The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb

A New York Times Espionage Bestseller "Weaving together his typicallyxa0intense research and a riveting narrative, Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress is a spellbindingxa0piece of historicalxa0writing." –Martin Dugard, author of Into Africa and co-author of the " Killing " series "Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress is a riveting, high-action World War II thriller with nothing less than the fate of Planet Earth on the line. Just imagine the horror if Hitler had gotten the atomic bomb? Written with great verve and historical acumen, Bascomb hits the mark of excellence. Highly recommended!" –Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Deluge and Cronkite "This book is a must read! A small band of spies commit themselves, their lives, and their family's lives to literally saving the world from the Nazis. An exciting and accurate story detailing a very dark time in world history, when the world pendulum could have tipped either way. If you liked Bridge of Spies , you are going to love this!” –Scott McEwen, #1 New York Times Bestselling Co-Author of American Sniper . "What would have happened if Hitler had managed to develop nuclear weapons? In The Winter Fortress , Neal Bascomb brilliantly tells the extraordinary true story of arguably the most important and daring commando raid of WWII: how an amazing band of men on skis made sure Hitler never got to drop the ultimate bomb." xa0 xa0xa0 –Alex Kershaw, New York Times bestselling author of The Longest Winter “Brilliantly written, The Winter Fortress cinematically captures a commando team’s efforts to destroy one of the most important secret facilities in World War II.xa0Bascomb’sxa0riveting prose puts the reader into one of the more daring missions of the war and the Allies’ efforts to sabotage a crucial aspect of Germany's nuclear program.xa0An excellent read.” xa0–Patrick K. O’Donnell, bestselling author of First Seals and Washington’s Immortals "This well-told and deeply researched account sheds light on an aspect of World War II that is little known or remembered, creating a valuable history that will be beneficial for most collections."– Library Journalu200b "An exciting, thorough account . . .xa0Featuring excellent characterization and exquisite detail concerning a theater of the war (Norway) not well-mined, this will make a terrific addition to World War II collections.” – Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Bascomb,xa0a WWII historian and former journalist, thrillingly recounts the commando effort to destroy the Norwegian Vemork hydroelectric plant . . . Axa0fascinating read about how a small group of Norwegians refused to submit to the brutal occupation of their country and contributed significantly to Allied victory."xa0 -- Publishers Weekly "Gripping . . . Parts of the book read like an adventure novel, others like straightforward history, but the combination will appeal to readers of both WWII fiction and nonfiction." -- Booklist , starred review "An authoritative account . . . Vivid and gripping."xa0 -- Foreign Affairs “Bascomb brings this overlooked tale of wartime nuclear sabotage to life while taking care to explain the science behind the story.” -- Scientific American "A spellbinding account of the quest to stop Germany from building an atomic bomb…. The Winter Fortress is a taut and peerlessly told adventure story full of thrills, derring-do and heart-stopping tension. And it packs an even more powerful punch because so much is at stake.” — Seattle Times "Gripping." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Told with both historical and scientific accuracy...this book has rocketed into my pantheon of the top suspense-filled stories about [WWII], along with The 900 Days and The Colditz Story ." —Ethan Siegel, Forbes "Deeply researched . . .Bascombxa0interweaves the stories of Hitler’s ‘Uranium Club’ and of atomic chemistxa0Leif Tronstad, who directed the Allied operation, with the thriller-esquexa0tale of the commandos who put the plant out of action in 1943." — Nature "Suspenseful . . . An intensely researched and vividly told account of one of the most critical episodes of the war." — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Riveting and poignant . . . ‘The Winter Fortress’ metamorphoses from engrossing history into a smashing thriller . . . Mr. Bascomb’s research and, especially, his storytelling skills are first-rate.” — Wall Street Journal "This tale of a daredevil mission to slow Germany’s World War II progress toward an atomic bomb could only be conjured by a master storyteller. Neal Bascomb’s a master all right, but the events he describes in fly-on-the-wall fashion—working from recently declassified documents, firsthand interviews and previously unseen diaries and letters—are true. . .xa0It’s part spy tale, part action-adventure yarn as the saboteurs strap on skis and undertake the mission of a lifetime. We know how it will turn out, but there are plenty of surprises along the way in a book that, once you reach the midpoint, is almost impossible to put down." — BookPage "Gripping ... compellingxa0and makes for an absolute page-turner. It is as much a saga of adventure and survival in the mode of Jon Krakauer and Sebastian Junger as it is an account of wartime sabotage, secret agents and resistance fighters . . .xa0epic in its sweep and is masterfully narrated by Bascomb."xa0 — Knoxville Newsxa0Sentinel From the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of Hunting Eichmann and The Perfect Mile, an epic adventure and spy story about the greatest act of sabotage in all of World War II xa0 It’s 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists. They have the uranium. Now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced at Norway’s Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork’s engineers push production into overdrive. xa0 For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed. But how would they reach the castle fortress, set on a precipitous gorge in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth? xa0 Based on a trove of top-secret documents and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, The Winter Fortress is an arresting chronicle of a brilliant scientist, a band of spies on skies, perilous survival in the wild, sacrifice for one’s country, Gestapo manhunts, soul-crushing setbacks, and a last-minute operation that would end any chance Hitler could obtain the atomic bomb—and alter the course of the war. NEAL BASCOMB is the national award-winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Winter Fortress,xa0Hunting Eichmann,xa0The Perfect Mile , Higher , The Nazi Hunters, Red Mutiny, among others. A former international journalist, he is a widely recognized speaker on the subject of war and has appeared in a number of documentaries. He lives in Seattle, Washington. For more information visit http://nealbascomb.com, or Twitter @nealbascomb. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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 survival 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 And now the commandos were going to break into it. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 Their moment now at hand, the saboteurs refastened their skis and started down the road through the darkness. 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 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. xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 Joliot-Curie explained that he needed a special ingredient for his experiments?u2009—u2009?heavy water?u2009—u2009?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. Read more