The Rest Is Classified - 72. Destroying the Nazi Nuclear Program: Bombing Norway (Ep 1)

Episode Date: August 10, 2025

What was the most dangerous mission of World War II? How did a small team of Norwegian skiers stop the Nazis from building a nuclear bomb? And, what exactly is heavy water, and why was it so important to the Nazis? Operation Gunnerside was a high-stakes, real-life mission to sabotage a Nazi nuclear program in Norway. Led by the young and fearless Joachim Rønneberg, a team of Norwegian commandos were tasked with a seemingly impossible mission.The Germans had increased heavy water production at the Norsk Hydro plant in the remote Telemark region, and the Allies feared they were close to developing an atomic weapon. This is the story of a daring sabotage mission that changed the course of history. Listen as Gordon and David begin their explosive two-part series on the mission to stop the Nazis from getting the bomb. ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restisclassified It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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at go-transit.com slash tickets. In November of 42, I was called up to Major Hampton. He said he said he, had just got a telegram from London, asking if I could take on a job in Norway, and if I could pick five of the unit to go with me. I asked, do they need to be skiers? And they didn't know because they didn't know anything. They just knew that it was an operation that had to be done as quickly as possible. Well, I picked out the five I wanted and said, I've been offered a job. I don't know what it is yet. Do you want to follow? And everybody, of course, they cheered. And I knew I had a good team. A very good team indeed. Welcome to the rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

Gordon Carrera. And that was Joachim Ronenberg. I practiced beforehand, Gordon, and I still screwed it up. You've just lost all our Norwegian listeners already. Can you say it again for me? Yonkim I'm going to go with. Yonkim. That was Yonkim Ronem, recalling the moment he was asked to lead I think what was arguably the most daring, dangerous and important sabotage mission of the Second World War. And he's going to lead that into his native Norway. It is code name. Operation Gunnorside, and it is our story this week on this explosive two-parter about great skiing action and on the rest is classified, of course. It would not really be a rest as classified episode, would it, Gordon, without you needing to explain some aspect of nuclear

science and engineering. So there's going to be all kinds of wonderful adventures in store for everybody this week on the pod. And Gordon, you're a huge fan of this story. And also Jockham, Jockham, Roddenberg. Yes, I am. Now, it's fair to say, David, there is this saying, which you might know, which is never meet your heroes, which is one of the reasons why I think if you're ever offered the chance, don't enter a room with Edward Snowden. He'd only let you down. He'd only disappoint you if you ever met him in real life. But, oh my gosh, every week someone comes up to me.

They basically say, how can you be on that podcast with Gordon Carreira? He loves Edward Snowden so much. Someone came out to be in Dallas, like two weeks ago and showed me a picture of a baby onesie that has the letters printed on it, WWESD. It's what would Edward Snowden do? And it is available apparently on Amazon. And he said, I think Gordon might like this for his kids. I said, Gordon's kids are older than that.

Yeah, they are. That would not be a good look. Nonetheless, the sentiment stands. Yeah. But I am quite reluctant on the whole, despite what you think about me, to divide. the world into heroes and villains. Normally, that is a mistake. But here, I think we are talking about someone who I actually genuinely think is a true hero in my eyes and who embodies what I think is a particular type of heroism. And I got to meet him. So I met Joachim. He did not let you

down once you met him. He did not let me down. So he did not let me down when I met him and when I spoke to him. I met him many years after he took part in this. What I think is the most day sabotage mission of the Second World War and also a genuinely important one. So it's got the excitement and the action of, you know, the most dramatic story. And there was a not perfect Hollywood movie, the heroes of Telemark made about it, which is not entirely accurate. But the fact a movie was made about it tells you how exciting it was. And yet it also really mattered because it goes to this crucial question, which is very modern as well, which is how do you stop a country developing a nuclear bomb?

We're talking about this story in the wake of the aerial bombing raid on Iran's nuclear program. And of course, on this program, we've also looked at how do you stop a nuclear program? How do you slow one down, right? Everything from killing scientists to cyber attacks. You know, we just concluded that series on Stuxnet and kind of the digital weapons you could use to halt a nuclear program. But this time, I mean, going back now into the Second World War to do a big.

bit more of a historical series on the rest is classified. I mean, we're going to look at, this is a good old-fashioned physical way to attempt to slow down or stop a nuclear program involving essentially a Norwegian ski team, which is very wonderful. Norwegian ski team takes on Nazi nukes is the simple way of putting it. That's good, Gordon. You just came up with that right now. That's good. I literally just made that up.

But it does go back to the start of the Second World War and the fear that the Nazis are putting together a nuclear program and that they could get the bomb. before the Allies. And of course, if they'd managed to do that, it would have changed the course of the war, and therefore the course of history, really. So it's that consequential. And so we are going to go back to this period, start of the Second World War, early 40s, when these scraps of intelligence are going to come in, that the Nazis are up to something. And it's focused on this crucial site in Norway. And to stop them, they're going to do something much riskier, really, and more daring than bombing from the air, as we've just seen in Iran,

but they're going to put a small team on the ground to carry out an active sabotage. And, I mean, any good adventure story, of course, has a protagonist, a main character who's going to lead the team and unite everyone around them. And so our main character, Gordon, why don't you introduce us to Akwakim. Yokam. Yokam. I'm so sorry, Norwegian listeners. I'm so sorry.

Yuckim. I'm honestly not trying to do this. this. Okay. Okay. This is just my shambling Americanism, Gordon. Mr. Ronneberg, you can call him from nowwards. Yeah. So he's born in 1919. So by the time we meet him in the Second World War, he's going to be only in his early 20s. So he's young. By then he's tall, six foot three, long angular face, lengthy dark hair with a side parting, quite laid back as a character and yet also fearless. So one of the aspects, I think, of his heroism is that, you know, especially when you look at pictures of him, he kind of looks quite ordinary. You know, he's good looking. young, but he's not in many ways your typical hero. He's also not your typical soldier. He's not someone who wants to fight and to kill. There's no tradition of military service in his family. His family are actually big in the business of exporting dried and salted fish in a town called Olusund, which I know is the correct pronunciation. I visited last year. Went there on a

family holiday to Ollison. Absolutely gorgeous town up on the Norwegian coast. It's interesting. It's a town with close ties to Germany. There's a big fire which destroys the center of Ollison in 1904, and the Germans, the Kaiser himself, helps rebuild it. And then lots of German tourists are coming there, although Joachim O'Roneberg remembers in the 30s, lots of them were coming in the 30s as tourists and taking lots of pictures of the harbour and the boats. And you're like, hmm, looking back, they might have not just been tourists, I think. Taking pictures of the spires. Yeah, the cathedral spires. So he's not done any military. training. What he is, and this is crucial, is a real outdoorsman and a skier. So he knows the mountains. He describes them as his playground since when he was a small boy. He would go in his Easter holiday and stay in the mountains, moving from one hut to another. He'd been a boy scout, joined the local skiing club. War comes, end of the 30s. First, of course, Germany invades Poland, but then in the spring of 1940, the Nazis sweep through Western Europe, take the low countries of France, and they invade Norway in April 1940.

I'm looking at the picture now. I realize you're in the middle of going through the Second World War, but he looks like Matt Smith, I think. From the crown and the Doctor Who and other things, yeah. I think Matt Smith is probably, what, a good couple decades older than this guy in this picture, but he's got kind of angular face. Angular face, yes. Yeah, that's not a bad comparison.

Anyway, back to the Second World War. I was just looking at the picture trying to come up with a celebrity comparison. If you're listening, just think of a younger version of Matt Smith in skis. And our young hero, when Norway is invaded in April 1940, is taken by surprise. Now, Norway gets invaded by the Nazis. The Britain tries to land some troops to help fight them off, but the operation fails. That disaster is one of the reasons why Churchill ends up becoming Prime Minister. but still by June, the Nazis have basically got control of Norway.

Now, the invasion takes them by surprise. Joachim himself is taking part in an alpine skiing competition at the time. His father wakes him up, you know, and says there's a war on where being occupied. He had no idea about it. The crucial thing is he decides he wants to leave. He doesn't want to live under Nazi occupation. Age 21, he decides he's going to escape. And lots of people are doing that at this time.

and they're going to try and flee the country. And he writes two letters, one to give to the Germans when they come to his parents and ask about what's happened to him. And another one, which is only going to be delivered after he's gone to his parents, to tell him really why he's leaving. And we've got that here. Do you want to read it? I do want to read it, yes.

This is young Yakim writing to his parents. It says, you will wonder why I did not come to dinner, when my bed is empty. You can seek solace in the fact that you are now sharing the same sacrifice as many families in our beloved country, and also that I will never feel more free than on the day we cast off from Norwegian soil and plow the sea bound for freedom's last hope. Live well then, dear mother and father. We will meet again before too long.

You will always be with me wherever I go in the world. Quite powerful, isn't it? This young man who's leaving everything behind. And he's going to make his way over to Scotland initially, to the UK. And I think one of the things helpful if you look at a map, if you want to understand it, and if you don't know the geography, actually how close the north of Scotland. Scotland and particularly the Shetland Islands off Scotland are to Norway. I mean, they really are actually physically close and actually culturally close. And, you know, there's fishing links

between the different communities. And during the war, there'll be something called the Shetland bus, which is not an actual bus, but it's a secret boat link, which allows agents to be brought in and out of Norway from the Shetlands. But there's also fishing boats going out and young Joachim goes on one of these fishing boats to Scotland. He's never been on a boat before. He's never been on the open seas, at least, on a boat. So he's seasick, but he decides he wants to join the Navy because he thinks it's exciting. So I kind of, you already get a sense of a bit of a taste for adventure. It's like Mansfield coming. He's a prospective Navy man who also gets violently ill at sea. Yeah, exactly, like the first chief of MI6. That's right. Another friend of

the show. So he goes to Scotland, then comes down to London. Interestingly enough, He goes first to a place called the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building, which is quite close to where I live in South London, and not that far from Goldhanger offices either, where we're recording. It's all the important places in life. That's right. Two lay in Marks in South London. Gordon's address, which is in the show notes, and Goldhanger Towers.

And Goldhanger Towers. And it's a big, huge, quite menacing Gothic building with dark corridors. And it's where refugees are taken. So people who arrive in the country, fleeing Europe, taken here first, and it's a kind of filtering station where they're interrogated, partly to see whether they might be spies who are being sent to Britain, and one or two are discovered to be spies, and then it's quite handy because Wandsworth Prison is just over the road. It's a place where MI6, the British Secret Service, and another group, which will explain a bit more about the Special Operations Executive, are recruiting those refugees, or at least looking for people amongst those refugees. who might be good for, let's call it special work. And Joachim is going to be one of those. It's kind of memorable.

He's only there for a brief period. But he remembers sitting around playing poker, with people from all around the world and with bombs falling on London. You'd obviously never heard, though, kind of experience. So he's told while he's there about something called a Norwegian independent company who are a group who are going to do kind of special operations

and fight back in Northern. And he decides he wants to join them. And he's picked up through them and through this thing called Special Operations Executive SOE, which for people who don't know about it, who aren't kind of big Second World War fans, SOE was set up by Churchill to, in his word, set Europe ablaze. What a charter. What a mission statement. Yeah, it's just like go out there and just blow things up.

So if you imagine MI6 are there quietly gathering intelligence and SOE are very loudly blowing things up. Using said intelligence, ideally. Using said intelligence. Although I think it's fair to say the two organizations were not always easy bedfellows. It's quite a lot of tension between them for obvious reasons. But Joachim is going through SOE training. So he goes first on armed and unarmed combat training, quite tough to weed people out. Then he gets more spy training, cover story codes, then sabotage and explosives training, and then parachute training. He complains the scenery he isn't very realistic in the middle of England because it doesn't look like Norway.

It's not on the mountains. But he's very good at this and actually he's going to be picked up to be a trainer himself because he's so good. But also it's kind of interesting because he says he found the training quite difficult because he's fundamentally quite a peaceful person and he says he was disturbed

by being taught to slip people's throats with a knife and things like that because it gives him trouble sleeping. So you get the sense, again, he's not a natural killer He's not like a ruthless person, and he has not been exposed at this point in his life to any violence, really. Yeah. He just wants to do his bit. So having been through training, doing some training himself, late November 1942, he summoned to SOE headquarters at Baker Street and told, as you read from right at the start, that he's been picked for an important job if he wants to do it.

And he's being told this team's mission is to sabotage a plant back in North. Norway and a set of cylinders. But he's actually at this point not told anything more or why it's so important, which I think is interesting. And here we are continuing with our recent theme on the rest is classified of large cylindrical objects in a plant. Yeah. How do you destroy them when the other side doesn't want you to destroy them? Right. And it's probably worth explaining here now. This is not a centrifuge cascade at Natanz, right, Gordon. But it is time for another nuclear lesson from Gordon Carrera because we've got to explain what this plan is

and why it's important and what those big cylinders are doing. Our producer, Callum, has suggested actually that once we're done with all of these, we should stitch them together. We can go back to the Klaus Fuchs episodes. We can take the Duxnet episodes. We can take what you're about to do. And you basically have a manual. And how to make a nuclear bomb?

How to make a nuclear bomb. Maybe that could be our coffee table book. Gordon. You know how the rest of history guys have one. We could have a rest as classified copy table book, which is nuclear bombs 101 from Gordon Carrera and David McCloskey. It's that accurate and that detailed. It's that good. It's going to be heavily censored and redacted. Heavy water. Heavy water. That's what it's about. It's about heavy water. Let's go back 1930s. Go back to our Klaus Fuchs days. Scientists working out, you can split the atom for energy and perhaps to make a bomb. So this idea is just as the war has started is in the air, but mainly in secret. Churchill at the start

of the war early on has said the priority is to make sure Britain builds this and no one else does. And eventually that's going to lead to what's called the tube alloys program as cover for the UK, which will then kind of join with the US Manhattan Project. Because you didn't have the money or the resources to really. But we had the expertise. Sink your teeth into it. We had Klaus Fuchs. What more do you need? We had a communist. a spy. You had to come in a spy that contributed to the effort. He was good, though. So that's the kind of allied program, but the Germans. MI6 is getting intelligence about intensive German activity that suggests they're also trying for a bomb. It's pretty fragmentary, but there are

these fears that are actually in the lead. And crucially, 1941, they're going to have got a report from Norway about Germany stepping up activity in this plant at Vermeck, which is in a region called Telemark, about 100 kilometres from Oslo, in the south-east of the country. And this is where we get to heavy water. So the Moorke is home to the Norseh hydro plant, which, when it was built, was the largest hydroelectric plant in Europe. We'll come back a bit to the geography. The region's on a plateau.

There's a gorge with a river in the valley, but also a lake up on the plateau, and water is being redirected from the lake on the plateau down this gorge. with the industrial plant about halfway down on a kind of cliff edge and the water comes down through tunnels from the top and turns turbine generators, which provides massive amounts of power. But the additional bit of this is some of the water then goes into what's called electrolysis cells, David. Oh, taking notes, yeah? What is that? I'm writing feverishly now. Which I think you'll find uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction. In this case, it's,

It splits the hydrogen and oxygen apart. Hydrogen pumped to a local factory to make fertilizer. But from the 1930s, there's a professor at the plant called Leif Tronstadt, good name. He's worked out you can do something more with all this kind of energy and water. And in the basement of the plant, there's another set of these specialist electrolysis cells, which are cylinders. And they could take some of the water and turn it into something called heavy water, deuterium. It's heavy because David, it has an extra neutron at its nucleus compared to normal water, just as I figured. Just as you figured, the clues in the name.

If you put an ice cube of heavy water inside water, it will drop because it's heavier. But doing this, right, takes enormous amounts of power. Doesn't a neutron have an atomic weight of zero, though? Is that right? I should have checked this beforehand. I guess there's an extra thing, but it shouldn't be heavier, right? What's the atomic mass of a neutron? You're taking us down a little bit of a diversion here, which is.

which I'm not sure is going to get us back to skiing and adventure. So I'm going to go back to the story and tell you, you work that one out. But the key point is it takes huge amounts of power and water and a lot of time to produce just a small amount of this heavy water. No one's quite sure what it's for in the 30s. The atomic mass of a neutron is approximately 1.0087 atomic mass units. Great. That's slightly more than the mass of a proton.

So I was incorrect, which was entirely foreseeable. So back to heavy water So one of the routes to making a nuclear bomb is through building a nuclear reactor For the reactor to work You have to moderate the fission of the uranium Which is splitting apart And one of the way of doing that

It's thought at the time Is to use heavy water as a moderator So this is leading edge science And Burmork in Norway Is really the only place in the world capable of producing heavy water At scale at the time And there's hardly any in existence

as the war starts. There's about 185 kilograms of heavy water in the world, most of it in Vermont, yeah, at the start of the war. Just as the war's starting, so back a little bit earlier, there's been this race to actually get hold of that stockpile. The Germans are trying to buy it, and the company are a bit kind of unsure about that, and the French get wind of it, and the French do this kind of crazy operation, all credit to the Dozierm Bureau of the French.

They do a great operation where they substitute bags at an airport. So the Germans think that the heavy water is going on a cargo flight to Amsterdam, and they intercept that, when in fact they've switched the bags and the French have put it on another flight to Scotland. It's going to end up weirdly at some point at Windsor Castle during the war briefly and be kept there, which is a kind of odd place to keep heavy water. But back to our story, the Germans, as we've said, invade Norway in 1940. So they haven't got those stocks, but they've got the plant. And MI6 hear that the Germans have given the order to increase heavy water production, maybe fivefold, bad news. Worth saying, MI6 have good sources in Norway, lots of people working with them. And I think the best book to understand what's going on in this period in Norway is a book called Secret Alliances by Tony Insull, who's a former British diplomat, and historian, brilliant book, which is all about.

secret operations, S-O-E-M-I-6, and the Norwegians of the war. One of the sources MI6 have is Leif Tronstat, the professor who's developed it and helped build a plant. And he tells MI6... That's helpful, by the way, when planning a sabotage operation, the guy who actually designed the plant happens to be there. He and another engineer actually escaped to London from Norway, having provided intelligence.

So they're going to be really important in helping plan it. And he is telling the Brits as well, once he's arrived, You can't bomb the plant, too much risk to civilians in the area, who obviously he wants to protect because they're Norwegians. It's too hard as well to bomb from the air, he says, because of the location on that cliffside, get spotted coming in by air, need to be accurate. So it's just too difficult. So it's got to be sabotage. So that becomes the only option for them to try and go after it. Now, there are, before we get to Joachim, an Operation Gunnicide, there's some precursors,

which is just worth touching on briefly. A team called Grouse, code named Grouse, is dropped in October 1942 to send back intelligence. They're Norwegians, including two school friends from the local area. They've got to send back messages, intelligence reports, make contact with the local sources who are on the ground. There's this fascinating bit where they're sending that by wireless telegraphy set. Morse code effectively, and the receivers, the people hearing it back in Britain, have been trained to know the hand, literally the way in which each operator sends a message. And the idea is every person actually uses the Morse code set uniquely.

You can tell if it's not the right hand, because that means maybe the set has been captured by the Germans and is being operated. And they can tell when Grouse at one point are sending back signals. It doesn't look like the right hand, the right person operating it, but then they actually discover it's because the person is so frostbitten, their fingertips are frozen and they can't press the keys properly because it's that cold. They try their first attempt at sabotage, which is called Operation Freshman. Now, this is a pretty wild operation because it involves dropping a team of 34 commandos who are going to be towed by a plane while they are in gliders.

Sounds safe. These gliders are going to kind of glide on to the, Norwegian snow and ice, and then they're going to get off, and then they're going to go and do their sabotage. Some remarked that the gliders resembled a coffin, and I'm afraid that is telling. And it was a wild plan, and it was the first time they'd really tried to do anything like this in that kind of weather. And the pilots, you know, the planes have never really towed in that kind of weather. It goes catastrophically wrong. Because The planes can't find the landing site. They get iced up.

They have to descend. They hit turbulence. That means the turbulence means the ropes towing the gliders snap. One of the airplanes just crashes. Another one makes it back. Both gliders go down. Some of the commandos die on impact. Others are captured by the Germans and are executed by the Germans.

They're not just imprisoned. No, because they're what are considered commandos, and the Nazi high command has issued the commander order, which says kill commandos, even if they surrender, even if they're in uniform. So it's a disaster. And what's more with them are maps indicating what their target was, which was Vermeck and their plot. So it's pretty much as bad as it could be at that point.

And so combined operations HQ, the Commando people have been running that operation, it now gets handed off to Special Operations Executive. Because I think there's a sense, you try. You know, you come up with a different scheme. And that is where Joachim Ronenberg is going to be selected and asked to create a team of six to go in and do it. And the Grouse team is still there on the ground, right? So there's still a team of two who are there in the area collecting intelligence.

So you've got some real-time sense of what's going on at the plant. One thing I'm trying to think about is, what would you say is kind of the modern equivalent of the heavy water? Because it's not like nuclear technology at this point isn't a proven thing, right? Yeah. It's interesting how much risk they're willing to take to try to take down a plant that is working on a fairly cutting edge and as yet maybe unproven. bit of nuclear technology.

I mean, I do think it is the equivalent of the Natanz enrichment plant. It's that kind of thing. But you're right, it's a less proven technology at that time. But if you've even got the possibility in wartime that the Nazis could use it, I think you can see why it becomes a priority to take it down. So even though freshmen has failed terribly, they're going to try and send in this next team, which is going to be led by Joachim. And he's asked to bring in these other people, five other people.

He picks people who he thinks he can ski. He's actually the youngest of the team, which I think is interesting. And yet he's clearly the leader. The plan originally is to go in three weeks after he summoned in to SOEA headquarters. But the problem is the weather. You need good weather to go. That doesn't happen very often in Norway in the winter. They have some aborted attempts to go out there.

The pilots can't tell the difference, they say, between clouds and mountaintops, which is not great when you're flying a plane. But at least they get a bit more time to prepare as a result. So they're looking and they're getting the intelligence from the professor who's there, who's also desperate to be parachuted in. The professor is like wanting to take part in operations and giving them more details of the layout. His ski game might not be up to Yacom's level though. Maybe not. He's a bit older, but he's still, I think he's pretty gung-ho in his own way. And they're looking, of course, what else they do? They look at scale models of the part.

We love our scale models. We love a good scale model. I mean, I would love an excuse to build a scale model of something right now and use it to plan an operation. They've looked at their scale models. They've got their skis. They've got their kit together. Eventually, time to go, February the 16th. And Joachim Ronenberg says to me, very many years later, when I ask him about that,

he said, we very often thought to ourselves that this was a one. way trip. Oh, all right. That's a good cliffhanger, Gordon. So maybe there with this prospects of a one-way skiing trip to a Norwegian heavy water plant. Let's take a break. And we come back. We'll see how this adventure gets on. I'm Sarah Churchwell. And I'm David Olushoeker. And together were the hosts of Journey Through Time, where we tell history from the ground up. This week, we're discussing the surprising history of the National Rifle Association in the US, the NRA, which is really the story of how guns became so tangled with American identity. The NRA was set up to improve gun safety and regulation after the Civil War, because despite

what we're told today, America was a society that favored strong gun control for most of its history. It was actually only in the late 20th century, while the NRA was being run, in fact, by a convicted killer, that the NRA transformed into a for-profit group that was against gun control, and that position has reshaped American life in the most profound possible ways. This history is essential to understanding the thinking behind some of the militias who took part in the storming of the Capitol building in 2021 and how these ideas are bleeding into law enforcement and who is propping up Trump in 2025. Ultimately, this is a story of national myth-making, and it's also a story about really effective marketing. Now, as a treat for our

listeners, we've got a short clip at the end of this episode. Well, welcome back. Operation Gunnorside is now officially underway, Gordon, and our Norwegian ski team are airborne over Norway, and in the pitch black of a Norwegian winter. And it sounds like a terrible skiing vacation to me, to be quite honest. Yeah, it's not Aspen, I think. It's not Aspen in their winter. It's deep winter, pitch black, when Joachim Roanenberg and the others jump from the plane. Initially, they land and they don't know where they are. They'll slowly realize that they're actually 20 miles away from the right drop site. No one ever hits the drop site in these

stories, do they don't. You just never do. You're always miles and miles from where you're supposed to be. I got some sympathy with the pilot. are going to be honest. They're interesting. They've got snowsuits on, although underneath British battle dress, because one of the things they're going to try and do is not look Norwegian, because they figure they've potentially got

a bit more protection and a bit more protection from reprisals for the local population, if it looks like they're British. So they've got snowsuits, British battle dress, Tommy guns, painted white, wooden skis, and then this I found extraordinary rabbit fur lined

underpants. I thought I was the only one who had a pair, but... I don't know where you get those from. Maybe where you are, they're sold in the shops. I've got a guy. Sounds very warm. It sounds warm. It sounds warm.

They've also got suicide pills in case they get captured. And they've got 11 containers full of all their equipment, you know, the explosives, everything else they need. There's a massive blizzard, inevitably. Obviously, there's going to be a massive blizzard. The storm hits. They can't see anything. They've got to take refuge in a hut, the nearest hut they can find.

The first morning, they can't even open the door of the hut. They're that snowed in. This is a somewhat ignorant question about Norway, but why are there huts everywhere? There are huts everywhere, because people just, I think, use them to escape. I don't think they're particularly fancy. I think they're just kind of quite basic huts littered around the countryside. So Norwegian listeners write in and tell us your hut culture and more. But I think that's the thing.

They're there. So five days they're stuck in the hut. Are they able to get out? They finally go out and they see someone coming towards them and that person is carrying a rifle. So it's a moment of tension because is this a German? Is it someone who can blow the whole operation? So they approach this guy, a lone individual on his skis with a sled he's pulling and a rifle. And it turns out he's a professional hunter stroke poacher.

There's a little bit of ambiguity about what it was. And on his sled is 50 pounds of reindeer meat, which he's been out collecting. And he's been out in the wilds supposedly for months just hunting and collecting this stuff to eventually take back to people in Oslo. Now, Joachim Ronenberg then asks him about his politics. Natural segue. What do you think of the Nazi occupation? Here's the problem for our poacher hunter.

He says he's a supporter of the Quisling Party. We should say the Quisling is the Norwegian. The region equivalent of Vichy, France, the kind of collaborationist government, is the Quisling government in Norway. And this guy has just said he's a supporter of them. It's a bad start to the operation. Off the dropside, blizzard, and then the guy shows up with meat, and he's a supporter of the Nazi government, supposedly.

Or at least he says so. Well, he says so. And the more they talk to him, the more they think he's possibly not the brightest spark. And he might be just saying that because he thinks that's the thing most likely. to save him. So it doesn't look like he's a member. He's not got kind of party IDs on him. He then offers to help them with the route that they need to go to meet up with the grouse team who've been in there for about five months already. And he's going to guide them along with a map and a compass. You get a sense he's a slightly odd character. I mean, he asked to buy one of their tommy guns at

one point. Probably be great for killing reindeer. Yeah, be great for killing reindeer. And he wants to shoot reindeer as he's going because he thinks, oh, it's a great opportunity to do some hunting. What do they tell him they're doing? They tell him they want to go to the plant, so they've told him where they're going. They're trying to kind of meet up with the grouse team. So eventually they do find the grouse team. And the grouse team, this is a wild story of survival in itself, because they've been living up in this really harsh Norwegian winter for months with no supplies, eating moss, so they've been making soup out of moss. So they are starved, sick. I mean, it's been bad. Do they have the rabbit fur-lined underpants or do they just have normal?

Even if they did, even if you've got those rabbit underpants. I think you're in a bad place. I think eating moss. So there's a joyous meeting up at a food and it's time to head to the plant. But the question is, what do you do with the hunter? What would you do, Gordon? Well, they've been given orders, which are let nothing get in the way of finishing the job. And you kind of know what that means. And you can't afford to take him with you. I mean, he can't come on an operation. You can't afford to leave anyone behind to guard him.

So you've got two choices, really, haven't you? You either let him go or you kill him. And there's a debate in the team. Some of them clearly do want to kill him. But it's interesting because Jochim Monenberg doesn't want to. And one of the other members of the team actually says, I'll shoot him for you. I'm going to shoot him for you because I can see you don't want to do it. So I'll do it.

And Yonkim says, no, I'm not sure. sure we have to do it. And it's interesting later in life when he explains why he didn't want to do it. He says he didn't know what the effect would be on the members of the team at shooting an innocent man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he felt it would trouble their conscience. It's kind of interesting, isn't it? Again, it goes to the nature of this man, that he's quite sensitive and quite thoughtful about these things. they get him to write a letter, sign a letter, saying that he's been helping them in some kind of sabotage activity.

I think that's a good idea. Yeah. They get him to sign it and they say, we're going to let you go, but we will make sure the Germans get this letter if you tell anyone about us. We'll make out that you were part of it. So it's a risky move. It's a risky move. But, you know, they let him go and it doesn't look like he does anything.

So they've dispatched with the hunter, fortunately without having to. to literally bump him off. Would you have shot him, Gordon? Would you have directed one of your ski team men? David, I can sense you're a hard man. You're a hard man. I can sense where you're heading. Go on.

What would you have done? I don't know. I don't know. I think I'd have struggled to. I'd have struggled to just execute this guy. It's also interesting, isn't it? Because you spent a few days with him and he's helped you trekking around. You've got a bit of a feel for him.

He's not the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I think that makes it a bit harder than in the heat of the moment. You're getting discovered and you've got to make the decision, I think. I don't know. I like to think I wouldn't have shot him, but I don't know. Okay. I think I might have shot him or had someone shoot him. Okay.

Seems risky. Let this guy go. It is risky. Yeah. You know, it's admirable. It's an admirable risk. Now comes the key question. They've got to attack the plant.

They've got explosives to blow up these pressure cylinders and drain the heavy water, but how are they going to get in? So we should just briefly set out a geography of this again. It's called the site. and the industrial plant, the Winter Fortress, in a book by the same name by Neil Baskam. And it certainly looks like one. It does look like a kind of bond layer, doesn't it? It's carved into the rock of a gorge, a big, you know, seven-eighth story industrial plant made of stone.

And it's on a kind of ledge halfway up the cliff side of the gorge, on the south side of the valley. Behind it, going further up to the top, are the pipelines bringing the water down to the generator. there's a single track railway line going along the wall of the gorge to the nearby town to bring in machinery, although there's also a lock gate, and then there is a 75-foot-long suspension bridge, which is connecting across a valley to the other side of the gorge. There's always a bridge. It's quite Indiana Jones, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

It reminds me that bit, is it Indiana Jones? Temple of Doom at the end, where they're on that kind of suspension bridge. there's a big drop down and there's the river below. It looks exactly like that, except with an industrial plant at one end. So you've got the kind of bridge going along the gorge and the river valley below it. Problem is, how do you get across? There's actually only 30 German guards on the site, partly because they're pretty convinced it's impregnable.

There are mines, there are searchlights, and crucially, there's around 200 reinforcements who can be called in from the nearby town if the alarm is sounded. Are there dogs? I don't know about the dogs, actually. It feels like there should be. It might be cold. It feels like there should be dogs. There would be a scene in the film where they come upon, you know, our intrepid ski team

sort of stakes out the site and we'll see, you know, Germans walking in sort of the winter air with dogs and there's lights. The only proper way in is over the suspension bridge. Two guards patrol the bridge. There's a guardhouse on the far side where the plant is, where a third soldier's got an automatic weapon and access to an alarm, which he could easily activate if there's any trouble on the bridge. And then, you know, you've got the reinforcements are going to go.

Going over the kind of the back of it, if you like, where the pipelines are, you know, there's three options really to get in. If you try and go over the far side, the back where the pipelines are feeding in, there's guards there as well and minefield. So that's out. The next option is the bridge across the valley. That's the most direct access, which is why you've got all the kind of guards there. Chances are you could fight your way across, but the alarm's bound to get sound.

Reinforcements are going to come in. One-way mission, even if you get across, and that's near. But the third option, the third option, David, is to climb down the gorge, cross the valley floor in the river, climb up the other side, which is even steeper, kind of imagine a sheer cliff face and then sneak onto the railway line, avoiding any guards. Best chance of surprise, but 600 foot drop, and the Germans basically don't think it's even possible. So they've accepted the local advice that this is an impossible route. So they've not really got any guards on it, but the odds of doing that of being able to do the climb down

across, up, sneak in, they do seem pretty tricky. And so Jokin Rönenberg, again, kind of goes and talks to his team and he says like, okay, what do we do? The odds are pretty bad. They all think it's a one-way ticket. He feels as the leader that he has to give them all a say in it. So they discuss it and they have a vote on how to get in and also how to get out. I mean, that's leadership, but it's kind of interesting because it's quite democratic leadership. Why hadn't they worked this out beforehand? Because they had the scale model. You feel like you work things out with the scale model.

Yeah, I guess so. But I think what they're also finding is only when you get there and when they've got the fresh intelligence from Grouse, who've got, we should say, sources inside the plant who are able to tell them what's going on and some of the routines, that you can see what the latest situation is. And you can actually visualize it and work it out. So I think it's only when they get there that they're going to decide finally. on what the plan is. And, you know, they're going to vote. The vote is up and down the cliff face. The obvious winner.

Let's do this. Let's do this clap. Which I guess it seems like obviously the most insane version, but perhaps less insane than trying to go through a minefield or conducting a suicide mission over the bridge. So it actually, in some ways, maybe the most harrowing seeming option is actually the least, the least risky in an odd way. Yeah. But it's interesting.

Rodenberg says, when you look at the gorge, he says, you feel it's impossible. That's what he felt at the time. It just didn't look like you could do it. But that is what they're going to try and do. Well, and that is actually a perfect place to end it, isn't it? It's quite, it is literally a cliffhanger. It's literally a cliffhanger. Yacquim Ronenberg and his team literally climbing the gorge to get to the heavy water plant.

So I think we should leave it there and we come back next time for the thrilling conclusion of Operation Gunnorside. We'll see just how that attack unfolds. But of course, Gordon, if you do not want to wait, dear listeners, you can become a member of the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. Sign up, binge, listen, get access to all of our series early and find out what in the world happens. to Joachin Brunnenberg and his team. We'll see you next time. See you next time. I'm Sarah Churchill from Journey Through Time.

And here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. So this is the thing that will amaze anybody who knows what the NRA is today, is that it began as a gun safety organization. What they discovered was that the soldiers in the Civil War were not good at gun safety. they were actually hopeless. They kept kind of shooting themselves and each other and they kept missing all their targets. as the Civil War was breaking out, there are these Americans in England who see the National Rifle Association and think, well, that's a good idea. We should have training in gun safety and in marksmanship. You know, people should be just, you know, better at it. And so that's the idea, but it takes them 10 years to get there because the Civil War is keeping Americans a little bit busy. But at the same time, the gun industry is growing. It's growing because of the Civil War. And so the gun industry starts to pivot to see themselves as marketing to individual U.S. consumers. and they start to market them as status symbols as symbols of personal power. If you want to hear more, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.