BY THE END of March 1944, Walther Gerlach, the head of the Uranium Club, and Kurt Diebner, his administrative head, were under relentless assault, chiefly from the Allied air raids that were leveling one research center after the next. Only days before the sinking of the Hydro, waves of bombers had targeted the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, destroying many departments, save, by chance, the one devoted to physics. With no end to the raids in sight, Gerlach and Diebner began to evacuate their scientists and equipment to the south.
In a report sent to Göring on March 30, Gerlach detailed the state of his program, from advances in the ultracentrifuges that separated U-235, to their successes in uranium-machine design, to the new methods of concentrating heavy water. Because of the Allied attacks, supplies of the precious moderator were in a “precarious position,” but Gerlach was hopeful that significant investments in German plants would bring about a steady flow in the near future. Further, he stated, the attacks on Vemork’s supply made it clear that the Allies themselves placed the “utmost importance” on fission research as a path to obtaining new explosives. It was essential that his teams do the same.
Diebner embarked on a new uranium-machine experiment while also pursuing his design of shaped charges for a fusion bomb. Harteck prodded IG Farben to move ahead with heavy water plants at Leuna. Heisenberg was still attempting a large new reactor, and other German scientists in the program continued with their research as well, all the while fleeing bombings, evading draft call-ups, and hauling their laboratories to hidden bunkers.
In mid-1944 Hitler, increasingly deluded and desperate, proclaimed Axis victory was imminent. “Very soon I shall use my triumphal weapons, and then the war will end gloriously... Then those gentlemen won’t know what hit them. This is the weapon of the future, and with it Germany’s future is likewise assured.” Few believed him. Germany was under assault from land, air, and sea. Allied forces drove their way to Berlin from the west, and the Russians pushed from the east. In July, a bomb run of 567 Flying Fortresses destroyed the Leuna works and with them the possibility of a renewed heavy water supply. Other attacks halted uranium production and U-235 separation. By the end of 1944, the best Diebner — or anybody he had called to nuclear research in 1939 — could aim to build was a self-sustaining uranium machine.
The Allies knew it. In August, Colonel Boris Pash, a U.S. Army intelligence officer, found Frédéric Joliot-Curie at the Collège de France in Paris. Joliot-Curie told Pash about his dealings with a number of German physicists, including one Dr. Kurt Diebner. Joliot-Curie believed the German program was far from advanced. That November, Pash and his boss, Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, discovered a bounty of secret papers in a Strasbourg hospital commandeered by the German atomic program. While American forces battled the Wehrmacht on the outskirts of the city, Goudsmit had soldiers haul away the files, and for four freezing days and nights, he and Pash read through them by candlelight, eating little, sleeping less. By the end, there was only one conclusion to draw: “Germany had no atom bomb and was not likely to have one in any reasonable time.”
But at the start of 1945, with the war’s end inevitable, Gerlach and Diebner continued to hope that their work would have some impact. They crisscrossed Germany, often at risk of strafing runs by Allied planes, distributing supplies and directing experiments in a last-ditch effort to obtain at least a working uranium machine. In a rock-hewn wine cellar in Haigerloch, a hillside village in southwest Germany, Heisenberg had established a laboratory and constructed a lattice of uranium cubes submerged in heavy water, similar to the one set up by Diebner before the evacuation from Berlin. Using 1.5 tons of uranium and heavy water, the machine produced the highest level of neutron multiplication yet achieved. By Heisenberg’s calculations, he was sure to have a self-sustaining reactor if he could only obtain 50 percent more uranium and heavy water. He would get neither.
*
On June 15, 1944, Leif Tronstad was at home, looking out at a rain-soaked Hampstead Heath and drafting a plan for what he had coined Operation Sunshine. Since the Allied thrust into France just over a week before, it had become clear that there would be no invasion to free Norway. His countrymen would have to do it themselves. Tronstad, recently promoted to major, was determined to be on the ground. There was a danger that the Germans would implement a scorched-earth policy when they withdrew their 350,000 troops, as they had done when leaving Italy.
Wilson and Brun wanted him to stay in London, but he was not to be dissuaded. He had just finished a three-week course at Rheam’s STS 17 sabotage school, receiving high marks (“first class in all respects”). He would no longer send other men to fight in his stead.
Just before midnight, he heard a tremendous roar passing over his house. Moments later, an explosion. The jet-powered V-1 rocket attacks had begun. Day after day, hundreds of German missiles landed on the city. All the while, Tronstad continued with his strategizing for Oper-ation Sunshine. By the end of July, he had his approval from General Hansteen and assembled his team. Jens-Anton Poulsson would lead one division, with his best friend Claus Helberg as radio operator. Arne Kjelstrup would be in charge of another. Einar Skinnarland, who was in Norway, would be Tronstad’s radio operator. A number of other Kompani Linge members, including Gunnar Syverstad, who had come to Britain for training after the ferry sabotage, would also join him. Tronstad would be in charge of protecting “the major industrial objectives” in the area, including its power stations, which supplied almost 60 percent of southern Norway’s electricity.
On August 27, he finished his farewell letter to Bassa, to be given to her in the event of his death. Although he was returning to Norway at last, she could not know that he was there. Tronstad gave Gerd Vold Hurum, his faithful secretary, the small key to his office safe. “Please take care of my diaries,” he said. Overwhelmed with emotion, she accepted the key. “When the war’s over,” he continued, “you must go and meet my family.” With that, he left Kingston House, his office of almost four years.
At long last, on October 5, Tronstad returned to Norway, dropping by parachute into the Vidda. His “long exile” was over. When the other parachutists assembled, Tronstad called for a toast, and they drank whiskey from their metal flasks. Then they pitched their tents.
Over the next five months, Tronstad recruited a small army of Milorg resistance fighters that ultimately numbered twenty-two hundred men. His headquarters were a ten-foot-wide hut buried in the deep snow near Lake Møs. As the commander of Operation Sunshine, he skied back and forth across Telemark and the neighboring regions, from Kongsberg to the east, Notodden to the south, Rjukan to the north, and Rauland to the west, coordinating with London and Milorg and making sure that the two worked seamlessly together. He met secretly with management at Norsk Hydro and other Norwegian companies to ensure they were onboard when the time came to eject the Germans.
Poulsson, Kjelstrup, and others set up separate bases of operation; Haukelid and his band of fighters joined the operation as well. They coordinated drops of arms and supplies, trained resistance cells in firearms and explosives, and performed small-scale sabotages on arms dumps. They also infiltrated power stations, dams, and industrial plants, teaching the workers how to thwart any German attempts to destroy their buildings, including how to implode the roofs so that the precious machinery inside remained operable once the debris was cleared.
Tronstad ate, slept, hunted, and skied beside his men. Most of them had thought highly of him while he was their boss in London. In the wilds of the Telemark, their loyalty and respect deepened into something greater still.
By spring 1945, the time for action looked imminent. Nazi Germany was collapsing, and the march into Berlin would soon cut off the head of the snake. Throughout Norway, the sabotage of railway transports, ports, ships, and communication lines was hobbling the Wehrmacht and obstructing the removal of its troops to reinforce their defenses inside Germany itself. On the night of March 11, Tronstad and two of his men, Syverstad and Jon Landsverk, were interrogating Torgeir Longnvik, a Nazi-appointed Norwegian sheriff. Tronstad wanted to know about his activities and those of other Nazi sympathizers, and they wanted to prevent him from informing the Gestapo about their underground activities in the district of Rauland. They debated whether or not to kill him, and Tronstad decided that Haukelid should hold him prisoner at Bamsebu.
Skinnarland had helped to capture Longnvik and erased the tracks to their location, a two-room cabin in the countryside not far from Lake Møs. When this was done, he left for a rendezvous at a neighboring farm. Tronstad finished his questioning of Longnvik and was getting ready to leave to join Skinnarland when suddenly the door to the hut burst open. The sheriff’s brother, Johans, entered with a gun and started shooting. Syverstad was struck in the head and, falling backward, knocked Landsverk out of the line of fire. Tronstad tried to rush Johans Longnvik, and in the bitter fight that followed two more shots rang out.
Tronstad dropped to the floor, killed either by the bullets fired by Johans or by the blows of a rifle Torgeir Longnvik had grabbed in the melee. The brothers escaped, locking the door from the outside. Finally Landsverk freed himself from the cabin and rushed to find Skinnarland. When the two returned to the hut, Syverstad was near death; there was no saving him. Looking from Tronstad’s disfigured face to Syverstad’s, Skinnarland was deeply shaken. All that blood. Then he collected himself. The sheriff would be back, with Germans.
Skinnarland and Landsverk moved quickly. They packed up all the papers and equipment, anything that might lead to other arrests. By the time they finished, Syverstad, who like Tronstad was married and the father of two young children, was dead. They carried the bodies down to the lake on sledges, cut a hole in the ice, and sank them before the Germans could take them. Then they left to alert the others, including Haukelid, warning that any attempt to avenge the killings might bring about a war with the local German garrison, a fight that Milorg was not ready to have.
Their quick actions prevented any roundups or intelligence leaks, but it did not take long for the Germans to find the bodies. Tronstad and Syverstad were dragged from the lake and brought to a nearby village to be inspected and photographed. The Germans then doused the bodies with petrol, set them on fire, and tossed the burned remains into a river. Skinnarland sent word to London of the tragic events, and Poulsson was put in charge of Operation Sunshine. He held the post until the end of the war, an end that Leif Tronstad did not see for himself.
*
The order to mobilize was given on May 8, 1945, the day Churchill declared victory over Germany from a balcony overlooking Whitehall to a throng of revelers. The forces throughout Norway, including deep in the heart of Telemark, went into action. After years of fighting as an underground army, they put on uniforms and simple armbands and took back Rjukan and the surrounding towns. They occupied Vemork and other power stations in the area, seized control of communication lines and key public buildings, and took responsibility for law and order, including the arrest of Norwegian traitors and SS officers. The soldiers in the German garrisons surrendered their weapons and went where they were told.
Similar scenes played out across Norway. The invaders numbered almost four hundred thousand, Milorg roughly forty thousand. There could have been an ugly fight, but there was none. At last Norway was free, and parties broke out in the streets of Oslo and throughout the country. That night, at the royal estate of Skaugum, Reichskommissar Terboven ate a sandwich and read an English detective novel. Then, resigned to follow Hitler in death, at 11:00 p.m. he entered a bunker, where he drank half a bottle of brandy and lit a five-meter fuse that led to a box of explosives. The fuse was calculated to burn for eight minutes and twenty seconds. At 11:30 sharp, the explosion sounded across the estate.
Heinrich Fehlis attempted to flee. He was arrested in Porsgrunn, a southern harbor town, wearing the uniform of a Wehrmacht lieutenant. Before he could be interrogated and his identity revealed, he took poison and shot himself in the head. Other Gestapo officials, including Siegfried Fehmer, tried to slip away. They were caught and brought to trial for their crimes. Vidkun Quisling and General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst were also arrested and tried.
A month after the German surrender, his country secure, King Haakon VII stepped onto Norwegian territory: the pier in front of Oslo’s Town Hall. In spite of a steady drizzle, fifty thousand Norwegians cheered and waved flags to celebrate his return. Among those present to honor him were Colonel John Wilson and over a hundred members of Kompani Linge, most of them wearing helmets or badges that named their operations. Grouse and Gunnerside were well represented. “Many times it may have looked dark,” Haakon spoke soberly to the gathering. “But I never doubted Norway would get back her rights.”
On Midsummer’s Eve, June 23, 1945, a smaller but no less jubilant liberation celebration was underway at the Skinnarland hotel beside Lake Møs. The front of the hotel was decorated with silk parachutes, and there was an illustrated schedule for the three-day event. Over dinners of trout and reindeer steak and bottles of champagne, aquavit, and beer, those who fought in the resistance around Rjukan spoke of past battles and of their future, too.
Among the honored guests were the Hamarens, Hovdens, and Skindalens, Poulsson, Helberg, Haukelid, Kjelstrup, Sørlie, Lillian Syverstad, Ditlev Diseth, and Kjell Nielsen. Einar Skinnarland celebrated with his brothers Torstein and Olav and reunited with Gudveig. A few seats were left empty. Olav Skogen, who had survived his imprisonment at Dachau, had not yet returned to Rjukan. Leif Tronstad and Gunnar Syverstad never would.
A week after the celebration, on June 28, 187 members of Kompani Linge, with Poulsson and Rønneberg in the lead, paraded in uniform before King Haakon. Of their select unit, fifty-one had died during the war. The king paid tribute to the men and their clandestine work. The following day, Colonel Wilson disbanded the company, asking them to serve their country in peace as they had in war.
By early August, Norway was beginning to recover after the long occupation, and Bassa Tronstad was back at her rented house outside Oslo. Her husband’s remains had been recovered from the river and buried in late May in a moving ceremony at an Oslo cemetery. Now, she was trying to make sense of the loss. The circumstances of his death she knew, but she had many questions about his time in London and about what had brought him to return to Norway. It was then that Gerd Vold Hurum came to her door. After offering her condolences, Gerd presented Bassa with eight diaries. There was also a letter. The diaries would take days to read, but the farewell letter was short and direct, and told Bassa all she needed to know.
“Dearest Bassa... I have the honor to lead an important expedition home, which will be of great importance to Norway’s future. It is in line with the course I chose on April 9, 1940, to put all my effort and abilities toward our country’s welfare... The war is singing its last verse, and it requires every effort from all who would call themselves men. You will understand that, won’t you? We have had so many magical happy years, and my highest wish is to continue that happy life together. But should the Almighty have another course for me, know that my last thought was of you... Time is short, but if all will not go well, don’t feel sorry for me. I am completely happy and thankful for what I have had in life even though I very much would like to live to help Norway back to its feet.” He wished the best for Sidsel and Leif. He looked forward to seeing them all again. The letter was signed “Your beloved.”
*
In Farm Hall, a quiet country house outside Cambridge, ten Uranium Club scientists were waiting for a decision to be made about their fate. They had been held there since July 3, 1945, rounded up when the Nazi regime fell, along with their papers, laboratory equipment, and supplies of uranium and heavy water. Among them were Otto Hahn, Werner Heisenberg, Walther Gerlach, Paul Harteck, and Kurt Diebner. They spent their time reading in the library, tending the rose garden, playing bridge, and wondering if they would see their families again. Unbeknownst to them, every room in the house was bugged, and their every word was recorded on shellacked metal disks to be reviewed by British intelligence.
At 6:00 p.m. on August 6, 1945, a short BBC bulletin reported that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan by the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. Major Terence Rittner, who was in charge of security at Farm Hall, went to Hahn’s room to inform him. As Rittner reported to his superiors, the man who discovered fission was “shattered” by the news and “felt personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.” Rittner steadied him with a glass of gin.
The news staggered the other German scientists at Farm Hall as well. Their disbelief was followed by cynicism. Surely the Allies were bluffing the Japanese into surrender. Surely the Americans and the British were not able to build an atomic bomb. Their shock and doubts were soon answered by another BBC broadcast a few hours later: “Here is the news: It’s dominated by the tremendous achievement of Allied scientists — the production of an atomic bomb.”
Then followed a statement from Churchill: “The greatest destructive power devised by man went into action this morning... The bomb, dropped today on the Japanese war base of Hiroshima, was designed for a detonation equal to twenty-thousand tons of high-explosive... By God’s mercy British and American science outpaced all German efforts... The possession of these powers by the Germans at any time might have altered the result of the war... Every effort was made by our Intelligence Service and by the Air Force to locate in Germany anything resembling the plants which were being created in the United States. In the winter of 1942–43 most gallant attacks were made in Norway on two occasions by small parties of volunteers from the British Commandos and Norwegian forces, at very heavy loss of life, upon stores of what is called ‘heavy water,’ an element in one of the possible processes. The second of these two attacks was completely successful.” Churchill concluded, “This revelation of the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man, should arouse the most solemn reflection in the mind and conscience of every human being capable of comprehension.”
The scientists launched into heated conversation. “They can only have done that if they have uranium isotope separation,” Hahn said.
Harteck countered, “That’s not absolutely necessary. If they let a uranium engine run, they separate [plutonium].”
“An extremely complicated business for they must have an engine which will run for a long time,” Hahn said. “If the Americans have a uranium bomb then you’re all second-raters.”
Heisenberg was still dumbfounded by the announcement. “Did they use the word ‘uranium’ in connection with this atomic bomb?” His fellow scientists responded: no.
Diebner interrupted: “We always thought we’d need two years for a bomb.”
Deep into the night, the ten men continued their conversation in the bugged dining hall. Some expressed horror at the use of such a bomb by the Allies. Others lamented how far behind their own program had been. They argued the science and mechanics of how exactly the bomb was produced — and the tremendous investment that must have been made by the Americans.
For a time, they played the blame game. They had had too few staff. Not enough support or supplies, chiefly not enough heavy water. There was too much infighting among their scientists, not enough cooperation. They concentrated too much on uranium machines and moderators, too little on isotope separation. The meeting with Speer in June 1942 had ended any hope of an industrial program. The “official people,” Diebner said, “were only interested in immediate results.” Their institutes were smashed by bombing runs. They never had the chance.
They also debated the morality of using a weapon of such devastating power and whether or not they had ever intended to produce one. Some, like Heisenberg, were already putting together the framework of their own defense, conveniently justifying the failure of their efforts as a calculated strategy to keep Hitler from obtaining the bomb.