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Stuff You Should Know - Episode Summary: WWII Sabotage Spotlight: Operation Gunnerside
Episode Overview Podcast Title: Stuff You Should Know Episode Title: WWII Sabotage Spotlight: Operation Gunnerside Description: This episode dives into a little-known WWII sabotage operation involving British Special Operations and the Norwegian Resistance, which aimed to hinder Nazi Germany's pursuit of an atomic bomb.
Key Themes and Discussions
Introduction to Operation Gunnerside
- Operation Gunnerside is presented as one of the lesser-known yet significant operations of WWII, especially within Norway, while it remains obscure in the U.S.
- The operation was suggested by a listener, Matthew Mimalt-Bouchard, highlighting its cult following in Norway.
Background Context
- The episode discusses the early understanding of nuclear fission and its potential for both energy and weaponry.
- The necessity for heavy water in nuclear reactions, particularly as a moderator, is emphasized:
- Heavy Water (Deuterium Oxide D2O): Contains deuterium, making it useful in slowing down neutrons to control nuclear reactions.
- The rarity of heavy water compared to regular water, making it a crucial resource.
The Role of the Norwegian Resistance
- The Germans invaded Norway in 1940, despite its neutral stance, aiming to control the heavy water production at the Vemork plant.
- Leif Tronstad, a key Norwegian chemist, becomes instrumental in the resistance against Nazi control of heavy water production.
Formation of Saboteur Groups
- Tronstad's escape to the UK allowed him to train Norwegian resistance fighters in sabotage techniques, leading to the creation of “Company Ling.”
- The episode outlines the subsequent operations, including Operation Grouse and Operation Freshman, both intended to disrupt German heavy water production.
Operation Gunnerside
- Led by Joaquim Rundberg, this operation was characterized by secrecy and tactical precision:
- The team faced difficult terrain and navigated through snow and icy conditions to reach their target.
- They successfully infiltrated the Vemork plant and caused significant damage to heavy water production facilities.
- Despite the odds, all saboteurs escaped without casualties, marking the operation as a success.
Aftermath and Impact
- Although the Germans quickly resumed production, the operation delayed their atomic ambitions, giving the Allies a crucial advantage in the race towards developing their own atomic bomb.
- The episode reflects on the moral implications of sabotage and civilian casualties, particularly in a subsequent operation that resulted in the deaths of Norwegian civilians.
Historical Significance
- The discussion concludes by assessing Operation Gunnerside's overall impact on the war, touching on historical debates about the efficacy of Germany's atomic program and how close they really came to creating an atomic bomb.
- Tronstad's later missions and his tragic death post-war are highlighted, providing a personal angle to the historical narrative.
Conclusion
- The episode wraps up with a humorous note on the cultural legacy of such military operations and the ongoing fascination with WWII history, particularly how these events are remembered differently in various countries.
Key Takeaways
- Operation Gunnerside serves as an example of effective sabotage in wartime.
- The significance of heavy water in nuclear development during WWII.
- The moral complexities surrounding sabotage operations involving civilian casualties.
- Historical narratives can shift based on geographic perspectives and cultural significance.
Listener Engagement
- The hosts encourage listeners to share their thoughts and stories related to the episode, emphasizing community interaction and engagement with historical narratives.
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This summary provides a comprehensive overview of the episode's content, highlighting the key discussions and themes while maintaining a structured and accessible format.
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Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:15Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry'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 welcomed 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've been gone for a long time. Yeah. And I'm like, do I even know how to do this anymore?
0:53Yeah, same here. I keep making this sound whenever I move. Oh, no, no, don't do that. I can't help it. It's just, I'm that rusty. And also, this topic, it's good, but 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 an umlaut. Is it? Okay. I mean, I'm going to treat them as umlauts. I'm pretty sure it's the same thing as an umlaut. Okay. Okay. We're still going to screw up some of this, but don't worry about the names too much.
1:32You know, we should just name everyone, you know, Bill 1, Bill 2, Bill 3. Right, or Leaf T. 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 II. 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. Yeah. It took a little while, didn't it, weirdly? Yeah. But here in the U.S., we don't know about it as much because we were kind of tangential to it, if at all.
2:15It was more a joint operation between the Brits and the Norwegians, the 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, Matthew Mimalt-Bouchard, who suggested this one, I think, back in November. Oh, wow. And 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? Be still my heart. Yeah. So the whole thing kind of starts off, I think, back in like 1939, when some German physicists figured out that you could split the atom through fission and release a bunch of energy.
3:01And very, very quickly after that, the 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 this 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.
3:40But there's more than 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. Okay. 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.
4:28That'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. So 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 kid. The kid's using heavy water. Exactly. Give him kids black eyes at that thing. Yeah. So but the reason that it was useful or is useful still in nuclear reactions is because of that neutron that it has. Right. So when you carry out a nuclear reaction that produces an explosion, you have an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
5:06That's the one where it just goes kaboom 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 use 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 fast 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.
5:54In the same way, you couldn't use regular water because regular water would be like, oh, thanks for the free neutron, chump, and turn into heavy water, I guess. So regular water wouldn't work. Heavy water would work. The problem is heavy water is 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 like 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.
6:38The 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 and a blazer. By the way, our first sidetrack of the year. I reminded Ruby last night that we had a TV show for the probably 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 John Hodgman and also starring my neighbor, Catherine, which was the final episode, how we wrote it. but not the final episode and how it aired. Right. 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.
7:27I 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 you're – it's very nice of you to say, but, like, from an – 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 Emily said, he really was. And I said, I never felt that comfortable and like I was doing a good job. Like every once in a while I was okay, but I felt, and I think you had real possibilities as an actor. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It was probably from a year spent as an emo drama kid.
8:02It 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, you know, helped hold our interest a little bit more. Yeah, that was like the space one, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a good one. It was pretty good. 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. Tag that in the end?
8:40Yeah, 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 Lief Tronstad. Lief T. Lief T. 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 Tronstad 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 use it as a tracer, which I guess you give somebody a glass of heavy water and then, you know, look at their kidneys and see if there's heavy water coming out of them and be like, well, there's your leak.
9:35Right. That's what I think. Yeah, exactly. So that's why he was pursuing it. And he was doing that for a company called Vimork Norsk. Not Norst or Norse. Norsk with a K. Hydroplant. And that was in the county of, of course, Telemark. Right. In the country of? I guess Norway, right? Sure. Yeah. You got a word like Norsk in front of you? You're talking Norway. Yeah. Yeah, so he's at work producing a few milliliters of that, what, like every day or so? Yeah, from like liters and liters and gallons of water. They would just get the tiniest amounts because I still don't quite understand how they were doing it.
10:19But essentially, they were separating out this one in 20 million molecule of heavy water from regular mountain water. Norse 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 Tronstadt who was like, we need to set up basically a separate heavy water operation. So by the time World War II broke out, the plant at Vermork, I'm pretty sure I said that right, Vermork and Vermindi. Vermork and Vermindi? Vermork and Vermindi.
11:00I got it. Okay. It just took a second. And I was like, well, I'm going to laugh at 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 rate no one had ever seen, like a cup full 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 that's not why they invaded Norway. They invaded Norway because they were Nazis.
11:38Norway 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 though they had help from the Allies. They were no match for the German army. And the Germans did as they do. They established a Nazi government there. And the people did not like that because they're Norwegian. They were like, no, no, no. we're going to 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, all right, martial law has been declared.
12:15If you resist, you will be put to death. And so a lot of Norwegians left, obviously, fought from other places. And a lot of them said, you know what, we're going to stay here and maybe work with the allies kind of undercover as moles. Yeah, it's like a secret resistance, right? And one of those people was Tronstad, at least at first. And then it became clear that he basically needed to get out of Dodge. So he ditched and went to, I think he went straight to the UK because after the Nazis set up this program, like it was not a pleasant place to be when they took over Norway. And the whole thing, Chuck, reminded me of, do you remember way, way, way early in the podcast we stumbled upon simo haia the white death the finnish sniper who was just like a farm boy yeah like i think killed more russians than anybody else in the war uh-huh um yeah that's remind you of that guy yeah i just remembered simo haia so i thought i'd give him a shout out yeah but i'm surprised you called up that name nice work so uh but leaf 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.
13:34And it's 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 on making an atomic bomb. And with the Allies, the three words Nazi atomic bomb was 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 a Nazi atomic bomb seems even worse.
14:13Yeah, 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. They probably had some tea and caught up in person. And he started training these commando units to be saboteurs to eventually do their, you know, saboteur work in Norway. And the whole time was staying in contact with his allies at the plant there at Vimork. 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 up with.
14:56But one of the guys there that he kept in touch with who will play a part in this story is named Einar Skinnerland. That's pretty easy. Yeah. Swallowblue 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.
15:28Word up, Jerry.
15:42Chuck, have you seen that movie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare? It's like a newish Guy Ritchie movie. No. It's pretty good, actually. All right. It's like an easy watch. Like, it's not some big, huge, sweeping epic or something you have to really, you know, keep up with. It's just a kind of an interesting— It's a Guy Ritchie movie. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would call snatch kind of convoluted. Well, sure, with the accents. Sure. But there actually was something called the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. That was the nickname for it. It was called the Special Operations Executive, officially.
16:18And they basically trained saboteurs. So that's who Leif Tronstadt threw his lot in with. And one of the first things they did for the Norwegians was send them to Scotland and have them train in like extreme weather as much as they could. But I'm thinking like the Norwegians would be like, this is like summer to us. What is this? Like I don't see why they would need to train in Scotland, but trained they were. Yeah. And the reason why they were trained for extreme weather and extreme conditions is because of the location of the Vermark power plant or I guess heavy water plant. It was in a really forbidding place that you would not want to go to without like a car.
16:58Yeah, 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. It was surrounded by a plateau, a mountain plateau called. Here we go. Hardanga Vida. Perfect. That's got to 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, that's got to be like the name of a god that's going to kill you or something. Yeah, Hardanger. I'm not sure what that is. It means high mountain plateau. I think Vita might be a plateau. Really? Maybe Hardanger. I don't know.
17:36I don't remember. So, wait. Oh, what was the guy's name? Ricky. I can't remember, but he was saying like living the plateau loco.
17:50Ricky Martin Ricky Martin Ricky Martin from Menudo that's right shout out to Menudo who knew that was coming I did not I knew they were going to make an appearance alright so it was surrounded by that mountain plateau it is a very very cold place I think Livia dug up this kind of old factoid it freezes flames in the fire is how cold it was there Not literally, of course, but, you know, those Norwegians are with 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. Tronsad was like, we've got ammonia tanks there, liquid ammonia.
18:35You're definitely going to 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, you know, didn't say this out loud, but was like, I don't want you to destroy the only hard water plant we have because this is a valuable thing. And all of a sudden you would kind of own not the patent, but the process for that. Yeah. And after the war, who knows who's going to need that stuff. So exactly. Yeah. It was a little bit of national pride, too, that was driving it.
19:07So he actually talked him out of it. The allies or the Americans, I guess, were put off for a little while. And they're like, all right, you go ahead and do your little sabotage thing. Let's see how you do. So that whole group of Norwegian resistance fighters was called Company Ling. And Company Ling kind of made it over as the group of trained saboteurs from the special operations executive. So Company Ling, they launched an operation, Operation Grouse. Great operation name. Yeah. But apparently the SOA didn't think so because they renamed it Operation Swallow. Yeah. And the whole thing was led by a guy named Jens Anton Poulsen, which I think I nailed just then.
19:52Except it's Jens. Oh, man. I semi-nailed it. No, you had it except for that, but that's okay. Okay. So Jens Anton Poulsen led, I think, three other resistance fighters who parachuted back in Norway. and essentially just became backwoodsmen for months, setting up like a camp, literally in like a trapper's cabin, and lived off hunting reindeer and just basically became the first little toehold of this operation of Norwegian resistance fighters coming back to sabotage the Wehrmacht plant. Yes, exactly. So they're there, they set up their camp, they're eating reindeer. It's very sad for reindeer. Sad but delicious.
20:38You've never had reindeer, have you? Yeah, a couple times. Really? No. I was about to say, where the heck do you even get reindeer? I don't know. I'm sure somebody sells reindeer meat in, like, somewhere weird, like Missouri or something. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure there's people in Maine right now that 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.
21:17It 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, you know, a distance from that. And it didn't kill everybody, but they, you know, they saw this happen. The Gestapo found the survivors and executed them basically on the spot and 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, you know, hunkering down in that cabin for a while and surviving undetected.
21:53Yeah. So Operation Freshman was like you said, it was the idea was just storm the heavy water plant, overwhelm it and blow it up. and they decided instead, okay, 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, oh man, Joaquin Runenberg, who was 23 at the time. They're like, you're basically an old man in World War II standards. Why don't you lead a team for Operation Gunner Side? 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 Vemarks heavy water production capabilities.
22:46I love this kind of thing. It's just the kind of thing. And if you're thinking, oh, man, why is 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 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 or a reboot. I mean, Snatch was basically Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels done over again. Yeah. He made a lot of those. There were several of those Sherlock Holmes movies, I think, right?
23:19No, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. No. Oh, I see. You were just kind of taking a little sidestep in the logical direction, right? Yeah. I didn't follow. 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. 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 what, you know, I can also recommend for kids, especially younger girls, Enola Holmes.
24:04The Enola Holmes movies are pretty good. Both of them are good. Yeah, I enjoyed those. We have to do a Sherlock Holmes episode at least one. We haven't done that? No, not as far as I know. Yeah, we totally have to because I don't really know anything about much of that. It's going to be like our chess or soccer episode, though, I have a feeling. Are there Holmesies that get upset? It's a whole hornet's nest we're going to stick ahead to. What are the clown band? The Insane Clown Posse? Yeah, but what are their people called? The Juggalos. Juggalos, yeah. The guy who does my hair is a former Juggalo.
24:44I think those are two words you like to hear together. Former Juggalo? Yeah, yeah. It's like former Holmesy. Yeah. After they leave that world behind, you know? Hey, I don't think the other people let you leave that world behind. Oh, boy. Yeah. It's threatening. So where were we, Chuck? Oh, yeah, Gunnerside. Yeah, we are at Operation Gunnerside. This guy, Rundberg, 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.
25:23That'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 some pipes. And that was that. Like, this is 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.
25:58They just maybe got blown off course or something like that. And 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 we could get through. But of course, they had Nazi guards there.
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26:35So that wasn't the best route. The other options were like a literal minefield or I guess mine forest that they could have 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 boat, I guess. And they said, minefield, no good. Nazis on the bridge, 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've failed to mention is that before this all happened, when Rundberg was, I guess, 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.
27:31And so just park that right there because, you know, if you introduce bolt cutters, I guess in this case Act 2, you know they're going to cut something in Act 3. Right. So he's got those bolt cutters 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.
28:06Exactly. 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 Kompany Linnia, the Norwegian resistance, are sitting there outside of the Vemark power plant, figuring out exactly how they're going to get in. And they decided that they would split up. There were five of them. And as they were sitting outside, they were faced with their first obstacle, which was a fence. And apparently the Brits had said, there's a fence. So here's a handsaw. And the guy who was in charge, who was it? Rundberg? Yeah, yeah.
28:47His second in command, Knut Håklid. We're like running through these Norwegian names, man. Hey, that sounds pretty good to me. Okay. So, and I know it's Knute. I always thought it was Knute, but it's Knute because I watched this cool little Nova special and he was interviewed and they definitely said Knute. He said, Rundberg, don't you have some bolt cutters? Right. And Rundberg gave him 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 Rundberg's foresight back in Cambridge.
29:24That's right. Snip, snip. So that paid off pretty quickly. Yeah, that was still Act 2. Well, I think I got the 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 nine provide cover. The other two, and they had Tommy guns. They had chloroform. They were set for an attack if need be. And they were keeping a watch on, like, the barracks, because there weren't, like, hundreds of German soldiers. I get the idea if they were going in with the initial 29 that it was probably a couple of dozen maybe. I mean, that's just a guess.
30:03I 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, you know, 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 a watch on the barracks. They were keeping a watch on that bridge for the guardsmen there. and just sort of waiting around for any activity 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 that so bad.
30:37Yeah. So the other four guys split into two pairs. They each had, and I get the idea, they split up in case, and they each had enough to, like, blow it up in case, like, two of them got caught or killed. The other two could still complete the job. Right. They got in through a second gate, and they had arranged with one of the co-workers there to, I guess, you know, one of the inside moles to leave a cellar door open. But unfortunately, that person called in sick that day and I guess didn't seem to think like, hey, I had this important other task to do. And Tronstadt had previously told them, though, like, if you can't get in that way, there's a cable shaft.
31:16You 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 plan. All he had to do was show up to work and leave the door open. He could have gone home right after that. Yeah. And been like, I just threw up. I have to get out of here. Right. And my guess, this is 1943, there's an 85 % chance that his illness was a severe hangover, which makes it even worse. Yeah, probably so. So, yeah, 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 Rundberg, the leader, and a guy named Frederick.
31:58Frederick. Yeah, Kaiser. Yeah, Frederick. Frederick. Not Frederick. Yeah. Eat your heart out, Fredericks. It's probably Frederick. Friederick. Yeah. Would be my guess. I like Frederick. That's how we say it in America. Anyway, Kaiser and Rundberg, 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. So, yes, and they went down a shaft even as well. You're right. 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 our hostage.
32:43Sit 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 he chloroformed the Watchmen anyway. And so as he's doing this, Rundberg 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 an explosion of glass as a window shatters. And Rundberg and Kaiser and the chloroform 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.
33:20We'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 them enough time to get the heck out of there. Ruenberg said, no, I really want to make sure we hear this thing go off. So we're going to go down to 30 seconds. I imagine everyone said, well, 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 said, can I get those glasses? Yeah. You know, if they blow up, my optometrist has quit and retired.
33:58I'm not going to 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. Röneberg 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.
34:39It'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 Schultz type stumbling out.
35:17Yeah, 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, 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 scot-free. And in retrospect, not a single bullet was fired and not a single person died in this highly successful, amazingly daring sabotage operation. That's right. But that is not the end of the story.
35:53So maybe we should take our second break. Yes. And we'll come back and finish up right after this.
36:12Word up, Jerry.
36:23All right. So as you said, the saboteurs got away. I think one of them, Polson took off to Scotland by sea. Rundberg 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 skied 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 Nazis were able to restart production at the plant.
37:08I 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 of damage to anyone but the 22 Norwegian civilians who were killed. Yeah. Like this 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. Yeah. Especially the bombs back then, you know. Yeah. For for for real. But the thing is, it did show the Nazis that like, hey, this remote, isolated, actually surprisingly vulnerable plant.
37:55That'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 Nazi 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, like, we can do this in, like, 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.
38:33So 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 capacity in just a couple of months. But as we said, they were moving everything to Germany. And I guess the Kompanylinge crew, the Norwegian freedom fighters, they were keeping an eye on all the movements of the heavy water from, I guess, their moles inside the heavy water plant. And they knew that the Nazis were going to move the heavy water and when they were going to do it and how they were going to do it. That's right. So they come up with another plan to further thwart their efforts.
39:11and they determined the best way to do this was to sabotage the ferry that's going to be ferrying everything over to Germany. So they knew it would cost them civilian lives, but they figured that was their best chance to get it before it even had a chance to get set up again. And old Canute is back on the scene. He was the second-in-command there at Gunterside, 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 14 Norwegians sadly were killed, along with four Germans.
39:49And this, again, was a big success. They, for a long time, they weren't even positive that there was heavy, 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, those were dummies, 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.
40:26Yeah. 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 had been floating. Like some people were trying to like climb onto the barrels to survive. They're like, heavy water's 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 their mark.
41:05The 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, the four that were floating. So it was a big deal too. But again, 18 people lost their lives for 14 of them, innocent Norwegians. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, that's actually something they wrestle with in the Nova documentary because they interview some of these people we've talked about and they're, you know, they're trying to reconcile their guilt with, you know, the, 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.
41:51Yeah. And it resulted in the loss of so many, you know, 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 Gunterside, 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, MRD Foote, great name, said that it changed the course of the war. The fact that they were denied that regular steady supply of heavy water really put a dent in their operation.
42:39Livia very astutely points out another factor was that key 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' pursuit of the bomb. But also, I think you found out, too, that 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 used graphite. They went with heavy water, which was a mistake.
43:19Yeah, 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.
43:55Yeah, that's right. If they had have calculated correctly, then 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 moderator, and they basically forgot to carry a one or something. I think what it really was is 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 dead, like dead in the water, basically.
44:34Yeah. Got to carry that eins. 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 Oktoberfest slogan. Right. They'd be like, what does this mean? And they'd be like, just drink this huge gallon here and shut up.
45:12I mentioned that film, 1965's The Heroes of Telemark, with Kirk Douglas as sort of a mashed up fictional character based on both Roneberg and Tronstadt. But 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 NRK ran a miniseries called The Heavy Water War in 2015. And that's when a lot of Norwegians kind of first learned of this operation. And if we're talking Tronstadt, if you want to button up his story, you feel bad for this guy because he didn't get to parachute in.
45:54and 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 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 hands dirty, which he 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 sad. At least he did get to get to oversee and fly in on Operation Sunshine.
46:39I 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 going to 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. Pretty great stuff. A sense of humor. Really good. Well, thanks to Olivia for that, and thanks to you for listening. And how about we set up a listener mail so I can thank that person, too. That's right. This is from Justin Meeks about Tavern on the Green. Hey, guys.
47:19And 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 Tavern on the Green. What? Wow. Yeah. Grandma said that was one of the first Thanksgiving she could remember, that she didn't eat turkey dinner because at Tavern on the Green, they had to order their steak and lobster, especially because Letterman was paying for it.
48:00Grandma 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 we're getting emails, that we are not doing live shows in 2025. Yeah, including Sketchfest. We've gotten a lot of emails from people who are like, the Sketchfest schedule is wrong because it doesn't have stuff you should know on there, right?
48:33And yes, we're sorry to inform you, we're not going to be at Sketchfest for, what, the first time in like 10 years maybe or something? Yeah, we're just taking a down year from doing live shows. We're going to 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 that's a decision we made that we feel good about. Yeah. And ironically, I just reached diamond status for 2025. Oh, I've never been diamond. I couldn't believe 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.
49:09Yeah. And I'll be buried next to you and it'll just say, sadly peaked at platinum. 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 stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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From the publisher
During WWII a perfectly-executed sabotage operation by British Special Operations and the Norwegian Resistance put a dent in the Nazi’s quest for an atomic bomb. Today, it’s unclear how effective it really was, but it’s still a heckuva story!
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