While much of Europe fell under Nazi occupation, a small team of Norwegian resistance fighters executed one of the most daring sabotage missions of World War II. This episode explores Operation Gunnerside, the February 1943 raid on the Vemork heavy water plant in Rjukan, Telemark. Led by Knut Haukelid and Josef Berg, nine commandos from the Norwegian Independent Company 1, backed by British Special Operations Executive training, infiltrated the heavily guarded facility to destroy the electrolysis cells producing deuterium oxide. Heavy water was essential for Germany’s nuclear research, and stopping it was a quiet but critical victory. We’ll walk through their journey across the Hardangervidda plateau, the meticulous planning that allowed them to bypass Gestapo patrols, and the explosive success that delayed the Nazi atomic bomb program by years. Unlike the earlier Operation Freshman disaster, this mission succeeded without alerting the enemy to its full scale, preserving the element of surprise for future operations.
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