Latest / Stuff You Should Know / WWII Sabotage Spotlight: Operation Gunnerside

Transcript

WWII Sabotage Spotlight: Operation Gunnerside · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And I guess it's a
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: new year because I just had the spirit of John
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Strickland passed through me when I welcome everybody. Did you
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: hear that enthusiastic he.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit of a well not a CoA.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I guess, just sort of an updating is this is
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: our first recording of the New Year, and we had
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: our longest break ever. You know, I think everyone knows
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: we take a nice long Christmas break, but this year
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: it stretched into November, and so we've been gone for
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: a long time. Yeah, And I'm like, do I even
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: know how to do this anymore?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Same here. I keep making this your sound whenever
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I move.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Oh no, don't do that.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: I can't help it. It's just I'm that rusty.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: And also this topic, it's good, but it's uh. We'll
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: try and keep it as streamlined and easy to understand
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: as possible. There's a lot of moving pieces, sure, and
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of Norwegian names that we've I still
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: don't know how to say the letter with like the
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: null set.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Uh. I think it's like a bum laut.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Is it? Okay? I mean I'm gonna treat him as zoomlouds.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it's the same thing as anomlout.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, we're still gonna screw up some of this.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: But don't worry about the names too much. You know,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: we should just name everyone, you know, Bill one, Bill two,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Bill three.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Right or leaf tu.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: But anyway, we're gonna give it our best. Go. Welcome back,
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: my friend. I'm glad to be back in the studio
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: after this wonderful break.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Same here, man, same here. Welcome back yourself. So, yeah,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: we're talking today about one of the more unsung operations
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: of World War Two. Unsung, I guess depending on where
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you live. If you live in Norway, it's song all
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: over the place. It's like a top forty hit there.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: It's sung so much.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: What is now? Yeah?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it took a little while, didn't it weirdly? Yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: But here in the US we don't know about it
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: as much because we were kind of tangential to it,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: if at all. It was more a joint operation between
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: the Brits and the Norwegians. The Norwegian Resistance, we should say,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: and the whole thing is called Operation Gunner Side. And
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I have to say I want to give a big
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: thanks to one of our listeners, Matthew me malt Butuchard,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: who suggested this one. I think back in November. Oh wow,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: and it got it went right to the top of
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the list. So here we are talking about it now
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: in January.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure you got that email and you're like,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: unsung saboteur story defeating the Nazis, but still my heart.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the whole thing kind of starts off. I
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: think back in like nineteen thirty nine when some German
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: physicists figured out that you could split the atom through
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: fission and release a bunch of energy. And very very
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: quickly after that, physicists around the world were like, this
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: is really great. We can come up with a whole
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: new source of energy for it. This could also be
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: an extremely dangerous weapon. And right after that, World War
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: II started and the Allies started working on the bomb,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: and they assumed that the Nazis were also working on
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: a bomb. So that's kind of like the mentality that
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: was going on with this story really starts.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was sort of a race to
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: see who could get there first. And I mean I
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: learned a lot researching this. I didn't know a lot
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: about a lot of this stuff, even though we've done
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: episodes about nuclear fission and the like. But there's more
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: than one way to skin a cat, as it turns out,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: if you want to try and make a reaction big
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: enough to cause a big boom. And one of the
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: routes that was taken by well, not the Americans, I
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: guess the Germans were trying to take this route was
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: to use something called heavy water AKA how would you
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: say that? Deuterium oxide Okay, D two O, which is
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: like H two Oh, it's like regular water. This heavy
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: water is except instead of normal hydrogen atom, there as
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: an H twoo that is now replaced by hydrogen isotope deuterium,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: which makes it literally heavier.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the reason why is because deuterium has a
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: neutron where hydrogen doesn't. That's the only difference. I mean,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: it's still you could cook with it, you could bathe
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: in it. You probably wouldn't really notice any difference because
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: it's two atomic units heavier, so it's not like you
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: would like be crushed down to the shower floor, if
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: you had it running through your house or anything.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Or water balloon, fight the kid. The kid's using heavy.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: One exactly, given kids black eyes at that thing. Yeah. So,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: but the reason that it was useful or is useful
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: still in nuclear reactions is because of that neutron that
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: it has. Right, So, when you carry out a nuclear
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: reaction that produces an explosion, you have an uncontrolled nuclear reaction.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: That's the one that where it just goes kaboom and
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: a huge amount of energy is released at once.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the whole point.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yes, for the bomb part. But to make the stuff
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: that actually blows up, usually plutonium, you have to carry
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: out controlled nuclear reactions, and to make it controlled to
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: kind of bring some order to the chaos and slow
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: things down just enough that it will never explode, yet
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: it will still produce energy that you can use to
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: create plutonium. If you bash uranium with a bunch of neutrons,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: you add a moderator, and heavy water is a moderator
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: because all those fast neutrons bouncing around will knock into
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the heavy water and it will transfer energy to the
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: heavy water's neutrons, but it slows the process down. In
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: the same way. You couldn't use regular water because regular
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: water would be like, oh, thanks for the free neutron jump,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and turn into heavy water. I guess, so regular water
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: wouldn't work. Heavy water would work. The problem is is
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: heavy water's really really rare.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super rare, and it takes a long time
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: to get just a little bit of it. I think
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: it's like, if you're just looking at a regular water source,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: there's one deuterium oxide molecule for about every twenty million
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: regular ones. So it's not needle in a haystack territory
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: molecularly speaking, but it's not far off. The Germans went
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: the route of heavy water as their moderator. The Americans
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: looked around for a moderator, and they said, what about
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Josh Clark. He's a pretty levelheaded guy.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I just show up with my note cards in a blazer.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: By the way, our first side track of the year.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: I remember A reminded Ruby last night that we had
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: a TV show for the probably fifteenth time in her life,
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: and she's like, you did, And we tried again and
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: actually watched an entire episode which one we watched, the
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: one with John Hodgman, and also starring my neighbor Catherine,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: which was the final episode. How we wrote it but
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: not the final episode and how it aired, right, We
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: won't get into that, but I have to say, dude,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: you were like pretty good and a lot of that
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: as an actor, and I was not.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: I disagree, you're always so hard on yourself. You were great, man.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: You were at least as good as I was. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: that's to say you were middling.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: I think I think you're It's very nice of you
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: to say, but like from an I think I had
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: a real outside point of view. Last night. I was like,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: you know, Josh was pretty good in a lot of this,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: and Emily said he really was, And I said, I
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: never felt that comfortable and like I was doing a
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: good job like every once in a while I was okay,
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: But I think you had real possibilities as an actor.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. It was probably from
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: a year spin as an emo drama kid.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: It was pretty good. Thanks and Ruby made it through
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: the episode and I was like, Hey, that's our neighbor
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: and that's John, you know John, so that I think,
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: you know, helped hold our interest a little bit more.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like the space one.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a good one. It
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: was was pretty good. So long way of saying, you
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: were not available as moderator because you weren't born yet.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: So the US ended up pursuing graphite as a moderator.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Either one can be used. We went graphite. The Germans,
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: I guess we'll get to there the reason they went
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: with hard water toward the end, right, yes, and tag
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: that in the end, yeah, I think so. All right,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: So anyway, hard water is what they're after. And as
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: it turns out, there was a chemist in Norway named
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: Leif Trunstad leaf t leaf tea, yeah exactly, who was
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: who understood how to find these molecules in the best
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: way possible because he was doing it for a different
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: reason there, right, Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: So Tronstad was one of these early people who was like, hey,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: this is weird and different and new, and we can
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: figure out how to get at least very small amounts
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: of it, and there's gotta be some cool uses for this,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: like scientific, non weapony uses. And one of the ones
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: that he thought of very early on was used as
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: a tracer, which I guess you'd give somebody a glass
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: of heavy water and then you know, look at their
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: kidneys and see if there's heavy water coming out of
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: them and be like, well, there's your leak, right, that's
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: what I.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: Think, Yeah, exactly. So that's why he was pursuing it.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: And he was doing that for a company called Themork
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: Norse not Norst or Norse norsek with a k hydro plant,
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: and that was in the county of of course Telemark.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Right in the country of I guess Norway, right, sure, yeah,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: look out a word like Norse confront of you. You're
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: talking Norway.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So he's at work producing a few milliliters of
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: that uh what like every day or so.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from like leaders and leaders and gallons of water.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: They would just get the tiniest amounts because I still
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: don't quite understand how they were doing it, but essentially
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: they were separating out this one and twenty million molecule
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: of heavy water from regular mountain water.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: That Norse black magic, yeah, and.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: So like the whole plant was originally a hydroelectric power plant,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: and then they converted to using electrolysis to I think
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: create ammonia, which is very handy, and fertilizers and explosives,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: and then it was Tronstadt, who was like, we need
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: to set up basically a separate heavy water operation. So
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: by the time World War two broke out, the plant
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: at Vermork I'm pretty sure I said that, right, Vermoork Invermindy, Sody,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: ver Morek Invernment. Yeah, okay, it just took a second.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: I was like, well, I'm going to laugh at it.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: I was making sure I didn't screw something else up. Sorry,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: that's a quality joke.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you. By that time that plant was the world
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: leader in heavy water production.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: That's right, all right, So park that to the side.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: They're producing heavy water at a rate no one had
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: ever seen, like a cupful of day. And World War
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Two begins in nineteen thirty nine, and like I said,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: the Germans were like, hey, we should try and get
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: on this heavy water train, and they didn't. This not
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: why they invaded Norway. They invaded Norway because they were Nazis.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Norway was neutral, had declared themselves neutral. But in April
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty they invaded Anyway and were defeated pretty quickly.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: It took a couple of months, even though they had
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: help from the Allied so they were no match for
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: the German army and the Germans did as they do.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: They established a Nazi government there, and the people did
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: not like that because they're Norwegian. They were like, no, no, no,
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: We're going to resist it, went on strike here in there.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: They didn't cooperate in other ways to kind of just
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: you know, get in the way of progress of Nazi progress.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: And so the Nazi says, all right, martial law has
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: been declared. If you resist, you will be put to death.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: And so a lot of Norwegians left, obviously fought from
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: other places, and a lot of them said, you know what,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: We're going to stay here and maybe work with the
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Allies kind of undercover as moles.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a secret resistance, right, And one of
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: those people was Tronstad, at least at first, and then
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: it became clear that he basically needed to get out
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: of Dodge, so he ditched and went to I think
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: he went straight to the UK because after the Nazis
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: set up this program like it was, it was not
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: a pleasant place to be when they took over Norway
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: and the whole thing. Chuck reminded me of do you remember,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: way way way early in the podcast, we stumbled upon Simohaya,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the White Death, the Finnish sniper who was just like
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: a farm boy who like I think, killed more Russians
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: than anybody else in the war. Yeah, I just remembered
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: sim Ohaya, so I thought i'd give him a shout out.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm surprised you called up that name. Nice work.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: So but Leif Tronstad, he became like a really valuable
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: asset because this guy is like the world leader in
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: heavy water production, who has all of the inside dirt
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: on the place where the most heavy water is being produced.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: And it's very clear now that the Nazis have taken
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: over this plant and stepped it up from like a
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: few millileters a day to like, I think a few
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: kilograms of heavy water a day, that they have designs
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: on making an atomic bomb. And then with the Allies,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: the three words Nazi atomic bomb was among the most
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: frightening combination of words you could possibly come up with.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: And even today you know, you're like, got a Nazi
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: atomic bomb, that'd be horrible, And then you remember, oh, yeah,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on population centers and
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: that was pretty bad too. Yet still, somehow Nazi atomic
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: bomb seems even worse.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does. So he, like you said, went to
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: the UK. There he met up in real life with
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: the intelligence people he'd been working with, you know, on
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: the down low from a long distance, which imagine was
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: a pretty fun meeting. They probably hit some tea and
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: caught up in person. And he started training these commando
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: units to be saboteurs to eventually do their their you know,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: saboteur work in Norway, and the whole time was staying
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: in contact with his allies at the at the plant
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: there at Vmork and eventually, and we're just gonna say
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: these names again. I wish we could all nickname them
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: all to make it easier to keep up with. But
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: one of the guys there that he kept in touch with,
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: who will play it part in this story, is named
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Ainar skinner Land. That's pretty easy. Yeah. Uh, swallow Blue
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: was his code name. And that feels like a pretty
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: good place for a break.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I think it is.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, all right, so we do remember how to do this,
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: and we'll be right back right after this.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terris ort and call
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: it treadactyl, how to take a bergery, all about fractals
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: gone that's another hunt the Liz Plane everything. Word up, Jerry.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Chuck. Have you seen that movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: It's like a Newish guy ritchie movie. No, it's pretty good.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Actually all right, it's like an easy watch, like there's
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: it's not some big, huge sweeping epic or something you
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: have to really, you know, keep up with. It's just
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: a kind of an.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: In richie movie.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, well I would call Snatch kind of convoluted.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Oh well, sure with accents.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Sure, But there actually was something called the Ministry of
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: Ungentlemanly Warfare. That was the nickname for it. It was
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: called the Special Operations Executive officially, and they basically trained saboteurs.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: So that's who Leif Tronstad threw his lot in with.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: And one of the first things they did for the
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Norwegians was send them to Scotland and have them train
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: in like extreme weather as much as they could. But
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, like the Norwegians would be like, this is
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: this is like summer to us? What is this like
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: they I don't see why they would need to train
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: in Scotland, but trained they were. Yeah, And the reason
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: why they were trained for extreme weather and extreme conditions.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Because of the location of the the Mark power plant
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: or I guess heavy water plant. It was in a
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: really forbidding place that you would not want to go
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: to without like a car.
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was tough. I would say, you'd
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: need one of those cool old army jeeps if you
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: wanted to get there. Back then, it was surrounded to
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: buy a plateau, a mountain plateau called here we go Hardanga,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Vita perfect. That's got to mean danger or something.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: I think it actually means like wide mountain plateau.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Danger.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: I looked. I looked it up because I thought so too.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: I was like, that's got to be like the name
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: of a god that's going to kill you or something. Yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: it means it means high mountain plateau.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: I think Vita might be a plateau really uh maybe
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: hard danger. I don't know.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: So wait so that Oh, what was the guy's name,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Ricky Uh, I can't remember, but he was saying, like
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: living the plateau loco, Oh God, Ricky Martin, Ricky Martin,
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Ricky Martin from Menudo.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: That's right. Shout out to Bernudo. You knew that was coming.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: I did not know they were going to make an appearance,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: all right, So it was rounded by that mountain plateau.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: It is a very very cold place. I think Livia
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: dug up this kind of old factoid. It freezes flames
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: in the fires, is how cold it was there, Not literally,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: of course, but you know those Norwegians are with a
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: turn of a phrase. So Americans came in and they said,
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: why don't we just drop a bunch of bombs on
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: this plant? What's your problem with these saboteurs and they
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: said no. Tron said was like, we've got ammonia tanks there,
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: liquid ammonia. You're definitely going to kill a bunch of
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: civilians nearby. And all this stuff is underground, under concrete
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: and metal in these bunkers, and it probably wouldn't destroy
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: everything you wanted to destroy anyway. He also, you know,
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: didn't say this out loud, but was like, I don't
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: want you to destroy the only hard water plant we
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: have because this is a valuable thing, and all of
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: a sudden you would kind of own not the patent
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: but the process for that.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and after the war, who knows who's going to
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: need that stuff? So exactly, Yeah, it was a little
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: bit of national pride too, that was driving it, so
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: he actually talked him out of it. The Allies or
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the Americans, I guess we're put off for a little while,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: and they're like, all right, you go ahead and do
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: your little sabotage thing. Let's see how you do. So
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: that whole group of Norwegian resistance fighters was called Company
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Ling and Company Ling I kind of made it over
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: as the group of trained saboteurs from the Special Operations Executive,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: So Company Ling. They launched an operation Operation Grouse, great
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: operation name yeah, but they apparently that so he didn't
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: think so, because they renamed it Operation Swallow.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: And the whole thing was led by a guy named
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Jens Anton Poulsen, which I think I nailed just then,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: except it's Yen's man, I saidm I nailed it. No,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: you had it except for that, but that's okay, okay.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: So Yen's Anton Poulsen led I think three other resis
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: since fighters who parachuted back in Norway and essentially just
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: became backwoodsmen for months, setting up like a camp literally
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: in like a trapper's cabin, yeah, and lived off punting
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: reindeer and just basically became the first little toe hold
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: of this operation of Norwegian resistance fighters coming back to
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: sabotage the Behmark plant.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. So they're there, they set up their camp.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: They're eating reindeer. It's very sad for reindeer.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Sad but delicious.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: You've never had reindeer, have you?
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah? A couple of times.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Really No. I was about to say, where the heck
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: do you even get reindeer?
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm shure that somebody sells reindeer meat
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: and like somewhere Weird, Missouri or something.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there's people in Main right now.
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: They're like, you've never had reindeer.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: We always have someone across the pond here.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: Right exactly. So about a month after that, they launched
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: another operation, Operation fresh Men, because they were like, these
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: guys are going to need some real, you know, some
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: muscle behind them.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: So they sent in two air gliders with thirty nine
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: British soldiers and they were just kind of coming in,
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: you know, behind them as back up. It did not
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: work out so well though. One of the planes crashed
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: into a mountain and killed everybody on board. The other
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: one crashed into the ground not where they were supposed
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: to land, but you know, a distance from that, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: it didn't kill everybody, but they, you know, they saw
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: this happen. The Gestapo found the survivors and executed them, yeah,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: basically on the spot, and also found a map that
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: showed that they were headed for the hard water plant.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: They didn't locate those original people, and they just sort
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: of stayed there, you know, hunkering down in that cabin
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: for a while and surviving undetected.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Operation Freshmen was, like you said it was.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: The idea was just storm the heavy water plant, overwhelm it,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: and blow it up. And they decided instead, okay, instead
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: of sending thirty nine soldiers with a ton of equipment
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: including bicycles, I read, we'll just try a more subtle touch.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: So they went to man Joaquin Runeberg Nice who was
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: twenty three at the time, and they're like, you're you're
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: basically an old band in World War two standards, why
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: don't you lead a team for Operation Gunner Side? And
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: this is finally the operation that this whole episode is
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: based on. And it was a small tactical saboteur team
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: who went to the heavy water plant to destroy the
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: marks heavy water production capabilities.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I love this kind of thing. It's just the kind
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: of thing. And if you're thinking, man, why is it
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: there a movie about this? There was an older movie
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: with Kirk Douglas that I don't think, you know, set
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: the World on Fire. But I think this could go
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: for maybe a Guy Ritchie update totally. Yeah. I doubt
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: if he would do it after the other one, but
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't know.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I don't think he's opposed to making a sequel or reboot.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, Snatch was basically Lockstock and Two Smoking Barrels
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: done over again.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he made a lot of several of those Sherlock
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Holmes movies, I think.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Right, No, Lockstock and two Smoking Barrels. No, Oh, I see,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: you were just trying to take a little side step
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: in the logical direction, right.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that didn't fall first one back, Yep, there you go.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I think the first one was pretty good.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know about the second one. Was that any good?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't see any of them.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: The first one was not bad if you don't let
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: yourself stop and think, like, who would have the audacity
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: to make sure Lock Holmes like a like a rough
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: and tumble action hero and just kind of give yourself
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: over to it. It's pretty good.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and what you know, I can also recommend for kids,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: especially younger girls and Nola Holmes you no, Loa Holmes
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: movies are pretty good.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Both of them are good.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I enjoyed those.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: We have to do with Sherlock Holmes episode at least
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: we haven't done that, No, not as far.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: As Yeah, we totally have to because I don't I
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: don't really know anything about much of that.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: It's gonna be like our chess or our soccer episode,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: though I have a.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: Feeling other home homesy's that get upset.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: It's a whole hornet's nests. We're gonna stick.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: What are the what are the clown uh? What's the
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: clown band?
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Uh? The insane clown posse?
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah? But what other people called the Juggalos Juggalos? Yeah.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: The guy who does my hair is a former Juggalo.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Ye. I think those are two. Where do you like
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: to hear together?
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Former Juggalo?
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, it's like former homesy Yeah, after they leave
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: that world behind.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: You know, hey, I don't think the other part. Let
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: you leave that world behind?
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Oh boy, it's threatening.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: So where were we Chuck.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we are at Operation Gunner side. This guy Runberg.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: He didn't know even why that plant was a target.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: They basically just said, here, old Chap, we want you
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: to go destroy some pipes at the plant, and the
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: people that tried before you all died and you might
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: as well pip. Yeah, that's basically it. That's all the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: information he had. But he was a game. He was
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: that kind of guy.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean they accepted cyanide pills as part of
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: this operation, and yeah, they had no idea what they
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: were doing. They just knew they had to go blow
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: up some pipes and that was that. Likes how dedicated
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: these people were that they were willing to sacrifice their
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: life to try to blow up some pipes because the
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Brits told them it was going to help cripple the
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Nazi war effort. So I think there was five of
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: them that parachuted in just like the Operation Swallow people
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: had before, but they were miles miles away from the
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: landing site. They just maybe got blown off course or
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: something like that, and it took them five days of
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: trudging through the snow, though I think they might have
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: had skis to find the operations swallow people who'd been
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: sitting there eating reindeer the whole time. And even when
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: they found them in this trapper's cabin and hooked up
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: with them, and now there's nine people in this operation.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: They were still forty miles away from the heavy water plant.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: And again it's like snowy in February in Norway.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: You can just imagine, yeah, yeah, there's a suspension bridge,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: there's one way you get through, but of course they
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: had Nazi guards there, so that wasn't the best route.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: The other options were like a literal minefield or I guess,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: mine forest that they could have crossed through at great peril.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Or they could hike all the way down into the
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: gorge which had like a half frozen river running through it,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: and then go to the plant that way and then
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: hike back up. And so they said they took a boat,
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: I guess, and they said minefield, no good, Nazis on
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: the bridge, no good. Let's just get on our skis
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: as we do and hike down that gorge. And that's
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: how they did it. We did need to mention one
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: little side thing that we've failed to mention is that
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: before this all happened, when Runberg was I guess, debriefed
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: and sort of getting his act together to go. He
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: went into a hardware store and apparently on a whim,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: as the story goes, bought some heavy duty bolt cutters,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: like metal bolt cutters, and to just park that right there,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: because you know, if you introduce bolt cutters, I guess
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: in this case Act two, you know they're going to
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: cut something in Act three. Right, So he's got those
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: bolt cutters, and they decide to go down into the
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: gorge as their route to the hard water plant.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and again not just going down into a gorge,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: crossing a half frozen river and climbing up a cliff
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: get to the top of the gorge on the other
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: side where the heavy water plant was. And apparently that
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: route was such an unlikely route that the Nazis didn't
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: even bother guarding the gorge.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: No nobody would go down there exactly.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: So February twenty seventh they made it for the forty
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: miles to their target. I think it was the night,
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: like right before midnight. This team of nine saboteurs from
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Company Linya, the Norwegian Resistance are sitting there outside of
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the the Mark power plant, figuring out exactly how they're
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: going to get in, and they decided that they would
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: split up. There were five of them and as they
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: were sitting outside, they were faced with their first obstacle,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: which was a fence. And apparently the Brits had said,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: there's a fence, so here's a handsaw. And the guy
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: who was in charge, who was it, Runberg? Yeah, yeah,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: his second in command Canute hawk Lead. We're like running
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: through these Norwegian.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Names many that sounds pretty good to me.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, so and I know it's Canute. I always thought
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: it was newt but it's Canute. As I watched this
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: cool little Nova special and he was interviewed and they
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: definitely said Canute. He said, Runberg, don't you have some
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: bolt cutters?
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: And Rumberg gave him the bull cutters and instead of
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: this loud, tedious, laborious hack saw that they would have
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: tried to use and probably gotten caught using, they just
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: snipped right through the fence in a few minutes thanks
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: to Rumberg's foresight back in Cambridge.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: That's right, snip snip, so that pade off pretty quickly.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Much more that was still out too well. I think
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I got the saying wrong if you introduce bulcutters in
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: neck two, they're gonna snip something in nect two. Yeah,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: they're on the property now, five of the people, five
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: of the nine provide cover the other two. And they
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: had tommy guns, they had chloroform. They were set for
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: an attack if need be, and they were keeping a
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: watch on like the barracks because there weren't like, you know,
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: hundreds of German soldiers. I get the idea if they
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: were going in with the initial twenty nine that it
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: was probably a couple of dozen maybe. I mean, that's
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: just a guess.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: I don't even know if was that many. I mean,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: as important as this heavy water plant was, so the
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: atomic program in Germany, Yeah, it was so remote that
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: they were just like, you know, I think it's going
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: to take a few people. We got mines, there's a gorge,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: we got people on the bridge. It's fine.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they were keeping a watch on
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: the barracks, they were keeping a watch on that bridge
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: for the guardsmen there, and just sort of waiting around
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: for any you know, activity, so they could get those
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: tommy guns out or maybe silently chloroform and Nazi, which
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: was a dream a Norwegian saboteur.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: You know, they want to do that.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so the other four guys split into two pairs.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: They each had and I get the idea, they split
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: up in case and they each had enough to like
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: blow it up in case, like two of them got
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: caught or killed, the other two could still complete the job. Right.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: They got in through a second gate, and they had
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: arranged with one of the co workers there to I guess,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: you know, one of the inside moles, to leave a
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: cellar door open. But unfortunate only that person called in
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: sick that day, and I guess didn't seem to think like, hey,
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: I had this important other task right to do. And
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Tron's dad had previously told him though, like if you
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: can't get in that way, there's a cable shaft you
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: can probably slip through. And that's what they ended up using.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I's want to circle back and emphasize the fact that
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: this man was a lynch pin to a sabotage plan.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: All he had to do was show up to work
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: and leave a door open.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: He could have gone home right after that, yeah, and
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: been like I just threw up at the get out of.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Here, right, And my guess this is nineteen forty three.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: There's an eighty five percent chance that his illness was
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: a severe hangover, which makes it even worse. Yeah, probably
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: so so yeah, luckily, yes, they found that that hatch
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: was opened in the cable shaft and they basically slid through.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: The two who made it through the cable cheft was Runberg,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: the leader, Yeah, and a guy named Frederick Frederick Yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Kaiser, Yeah, Frederick Frederick Frederick.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, eat your heart out. Frederick's it's probably Frederk. Yeah,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: would be my guest. I like Frederk. That's how we
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: say it in America. Anyway, Kaiser and Rumberg they were
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the ones who went down this cable shaft and they
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: start getting busy. I think Kaiser was holding it. Go
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: They're like, we have some extra time, it's right, go ahead.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: So they yes, and they went down a shaft even
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: as well, and so almost immediately they found a watchman
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I take him to be a Norwegian watchman maybe, and
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: they were like, you know, you're now our hostage. Sit
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: there and be quiet, and he's like, no problem, you
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: guys do whatever you want. And despite his complicity, Kaiser
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: was like, this is my one chance, and so he
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: chloroformed the watchman anyway, And so as he's doing this,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Rumberg went and planted the explosives on the pipes, just
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: as he was told to do. And right about then,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a explosion
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: of glass as a window shatters, and Rumberg and Kaiser
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: and the chloroform guard I'll turn and look, and the
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: other two men from the other explosives team come in
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: through the window.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: That's right. They're like, it's just us, guys, We're all
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: here together, so we can get this thing bombed up quicker.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: They set up those explosives, the four of them, I guess,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: at this point, and the fuses at the time were
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: two minute fuses that would have given enough time to
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: get the heck out of there. Runberg said, no, I
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: really want to make sure we hear this thing go off.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: So we're going to go down to thirty seconds. I
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: imagine everyone said, oh, how about a minute? He said, no,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: thirty seconds is plenty. So they're getting ready to light
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: the fuses. The guard that they had at gunpoint said,
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: can I get those glasses? Yeah? You know, if they
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: blow up, my optometrists has quit and retired. I'm not
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: going to be able to replace those things very easily,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: so they said, sure, get your glasses, and at that
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: point another civilian employee Norwegian obviously comes into the room
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and is now another temporary prisoner. Runeberg lights those uses
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: counts to ten, which means they only have twenty seconds,
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: and then says run to the two civilians. They get
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: the heck out of there as well. I reckon in
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: the movie, guy Ritchie would really have to sort of
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: fudge things, because what is not exciting in a movie
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: like this is when is all you hear? And that's
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: kind of all they heard. It wasn't a huge explosion.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: It's not like they were blowing up this entire plant
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: like he would probably do in a movie. They were
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: just trying to damage these pipes, and he said that
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: later on, he said they heard a tiny, insignificant pop.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Also because it was underground under that concrete and stuff.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: Windows did break though, enough at least to rouse some
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: sleeping Nazis. This part is very movie like because the
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: four that were guarding kind of watched as half dressed
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Nazi gets out and was like, oh, do I hear anything?
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Do I hear anything? But apparently that was a pretty
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: noisy plant. So he just goes back to bed.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I can't help but imagining like a Sergeant Schultz type, yeah,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: stumbling out totally. So, yeah, it wasn't a big deal.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: And as a matter of fact, I mean it turned
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: out to be a big deal, but like, yeah, it
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: didn't cause like that huge explosion where guards start coming
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: out of nowhere and you know, there's alarms going off
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: and searchlights coming on. It wasn't anything like that. And
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: in fact, all nine people who were the saboteurs in
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: this operation got away. They escaped scott free, and in retrospect,
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: not a single bullet was fired and not a single
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: person died in this highly successful, amazingly daring sabotage operation.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: That's right, but that is not the end of the story.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: So maybe we should take our second break, yes, and
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: we'll come back and finish up right after this.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I want to learn about a terror sort and college
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: fred actl how to take a berg fractal gink is gone.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: That's a little hunt.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: The boarder murders and they kind of all rung on
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: the slane.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Everything sport up. Jerry.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: All right, So, as you said, the saboteurs got away.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: I think one of them, Poulsen, took off to Scotland
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: by sea. Runenberg and the and the rest of the
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: gang stayed on their skis as the Norwegians do. They
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: skid about two hundred miles, which is like nothing for them.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: They skid to Sweden. In fact, with Nazis chasing them,
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: they had planes above trying to locate them. Like that
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: part would be a pretty good part of the movie,
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: I guess. But they got away, and there was a
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: German head of the German special forces in Norway who
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: called it the most splendid coup. However, it only took
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: a few months before where the Nazis were able to
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: restart production at the plant. I think this happened in February,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: so in May of that same year they had ramped
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: back up to full capacity, which seems like a big disappointment.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: But no, because here come the Americans with their initial
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: plan to just bomb the plant, and just like they
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: were warned, it did not do a ton of damage
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: to anyone but the twenty two Norwegian civilians who were killed.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like this heavy water plant was in this basement
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: of a power plant, so it was not easy to
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: get to as far as like aerial bombs are.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Concerned, especially the bombs back then, you know, yeah for real.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: But the thing is it did show the Nazis that like, hey,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: this remote, isolated, actually surprisingly vulnerable plant. Yeah, that's like
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: the one source of our heavy water. We should probably
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: stop creating heavy water there and move the operations to Germany. Yeah,
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: so they did. Remember the Nazi heavy water program is
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: set back a few months, and this is at a
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: time where the Allies are racing in the Manhattan Project
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: to create the atomic bomb. Assuming the Nazis are in
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: the same race as them. The Allies understand that we
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: can do this in like two three years. So to
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: set back a Nazi atomic program three months is an
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: enormous setback in a two or three year race to
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: become the first to come up with an atomic bomb.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: So from that standpoint, even at the time, they were like,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: that was a very successful operation, even though, like you said,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: the Nazis got back up to full full capacity in
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: just a couple of months. But as we said, they
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: were moving everything to Germany, and I guess the company
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: linga crew, the Norwegian freedom fighters, they were keeping an
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: eye on all the movements of the heavy water from
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: I guess they're moles inside the heavy water plant, and
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: they knew that the Nazis were going to move the
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: heavy water, when they were going to do it, and
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: how they were going to do it.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: That's right. So they come up with another plan to
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: further thwart their efforts, and they determined the best way
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: to do this was to sabotage the ferry that's going
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: to be ferrying everything over to Germany. So they knew
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: it would cost some civilian lives, but they figured that
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: was their best chance to get it before it even
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: had a chance to get set up again. An old
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Canute is back on the scene. He was the second
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: in command there at Gunnerside, if you remember, and he
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: was leading the team this time. He had been promoted,
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: I guess. And in February nineteen forty four, they set
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: off explosions on the bow of that ship. It was
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: a ferry called the Hydro, and fourteen Norwegian sadly were killed,
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: along with four Germans, and this again was a big success.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: For a long time, they weren't even positive that there
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: was heavy or they couldn't prove at least that there
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: was heavy water on board and there was a German
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: heavy water expert after the war that said, no, those
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: were just those dummies. Dummy and I guess to try
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: and undermine the idea that it was a success. But
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: PBS Nova to the rescue. In two thousand and three,
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: they organized a salvage of one of those barrels from
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: that sunken ferry and they proved that it contained heavy water.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: So it was a great success after all.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: That was the Nova mini documentary. I watched. It was
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: really good. Yeah, but one of the things that they
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: covered that the reason why the Allies were like, maybe
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: those were dummies, is that there were reports of survivors
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: of that fairy sinking, that barrels have been floating, like
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: some people were trying to like climb onto the barrels
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: to survive. They're like, heavy water's not supposed to float
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: in regular water, and so they were like, it's possible
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: that this was a decoy because also intelligence showed that
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: some heavy water did arrive in Germany. Well, it turns out,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: thanks to this Nova special I'm about to spoil it,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: that those barrels that floated were the most pure form
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: of heavy water that they had mark the barrels weren't full,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: and so the air inside the barrels was making them float.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, so it was heavy water that they sabotage. They
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: did put a dent in the amount of heavy water.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: I think there was a fifteen ton shipment and the
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Germans were only able to collect I think the four
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: that were floating. So it was a big deal too.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: But again, eighteen people lost their lives, for fourteen of
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: them innocent Norwegians.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's that's actually something they wrestle
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: with in the Nova documentary because they interview some of
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: these people we've talked about, and they know they're trying
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: to reconcile their guilt with the how impactful the mission was,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: especially living for decades with that gnawing rumor in the
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: back of their head that those had been dummy barrels.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it resulted in the loss of so many,
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: you know, civilian lives.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think they were quite relieved to find
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: that it really was heavy water. And still there's debate
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: today over even with the success of Gunner Side, was
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: the success of that Swallow group thinking of the hydro ferry,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: how much of an impact it really had on Germany's
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: atomic program, and in fact, how much of a program
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Germany had during World War two to build an atomic bomb.
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. The official historian of the s oe
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: H M. R. D. Foot Great Name said that it
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: changed the course of the war. The fact that they
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: were denied that that regular, steady supply of heavy water
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: really put a dent in their operation. Olivia Various Stutey
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: points out another factor was that key scientists were a
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: lot of them were Jewish scientists that the Nazis were using,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: and they either escaped or were murdered, which also slowed
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: down the You know, the Germans pursued of the bomb,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: but also I think you found out too that was it.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: The Germans U regretted pursuing heavy water.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Was that what it was instead of so they were
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: basically they took a wrong turn right out of the
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: gate with what they chose as a moderator. I think, like,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: did you say earlier that the United States chose graphite.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, we used graphight. They went with heavy water,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: which was a mistake.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well they're both really great moderators. But graphite is
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: available in abundance. You can find it anywhere, right, sure,
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: heavy water is really hard to come by, so right
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: out of the gate, the Germans chose a moderator that
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: was really difficult to get and that there was only
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: one place basically in the world that was producing it,
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: whereas the Americans just went out and bought a bunch
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: of graphite at the grocery store basically to use their moderator.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: So right away that first hurdle the Americans overcame the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Germans ran into. And the most interesting thing is it
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: was based on a miscalculation.
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. If they had have calculated correctly, then
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: they would have known from the beginning, right.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think whoever conducted I can't remember their
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: but they conducted experiments on the viability of graphite as
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: a moderator, and they basically forgot to carry a one
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: or something. I think what it really was is they
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: didn't factor in the influence of impurities in their graphite sample,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: and they concluded that graphite wasn't a very good moderator,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: so let's use heavy water instead. So essentially, even before
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: the program started, the Nazi atomic program was just dead,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: like dead in the water. Basically, yeah, got to carry
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: that ice, yes, but the Allies didn't know this, And
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: it turns out that just the idea that the Nazis
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: were involved in heavy water production suggested that they were
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: after an atomic bomb and that the Allies then were
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: in a foot race against them, and that led to
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: the creation of an actual atomic bomb. So the Nazis
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: directly influenced the production of an atomic bomb, even though
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: it wasn't theirs.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: The Nazis being involved in heavy water production sounds like
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: some sort of weird October fet slogan.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: It'd be like, what does this mean. They'd be like,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: just drink this huge gallony here show.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: I mentioned that film nineteen sixty five's The Heroes of
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Telemark with Kirk Douglas as sort of a mashed up
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: fictional character based on both Ronenberg and tron Stadt, that,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: like I said, wasn't like the biggest film ever, but
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: it wasn't an American film. So we did know about this
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: operation more than they did in Norway until like twenty fifteen.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: State broadcaster NRK ran a mini series called The Heavy
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Water War in twenty fifteen, and that's when a lot
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: of Norwegian's kind of first learned of this operation. And
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: if we're talking tron Statt, we want to button up
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: his story. You feel bad for this guy because he
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: didn't get to parachute in and actually have feet on
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: the ground for this kind of thing. He finally got
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: to do that kind of thing in October of nineteen
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: forty four. He got under that parachute for Operation Sunshine,
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: which was, you know, protecting Norway's some of their industrial
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: assets and infrastructure from German saboteurs as the Nazis were
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: on their way out. So he got his hands dirty,
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: which he'd always wanted to do. But very sadly the
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: following May I believe in nineteen forty five, he was
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: shot dead by the brother of a Norwegian collaborator who
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: he was questioning, so he tragically died as well.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is sad. At least he didn't get to
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: get to oversee and fly in on Operation Sunshine.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: I wonder if he got to use any chloroform.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe so, Chuck, I think that's it for the Norwegian
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: sabotage Operation Gunner Side. We haven't figured out what we're
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: going to name this episode.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: I like Olivia's title.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Oh man, it's one of the better ones.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: You want to go ahead and tell everyone. Yes, she
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: titled this article like water for nazis pretty great sense
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: of humor. Yeah, really good.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks Olivia for that, and thanks to you for listening.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: And how about we set up a listener mail so
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: I can thank that person too.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: That's right. This is from Justin Meeks about Tavern on
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: the Green. Hey, guys, and this shows you how long
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: we've been off, because I've been hold on to this one.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: My grandma had a wonderful related story to Tavern on
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: the Green. She was from rural Montana and travels to
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: New York in the late nineties with a group of
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: old ladies over Thanksgiving. One of her traveling group actually
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: had sold David Letterman his Montana ranch, so they went
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: to a taping of a show and he invited them backstage.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: He found out they were going to be in town
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: for Thanksgiving and invited them to have Thanksgiving dinner with
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: him at Tavern on the Green. What wow, Yeah, Grandma
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: said that was one of the first Thanksgivings she could
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: remember that she didn't eat turkey dinner because at Tavern
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: on the Green they had to order their steak and lobster,
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: especially because Letterman was paying for it. Grandma never missed
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: an episode of Letterman even before this certainly never did
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: it afterwards. Letterman is seriously a great dude, and love
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: that Grandma got to meet one of our heroes like this.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Thanks for the many years of the podcast, Keep up
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: the great work, Come back and see us in Denver.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: That is from Justin Meeks and Justin We're gonna head
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: back to Denver at some point, but we should probably
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: tell people since we're getting emails that we are not
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: doing live shows in twenty twenty five.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, including sketch Fest. We've gotten a lot of emails
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: from people who's like the sketch Fest schedules wrong because
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have stuff you should know on there, right,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: And yes, we're sorry to inform me we're not going
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: to be at sketch Fest for what the first time.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: In like many years, ten years maybe or something. Yeah,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: we're just taking it down yere from doing live shows.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: We're gonna we're gonna be back out there again, so
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: fear not. We're just taking it down here. And that's
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: like four less trips that we're gonna take and we're
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: gonna be with our family. And that's a decision we
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: made that we feel good about.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and ironically I just reached diamond status for twenty
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: twenty five.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, I've never been diamond.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. I got the email and I
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: forwarded it to you me. I was like, well, now
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I know it's going to be written on my headstone.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll be buried next to you and it'll
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: just say sadly peaked at platinum.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: What else? Man?
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: That's it?
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, thank you very much.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: To Justin Meeks.
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: Justin Meeks, whose grandma has a great story and who
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: I assume did not go on to become Letterman stalker.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: Right, I don't think so.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Justin and email is
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: a pretty cool story about David Letterman, or otherwise, you
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: can send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.