we've...
I still don't know how to say the letter with like the null set.
I think it's like a oom -lout.
Is it? Okay. I mean I'm going to treat them as oom -louts.
I'm pretty sure it's the same thing as an oom -lout.
OK, we're we're still going to screw up some of this, but don't worry about the names too much.
You know, we should just name everyone.
Bill one, Bill two, Bill three.
Right. Or Leif Tea.
But anyway, we're going to give it our best go.
Welcome back, my friend.
I'm glad to be back in the studio after this wonderful break.
Same here, man. Same here.
Welcome back yourself.
So, yeah, we're talking today about one of the more unsung operations of World War Two.
Unsung, I guess, depending on where you live.
If you live in Norway, it's sung all over the place.
It's like a top 40 hit there, it's sung so much.
What is now? Yeah. It took a little while, didn't it, weirdly?
Yeah. But here in the US, we don't know about it as much because we were kind of tangential to it, if at all.
It was more a joint operation between the Brits and the Norwegians, the Norwegians.
or Norwegian resistance, we should say.
And the whole thing is called Operation Gunnerside.
And I have to say, I want to give a big thanks to one of our listeners, Mathew Overview, who suggested this one I think back in November.
Oh, wow. And it got it went?
Right to the top of the list.
So here we are talking about it now in January.
Yeah, I'm sure you got that email and you're like unsung, saboteur story, defeating the Nazis.
There's still my heart.
Yeah, so the whole thing kind of starts off...
I think back 1939, when some German physicists figured out that you could split the atom through fission and release a bunch of energy, and very, very quickly after that physicists around the world were like, this is really great.
We can come up with a whole new source of energy for it.
This could also be an extremely dangerous weapon, and right after that, World War II started and the Allies started working on the bomb, and they assumed that the Nazis were also working on a bomb.
So, that's kind of like the mentality that was going on with the story really starts.
Yeah, I mean, it was sort of a race to see who could get there first.
And, I mean, I learned a lot, researching this.
I didn't know a lot about, a lot of this stuff even though we've done episodes about nuclear fission and the like.
But there's more than in one way to skin a cat as it turns out if you want to try and make a reaction big enough to cause a big boom.
And one of the routes that was taken by, well not the Americans, I guess the Germans were trying to take this route was to use something called heavy water, a .k .a., how would you say that?
Deuterium oxide? Mm - hmm.
D2O which is like H2O, it's like regular water.
this heavy water is except instead of a normal hydrogen atom there as an H2O, that is now replaced by a hydrogen isotope deuterium, which makes it literally heavier.
Yeah. And the reason why is because deuterium has a neutron where hydrogen doesn't.
That's the only difference.
I mean, it's still...
You could cook with it.
You could bathe in it.
You probably wouldn't really notice any difference because it's two atomic units heavier.
It's not like you would like be crushed down to the shower floor if you had it running through your house or anything.
Or water balloon fight.
The kids using every one.
Exactly. Giving kids black eyes at that thing?
Yeah. But the reason that it was useful or is useful still in nuclear reactions, it's because of that neutron that it has, right?
When you carry out a nuclear reaction that produces an explosion, you have an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
And that's the one where it just goes caboom and a huge amount of energy is released at once.
Yeah, that's the whole point.
Yes. For the bomb part, but to make the stuff that actually blows up, usually plutonium, you have to carry out controlled nuclear reactions.
And to make it controlled, to kind of bring some order to the chaos and slow things down just enough that it will never explode, yet it will still produce energy that you can used to create plutonium, if you bash uranium with a bunch of neutrons, you add a moderator.
And heavy water is a moderator because all those vast neutrons bouncing around will knock into the heavy water, and it will transfer energy to the heavy water's neutrons.
But it slows the process down.
And in the same way, you couldn't use regular water because regular water would be like go, thanks for the free neutron jump and turn into heavy water, I guess.
So regular water wouldn't work, heavy water would work.
The problem is, is heavy water's really really rare.
Yeah, it's super rare.
And it takes a long time to get just a little bit of it.
I think it's, if you're just looking at a regular water source, there's one deuterium oxide molecule for about every 20 million regular ones.
So it's not needle -in -a -haystack territory, molecularly speaking, but it's not far off.
The Germans went the route of heavy water as their moderator.
The Americans looked around for a moderator and they said, what about Josh Clark?
He's a pretty level headed guy.
I just show up with my note cards in a blazer.
By the way our first side trek of the year.
I reminded Ruby last night that we had a TV show for probably the 15th time in her life, And she's like, you did, and we tried again and actually watched an entire episode Which one?
We watched the one with Jon Hodgman and also starring my neighbor, Catherine.
Which was the final episode, how we wrote it, but not the final episode in how it aired.
We won't get into that, but I have to say dude, you were, like, pretty good in a lot of that as an actor.
And I was not. I disagree.
You're always so hard on yourself.
You were great, man.
You were at least as good as I was.
That's to say you were middling.
I think, I think it's very nice of you to say, but like for a, I think I had a real like outside point of view last night.
I was like, you know, Josh was pretty good in a lot of this.
And really said he really was, and I said I never felt that comfortable and I was doing a good job.
every once a while I was okay, but I think you had real possibilities as an actor.
Well, thank you, I appreciate that.
It was probably from my years' spin as a emo drama kid.
It was pretty good.
Thanks. And Ruby made it through the episode and I was like, hey, that's our neighbor and that's John, you know John, so that I think helped hold our interest a little bit more.
Yeah, that was the space one, right?
Yeah. That was a good one.
It was pretty good.
Um, so long way of saying you were not available as moderator because you weren't born yet.
So the U .S. ended up pursuing graphite as a moderator.
Either one can be used.
We went graphite. The Germans, I guess we'll get to the reason they went with hard water toward the end, right?
Yes. And tagged that in the end?
Yeah, I think so. All right.
So anyway, hard water is what they're after.
And as it turns out, there was a chemist in Norway named Leith Transtad...
Leith Tea. Leith Tea, yeah, exactly.
Who understood how to find these molecules in the best way possible because he was doing it for a different reason, there, right?
Yeah, so Transtad was one of these early people who was like, hey, this is weird and different and new and we can figure out how to get at least very small amounts of it, and there's got to be some cool uses for this, like scientific non -weapony uses.
And one of the ones that he thought of very early on was used as a tracer from like, leaders and leaders in gallons of water, they would just get the tiniest amounts, because I still don't quite understand how they were doing it, but essentially they were separating out this one in 20 million molecule
of heavy water from regular mountain water.
that north black magic yeah and so like the whole plant was originally a hydroelectric power plant and then they converted to using electrolysis to I think create ammonia which is very handy in fertilizers and explosives and then it was Trons taught who is like we need to set up basically a separate
heavy water operation so by the time World War two broke out the plant at ver Mork I'm I'm pretty sure I said that right.
Ver Competitive. Yeah, I got it.
No, I was making sure I didn't screw something else up.
Sorry, that's a quality joke.
Thank you. By that time, that plant was the world leader in heavy water production.
That's right. All right.
So, park that to the side, they're producing heavy water at a one ever seen, like a couple a day.
And World War II begins in 1939.
And like I said, the Germans were like, hey, we should try and get on this heavy water train.
And they didn't – this – not why they invaded Norway, they invaded Norway because they were Nazis.
Norway was neutral, had declared themselves neutral.
But in April of 1940, they invaded anyway and were defeated pretty quickly.
It took a couple of months, even thought they had help from the allies.
They were no match for the German army, and the Germans did as they do.
They establish a Nazi government there, and the people did not like that because they're Norwegian.
They were like, no, no, no, we're gonna resist.
They went on strike here and there, they didn't cooperate in other ways to kind of just, you know, get in the way of progress, of Nazi progress.
And so, the Nazi says, alright, martial law has been declared, If you resist, you will be put to death.
A lot of Norwegians left, obviously, fought from other places, and a lot of them said, You know what?
We are going to stay here, and work with the allies, kind of under cover as moles.
Yeah, it was like a secret resistance.
One of those people was Tronstad, at least, at first.
And then it became clear that he basically needed to get out of Dodge.
He ditched and I think he went straight to the UK.
Because, after the Nazis setup this program, like, it was not a pleasant place to be.
When they took over Norway.
Now, a whole thing Chuck reminded me of, do you remember way, way, way early in the podcast we stumbled upon, famously the White Death, the Finnish sniper, who was just like a farm boy.
Yeah. I feel like I think he killed more Russians than anybody else in the war.
Reminded you of that guy.
Yeah, I just remembered him.
an opiates from Ohio, so I thought I'd give him a shoutout.
I'm surprised he called up that name, nice work.
But Leave Tronstad, he became like a really valuable asset because this guy is like the world leader in heavy water production.
Who has all of the inside dirt on the place where the most heavy water is being produced and its very clear, now that the Nazis have taken over this plant and stepped it up from like a few milliliters a day to, like, I think a few kilograms of heavy water a day that they have designs I'm making an atomic
bomb. And then, with the allies, the three words, Nazi Atomic Bomb, was, yeah, among the most frightening combination of words you could possibly come up with.
Yeah, and even today, you know, you're like, God, a Nazi Atomic Bomb?
That'd be horrible.
And then you remember.
Oh yeah, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on population centers and that was pretty bad too, yet still somehow Nazi atomic bomb seems even worse.
Yeah, it does. So he, like you said, went to the UK.
There he met up in real life with the intelligence people he'd been working with, you know, on the down -low from a long distance, which, I imagine, was a pretty fun meeting.
Sure. They probably hit some T and caught up in person.
man, and he started training these commando units to be saboteurs to eventually do their saboteur work in Norway, and the whole time was staying in contact with his allies at the plant there at V -M trouk, and eventually, and we're just going to say these names, again, I wish we could all nickname them
all to make it easier to keep it up with, but one of the There that he kept in touch with who will play a part in this story, is named Anar Skinnerland, that's pretty easy.
Yeah Swallow blue was his code name.
And that feels like a pretty good place for a break.
I think it is. Yes All right.
So we do remember how to do this and we'll be right back right after this that some of you should know!
Word up, Jerry! Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey.
With Up First from NPR though it doesn't have to be.
Welcome to 15 Easy Minutes.
A place for a break?
I think it is, yes.
Alright, so we do remember how to do this, and we'll be right back right after this.
fts, Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey.
With UpFirst from NPR, though, it doesn't have to be.
Welcome to 15 easy minutes of breaking news, clarity on international and national affairs, and a casualties tone that you can take in with breakfast.
Begin your day informed, ready and refreshed.
Begin your day with UpFirst.
Subscribe to UpFirst from NPR on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Chuck have you seen that movie The Ministry of Un Gentlemenly Warfare?
It's like a newish Guy Ritchie movie?
No! It's pretty good, actually.
Alright. It's like an easy watch.
It's not some big, huge sweeping epic or something you have to really keep up with.
It's just an interesting - It's kind of a Richie movie.
Yeah, right. Well, I would call snatch kind of convoluted.
Well, sure with the accents.
Sure. But there actually was something called the Ministry of Ungently Warfare.
That was the nickname for it.
It was called the Special Operations Executive officially.
And they basically trained saboteurs.
So that's who Leif Transtad threw his Lauden with.
And one of the first things they did for the Norwegians was send them to Scotland and have them train in extreme weather as much as they could.
But I'm thinking the Norwegians would be like, this has this is like summer to us, what is this?
I don't see why they would need to train in Scotland, but trained they were.
And the reason why they were trained for extreme weather and extreme conditions is because of the location of the Valmarc Power Plant or I guess heavy water plant.
Uh, it was in a, a really forbidding place that you would not want to go to without like a car.
Yeah, it was it was tough.
I would say you'd need one of those cool old army jeeps, if you want to get there back then, uh, it was surrounded by a plateau, a mountain plateau called.
Here we go. Uh, Parsanga Vita.
Perfect. It's gotta mean danger or something.
I think it actually means like wide mountain plateau Danger I looked I looked it up because I thought so too I was like this got to be like the name of a God that's gonna kill you or something Yeah, dang.
It means like it is it means high mountain plateau.
I think vida might be a plateau Really?
Maybe Sure dang or I don't know so wait.
So the What was the guy's name Ricky?
I can't remember, but he was saying like living the Plateau loco?
Oh, God, Ricky Martin.
Ricky Martin. Ricky Martin.
From Minudo? That's right.
Shout out to Minudo.
You knew that was coming.
I did not. Not that they are going to make an appearance.
All right. So it was surrounded by that mountain plateau.
It is a very, very cold place.
I think Lily dug up this kind of old factoid, it freezes flames in the fires is how cold it was there.
Not literally of course, but those Norwegians are for the turn of a phrase.
So Americans came in and they said, why don't we just drop a bunch of bombs on this plant?
What's your problem with these saboteurs?
And they said no. Tron itiner, we've got ammonia tanks there.
Liquid ammonia. You're definitely gonna kill a bunch of civilians nearby.
and all this stuff is underground, under concrete and metal in these bunkers and it probably wouldn't destroy everything you wanted to destroy anyway, he also didn't say this out loud, but was like I didn't want you to destroy the only hard water plant we have because this is a valuable thing and all
of sudden you would own, not the patent, but the process for that.
Yeah and after the war, who knows who's gonna need that stuff.
I think three other resistance fighters who parachuted back in Norway and essentially just became back woodsman for months, setting up a camp, literally in a trapper's cabin, and lived off hunting reindeer and basically became the first little toehold of this operation of Norwegian resistance fighters
coming back to sabotage the Vermark plant.
Yes, exactly. So they're there, they set up their camp, They are eating reindeer.
It is very sad for reindeer.
Sad but delicious. You've never had reindeer, have you?
Yes, a couple of times.
Really? I was about to say, where the heck do you even get reindeer?
I don't know, somebody sells reindeer meat in, like, some weird majority of Missouri or something.
Yes, I'm sure there are people in Maine right now who are like, you've never had reindeer?
We always have some across the pond here.
Right, exactly. So, about a month after that, they launched another operation, Operation Freshman, because they were like these guys are going to need some real, you know, some muscle behind them.
So, they sent in two air gliders with 39 British soldiers, and they were just kind of coming in, you know, behind them as backup.
It did not work out so well though.
One of the planes crashed into a mountain and killed everybody on board.
The other one crashed into the ground.
Not where they were supposed to land, but a distance from that.
It didn't kill everybody, but they saw this happen.
The Gestapo found the survivors and executed them basically on the spot.
They also found a map that showed that they were headed for the hard water plant.
They didn't locate those original people and they just sort of stayed there hunkering down in that cabin for awhile and surviving undetected.
Yeah. So Operation Freshman was, like you said, the idea was to just storm the heavy water planet, overwhelm it and blow it up.
And they decided, instead of sending 39 soldiers with a ton of equipment, including bicycles I read, we'll just try a more subtle touch.
So they went to Joaquin wow Hannah Berg who was 23 at the time.
They're like, you're basically an old ban in World War II standards why don't you lead a team for Operation Gunnerside and this is finally the operation that this whole episode is based on.
And it was a small tactical saboteur team who went to the heavy water plant to destroy the Vermarch's heavy water production capabilities.
I love this kind of thing.
Mm hmm. It's just the kind of thing.
And if you're thinking, oh man, why is it there a movie about this?
There was an older movie with Kirk Douglas that, I don't think, you know, set the world on fire.
But I think this could go for for maybe a Guy Ritchie update.
Totally. Yeah. I doubt if he would do it after the other one, but, you know.
I don't know. I don't think he's opposed to making a sequel sequel or a reboot.
I mean, Snatch was basically lockstock and And two smoking barrels done over again.
Yeah, he made a lot of those, several of those Sherlock Holmes movies I think, right?
No, Loc stock and two smoking barrels.
Oh, I see, you were just trying to take a little sidestep in the logical direction, right?
That didn't follow him.
First one back. Yep, there you go.
So yeah, I think the first one was pretty good, I don't know about the second one, was that any good?
I didn't see any of them.
even the first one was not bad.
If you don't let yourself stop and think like, who would have the audacity to make Sherlock Holmes like a rough -and -tumble action hero and just kind of give yourself over to it, it's pretty good.
Yeah, and I can also recommend for kids, especially younger girls, the Inola Holmes movies are pretty good.
Yeah, both of them are good.
Yeah, I enjoyed those.
We have to do a Sherlock Holmes episode at least one week.
haven't done that? We totally have to, because I don't really know anything about much of that.
It's gonna be like our chess or soccer episode, though, I have a feeling.
Are there hom senseies that get upset?
It's a whole hornet's nest we're gonna stick it in.
What are the clown, what's the clown band?
Insane Clown Posse?
Yeah, but what are their people called?
The Juggalos. The guy who does my hair is a former juggalo.
I think those are two words you'd like to hear together.
Former juggalo? Yeah.
Yeah. It's like Former Holmes.
Yeah, after they leave that world behind Hey, I don't think the other people let you leave that world behind.
Oh boy, it's threatening.
Where were we, Chuck?
Oh yeah, GunnerS NORIDE Yeah, we are at Operation GunnerS NORIDE.
this guy, runeburg, he didn't know even why that plant was a target.
They basically just said, All right, We want you to go destroy some pipes at the plant, and the people that tried before you all died and you might as well.
Pip -pip. Yeah, that's basically it.
That's all the information he had, but he was game.
He was that kind of guy.
Yeah, I mean, they accepted cyanide pills as part of this operation.
And yeah, they had no idea what they were doing.
They just knew they had to go blow up districts.
guy Runberg, he didn't know even why that plant was a target.
They basically just said here old chap.
We want you to go destroy some pipes at the plant and the people that tried before you all died and you might as well.
Pip pip. Yeah that's basically it that's all the information he had but he was game, he was that kind of guy.
Yeah I mean they accepted cyanide pills as part of this operation and and.
Yeah they had no idea what they were doing they just knew they had to go blow up some pipes and that was that.
That's how dedicated these people were, that they were willing to sacrifice their life to try to blow up some pipes because the Brits told them it was going to help cripple the Nazi war effort.
So, I think there was five of them that parachuted in just like the Operation Swallow people had before.
But they were miles, miles away from the landing site.
They just maybe got blown off course or something like that.
It took them five days of trudging through the snow, although I think they might have had skis, to find the Operation Swallow people who'd been sitting there eating reindeer the whole time.
And even when they found them in this trapper's cabin and hooked up with them, and now there's nine people in this operation, they were still 40 miles away from the heavy water plant.
And again, it's like snowy in February in Norway, you can just imagine.
Yeah, yeah, there's a suspension bridge.
There's one way to get through it.
But of course, they had Nazi guards there, so that wasn't the best route.
The other options were a literal minefield or, I guess, mine forest that they could've crossed through at Great Peril, or they could hike all the way down into the gorge, which had like a half -frozen river running through it, and then go to the plant that way and then hike back up.
And so they said, they took a vote, I guess.
They said, minefield, no good.
Nazis on the ridge, no good.
Let's just get on our skis as we do.
And hike down that gorge.
And that's how they did it.
We do need to mention one little side thing that we failed to mention.
Mm -hmm. Is that before this all happened, when Run continually was debriefed and sort of getting his act together to go, he went into a hardware store.
and apparently on a whim as the story goes bought some heavy duty bolt cutters like metal bolt cutters mm -hmm and to just park that right there because you know if you introduce bolt cutters and I guess in this case act two you know they're gonna cut something in act three right so he's got this bolt
kutters and they decide to go down into the gorge as their route to the hard water plant Yeah.
And again, not just going down into a gorge, crossing a half frozen river and climbing up a cliff, get to the top of the gorge on the other side, where the heavy water plant was.
And apparently that route was such an unlikely route that the Nazis didn't even bother guarding the gorge.
No, nobody would go down there.
Exactly. So, February 27th, they made it for the 40 miles to their target.
I think it was the night, like right before midnight, this team of nine saboteurs from company Vinje, the Norwegian Resistance, are sitting there outside of the Vmark power plant, figuring out exactly how they're going to get in.
They decided that they would split up.
There were five of them.
As they were sitting outside, they were faced with their first obstacle, which was a fence.
Apparently the Brits had said there's a fence so here's a hair saw.
And the guy who was in charge, who was it?
Runeburg? Yeah, yeah.
His second -in -command, Knut Hawkelied.
We're like running through these Norwegian names, man.
Hey, that sounds pretty good to me.
Okay so, and I know it's Knut.
I always thought it was Knut but it's Knut because I watched this cool little Nova special and he was interviewed and they definitely said Knut.
He said, Roonberg, don't you have some bolt cutters?
Right. And Runeburg gave them the bolt cutters And instead of this loud, tedious, laborious hacksaw that they would have tried to use and probably gotten caught using, they just snipped right through the fence in a few minutes thanks to Remberg's foresight back in Cambridge.
That's right! Snip snip.
So, that paid off pretty quickly.
Much more quickly than I thought.
Yeah, that was still Act 2.
Well, I think I got this saying wrong, if you introduce bowl cutters in Act 2, they're going to snip something in Act 2.
Yeah. They're on the property now.
Five of the people, five of the nine, provide cover.
The other two, they had Tommy guns.
They had chloroform.
They were set for an attack if need be.
They were keeping a watch on like, the barracks.
Because there weren't hundreds of German soldiers.
I get the idea that if they were going with the initial .29, that it was probably a couple of dozen maybe.
I mean, that's just a guess.
I don't even know if it was that many.
Maybe not. as important as this heavy water plant was to the atomic program in Germany, it was so remote that they were just like, I think it's going to take a few people.
We got mines, there's a gorge, we got people on the bridge it's fine.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So they were keeping watch on the barracks, they were keeping a watch on that bridge for the guardsman there and just sort of waiting around for any activities so they could get those Tommy guns out or maybe silently chloroform a Nazi, which was a dream of any Norwegian saboteur.
You know they wanted to do this, so bad.
Yeah. So, uh, the other four...
And Trondstadt had previously told them, though, like, if they can't get in that way, there's a cable shaft, you can probably slip through, and that's what they ended up using.
I just want to circle back and emphasize the fact that this man was a linchpin to a sabotage clan.
All they had to do is show up to work and leave a door open.
He could have gone home right after that.
Yeah. And they're like, I just threw up.
I have to get out of here.
And my guess, this is 1943.
There's an 85 % chance that his illness was a severe hangover.
Which makes it even worse.
So luckily, yes, they found that that hatch was open in the cable shaft and they basically slid through.
The two who made it through the cable shaft was Runeburg, the leader, and a guy named Frederick...
Yeah, Kaiser. Frederick.
Frederick. Not Frederick.
Yeah, eat your heart out, Fredericks.
It's probably Frida.
Frida? Yeah. Would be my guess.
They're like Frederick.
That's how we say it in America.
Anyway, Kaiser and Reu Boerk, they were the ones who went down this cable shaft and they start getting busy.
I think Kaiser was holding a gun – Whoa, whoa, whoa.
What? They're like, We have some extra time.
Sorry, go ahead. yes.
So they went down to shaft even as well.
And so almost immediately they found a watchman.
I take him to be a Norwegian watchman maybe.
And they were like, you know, you're now a hostage.
Sit there and be quiet.
And he's like, No problem, you guys do whatever you want.
And despite his complicity, Kaiser was like, This is my one chance.
And so we chloroformed from the watchman anyway.
And so, as he's doing this, Roomburg went and planted the explosives on the pipes just as he was told to do, and right about then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a explosion of glass as a window shatters, and Roomburg and Kaizer and the chloroformed guard all turn and look, and the other two
men from the other explosives team come in through the window.
That's right. They're like, it's just us guys.
We're all here together So we can get this thing bombed up quicker they set up those explosives the four of them, I guess at this point and The fuses at the time were two -minute fuses that would give enough time to get the heck out of there Runberg said no.
I really want to make sure we hear this thing go off.
So we're gonna go down to 30 seconds I imagine everyone said no.
How about a minute?
He said no 30 seconds is plenty So they're getting ready to light the fuses the guard that they had at gunpoint It said, can I get those glasses.
If they blow up, there my optometrist has quit, and retired, I'm not gonna be able to replace those things very easily.
So they said, sure, get your glasses.
And at that point, another civilian employee, Norwegian obviously, comes into the room, and is now another temporary prisoner .rondenberg lights those fuses, counts to 10, which means they only have 20 seconds and then says, run to the two civilians.
They get the heck out of there as well.
I reckon in the movie, Guy Ritchie would really have to sort of fudge things.
Because what is not exciting in a movie like this, is when is all you hear, and that's kind of all they heard.
It wasn't a huge explosion.
It's not like they were blowing up this entire plant like you would probably do in a movie.
They were just trying to damage these pipes.
And he said that later on he said they heard a tiny insignificant pop, also because it was underground under that concrete and stuff.
Windows did break though, enough at least to rouse some sleeping Nazis.
This part is very movie like, because the four that were guarding kind of watched as a half dressed Nazi gets out and was like, oh, do I hear anything?
Do I hear anything?
But apparently that was a pretty noisy plant, so he just goes back to bed.
I can't help but imagining like a Sergeant Schulz -type stumbling out - it totally.
So yeah, it wasn't a big deal and as a matter of fact, I mean, it turned out to be a big deal but like, it, yeah, it didn't cause like that huge explosion where guards start coming out of nowhere and you know, there's alarms going off and searchlights coming on.
It wasn't anything like that and in fact all nine people who were the saboteurs in this operation got away they escaped scout free and in retrospect, not a single bullet was fired.
And not a single person died.
and this highly -successful, amazingly -daring sabotage operation.
That's right, but that is not the end of the story, so maybe we should take our second break.
Yes. And we'll come back and finish up right after this.
Wanna learn about a terrorist ,don't call a cleredactyl How to take a His stomachs should know Word up Jerry All right.
So, as you said, the saboteurs got away.
I think one of them, Polson, took off to Scotland by sea.
Runberg and the and the rest of the gang stayed on their skis as the Norwegians do — they skied about 200 miles, which is like nothing for them.
They ski to Sweden in fact, with Nazis chasing them.
They had planes above trying to locate them.
Like that part would be a pretty good part of the movie, I guess.
But they got away and there was a German, head of the German Special Forces in Norway who called it the most splendid coup.
However, it only took a few months before the Nasbys were able to restart production at the plant, I think this happened in February.
so in May of that same year, they had ramped back up to full capacity, which seems like a big disappointment.
But no, because here come the Americans with their initial plan to just bomb the plant.
And just like they were warned, it did not do a ton damage to anyone but the 22 Norwegian civilians who were killed.
Yeah, this heavy water plant was in this basement of a power plant, So it was not easy to get to as far as like aerial bombs are concerned.
Especially the bombs back then, you know.
Yeah, for, for real, but the thing is it did show the Nazis that like hey this remote isolated actually surprisingly Vulnerable plant.
Yeah, that's like the one source of our heavy water We should probably stop creating heavy water there and move the operations to Germany Yeah, so they did and remember the Nazis heavy water program is set back a few months.
And this is at a time where the allies are racing in the Manhattan project to create the atomic bomb, assuming the Nazis are in the same race as them.
The allies understand that we can do this in two three years, so to set back a Nazi atomic program three months is an enormous setback in a two or three -year race to become the first to come up with an atomic bomb.
So from that standpoint, even at the time they were like that was a very successful operation Even though like you said the Nazis got back up to full full capacity in just a couple of months But as we said, they were moving everything to Germany, and I guess the company linga crew the Norwegian freedom
fighters They were keeping an eye on all the movements of the heavy water from I guess their their moles inside the heavy water plant And they knew that the Nazis were gonna move the heavy water, and when they were gonna do it, and how they were gonna do it.
That's right, so they come up with another plan to further thwart their efforts.
And they determined the best way to do this was to sabotage the ferry that's gonna be ferrying everything over to Germany.
So, they knew it would cause some civilian lives, but they figured that was their best chance to get it before it even had a chance to get, you know, set up again.
One man, an old canute, is back on the scene is back on the scene.
He was the Second In Command, there at Gunner's side, if you remember.
And he was leading the team this time.
He had been promoted, I guess.
And in February 1944 they set off explosions on the bow of that ship.
It was a ferry called the Hydro, and fourteen Norwegians sadly were killed, along with four Germans.
And this again was a big, big success.
Yes. For a long time, they weren't even positive that there was heavy water, or they couldn't prove at least that there was heavy water on board.
And there was a German heavy water expert after the war that said, no, those were just zolzowdummy's dummy.
And I guess to try and undermine the idea that it was a success.
But PBS Nova to the Rescue in 2003, they organized a salvage of one of those barrels from that sunken ferry and they proved that it contained heavy water so it was a great success after all.
That was the Nova Mini documentary I watched.
It was really good.
But one of the things that they cover in that the reason why the allies were like maybe those were dummies is that there were reports of survivors of that ferry sinking that barrels have been floating, like some people were trying to like climb on to the barrels to survive.
They were like heavy waters not supposed to float in regular water.
And so they were like, it's possible that this was a decoy because also intelligence showed that some heavy water did arrive in Germany.
Well, it turns out, thanks to this Nova special, I'm about to spoil it, that those barrels that floated were the most pure form of heavy water that they had at Behrmark.
The barrels weren't full, and so the air inside the barrels was making them float.
Wow. Yes. So it was heavy water that they sabotaged.
They did put a dent in the amount of heavy water.
I think there was a 15 ton shipment, and the Germans were only able to collect, I think before that were floating.
So it was a big deal too, but again 18 people lost their lives for it, 14 of them innocent Norwegians.
Yeah. And I think that's that's actually something they wrestle with in the NOVA documentary because they interviewed some of these people we've talked about, and they're trying to reconcile their guilt with how impactful the mission was, especially living for decades, with that gnawing rumor in the back
of their head that those had been dummy barrels.
And it resulted in the loss of so many civilian lives.
So I think they were quite relieved to find that it really was heavy water, and still there's debate today over, even with the success of Gunner Side, even with the success of that swallow group thinking of the hydrofairy, how much of an impact it really had on Germany's atomic program and in fact how
much of a program, genuine rumor in the back of their head that those had been dummy barrels Yeah, and it resulted in the loss of so many civilian lives Yeah, so I think they were quite relieved to find that it really was heavy water And still there's debate today over even with the success of Gunnerside,
even with the success of that swallow group sinking of the hydro ferry, how much of an impact it really had on Germany's atomic program, and in fact how much of a program Germany had during World War II to build an atomic bomb.
Yeah, for sure. The official historian of the SOE, MRDFoot, great name, said that it changed the course of the war.
The fact that they were denied that that regular, steady supply of heavy water really put a dent in their operation.
Livia, very astutely, points out another factor was that here scientists were, a lot of them were Jewish scientists, that the Nazis were using.
And they either escaped or were murdered, which also slowed down the Germans pursued the bomb.
But also, I think you found out too, that was it the Germans regretted pursuing heavy water?
Was that what it was?
Instead of graphite?
So, they were basically they took a wrong turn right out of the gate with what they chose as a moderator.
I think like, did you say earlier that the United States chose graphite, right?
Yeah, we use graphite.
They went with heavy water, which was a mistake.
Yeah. Well, they're both really great moderators, but graphite is available in abundance.
You can find it anywhere, right?
Sure. Heavy water is really hard to come by.
So right out of the gate, the Germans chose a moderator that was really difficult to get and that there was only one place basically in the world that was producing it whereas the Americans just went out and bought a bunch of graphite at the grocery store, basically to use as their moderator.
So right away that first hurdle the Americans overcame the Germans ran into.
And the most interesting thing is it was based on a miscalculation.
Yeah, that's right.
If they had have calculated correctly than they would have known from the beginning, right?
Yeah, so I think whoever conducted, I can't remember their names, but they conducted experiments on the viability of graphite as a moderators and they basically forgot to carry a one or something.
I think what it really was that they didn't factor in the influence of impurities in their graphite sample and they concluded that graphite wasn't a very good moderator so let's use heavy water instead.
So, essentially, even before the program started the Nazi atomic program was just like dead in the water, basically.
Yeah, gotta carry that out.
Yes, but the Allies didn't know this and it turns out that just the idea that the Nazis were involved in heavy water production suggested that they were after an atomic bomb and that the Allies then were in a foot race against them and that led to the creation of an actual atomic bomb.
So the Nazis directly influenced the production of an atomic bomb, even though it wasn't theirs.
The Nazis being involved in heavy water production sounds like some sort of weird October FET slogan.
It would be like, what does this mean?
They'd be like, just drink this huge gallon here.
I mentioned that film, 1965's The Heroes of Telemark with Kirk Douglas as sort of a mashed -up fiction character based on both R training and Tron Shot that like I said, wasn't like the biggest film ever, but it was an American film.
So we did know about this operation more than they did in Norway until like 2015 state broadcaster in our kay random miniseries called the heavy water war in 2015 and that's when a lot of Norwegian's kind of first learned of this operation we're talking Tron Stott, if you want to button up his story,
you feel bad for this guy because he didn't get to parachute in and actually have feet on the ground for this kind of thing.
He finally got to do that kind of thing in October of 1944.
He got under that parachute for Operation Sunshine, which was, you know, protecting Norway's some of their industrial assets and infrastructure from German saboteurs as the Nazis were on their way out.
so he got his his hands dirty, which he had always wanted to do.
But very sadly, the following May, I believe in 1945, he was shot dead by the brother of a Norwegian collaborator who he was questioning.
So he tragically died as well.
Yeah, which is said at least he did get to get to oversee and fly in on Operation Sunshine.
I wonder if he got to use any chloroform.
Maybe, so, Chuck, I think that's it for the Norwegian sabotage operation Gunner side.
We haven't figured out what we're gonna name this episode.
I like Olivia's title.
Oh man it's one of the better ones.
You want to go ahead and tell everyone?
Yes. She titled this article, like water for Nazis.
Well, thanks to Olivia for that and thanks to you for listening and how about we setup a listener mail so I can thank that person too.
That's right, this is from Justin Meeks about Tabern on the green.
Hey, guys! She chloroform.
Maybe. So Chuck, I think that's it for the Norwegian Sabotage Operation Gunnerside, we haven't figured out what we're going to name this episode.
I like Livia's title.
Oh, man. It's one of the better ones.
You want to go ahead and tell everyone?
She titled this article, lyric water for Nazis.
Intic pronounair did you hear her?
Yep. Really good. Well thanks to Livia for that and thanks to you for listening.
And how about a, we set up a listener mail so I can thank that person too.
That's right. This is from Justin Meakes about tavern on the green.
Hey guys. And this shows you how long we've been off because I've been holding on to this one.
My grandma had a wonderful related story to tavern on the green.
She was from rural Montana and traveled to New York in the late 90s with a group of old ladies over Thanksgiving.
One of her traveling group actually had sold David Letterman, his Montana ranch, so they went to a taping of a show and he invited them backstage.
He found out they were going to be in town for Thanksgiving and invited them to have Thanksgiving dinner with him at Tabernon the Green.
What?! Wow, what a guy.
Grandma said that was one of the first thanksgivings she could remember that she didn't eat turkey because, atarenondaleGreen, they had to order their steak and lobster, especially because Letterman was paying for it.
Grandma never missed an episode of Letterman even before this.
Certainly never did afterwards.
Letterman is seriously a great dude and love that Grandma got to meet one of her heroes like this.
Thanks for the many years of the podcast, keep up the great work.
Come back and see us in Denver.
That is from Justin Meeks and Justin we're going to head back to Denver at some point.
But we should probably tell people since were getting emails some emails that we are not doing live shows in 2025.
Yeah, including Sketch Fest.
We've gotten a lot of emails from people that it's like, the Sketch Fest schedule's wrong because it doesn't have stuff you should know on there, right?
And yes, we're sorry to inform you, we're not going to be at Sketch Fest for what, the first time in...
Like many years. 10 years maybe, or something?
Yeah, we're just taking a down year from doing live shows.
We're gonna be back out there again, so fear not.
We're just taking a down year, And that's like four less trips that we're going to take and we're going to be with our family, and and that's a decision we made that we feel good about.
Yeah. And ironically, I just reached diamond status for twenty, twenty five.
Oh, I've never been, I could and believed it.
I got the email and I forwarded it to Yumi.
I was like, well now I know it's going to be written on my Headstone.
Yeah. And I'll be buried next to you and it'll just say sadly peaked at platinum.
Uh, what else, man.
That's it. Okay. Well, thank you very much to...
Justin Meeks. Justin Meeks whose grandma has a great story and who I assume did not go on to become Letterman's stalker.
Right. I don't think so.
If you want to be like Justin and email us a pretty cool story about David Letterman or otherwise, you can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iheartradio .com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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