The Winter Fortress Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Map: Attack on Vemork

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  List of Participants

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I

  The Water

  The Professor

  Bonzo

  The Dam-Keeper’s Son

  Open Road

  Part II

  Commando Order

  Make a Good Job

  Keen as Mustard

  An Uncertain Fate

  The Lost

  Part III

  The Instructor

  Photos

  Those Louts Won’t Catch Us

  Rules of the Hunter

  The Lonely, Dark War

  The Storm

  Best-Laid Plans

  The Climb

  Sabotage

  Part IV

  The Most Splendid Coup

  The Hunt

  Phantoms of the Vidda

  A National Sport

  Target List

  Cowboy Run

  Part V

  Nothing Without Sacrifice

  Five Kilos of Fish

  The Man with the Violin

  A 10:45 Alarm

  Victory

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Read More from Neal Bascomb

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Neal Bascomb

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bascomb, Neal.

  Title: The winter fortress : the epic mission to sabotage Hitler’s atomic bomb / Neal Bascomb

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by the publisher; resource not viewed.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015048287 (print) | LCN 2015042716 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544368064 (ebook) | ISBN 9780544368057 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Commando operations—Norway. | World War, 1939–1945—Underground movements—Norway. | Sabotage—Norway—History—20th century. | Atomic bomb—Germany—History. | World War, 1939–1945—Germany—Technology.

  Classification: LCC D794.5 (print) | LCC D794.5.B373 2016 (ebook) | DDC 940.54/86481094828—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048287

  v2.0716

  Cover design by Albert Tang

  Cover photograph: Norsk Hydro ASA photo collection/Norsk Industriarbeidermuseum

  All maps © Svein Vetle Trae/Fossøy; interior maps rendered by Jim McMahon/Scholastic. Map source notes: Attack on Vemork Jens-Anton Poulsson, Knut Werner Hagen; Grouse’s Arrival in Norway Jens-Anton Poulsson, Knut Werner Hagen; Operation Freshman Per Johnsen; Grouse Hideouts Jens-Anton Poulsson, Knut Werner Hagen; Gunnerside’s Retreat to Sweden Joachim Rønneberg; Bombing of Vemork Norsk Hydro Archive; Sinking of the D/F Hydro Knut Haukelid, Knut Lier-Hansen.

  To those who brave the struggle

  List of Participants

  * * *

  Operation Grouse/Swallow

  Jens-Anton Poulsson, leader of Grouse

  Knut Haugland, radio operator

  Claus Helberg

  Arne Kjelstrup

  Einar Skinnarland

  Operation Gunnerside

  Joachim Rønneberg, leader of Gunnerside

  Knut Haukelid, second in command

  Birger Strømsheim

  Fredrik Kayser

  Kasper Idland

  Hans Storhaug

  D/F Hydro Sinking

  Alf Larsen, engineer at Vemork

  Knut Lier-Hansen, Milorg resistance fighter

  Gunnar Syverstad, laboratory assistant at Vemork

  Rolf Sørlie, construction engineer at Vemork

  Kjell Nielsen, transport manager at Vemork

  Ditlev Diseth, Norsk Hydro pensioner

  Norwegians

  Leif Tronstad, scientist and Kompani Linge leader

  Jomar Brun, chief engineer at Vemork

  Torstein Skinnarland, brother of Einar

  Olav Skogen, leader of local Rjukan Milorg

  Lillian Syverstad, courier for Einar Skinnarland

  Hamaren, Hovden, and Skindalen families, farmers who aided Skinnarland

  Allies

  Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain

  Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States

  Eric Welsh, head of the Norwegian branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)

  John Wilson, Norwegian section chief of British Special Operations Executive (SOE)

  Wallace Akers, head of the Directorate of Tube Alloys

  Mark Henniker, commanding officer of Operation Freshman

  Owen Roane, American Air Force pilot

  Nazis and Collaborators in Norway

  Josef Terboven, Reichskommissar in Norway

  General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, head of German military forces in Norway

  Lieutenant Colonel Heinrich Fehlis, head of the Gestapo and security forces in Norway

  Captain Siegfried Fehmer, Gestapo bloodhound in Oslo

  Second Lieutenant Muggenthaler, Fehlis’s SS official in Rjukan

  Vidkun Quisling, leader of the Nasjonal Samling, Norwegian fascist party

  German Scientists

  Kurt Diebner

  Werner Heisenberg

  Paul Harteck

  Abraham Esau

  Walther Gerlach

  You have to fight for your freedom and for peace. You have to fight for it every day, to keep it. It’s like a glass boat; it’s easy to break. It’s easy to lose.

  —JOACHIM RØNNEBERG, Gunnerside leader

  Prologue

  * * *

  Nazi-occupied Norway, February 27, 1943

  In a staggered line, the nine saboteurs cut across the mountain slope. Instinct, more than the dim light of the moon, guided the young men. They threaded through the stands of pine and traversed down the sharp, uneven terrain, much of it pocked with empty hollows and thick drifts of snow. Dressed in white camouflage suits over their British Army uniforms, the men looked like phantoms haunting the woods. They moved as quietly as ghosts, the silence broken only by the swoosh of their skis and the occasional slap of a pole against an unseen branch. The warm, steady wind that blew through the Vestfjord Valley dampered even these sounds. It was the same wind that would eventually, they hoped, blow their tracks away.

  A mile into the trek from their base hut, the woods became too dense and steep for them to continue by any means other than on foot. The young Norwegians unfastened their skis and hoisted them to their shoulders. It was still tough going. Carrying rucksacks filled with thirty-five pounds of gear, and armed with submachine guns, grenades, pistols, explosives, and knives, they waded, slid, and clambered their way down through the heavy, wet snow. Under the weight of their equipment they occasionally sank to their waists in the drifts. The darkness, thickening when the low clouds hid the moon, didn’t help matters.

  Finally the forest cleared. The men came onto the road that ran across the northern side of Vestfjord Valley toward Lake Møs to the west and the town of Rjukan a few miles to the east. Directly south, an eagle’s swoop over the precipitous Måna River gorge, stood Vemork, their target.

/>   Despite the distance across the gorge and the wind singing in their ears, the commandos could hear the low hum of the hydroelectric plant. The power station and eight-story hydrogen plant in front of it were perched on a ledge overhanging the gorge. From there it was a six-hundred-foot drop to the Måna River, which snaked through the valley below. It was a valley so deep, the sun rarely reached its base.

  Had Hitler not invaded Norway, had the Germans not seized control of the plant, Vemork would have been lit up like a beacon. But now, its windows were blacked out to deter nighttime raids by Allied bombers. Three sets of cables stretched across the valley to discourage low-flying air attacks during the day as well.

  In dark silhouette, the plant looked an imposing fortress on an icy crag of rock. A single-lane suspension bridge provided the only point of entry for workers and vehicles, and it was closely guarded. Mines were scattered about the surrounding hillsides. Patrols frequently swept the grounds. Searchlights, sirens, machine-gun nests, and a troop barracks were also at the ready.

  And now the commandos were going to break into it.

  Standing at the edge of the road, they were mesmerized by their first sight of Vemork. They did not need the bright of day to know its legion of defenses. They had studied scores of reconnaissance photographs, read reams of intelligence, memorized blueprints, and practiced setting their explosive charges dozens of times on a dummy model of the target. Each man could navigate every path, corridor, and stairwell of the plant in his mind’s eye.

  They were not the first to try to blow up Vemork. Many had already died in the attempt. While war raged across Europe, Russia, North Africa, and in the Pacific, while battalions of tanks, squadrons of bombers, fleets of submarines and destroyers, and millions of soldiers faced off against each other in a global conflict, it was this plant, hidden away deep in the rugged Norwegian wilds, that Allied leaders believed lay on the thin line separating victory and defeat.

  For all their intricate knowledge of Vemork, the nine were still not exactly sure how this target could possibly be of such value. They had been told that the plant produced something called heavy water, and that with this mysterious substance the Nazis might be able “to blow up a good part of London.” The saboteurs assumed this was an exaggeration to ensure their full commitment to the job.

  And they were committed, no matter the price, which would likely include their own lives. From the start, they had known that the odds of their survival were long. They might get inside the plant and complete their mission, but getting out and away would be another story. If necessary, they would try to fight their way out, but escape was unlikely. Resolved not to be captured alive, each of them carried a cyanide pill encased in rubber, stashed in a lapel or waistband.

  There were nerves about the operation, for sure, but a sense of fatalism prevailed. For many months now they had been away from their homes, training, planning, and preparing. Now at least they were about to act. If they died, if they “went west,” as many in their special company already had in other operations, so be it. At least they would have had their chance to fight. In a war such as this one, most expected to die, sooner or later.

  Back in England, the mastermind of the operation, Leif Tronstad, was awaiting news of the operation. Before the commandos left for their mission, he had promised them that their feats would be remembered for a hundred years. But none of the men were there for history. If you went to the heart of the question, none of them were there for heavy water, or for London. They had seen their country invaded by the Germans, their friends killed and humiliated, their families starved, their rights curtailed. They were there for Norway, for the freedom of its lands and people from Nazi rule.

  Their moment now at hand, the saboteurs refastened their skis and started down the road through the darkness.

  Part I

  1

  The Water

  * * *

  ON FEBRUARY 14, 1940, Jacques Allier, a middle-aged, nattily dressed banker, hurried through the doors of the Hotel Majestic, on rue la Pérouse. Situated near the Arc de Triomphe, the landmark hotel had welcomed everyone from diplomats attending the Versailles peace talks in 1919 to the influx of artists who made the City of Light famous in the decade that followed. Now, with all of France braced for a German invasion, likely to begin with a thrust through Belgium, and Paris largely evacuated, a shell of its former self, conversation at the hotel was once again all about war. Allier crossed the lobby. He was not there on bank business but rather as an agent of the Deuxième Bureau, the French internal spy agency. Raoul Dautry, the minister of armaments, and physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie were waiting for him, and their discussion involved the waging of a very different kind of war.

  Joliot-Curie, who with his wife, Irène, had won the Nobel Prize for the discovery that stable elements could be made radioactive by artificial or induced methods, explained to Allier that he was now in the middle of constructing a machine to exploit the energy held within atoms. Most likely it would serve to power submarines, but it had the potential for developing an unsurpassed explosive. He needed Allier’s help. It was the same pitch Joliot-Curie had given Dautry months before, one made all the more forceful by the suggestion that the energy held within an ordinary kitchen table, if unlocked, could turn the world into a ball of fire. Allier offered to do whatever he could to help the scientist.

  Joliot-Curie explained that he needed a special ingredient for his experiments—heavy water—and that there was only one company in the world that produced it to any quantity: Norsk Hydro, in Norway. As an official at the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, which owned a majority stake in the Norwegian concern, Allier was ideally positioned to obtain whatever supplies Norsk Hydro had at its Vemork plant as quickly and discreetly as possible. The French prime minister himself, Édouard Daladier, had already signed off on the mission.

  There was one problem, Allier said. Only a month before, the chief lawyer for Norsk Hydro, Bjarne Eriksen, had visited him in his Paris office. According to Eriksen, the Germans were also interested in the production at Vemork. They had placed a number of orders and had suggested that they might need as much as two tons of heavy water in the near future. Startled by the demand for such vast quantities—and denied any information about how the material might be used—Norsk Hydro had yet to fulfill more than twenty-five kilograms of these orders.

  This report troubled Dautry and Joliot-Curie deeply. The Germans must be on the same track with their research. Allier needed to move—and fast—to secure the stock before the Germans did. If there was trouble in bringing it out of Norway, he was to see that the heavy water was contaminated, thus rendered useless for experiments.

  Two weeks later, Allier headed across the vast hall of Paris’s Gare du Nord and boarded a train to Amsterdam. He was traveling under his mother’s maiden name, Freiss. Concealed in his briefcase were two documents. One was a letter of credit for up to 1.5 million kroner for the heavy water. The other gave him the authority to recruit any French agents required in smuggling out the supply. Short of the false beard, Allier felt like he had all the accouterments of a hero in the spy novels he loved.

  From Amsterdam he flew to Malmö, Sweden, then took a train to Stockholm. There he sat down with three French intelligence agents, tasking them to meet him in Oslo a few days later. Early on March 4, Allier traveled by train to the Norwegian capital, arriving into Eastern Central Station. At the French Legation, he learned that his cover was already blown. An intercepted message from Berlin’s spy agency, the Abwehr, had been deciphered. “At any price,” it read, “stop a suspect Frenchman traveling under the name of Freiss.”

  Allier was undeterred. He left the legation and rang Norsk Hydro from a public phone booth. Within the hour, he entered the company headquarters at Solligata 7, a short distance from the royal residence of King Haakon VII. In a meeting with Dr. Axel Aubert, Allier made his offer to buy the company’s stocks of heavy water. He said nothing about their intended use, unsure th
at he could trust Aubert. The tough, long-standing director general, who looked like he chewed stones for breakfast, was clear: his sympathies were with France; he had refused the Germans any great quantities of heavy water, and he would provide Allier with whatever he needed.

  The next day, Allier traveled by car to Vemork, one hundred miles from the Norwegian capital. Aubert followed. Their arrival was unannounced.

  For thousands of years, water had run plentifully throughout the high wilderness plateau of the Hardangervidda in Telemark, a region west of Oslo. Much of this water, a vast flow, descended from the Vidda into its natural reservoir at Lake Møs. Then the river Måna carried the water for eighteen miles through the steep Vestfjord Valley to Lake Tinnsjø.

  The river’s flow changed when Norsk Hydro, a burgeoning industrial giant, built a dam at the lake’s outlet in 1906. The company redirected the water through tunnels blasted out of the rock, which ran for three miles underground before they reached the Vemork power station. From there, the water fell 920 vertical feet through eleven steel pipelines into turbine generators that produced 145,000 kilowatts of electricity. It was the world’s largest hydroelectric power station.

  A fraction of the water, roughly sixteen tons an hour, was then directed into a hydrogen plant, also the world’s largest, thirty feet away on the edge of the cliff. There it flowed into tens of thousands of steel electrolysis cells, which consumed almost all of the power generated at the station. Currents of electricity running through the cells split the water’s two hydrogen atoms from its lone oxygen one. These separated gases were then pumped down to chemical plants in Rjukan, at the base of the valley. A company town, Rjukan had seven thousand residents most of whom worked for Norsk Hydro. The hydrogen was primarily used to make fertilizer—a huge market.