World War II - The Mission that Blew Up Germany's Only Chance to Win
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2023
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The year was 1941. Norway had fallen into darkness under the iron fist of Hitler’s brutal Wehrmacht. The conquering German forces were draining the life out of the Norse country, harnessing the nation’s industrial might and vast natural resources to fuel the Third Reich as it engulfed the continent.
Yet, shrouded in uncertainty, the Allies remained largely ignorant of the full breadth of Germany's sinister schemes.
That was until, fleeing his home country, Leif Tronstad, a scientist turned resistance fighter, arrived in England after barely escaping the claws of the Gestapo. He brought the Allies shocking and vital news about German operations in occupied Norway.
The intelligence he delivered confirmed the worst speculative fears of the Allied commanders. The Germans had seized control of the Vemork hydroelectric power plant and were producing heavy water at a terrifying pace.
Top Allied leaders privy to the top-secret progress of America’s Manhattan Project knew heavy water was crucial in creating an atomic weapon. The largest plant in Europe was now a ticking time bomb, producing this essential ingredient in massive quantities.
This production, this countdown to an unfathomable horror, had to be halted. No cost was too great, no risk too immense. And so, under the weight of this dire imperative, one of the most daring, high-stakes commando operations of World War II was put into motion... A ticking clock against a rising tide of darkness, the stage was set for a thrilling saga of courage, resolve, and audacious heroism.
I lived in Norway for two years and had the honor of meeting Claus Helberg who was kind enough to tour the Hydro Plant with me and discuss his team’s attack, etc. A funny moment was when we went to the small gift store and there were two DVDs that told the story of the Commando Raid. One was the US Kirk Douglas movie and the other a Norwegian film where the actual Norwegian Commandos played themselves. Claus walked up to the counter and turned all the US Kirk Douglas DVDs face down. He smiled and said the Norwegian version was obviously more accurate. There is also a story regarding the ferry. Many years after the war the Norwegian Government commissioned an expedition to retrieve one of the barrels from the ferry. There was speculation it was just filled with water (there was a push to charge the Commandos for the deaths of innocent Norwegians on the ferry). A test of the barrel contents proved it was “heavy water” and a plaque was placed at the ferry in honor of those who died and establishing a site that by law could not be plundered in the future. Having Claus walk the same ground he walked in the raid, talk about why they did certain things, etc., I was totally humbled by him. Great man as they all were.
To meet Claus and tour the very sight of the raid with him is once in a lifetime opportunity ,I’ve had Assault in Norway since 1976 ,I read every year at Christmas ,hero’s every one of them !
@@markp8277 Hi, if you have an opportunity look up Reports from #24
What doesn't get mentioned is that the Germans also needed the nitrates from the plant to make conventional chemical explosives.
Two points. 1) I understood that in sinking the ferry no Norwegians were harmed/killed because everyone, except the Germans, new of the planned attack.
2) Heavy water as the mechanism of slowing down the neutrons such that they could combine with another Uranium nucleus was a technique rejected by the Americans as being "inefficient" for whatever reason.
@richardcarter5314 The main reason heavy water was not used as it was in scarce supply initially. There are other moderators besides graphite and heavy water that can be used as a neutron moderator. I think one reason was that German graphite was low quality as it was contaminated being made from low grade brown or lignite coal. You need high-quality, very pure graphite to use as a moderator. This is most likely the reason German researchers used heavy water, but unfortunately, there was not enough, and the allies interrupted their only supply. You need a reasonable amount of power to separate deuterium from normal hydrogen. Being an ammonium fertiliser plant, the Nordsk hydro plant could produce it as a by-product, a few hundred kilograms a year. You also need quite a few tonnes of the stuff to fill the reactor. The US and Canada did set up plant to separate deuterium, and heavy water reactors did get built near wars end to make plutonium, which went into the post-war nuclear arms race.
Wow. Aircraft camouflage was very good during the war. That Halifax managed to make itself look like a Sunderland flying boat. Magnificent.
I didn't see that coming.
Bad mistake, but not as bad as the error-ridden nonsense that Dark Skies serves up in his awful videos.
I wonder if it helped it to be relentless. Oh wait, that was just the Germans.
@@narabdela Yeah I have blocked every one of his related dark channels
My uncle Howell Bevan took part but sadly died in the operation
Be proud he sounds like a man who had a big set
Thank. You. For. His. Service.
Although we only met him only once or twice, the "boyfriend" of a longtime friend of ours (they were both up their 70s) was one of the young Norwegian guerillas who took part in this action. The irony was that he didn't want to talk about it. He preferred to talk about his accomplishments as a senior executive of a Fortune 500 company.
its called PTSD
Wow, what a video!
The competence, courage, resourcefullness and just plain grit of these soldiers, and commandos beggars belief. HUGE RESPECT. I wonder is such people still exist today?
Around 1970 I met Otto Skorzeny, arguably one of Hitler's most trusted men. He told me that Hitler's biggest mistake was not taking Gibraltar. Controlling Gibraltar would have given Germany soldiers to fight England. Instead, Germany was mired in the Libyan desert, losing manpower & having to deal with the allies in the Mediterranean.
How would they have taken it, or kept?
@@Ah01 it was out of respect for Franco that they didn't. Franco was an ally but had just finished the civil war. He had no money. Hitler did bomb a small town up north to show his disapproval.
Thanks to the Aussies
Hitler was evil. His most trusted man didn't condemn the Holocaust?
franco might have joined allies,. so no not a mistake
I love these videos.
I do have to apologize through. I had to laugh when he said "They caught a reindeer before Christmas."
Soldiers: "Sorry Santa but we needed Rudolph more than you did."
Me too. Its amazing how everything fell into place. Even the deer steaks.
The song 🎵 needs to be changed to 🎵 Rudolf the Red Meat 🍖 Reindeer 🎶 ...
for those who dont know, heavy water is water with the hydrogen atoms replaced with deuterium, so its D2O instead of H2O
Thankyou very much. I had no idea and felt rather stupid given this assumes I should know.
@@iamthebroker I learned this over 40 years ago at school. Basically it is H3O
@@philhawley1219 fellow above suggest D2O. Maybe it’s changed in the 40 years…..
@@iamthebroker An extra hydrogen atom is added to a water molecule. I can't remember how the process works but it involves a huge electrical supply which explains why this project was set up at a hydro-electric power station. Deuterium does not exist naturally,it is not an element like hydrogen or oxygen. It has to be produced by an artificial method that only people like Einstein, Rutherford and Bohr could comprehend.
Normal people like us need not worry about it. Until it all goes wrong.
No. Deuterium is a hydrogen atom with 2 neutrons instead of one. Chemically heavy water is H2O, but has extra mass from the extra neutron
What an incredible story. Such incredible bravery for all involved and, in particular Leif Tronstad
Tronstad stayed in the UK while Joachim Rønneberg was leading the commando group of 6 guys. So I would rather say that in particular these 6 guys were brave as they really did not expect to survive.
This video is a stark reminder of how vital Resistance fighters are to the world.
Resistance fighters are one thing and revolutionaries another. The so-called ANTIFA in the US is more like the blackshirts of Hitler.
It was easy to see during WWII.
Not really.
There was no chance of Germany developing a nuclear weapon.
What the raids achieved was a belief in Germany that their nuclear weapons program had validity and that they should spend more on it, to the detriment of conventional weapons.
The Manhatten project was so incredibly expensive that it took the might of the brains of all the allied powers, and their collective wealth, to work out how to make the first atomic bombs. Germany had neither the brains nor the wealth to do this.
What was achieved by the raids were this distraction from conventional weapons and a diversion to defend Norway when the real objective was a landing in Normandy.
It might sound like I'm downplaying the importance of the raids...but evey man and gun that remained in Norway was a man/gun not defending France. They contributed to the winning of the war and saving Allied lives.
Do not, however confuse the RESISTANCE FIGHTER of yesteryear with the egomaniacal ‘FREEDOM FIGHTERS’ of latter times!
A lot of people are complaining in the comments that the missions were wasteful and unjustified because Germany's atomic program couldn't produce a bomb for several more years. That is true. However, when you look at the events from the perspective of the Allies in mid-1942, the justification for these missions becomes pretty clear.
1: The allied governments knew that Hitler had an atomic energy program that could produce a weapon. However, they had no way of knowing what levels of success had been achieved at the time. Intelligence was much more difficult to gather and verify in the pre-digital age.
2: The allies had under-estimated their enemies previously and had paid dearly for it. Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, Poland- all of these taught the Allies that they couldn't take anything for granted. So they were justified in taking this potential threat seriously.
3: At the time, Manhattan Project scientists had not been able to produce a sustained atomic reaction. This was very much an arms race to complete the bomb first. They had to do whatever was necessary to slow down the German's progress.
4: Allied forces had not had any major offensive victories in Europe and were still very much fighting a defensive war. Everything was at a tipping point. They simply couldn't allow Germany to gain any advantage in that situation.
Based on all of this, I think that the Allies were fully justified in taking steps to disrupt Germany's atomic program- even if that program was not as developed as they feared.
It is said that hindsight is 20/20, and when people are complaining or degrading actions years AFTER, rather than from the perspective of the here and now from the perspective the of people from THEN, you have to wonder what meds that are on.
Exactly the same reason we went into Iraq. It's infuriating that the Democrats line after that was "Bush Lied, People Died". What a crock. He exercised his judgement and it was the right call.
@@retireorbust Of course it was. We found 1000s of WMD's in OIFIII 2005-2006. Took a while to locate them. New York Times did a book length article on it.
@@Denpachii The Germans were much closer, theoretically, to the hydrogen bomb, than we were, which is why so many of their nuclear scientists were brought over after WWII to help us develop one.
@@retireorbusttotally different. Bush and the rest of the liars should’ve been prosecuted for this war. Iraq had no advanced nuclear program. Freaking lies. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and 5000 us troops all died bc Bush lied.
Masterful video. I was on the edge of my seat the whole way!!
In case anyone is wondering how much heavy water was transferred out of Norway to France, it was 185 kg (410 pounds), which was only about 166 liters or 44 gallons (heavy water weighs 10% more than regular water).
That hydro power plant could produce around 10 kg of heavy water in a month, so their 185 kg stockpile would take 18-19 months to produce.
But it really didn't.
The war would have been over for years before Germany actually managed to make an atomic bomb with the way they were going about it.
Why was the Heavy Water going to France? If its going to France then the French Resistance Forces would of had knowledge of it.
Remember how important French Resistance Forces were to the British People. They were requesting information about German Troop and Heavy Armor movement for fear of an invasion of the British Isles!!!
410 lbs of water ? Why didn't they simply put it on an airplane ?? 410 lbs isn't too heavy
What was the purity of the "water" being sent? Is the quantity of heavy water described here that of only the deuterium oxide or of the entire mixture. I expect the deuterium oxide would have been a small fraction of the liquid in which it was dispersed.
May I just say I love the flow of the narrator so great thing to almost sound like Richard Burton, but the flow of the story is wonderful based on the actual fact of the situation, the heavy water plant in Norway
Before this video, I knew of because it the basis of a movie starring Kirk Douglas. I am a BOOMER. Lots of WWII movies I watched growing up. Those were the days of good guys vs bad guys, where the good guys win, but at a cost. Was this attack on the water plant necessary? IF you lived in the USSR, OR CHINA UNDER MAO, OR RECENTLY VENEZUELA, THE ANSWER IS WITHOUT DEBATE! YES, IT WAS NECESSARY!
Very well narrated. This incident and the mission around it could very well inspire a movie, if it hasn't already.
@chaosncheckt9356 Wow... Awesome that You had the opportunity to actually meet one of the Hero's , who very likely saved our planet from a form of totalitarianism & despair... That must have been an EXTREME honor....
The thumbnail is wrong. The attack was not against the pipelines in the back, but against a now mostly destroyed building in front that is now gone. The heavy water "basement" was recently rediscovered and returned into a museum. I think it opened for the first time this summer.
If they made a movie about Knut Haukelid's participation in the Norwegian resistance movement, I would happily pay 10x the ticket price to watch it.
These Norwegian partisans were badasses!
The sad irony of this story is that a deuterium moderator was not as important to plutonium breeding as graphite was. The target was attacked, in part so germans focused on this industrially intensive subpoptimal material. In addition to the attack at the plant, stockpiles were sunk on a ferry during transit to Germany.
Yep. The Germans were never even close to a nuclear weapon. That's what happens when you go after the best scientists of your country, based on race.
Hell, the US struggled to do it, and we had a LOT more resources to throw at the problem, and weren't under attack at the time.
@@jeromethiel4323 Dismiss of what you call 'best scientists of a time' was not by race, but from a continued ethnic attitude no doubt of a racist, parasitic, hostile nature. We don't need them, we spent our money but still do (Slade, Krazee now. ruclips.net/video/eEv6jy_7PQQ/видео.htmlsi=jJiO8hxRwos685s8 )
Not 'fed up by contempt', but their victims fed up with their abuses.
True nature of damages zyonists got from WW II events was not being victims of a genocide, but a 'narcissistic wound'
Holocaust was just industrial euthanasia, there was not enough food for all, from wasp strategic bombings
Poor hyenas, attacked by all lambs!
The attack on the heavy water plant,although a success only stopped the production of heavy water for 6 weeks.replacement plant was already on standby...the destruction of the ferry carrying the heavy water was a decisive move... unfortunately children got killed on that mission.rip to all that lost their lives.
@@thebossdebz3060 That plant was intended mainly to produce Nitrogen fertilizers, even if there are indications a nuclear explosive was detonated by nsdap somewhere in the inner Baltic sea region, the Wehrmacht had realized their 'War theater' was in Europe, any use of a nuclear weapon would make radioactivity fall on themselves.
As a matter of fact, wild boars in German woods are not edible today, because its meat contains radioactive isotopes beyond tolerable levels, this radioactivity coming from allied Nuclear, open air experiments after WW II.
Perseverance in fighting WW II, and doing that libels, agit-prop, piracy, is not a quality, but a feature of senility, impairment, dementia, it's partly easy to explain, the man on US administration is Joe 'gaga' Biden, his affective hue is superimposed on his followers and those under his power, same as that of Jorge Bergollo, dumb, queer, marrano (Boludo, Sarasa, Marrano) affects all catholic priesthood and followers; actually this church is more a continuity of the bloody roman empire power expansion than proclaimer of Gospel.
We are made of flesh, nobody escapes from most of our limitations.
Gesund +
The germans could have got a lot of wery clean graphite in Norway to, but they did not.
On Senja in nothern Norway
called Skaland Graphite
Delivered high quality
graphite since 1932
Europs biggest producer of
Crystalline flake graphite.
The US built an (several) atomic bombs with no heavy water. The US used very pure Carbon instead. The Germans mis-measured the neutron cross section of Carbon and believed they needed heavy water. They didn't, but they thought they did. Germany never achieved a neutron chain reaction. The US had a chain reaction as early as 1942.
Source?
@@Triggatra4258 A good source might be "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Rhodes). Note that the first reactor (in Chicago) used Graphite. The reactors are Hanford also used Graphite. See "B Reactor" in Wikipedia for more details.
@@Triggatra4258 See "Chicago Pile-1" in Wikipedia for details about the use of Graphite in the very first nuclear reactor
@@Triggatra4258books in science, math, and history. Look it up yourself 😂
Britain had the first “chain reaction” in 1939. They gave the secrets to the us.
Superb story telling .
I have been there. took a tour of the old hydro electric station. It’s amazing it’s still there. I went there for interest reasons & I wasn’t disappointed.
Hence the film The Heroes of Telemark i think
Great movie 🎥
@@user-ex4si2md6rKirk Douglas?
The Hollywood version of the story is not historical. The BBC is much better. I attended a lecture by one of the participants. His story was quite exciting.
Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf.
Excellent content and presentation including video footage. One error -- the map of Europe at 3:28 show 1991 European boundaries instead of 1938,
Umm and also the so called bomber tow aircraft and the terrible bot voice
@@gowdsake7103 Wasn't sure if it was a bot or not, but the narration does indeed sound terrible.
There was an episode of Hogan's Heroes which focused on the heavy water Germany was acquiring from Norway.
The fountain of youth
@@WildVikingMarauder Hogan and Hilda convinced Klink his hair was growing back.
Has a movie ever been made about this daring mission?
Two I believe. One with Kirk Douglas. The other I think is more accurate and closer to a documentary.
'The Heroes of Telemark'.
@@robert-zj7ef Cool. I'll check those out. Thanks.
@@Seagullias12 Thanks for the reply. Is it good in your opinion?
@@Ken5244: It's entertaining and pretty close to the truth. Of course, there is always the added bits for 'Dramatic effect' (as if the actual story isn't dramatic enough) and the 'essential' sub-plot (love story) that is typical of a lot of war movies, but a good movie, nonetheless. Considering the details of many 'Special Ops' were withheld for many years after the war, the researchers did a good job with what was known at the time.
Germany never really got that far… but like the ‘bomber gap’ and the ‘missile gap’ the potential ( what they Could do) was enough to green light extensive countermeasures
Yes, It takes a lot more than heavy water to make a device.
Another masterpiece of a video. I didn't know anything about this, as I suspect most Americans don't, and it was a real eye-opener for me. Such determination and bravery, not to mention the terrible conditions the first team had to contend with, should be taught to schoolkids as an inspiration that great deeds can be accomplished by a very few people and can change history.
Watch the movie (The Heroes of Telemark.)
@FloozieOne. Unfortunatrly the knowledge of WW 2 history is very flawed in the US. A couple of years back I meet som Americans on a cruise in the Medditeranians. They didn't even know that the US hade soldiers in Europe. The invasion on D-day was never heard of. I had to teach them about their own history.
I learned about heavy water from Hogan’s Heroes, so Americans of that era knew all about this.
In fact, the factory was producing green hydrogen to make ammonia. The energy needed was produced by hydro electric power. The electrolyzers concentrated heavy water as a byproduct.
There's a brilliant autobiography about this: "Two Eggs On My Plate"
None under your pants...
Even if Germany learned how to make a nuke, they could not make the fuel for it nor would they have a way to deliver the nuke to its target.
Werner von Braun's V2 rocket could have carried a small atomic bomb. If the scientists were NAZI ideologues, knowing the scattering of radioactive material, they could have created ' DIRTY BOMBS' and used the V2 to deliver them. Thank God they did not!
most absurd thing is the B29 bomber program cost 3 billions while the Manhattan project just 1.9 billions.
V-2? Americka bomber? C'mon!!
Wow, this is very interesting!
The German bomb program didn't get really started, and the German nuclear researchers were still at the stage trying to attain a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Enrico Fermi attained this in December 1942 in Chicago in a temporary graphite core. An important step on the way to the fission bomb. So Fermi could be best described as the originator or father of the atomic bomb. The original core was disassembled and rebuilt into a small experimental reactor in Chicago.
Wow. This is possibly the best comment I've ever read. Beyond horrific. Thank you for sharing. My nightmare. Shit.
Do you have any more details? What am so intrigued. Your comment is so amazing.
Enrico Fermi was a good experimentalist as well as a nuclear theorist. He worked out that graphite could also be a good neutron moderator. Something the German nuclear physicists didn't twig to. But by trying to use heavy water as a neutron moderator makes cooling a reactor somewhat easier. Heavy water was used in small experimental reactors used as neutron sources. Silicon chip production does use nuclear alchemy in changing chemically doping elements or transitioning the elements in the chips silicon wafer by neutron activation from nuclear reactors or particle accelerators, the second source for neutrons in nuclear physics. The Germans may have used neutron sources to crib what a chain reaction would be in a large mass of natural uranium but never achieved a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. They just didn't have the materials to produce plutonium or the means to separate U235 from natural Uranium which is predominately U238. I think it was worked out that the all the Uranium refined metal they had would have to have been pooled together in one reactor to achieve a self sustaining chain reaction. This never happened as the two major groups each roughly had half the Uranium needed.I can see the scepticism about the supposed 3 German nuclear tests as they did not have the high purity U235 or Pu 239 to create an uncontrolled nuclear release or bomb detonation. Even a low yield blast would have left considerable nuclear fallout. Low yield nuclear tests in Australia by the British during their test programs, the what if you don't get a perfect implosion tests, created considerable radioactive contamination over a local area. This knowledge was traded by the British as well as their experimental sounding rocket knowledge on reentry heat shields for nuclear tipped missiles when they negotiated for polaris nuclear missiles with the US. The Brits also have designed and handed the US blueprints for the nuclear missile silos but never built any as it was a "not in our backyard" political objection by local inhabitants. Who want a nuclear missle silo just down the road being a target for a one megatonne hydrogen bomb. Yes the cold war was and even today a worry, the current nuclear weapons proliferation to North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel, are a worry but but also if Iran finally gets enough fissile material that will add to the globes worries. The Iranians are supporting a number of terrorist groups.
@@damianousley8833Thank you
That's the real point. German atomic research was so far behind the allied effort that if they were not hindered at all during the war they would have never delivered a weapon or a reactor by 1945. The best and brightest of Europe's physicists were all driven out by Hitler (and into the US/UK atomic program) prior to WWII and those that were left did nothing to help the Nazi's.
Drove through Rjukan on our way to Loftus in 2003 and could see the heavy water/power plant etc . in the distance. It was after hours so could not explore the area.
Super cool vid
imagine a V2 rocket with a nuclear warhead ? UGH Hitler would not have a second thought about using it
Just didn't have the second part
This story is fascinating a courageous Commandos especially the ones that waited out there for such a long time and the ones who perished trying to achieve their goal. Some of the footage look like it was the motion picture was this made into a movie?
The Heroes of Telemark
They never got enough of the recognition that they deserve
its all found footage, from movies, documentaries. none of it is actually from this event as far as I can tell just used to tell the story
Very important mission.
3:48 Oh dear me!
*Uranverein* is translated spoken as *Urine Project* - rather than *Uranium Project.*
I can tell from the thumbnail photo: Norsk Hydro / heavy water, right? Nope, no chance. It doesn’t take all that much reading into Germany’s atom bomb program to know that they had no chance to build a bomb. Didn’t have the resources, didn’t have the time, and the one guy who might have led a successful program (Heisenberg) was probably dragging his feet, if not actually sabotaging things. The deck was so stacked against Germany that had the U.S. known the actual situation, they probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Well they didn't hey?The British attack on the Hydro Electric plant was to make sure that the supply of heavy water and hence a POSSIBLE atom bomb was denied to the Germans. Which it did.
There is much uncertainty about whether Heisenberg was dragging his feet or if he just claimed that after the war to make himself look better to the Allied Powers. (And yes, the pun is intentional.)
@@PaulTomblin
Exactly. While many other scientists (non Jews included) fled Germany, he got promoted, his roles were expanded, he met Nazi's leadership, he also refused the offer to migrate to America. These all were indications of "if he could achieve greater heights, why not attitude"
The Norse Comandos are my heroes
I have a cousin in Norway that worked at Norse Hydro and a friend of mine here in the states did some engineering work for a Norse Hydro about 10 years ago.
@@marlobreding7402 The factory shown in the video is now closed.
Interesting and thanks. The story that I heard included much of the above. The difference being that some heavy water did get through, and some experiments were conducted, but with disappointing results. Interesting that the Nazis insisted on trying only heavy water and not graphite, or both? The relevant and salient experiments conducted by the Americans were almost by accident and came to a relative head when the Berkley Chemist, Seaborg, used the University's Cyclotron to make small amounts of plutonium from initial samples of native uranium via a multistep process. The Physicist, Edwin McMillan, had previously found some of this process when he had been tinkering with the cited Cyclotron, before he was whisked away by Uncle prior to the doings of much of WWII.
My understanding is that one of the German scientists had done calculations for graphite and incorrectly concluded it wouldn’t work
Don´t forget to watch the highly memorable movie of this, "The Heroes of Telemark", starring Richard Harris.
Germany invaded Norway to forestall the imminent british invasion designed to cut off german iron ore supplies.
Yes, when UK and their domestic servant France declared war to Germany, upon Wehrmacht entry on Prussian land occupied by Polish, they had no choice than enter all surrounding countries, otherwise, allied would have stablished bases there to attack Germany. War is as it is.
The Germans had no nuclear bomb programme or the capacity for one. They had limited radioactive material which they split between several research projects (at least three). They were attempting to develop a nuclear reactor to generate energy. When it was discovered by the Allies it was quite primitive and hazardous; those working with it would have been killed by radiation before they got any useful power out of it.
Excellent retelling of the story. Too bad they couldn't find original videos and instead used other videos from almost all other videos about the soe, oss, and US Special Forces
The availability of heavy water was only one issue. They Germans were going down dead ends on the engineering side as well and we're ultimately not extremely close to building a working bomb even if they had the theoretical issues laid out (which they didn't, fully)
Cool. HBO managed to catch everything on film.
The "Manhattan Project" was NOT an American project. It was an allied project initiated by Winston Churchill with research done in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada. Once the Americans got involved the Canadian and British scientists who had a huge head start relocated to the USA because as we know the Americans insist on getting their way.
Americans do always want to be in charge, but, in WWII, the USA had the greatest ability to produce weapons and materiel of any nation on Earth.
That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever read regarding world war two. The British project was called 'tube alloys'..was a complete failure and was absorbed into the Manhattan project which was funded by the usa...built in the usa..tested in the usa..under the command of the usa army..and the bomb was transported by the USA navy and dropped by a usa army airforce B-29 the most technologically advanced bomber of World War two in active operation and the only aircraft capable of completing the mission. Your USA envy is obvious. British are the best in the world at getting oither countries to win wars for them and for taking credit for others efforts.The british took another nine years to develop an atomic bomb. On October 3, 1952, Britain detonated its first atomic device, code-named "Hurricane." It had an explosive yield of about 25 kilotons.....The USA did not share it research and atomic bomb development with Britain as they had been overrun with Russian agents. There is a very good documentary on the British secretary who gave Russia the information which allowed Russia to develop their own atomic bombs. She was ound out and arrested in 1999. She was tried for treason, convicted but not jailed or executed as she was by then an 87 year old woman. From the history channel.."In 1999, an 87-year-old British woman held a press conference in front of her home to announce that for nearly four decades, she’d worked as a spy for the Soviet Union. In fact, Melita Norwood was the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. From World War II through the Cold War, she stole nuclear secrets from the office where she worked as a secretary and passed them to Moscow. Norwood was coming clean because a Cambridge historian had discovered her espionage while writing a book, but she was unrepentant. She told The Times of London that “in the same circumstances, I know that I would do the same thing again.”
So much for MI 6. Where was James Bond when his country needed him? Buy a history book peggy
@peggyt1243 - Wow...your ignorance of the historical facts is breathtaking.
@@Vito_Tuxedo Vito - my knowledge of this subject greatly exceeds your brainwashed version of history. Dig deeper.
@@tlt3921 Research by British and Canadian scientists was done in Chalk River Ontario. This of course is not in any US history books because US history books write history to embellish the American role and contributions.
There was a movie starring Kirk Douglas about the ferry being blown up.
Can't believe they didn't know how to pick a lock
Please stop using computer generated voice-overs. It makes it feel cheap and amateurish.
Real voice actors are needed to narrate the videos.
This story would make a great WWII film.
It already has.
@@narabdela Title? I'm unaware of any film about this incident. I would love to watch it!
@@vanessajazp6341 "The Heroes of Telemark"
@@narabdela Thx 🙂 I'll look for that.
It is at least 2 movies ans 1 tv serie about this.
Vemork may have produced massive quantities of heavy water, but it did it _VERY SLOWLY_... max production was 4kg/day which is pretty close to a gallon.
Doing some quick math in my head says that 4 kg of heavy water would = approximately 3.6 liters of material. A bit shy of a gallon...
I recall the first nuclear reactor started up in 1938 Berlin, their scientists were allowed to publish this in the international science magazines. This would certainly have caused the readers to warn their leaders about the bomb possibilities.
There was an awesome squadron 663 raid carried out against the last shipment out of Norway, the attacking aircraft (mosquitos) had no idea when the ship would depart and thus they actually landed in Norway on a frozen lake and waited for the signal the heavy water boat was on it's way to Germany, I think they had a specific place in mind for their attack, making sure the cargo couldn't be retrieved in very deep water i believe. Great story,
The German nuclear program was a joke and this was understood by top level scientists on the Allied side.
The raids were a misunderstanding from middle ranking science thinking that Germany could achieve more than they could, with a side serving of keeping Norway defended instead of Normandy.
It remains an important objective - Allied intelligence was incredibly ''cute' in misdirecting German resources (some say they started in 1936).
"What if?" is a fun pursuit. The Germans were not very close to a practical atomic bomb, so this "what if?" is not that interesting. More realistically, the "what if?" of jet power is more compelling. Germany was ahead with jet propulsion and Hitler squandered it with making the Me-262 a fighter-bomber instead of a fighter.
This would make a great movie
It was. Kirk Douglas starred in the movie.
in 2015 there was a norwegian tv show made about this mission aswel thats really good, tho not sure where to find it with english subtitles
Homie was focused on one goal throughout the whole war. Also wild the amount of civilian casualties both sides were ok with back then.
They had no choice. They didn’t have precision laser guided bombs that could hit a target within a few meters. Carpet bombing was the only way. A lot more civilians would have died if Hitler had a bomb. He would have dropped one on London without batting an eye. Kinda like the US did to Japan….
You know they’re still ok with civilian casualties right
💡Civilians are still their guinea pigs!😖
This was a war where civilian casualties were an accepted practice by all sides.
@@gillesjolicoeur4723 Yes, now they're euphemistically called "collateral damage" - the public doesn't get quite as upset! 😟
Except that the heavy water wasn't the limiting factor. They were too far behind in other areas for the heavy water to make a difference.
Where did the commando footage come from?
I believe it is Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water - 1948
As said many times, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but only by virtue of its littleness.
Walther Bothe initially convinced Germany that graphite was not a viable option due to the higher neutron absorption. This did not stop them from using graphite after heavy water was compromised. History doesn't want to admit that Germany was so close to ruling the entire world to spite the allies hard work.
I guess you have very little to support that opinion.
They had the idea but not the means to build an atomic bomb which was a theoretical concept not a practical reality
What I find funny about this story is that all you have to do to get rid of heavy water is pour it on the ground. People have been drinking heavy water for as long as there have been people. I don't remember the exact ratio but in a day's time you will have definitely consumed some without even realizing it.
wow what a mission.
Excellent video!!
I definitely heard uran project wrong
The again something that sounds like a piss project would easyily get overlooked if youbwanted it to be secrect
Recently we had one of the grand kids of the people that helped to do this move to my town and he was really surprised that an American had even heard of the event, lol
A good friend of mine told me after his dad died a few months after the family got a letter from the ministry of defence to go to london & pickup an award for his dads service to his country , it turned out his dad did a lot of behind the lines operations , after him & his mum picked up the award my mate said what missions did my dad go on ? and was told they are still classyfied but i can tell you he was on the first raid on the heavy water plant this being public knowledge by now so now was not still classified , my mate said he never spoke of the war we never knew what did till now ..........
The background music is distracting and unnecessary. It detracts from the video.
There is no indication that Nazi Germany was close to atomic bombs. But you couldn't know that at the time and that's why the missions were extremely important.
A good storey, albeit with a little too much descriptive hyperbole.
STORY,,,,,,.DUMBBELL!!!
11:25 They made a great movie on this mission
Can you share the name?
@@AnshumanKumar007The Heroes of Telemark
@@AnshumanKumar007 The Heroes of Telemark is one I know of.
@@FernandoLichtschein thank you
It was shockingly bad typical Hollywood trash
Except that Germany was nowhere near the stage of actually constructing a working weapon. They made serious mistakes as early as 1941 (mistakenly ruling out the use of Graphite). When Germany surrendered in May 1945, its atomic researchers were still struggling to reach critical mass with a pile, a goal Fermi had first achieved at the Met Lab in December 1942.
Heisenberg had also made a fundamental error in his calculation of the critical mass leaving him thinking you need much more fissile material than you do. He would later claim it was deliberate to stop Germany developing a bomb but that was a lie. By much more like 150 tonnes of U-235 instead of ~12kg
but the Allies had no idea that Germany was nowhere near to constructing a working atomic weapon until after the war was over, and the Allies were quite logical to assume the worst.
Maybe but the Allies didn,t know that and couldn,t take a chance
@@michealhand1001 But we do know that now, which is why video's attempting to show that Germany was 'near' to creating a nuke are so inaccurate.
@@douglasscovil3447 But we do know that now, which is why video's attempting to show that Germany was 'near' to creating a nuke are so inaccurate.
Good plot for movie
The footage that your watching is from a movie telling the same story,
"The heroes of Telemark".
I wish you could turn off the music
Telemark Heros … the CANDU system uses Heavy Water. It cannot explode.
And the RBMK- 1000 reactor system, as installed at Chernobyl also used heavy water, but that tells us nothing about the part heavy water may play in someof the many possible routes to developing a fission bomb.
3:57 - "Uranverein" means URANIUM CLUB.
Tell your voice synthesizer that Leif is pronounced Leaf, not Life.
"Norways' neutrality"... Quisling
It’s an interesting story but the Germans weren’t actually close to a nuclear bomb. The fact that they were using heavy water as a neutron moderator shows the weakness of their science. The Manhattan project used graphite blocks which is essentially pencil lead and far more available and easy to use.
More importantly the Manhattan project also built huge centrifuges powered by hydroelectric dams in the Tennessee valley to separate the uranium isotopes. This was a tremendous investment, one that Hitler was not willing to make because he considered nuclear science Jew science and didn’t want to fund it in quantities needed.
However hats off to the Norwegians and British that took out the heavy water deliveries
It is well known that light water and graphite are also moderators of chain reactions. This raises the question, would this have changed the fact that Germany did not build a nuclear bomb if it had been known at the time?
I love how the bot translates “Uranverein” (Uranium club) into Urine Project.
Look for an Urologist, they are 'Urine surgeons'
It is generally accepted that the German heavy-water based program was highly unlikely to ever produce a weapon, but the value in disrupting it was that they didn't get to complete their research effort and realise that.
So, what IS heavy water?
You have found out by now im sure. It slows down the process of all the fusion. Its done in the lab.
The attack was truely a heroic deed, but the Germans resumed well their production of heavy water after that. Their a-bomb project fell short in many ways, but the amount of heavy water was not the most critical one. Biggest problems were that the overall resources allocated were not nearly enough and passive slowing of the nobelist Heisenberg since he did not publicise his calculations of the critical mass of the amount of the uranium isotope needed, even though counting it was well within his capability.
US was only national economy that had the resources and the means to produce a workin atomic weapon during the war. Of course that was not public knowledge back then and the fear was great. What if a lunatic like Hitler (or Putin 😢) would possess such a weapon.
Great stuff
A lot of exaggeration here. Heavy water production was a side product from another process producing a different industrial chemical. The production was just a few liters per day. It was extracted, not synthesized. The commandoes that raided the plant blew up the equipment which sat on a desk snd the stockpile was eliminated by smashing the valves on the tanks and the water just ran out and down the drains. The german interest was for energy production. They did not know the critical mass for uranium. The danger of heavy water is that a heavy water reactor using U248 would produce plutonium which the Germans did not know about.
U238
They over estimated the amount of Uranium needed, possibly a deliberate act. The calculations were made in the UK and that was one of the major secrets Churchill gave to the US in return for aid in the war efforts. In return the US was expected to share the results of the Manhattan project which include British scientists. However after the war the US reneged on the deal forcing the UK to develop its own bomb. Among all this the USSR had spies well placed to forward the secrets of the bomb and was able to use them to produce their own.
@@geoffreycodnett6570 Winston Churchill never was elected, he arrived to seat after Chamberlain resigned, and soon died. When after war Churchill wanted votes to come back, he proposed attacking the soviet union, even with nuclear weapons.
But Stalin survived WW II thanks to allied wasp help....
Yeah there are lots of by products in the production of chemicals and the like that go wasted or even unrecognized. Kind of a drag
No matter how it is viewed, any country at that time in the war was a very serious threat if it successfully constructed even a dirty bomb.......taking affirmative action was a very high priority for those that wanted to sleep at night.
Origin of WW I and WW II is stated in the book by F Engels about 'Condition of british workers, 1845', while britons were looking at their navels, 'how smart they were', Germans were taking industrial and commercial bites on the UK customers abroad.
When UK realized this, implemented war through Clemenceau.
Gavril Princip, murderer in Sarajevo, had hebrew name and surname, hebrew own the capital in many lands' industry and trading, the UK approach to German competitors were two wars.
UK nearly went bankrupt after second.
Currently, britons are headed to bankruptcy, the 'solo' economy their industry requested, 'brexit', thinking the EU rules hampered their competitivity, is not feasible.
Shocking that the Norwegians didn't destroy the plant themselves, even more shocking the french actually took the heavy water BACK to mainland europe. Lots of real selfless heros in this. My question is how was a weapon to be delivered ? Not the V2, low weight capacity, bomber, not a good record for large german aicraft. Submarine maybe, a section of sub added with a bomb then sailed into the pool of London could have worked once sailors had evacuated perhaps.
Blohm&Voss 6 engine Flying Boats are said going to Great Lakes, dropping some pamphlets there, and returning to Norway.
These airplanes could have dropped a Nuclear Weapon anywhere in US East Coast, and come back home.
Movie 1965 "The Heroes of Telemark".
They split up to reduce the chances of being caught…🤔
Still you got to give the right info about deuterium it was useful at the time ti contain the gamma radiation only right it is useful for hydrogen bombs or fusion reactors the germans never developed a nuke cheers yunis
Nonsense. Heavy water could be used to build a nuclear reactor to turn unfissile U238 into Plutonium 239
You gotta love it...reindeer for Xmas. Did anyone tell Santa?
This flick overstates the Nazi "progress" towards a nuclear weapon. We now know that it was essentially a one horse race with the Germans on a mule.
Some data still classified as to where they were, what they knew, the nuclear fallout ground poisoning and personnel exposed and killed. Germany was too close but some info won’t be known for years.
I really doubt that Germany could have ever developed an atomic weapon, considering that Hitler had declared Einstein's theories to be invalid since he was a Jew.
They split the plutonium atoms to release the energy contained. But why do they need the heavy water H3O ?
No one ever mentions the English women that went on that mission. Oh, a couple of the "upper class" men got the VC. The lower rank ones are sometimes mentioned. BUT there is never, ever any mention of at least 3 women . . . one of which burst an eardrum and never flew in an airplane again. Two trips across the pond to visit her son decades later were traversed on the QE II.