Assault in Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Bomb

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Автор: Thomas Michael Gallagher

Название: Assault in Norway: Sabotaging the Nazi Nuclear Bomb

Издательство: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Год: 1975

Формат: PDF

Страниц: 244

Язык: English

Размер: 26.6 MB

During World War II, the Allied High Command was determined to prevent the Nazis from developing an atomic bomb. Many of Europe's top-class physicists had fled from fascism, e.g. Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, but others had remained behind. Once the Germans had invaded Norway in 1940, they increased production of heavy water at the Vemork hydroelectric plant, which was the first installation in the world to mass-produce this element. Heavy water (deuterium) was critical for the construction of the world's first fission reactors, and thus critical for the creation of an atom bomb. All of the attempts to destroy the German heavy water production are discussed in this book, but the emphasis is on Operations Swallow and Gunnerside, the story of the ten Norwegians who pitted their skis and guns against the Nazi juggernaut that held their homeland in thrall. "Assault in Norway" is both a story of wartime heroism, and a wilderness survival story, for the small band of saboteurs had to spend the winter on Norway's rugged Hardanger Plateau, surviving on the reindeer they skied down and shot.