3:40 - A correction, Britain was in WW2 from 1939, declaring war on Germany in September 1939 when Poland was invaded. By the time of Pearl Harbour, the UK had already endured the Blitz, 8 months of mass aerial bombing of the United kingdom. Including a period in September/October 1940 when London was bombed on 56 of 57 consecutive days.
It seems this is often a point of soreness when discussions of contribution to the war effort come up online. Americans will often, quite rightly, point to the impact they had while Britons will often reply, quite rightly, that they were a tad late to the party.
And the battle/defence of France, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Fighting Germany in Africa and Bombing Germany... But to expand on the failed British part of the operation... The aircraft were flying with ZERO visibility... with only the commandos (UK+NORG) and command knowing the true stakes of the mission. The pilots did not want to continue under the conditions but were under explicit orders to continue "at any cost". One of the aircraft flew into a mountain and the other then had the pilots refuse to continue and abruptly aborted, breaking the glider free prematurely. 1/3 of all the personnel survived the crashes, half of which were seriously injured. All were brutality tortured and questioned. They did not give up any information. 2/3's were shot in the woods, striped and buried and the remainder were executed by air bubble to the blood stream. Unfortunately, a single map survived, later revealing the target. There was a massive heated argument between the Wehrmacht and Gestapo, with Wehrmacht officers insisting that their prisoners are to be protected under the Genever convention and treated as prisoners of war, the Gestapo took complete command. The local Norwegians tended to the unmarked graves of the British servicemen in secret, until the British 1st Airborne later arrived. They were all reburied and some were reburied near Oslo with full honours. All involved Gestapo officers were identified and either "prematurely ended" or were later tried and executed for their crimes.
@@babalonkie I wasn't disagreeing with OPs comment, more just speaking to the point that (in my experience online) Americans don't seem to perceive the gap between when Britain joined the war and when they did (like in the video).
As a norwegian, we all know this story but it is such a important piece of history. They would be proud to see how the country has evolved thanks to them.
As a Swede, we still feel a sense of national shame over the fact that the politicians at the time allowed germans to ship troops and weapons to Norway. Granted, it was a hard decision to make too since the "official neutrality" wasn't really a point of principle but rather to avoid Germany setting it's sights on Sweden too (which was ill equipped to mount a proper defense against the wehrmacht). So a lot of lives were probably saved, but it leaves an extremely bitter aftertaste. One can only hope that the unofficial support extended to Finland during the winter war, the acceptance of large numbers of war refugees and persecuted jews and participation in rebuilding efforts of what had been destroyed in many countries across Europe (since Sweden still had a lot of intact key industries after the war) can make up for it a little bit.
@@sevenproxies4255 Dead politicians and their stupid decisions aside, Modern Norway is very fond of modern Sweden :) We just don't admit it very often. Sincerely, a Norwegian!
@@BouncyStickman The feeling is mutual. We're all scandinavian brothers when all is said and done. Along with the Danes, Icelanders, the Faroese and (even though they aren't technically Scandinavian) The Finns. A personal dream of mine would be that our countries created a nordic union instead of some being in the EU while others aren't. I believe we would be able to run a much better union together due to many shared cultural values and ideals, whereas the EU is just constant bickering and everyone pulling in different directions.
I was visiting your country back in 1996. Stayed with a friend who took to me to visit the heavy-water factory (you guys had made it into a museum by then), and we sat for lunch on the banks near where the ferry was sunk. It was surreal to hear this fascinating story, whilst sitting less than 500mtrs from where it all happened.
THE SLED ! One of the Norwegian saboteurs in the heavy water mission, Knut Haugland, discovered an old sled in the area where he used to play as a child. This sled turned out to be a lifesaver for the team. Without it, they would have had to make multiple trips to transport their equipment, increasing the risk of detection. Finding the sled allowed them to carry everything in one go, contributing significantly to the success of their mission
@@Efreeti Yep. He was described in the book "Kon Tiki" as a radioman for that operation. (Thor Heyerdahl, author and expedition founder/member. Don't bother with the recent movie: Hollywood had their dirty hands all over it. Check out the book for the REAL story) Not the only WWII veteran of note either, as mentioned in the book. (I don't need to tell you, seeing as you obviously know the book enough to reference this: I leave this here as a "warning" to others to avoid that damned movie that Hollywood forked up and start making requests to their libraries and booksellers instead)
@@hornetscales8274 Indeed, I share a last name with Knut though I don't think we're related. However, I grew up with stories from the WWII resistance, my grandfather was a young member of it running messages and such, and I know much about the work of Thor Heyerdahl, his work didn't just involve archaeology and anthropology but cultural conservation on behalf of endangered native groups
Fun thing to add is that one of the French saboteurs who helped steal Germany's heavy water supply was Irene Curie, daughter of Marie Curie. She was a proud member of the French Resistance who refused to evacuate so she could spend the war sabotaging Germany from the inside.
Yea! Irene’s husband also stayed behind, and when the allies hit Paris he was on the ground with the resistance using supplies from his lab to make suped-up Molotov cocktails to throw at Germans
When I hear French sabatours I imagine the parade of snail slime trails I used to find making figure 8s and swirls all over the floor around the crib when I first had my daughter almost 15 years ago. I like snails but was forced to make a salt perimeter because I can't just allow the outside to do whatever it wants to contaminate the only baby I was ever going to have.
Hitler stopped a lot of Hitler’s nukes as well. Considering a lot of the top nuclear physicists at the time were Jewish. Bit of a neutron stream to the foot.
I was going to comment about that, too. They were never really close to having functional nuclear weapons. If anything, they were closer to having a reactor, and even that would have been a bit of a stretch for them at the time (especially as the war went on and factories were bombed).
Yeah the nazis tended to be their own worst enemies. It's unfortunate that even today we're taught to see them as geniuses- basically just uncritically buying into their propaganda.
I often joke Hitler's doctor won the war for the allies. Regular doeses of methamphetamine will definitely hinder your cognitive abilities lol (In addition to the raging racism and paranoia)
Another factor that limited German nuclear research was the fact that the remaining nuclear scientists scientists were spread across multiple teams who worked independent. Where the Manhattan Project concentrated all those specialists, in Germany the multiple teams competed against their colleagues for resources.
Yeah, Hitler's paranoia drove him to create a hypercompetitive environment full of overlapping jurisdications and inefficient redundancies, all so that nobody could accrue enough power and authority to challenge his own. It started with the party/government, then the military, and it spread to the nuclear bomb program as well.
Since it was one big happy team it was easy to steal the results and plans from the US, and send them over to their fellow travelers in the Soviet Union.
Well shucks, do you mean to say that collaboration is provably more effective than competition? I wonder if this concept could possibly maybe be true in other places, too!
Even that realization would only have mattered in an alternate universe. The consequences of going down the heavy water route or the alternatives were unknown to both the German atomic project and the Manhattan project. Basically both groups tossed a coin, followed nothing more than their gut feeling. The Manhattan project picked right, the German project took the wrong path. In the end that kept the Manhattan project on track for a nuclear weapon in 1945 but it didn't derail the German atomic project. A key problem was the lack of resources. The German atomic project never had even remotely enough resources to compete with its American counterpart. It was competing with the war itself and development work on other "super weapons" including the V2 for resources and ultimately was just starving. When the Americans inspected the German nuclear reactor prototype after the capitulation they found it to be so far behind expectations they felt fooled - also because intelligence reports had made it look like a far greater threat than it ever was. Some materials also vanished after the end of the project including some of the uranium cubes intended to be used as fuel for the reactor. The reactor was disassembled after the war. Later a small museum was created. It's not far from me but I've never visited it. I'm told it's pretty unimpressive not last because there's so little to show. The German uranium project did use graphite. So they had two different moderators. It would seem they somehow preferred heavy water.
@@dongiovanni4331 Not sure if that was a relevant consideration yet. Most old German documents I've seen are calling a nuclear bomb an "Uranbombe", uranium bomb. A physicist named Friedrich Georg Houtermans who is virtually unknown today made a proposal to breed Pu239 from U238 but that seems to have been ignored. The proposals and draft patents by the far more influential Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker from 1941 even evolved into a non-weapon direction. The reactor they were building was pretty small, at best a research prototype, certainly not suitable to produce the quantities of Plutonium required for further exploration. This is demonstrated by the size of the reactor, quantity of uranium, lack of a proper shielding required for safety of a breeding reactor and lack of cooling. Then as Berlin got too dangerous as the location of a research project, the German nuclear research moved to Southwest Germany, to far more modest facilities. It would appear that latest by that time the primary inofficial research objective was to look like doing something important and to ensure participating research personal wasn't given a rifle and sent of to the front ;-) Anyway, the reactor shown in the video is at that alternate location in the Southwest, in Haigerloch. Which these days is much more known for the brewery named after the town than the research project. The underground location was previously used to store potatoes and beer by a local pub, had been originally created for an abandoned railway tunnel project. Barely the prime real estate required for a major research project.
True. I mean, if your enemy is going out of their way to destroy this one place in the middle of the woods, it must be important. Though, given the secrecy the US had, I doubt the Brits and other Allies knew it was a dead end anyways.
Technically heavy water can have very significant biological consequences iirc, but it does need to be ingested in some pretty unreasonable conditions (i.e essentially replacing natural water) in order to do so. And at that point, saying it’s toxic isn’t exactly a high bar to clear. This toxicity is much more visible in smaller organisms, but I gave up that dissertation project because the project lead seemed uninterested in engaging with the students doing it, so I can’t remember exactly why. Basically even though it won’t hurt you, it’s still not recommended
Iirc it's because of kinetics. Deuterium, being nearly twice as massive as normal hydrogen (protium), needs more energy to do chemical reactions (also hence why you can enrich it using e.g. electrolysis, tending to stay in the water), which makes some chemical reactions slow down significantly. Also I think bcs its nucelar spin is 0, instead of protiums +1/2, it also contributes less to hydrogen bonding, hence destabilizing some structures, like proteins.
@Cotif11 I'm sorry, but no. From D-day to the end of the war in the European theater is 10 months. The war had already been going on for 5 years. I think Kyle just made a mistake.
Your Half-Life series is a gift to the wider world. Not enough people understand the history of Nuclear Science. Too many people are afraid of the things that human error cause to allow the massive benefits of having a nuclear power plant in their communities. Nuclear power should be the future of energy but too many outside forces demonize it for malicious purposes or straight up ignorance. Keep fighting the good fight and maybe one day we won’t be dependent on fossil fuels anymore and we will have an educated society that respects the benefits of Nuclear Power.
People like you are gonna kick yourselves in shame when society collapses and those plants are left unattended. I think I would rather live in your climate apocalypse boogeyman, that was inevitably bound to happen regardless of human technology or not. I don’t feel safe living next to a nuclear plant. Have you learnt nothing from Chernobyl? Jesus.
A lot of people are actually so un-informed about nuclear physics, that they are affraid that a nuclear power plant reactor is an atomic bomb. Great example is the history of trying to build the first NPP in Poland. They abandoed the constructionn site in 1989 because when there were public information panels nobody listened to nuclear phisicists and people who actually know a lot about it, because one man from the opposing side - a demagogist - came and said (paraphrasing) "Building an NPP is like playig cards with the devil himself" and the farmers living in that region (because of low levels of education and lack of understanding atom) got affraid and protested against it so much that they forsaken the construction site and never finished it despite some of the reactor buildings were almost complete.
As a part of my military service my team and I walked the route of the saboteurs during the night. We ended up getting lost in the woods, only to then realise that we'd forgotten our tent poles, and had to sleep outside in -10c. Great story, horrible experience :p
I read another book that suggested Heisenberg also self-sabotaged a bit, knowing that if he finished his work then he’d be sent to the front (he was able-bodied enough to fight). He didn’t want to do that, so he kinda waffled around and self-stalled…in addition to the fact that the heavy water system wasn’t exactly the fastest production they needed
@@angelalmaguer311 I haven’t read that one yet, thanks for the rec! I think it was an aside during “The Girls of Atomic City”, there were multiple chapters that pulled out of Oak Ridge and took a look at what was happening elsewhere in the physics world/the war simultaneously. Helped give you the sense of urgency.
The entire German program had so much "sabotage" it's rather entertaining. Heisenberg over-estimated how much uranium would be needed by X2. One German scientist studying graphite moderator was too focused on his affair. The transcripts of the captured German scientists talking after they were told about Hiroshima shows how incompetent they all were.
I actually read a couple of books about it, but one of the ones mentioned in the comments here 😅 I can't remember what, if anything, Heisenberg says about this in his autobiography (it's been... 20 years? I may have to read it again!)
Anyway, the conclusions I got from those were the same as yours; lots of things going on in Germany that slowed this down even more - some speculated/claimed, some very definitely happening
The operation was organised by the British Special Operations Executive, which routinely recruited, radicalised and supplied resistance groups across europe, along with giving them naughty suggestions.
it was also a WHOLE mission in battlefield v... but they kind of screwed around with it.. it was origialy 9 commandos that whent it... not a single woman.
Haven't played that game so I don't know how explicitly the British identity is established but the real Norwegians where dressed in British uniforms in hope of preventing retaliation on Norwegian civilians if they where captured.
6:15 Slight Correction: Heavy water is inefficient for the body to use for its chemical reactions because of the extra weight, and drinking heavy water consistently can actually cause some health problems because of that, but it would need to be at high concentration, for an extended period of time. Practically speaking, heavy water isn’t exceedingly dangerous but it’s not desirable for the body
@@tachyon8317 Right, I didn't think of that. If you get heavier from the heavy water you won't be able to swim anymore, you'll sink like that ice cube.
@andrasbiro3007 it's not even that. In that case, muscle and determination can compensate. The 50%+1 bit comes into play because heavy water in that concentration becomes toxic. So, IN THEORY, one can have body water concentration of 49% "heavy water", and 51% "normal" water, and be totally fine. I would NOT recommend striving for that ratio, but if you have a cup with some sinking ice cubes for a night, I would SUSPECT, and ALLEGE, that one would, might, possibly, almost, be "ok". There's a thing called LD/50, or something like that, that would give a better idea on that, than I, myself, could ever give. Note- that I am NOT a chemist, or anything/one like that, so my OPINON should NOT be taken as "fact". And that what I have posted is based solely on, if anything, 2nd (maybe, 3rd) hand knowledge.
This is the earliest I’ve ever been to one of these videos :D Hitler also sabotaged himself, he saw physics as Jewish science. He didn’t want to listen when told that getting rid of Jewish scientists would be harmful.
@@shadowldrago I don't know why Jacob felt the need to insult you to make a point, but the point is that hate itself holds humanity back, not just any particular flavor of it.
Haha, I never expected to see a video from you about tungvannsaksjonen! This hits right at home. Greetings from norway, and thank you for all the amazing videos you make!
@@antonycharnock2993: That film _suuuuucked!_ It dragged on in the middle (about 80% of the total runtime), and the most interesting thing about it was the unintended sexual tension between the two male leads.
Thanks for these videos. I also appreciate how you take your time when discussing the horrors of war (death, torture, execution etc ). That sort of stuff always brings me back to Fallout. War...war never changes.
Even If if Norway didn't, Nazi Germany wouldn't have been able to build a nuke during the war, there were no funds, no real interest from the military or Hitler and no industry to support such a project anyway, hence all the effort was put into ballistic missiles as no one believed they could pull off a nuclear bomb well into the 50s.
This and even if they canceled all their other wonderweapon projects it would still be am magnitude to low at least. The US also had the benefit of not getting bombed daily by increasingly numbers of bombers. They also dropped the nuclear bomb idea after an miscalculation but it did not matter because the cost. Now the allies did not know this or the final cost of the nuke so they was very scared about this and slowing down the German nuclear program was an very high priority.
In interrogation after war Heisenberg was shown the error in his calculations that led to his belief that a bomb was theoretically possible but utterly impractical. At first he had a hard time believing it but did come to accept it in time and by repeating the calculations himself. The nuclear research and materials were distributed across many different sites in Germany and there was no coordination between the teams in the labs. Each pursuing their own ideas and jealousy guarding their small amounts of nuclear fuel whilst trying to make more in their tiny reactors. Heavy water is also a very poor choice of material for a weapon. As a result Germany was probably decades from making a viable bomb.
I think I remember reading that the German nuclear effort chose heavy water over graphite because the graphite samples they used to determine cross sections were contaminated with boron.
Just want to point out that Britain entered the war on the 3rd of September 1939, when it declared war on Germany after Germany's refusal to halt their attack on Poland.
This is one of the videos that has several items of interest - not only the video itself, but the educational comments being given that provide even more information and understanding. For those of you whom are posting the extremely informative and interesting comments, I for one give you huge thanks!!
Havent gotten far enough in the video to see if you did, but I highly recommend traveling to Vemork to see the heavy water factory itself. It puts everything into perspective and makes the whole affair feel alot more real. The original building that housed the electrolysis machines was torn down, but a few years ago they restored the basement that did the final purification of the heavy water
I remember reading about this story in Neal Bascomb's book SABOTAGE. It is my favorite non-fiction book I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fiction and not non-fiction because it is structured like a fiction book. This is my favorite story of WW2 and I am glad you are sharing it for more people to learn about this incredible story.
I have a vial just like the one at 6:39 containing heavy water from the railroad ferry "DF Hydro" that the saboteurs sank in Lake Tinn on the 20th of February 1944. A company in Norway sold them a few years back. It is believed that there was between 29 or 39 barrels with heavy water on board. It was unrefined as well, so the contents in the vial is pretty murky.
The Half-Life Histories is how I found this channel and everything you put out is amazing.. but I doubt this was the greatest act of sabotage ever. Col. Hogan and the guys at Stalag 13 were not even mentioned once!! ;) In all seriousness, I look forward to this series so much. Keep up the amazing work. Haunt (Former 44SMW Minute Man II technician)
I saw an interview with one of the original commandos years ago, he must’ve been at least in his 70’s by then and still demonstrated how he abseiled down a cliff as part of the operation. He must’ve been a formidable force in his youth!
From what I researched in school it didn’t really matter anyways, since it seemed Heisenberg was secretly sabotaging it anyways, or at least not doing his best. But tungtvannsaksjonen is very interesting anyways, watched a movie on it, would recommend watching if you like stuff like that. Oh I should also add: while not directly affecting the outcome of the war, the morale boost from these victories can not go unmentioned as they certainly did help
I’m sure that this likely won’t get read, but if it does, please never stop. I am going to school for electrical engineering, and your half life history videos have made me want to find any possible way to include the nuclear power industry into my future career however possible. Thank you for what you do, please never stop making these videos Kyle. I recommend you to my friends and I hope you continue to upload these gems.
There's something so soothing about Kyle's essay reading voice. I don't want to say it's half the reason I love these so much... But it's more than I care to admit
In the US on the public broadcasting network PBS there was a show called “Secrets of the Dead” They did a show were they went over the ferry bombing, recovered one of the barrels and tested it. The heavy water percentage matched. Also some barrels were recovered immediately after the sinking by the Germans. They hadn’t been completely filled so they floated
My parents just got done doing an ancestry trip to Norway and a long long way off relative was part of this sabotage crew. They chatted with the guy's kid and supposedly the Germans said "this was the most intricate and thought out sabotages done ever"
Heavy water does definitely have biological effects as deuterium bounds stronger to oxygen, having the effect of slowing down chemical reactions you would eventually die if you only drank it instead of normal water but its safe in any realistic dose, in fact in low doses it could potentially slow aging it also tastes sweet which is neat
The way these videos are done, with the way of telling, intonation, and paying respect to unfortunate deaths with moments of silence while telling, is amazing.
There is a story playing Battlefield V that touches on this story about commandos sabotaging the Nazis heavy water production and it was one of best missions I ever played on that game and now its awesome knowing I played just a small (mostly made up story) about real events during WW2 of the sacrifices of those in Norways history
Ah yes, Nordlys. A very inaccurate and disrespectful portrayal of a real event. Where the real heroes are unceremoniously killed off, and replaced by a "girl boss".
Ah yes, I too helped defeat the Nazis when I parachuted behind enemy lines as a part of the 101st just before the D-day landings... In the Original Call of Duty game of course. I'm rather old you see.
My grandmother was Norwegian, described occupied Ålesund. I know I'm Norwegian-American, but it still gives me some pride. My great grandfather, who had apparently immigrated to the US during the occupation, got the rest of the family out of Norway shortly after. He then volunteered in WW2 for the US when he was about 40 or so, and died here in Portland. I moved here without knowing he died here as no one told me about him, found him at the veterans cemetery in Happy Valley. Anyway, this sounds like a pretty awesome video game.
It's also bad for you in large quantities, as there is a small difference in the chemistry. But you'd have to drink a pretty absurd (and absurdly expensive) amount of it to cause health issues.
Thank you for making this one, Kyle. This was always something that peaked my interest, and now I'm happy that others can experience the information as well.
The heavywater sabotages are such an interesting topic! Operation Gunnerside was one of two major operations, the other one involved the sinking of a boat transporting heavywater. This part of history is so interesting, and this video is a nice introduction
I love that you're doing these videos. Long time science and technology nerd here, and I've learned sooooooo much from you it's not even funny. Seriously, thanks for doing such good and important work. In 100 years, your videos (especially the half life histories series) will continue to educate and enlighten young minds who want to enter these fields.
My high school chemistry teacher told my class this story, really interesting! Crazy to think that D2O used to be so rare when it's comparatively cheap nowadays and will commonly be found in any chemistry lab.
There are a lot of comments about how this did not matter, and Germany was failing at this time to get anywhere close. At the time, they lacked enough information to be able to say for certain how close or far Germany was from building a reactor or possible bomb, but Germany was willing to invest a lot of time and money into getting the heavy water. What it means to us and what it meant to them are not necessarily the same thing. We also cannot say with absolute certainty that this did not help in some way. While it is unlikely Germany would have accomplished anything with the heavy water, thanks to these soldiers, they never got it to even try. This is far from the only operation where later people could go, "For all that effort, it really did not change anything." We put a lot of effort into things on a regular basis, and it turns out that maybe it was pointless. These soldiers still accomplished their mission, because at the time, that is what they believed they had to do.
Keep in mind that the Germans also had a stockpile of uranium from the Belgian Congo when they seized Antwerp, Belgium, and the files from Niels Bohr's lab when they seized Copenhagen, Denmark. So as far as the Allies were concerned, it looks like the Germans had a good hand in a game of nuclear poker. Bohr escaped Denmark and went to work on the British Tube Alloys project and later the US Manhattan Project. Tube Alloys? That was the code name for the theoretical work that the British started on the atomic bomb. The British concluded that it was too unsafe to continue the project in the UK and gave the data to the Americans. So the Allies had a good understanding of what could have been. The fact that Hitler was an idiot only became obvious later. (Look up: Operation Foxley)
>> willing to invest a lot of time They were willing, but lot of time is not something they had. Also, heaving heavy water is not even part of weapon production.
7:10 : slight correction here. Regular water is a *better* moderator than heavy water, because its hydrogen atoms are (almost),exactly the same mass as the neutron. But regular water also ever so slightly absorbs neutrons, just enough that the chain reaction cannot sustain itself with natural (non enriched) uranium. Heavy water, OTOH, does not absorb neutrons.
Anybody finding this story compelling should seek out "Ray Mears' Real Heroes of Telemark" (BBC, 2003) which looks to be on UA-cam, the accompanying book is on internet archive. Also worthwhile is "PBS Nova: Hitler's Sunken Secret" which also looks to be on UA-cam and covers a then resent diving operation on the wreck of the ferry boat Kyle mentions.
Came to make the same comment. Mears' show is especially interesting because he's an expert in wilderness survival who has studied cultures around the world.
Man as a Norwegian, it is increadible to hear THE Kyle Hill make a video about it. It's a very well known story here up North, but one that has sadly been mostly left out of the bigger picture of WW2, and the other operations of Milorg and other recistance groups. So thank you! If anybody is intrested in a deeper dive, there are many amazing movies and documentaries about the heavy water - it's a recomended watch!
Great to see coverage of this raid! It deserves to be more well known. However, it really had very little impact on Germany’s nuclear program. The program was a mess, already plagued by infighting and a lacking the military leadership of the American program, had a poor reactor design, and for most of its existence didn’t think that the refinement needed to make a bomb was possible and were focused on making nuclear powered u-boats. The worst part is that there were elements within the intelligence circles of the allies that knew this at the time of the raids, but didn’t want to tell other branches due to rivalries and not wanting to reveal sources, making the series of raids a bad sabotage pointless risks that got people killed
Bear in mind that the British had no way of knowing the state of the German atomic program. They had little choice but to assume the worst case scenario.
Called in to serve And they knew what to do They were the heroes of the cold Warrior soul! They signed the book of history They played the leading role To win the second war
Need to point out that Germany making the Bomb would have been worse than useless, given they didn't have the means to deliver it. Not when the Allies dominated the sky and the entire He 177 had been grounded for lack of fuel.
It’s honestly weird people are buying into the propaganda that Hitler miraculously created. WMDs are only as effective as its delivery platform and Germany even with a Nuclear bomb would only hope to create a temporary buffer zone.
The role of heavy water during WWII and the remarkable Norwegian missions to thwart its production were so significant in shaping history. Reminder of the importance of strategic little-known efforts in large-scale conflicts.
We really weren't that close, as others have said. The nazis didn't have a realistic nuclear weapons program, and had self-sabotaged by putting some of the best minds in Germany into concentration camps.
Every time I see this story retold on a channel .. I watch it. And every time, I remember playing this very mission on MoH on PS1 back in the day and not realizing back then that it was based on a true story.
@@Pub2k4 We said that the terms were non-negotiable, but they were going to try, using the USSR as a middle man, and then the Soviet envoy said “Nyet, comrade. We are invading.”
There’s a song about this by Sabaton, appropriately titled “Saboteurs.” For those unfamiliar, Sabaton’s songs cover various topics in military history. Great content as always, Kyle!
Title is ridiculous. Germans weren't even close to producing nuclear weapon. Heavy water is only one of intermediate steps, there're lot of others. But even in unlikely event of producing 1-2 bombs, outcome would be still defeat as Germany lost to overall industrial capacity of US and USSR
15:25 - The 2015 Norwegian TV mini-series "Kampen om Tungtvannet" has an English subbed version that goes by the title "The Heavy Water War: Stopping Hitler's Atomic Bomb" (US/Aus), or "The Sabateurs" (UK).
Dropping the bombs didn't end ww2, faced with fighting Russia again in a third war is what caused Japan to drop out. The fighting minister were ready to keep fighting America but when it was heard that Russia was also going to invade the Empire stepped in and stopped the ministers that wanted to keep the war going and sided with the ones that wanted it to stop. That is what caused Japan to not want to keep fighting, not because we dropped two nuclear bombs on them but because they were going to fight Russia again. It sucks that most people think that it was the bombs that stopped Japan and don't really look at the history between Japan and Russia and how that effected the decision for Japan to stop fighting.
Well, yes and no. In reality, it was a combination of factors: the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bombings, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. All three played a role. Hirohito in particular was severely affected by the devastation of Tokyo and enormous civilian casualties. The atomic bombings made it clear that the Allies could quite literally annihilate all of Japan with ease, including their army. More, since the Japanese had stationed virtually everything they had left in Kyushu to defend against Allied landings, there was nothing left to stop a Soviet invasion in the north. We'll never know if any of those factors could have forced the Japanese surrender without the other two. Notably, neither did the Allied governments.
The dropping of the Hiroshima bomb is what decided Stalin to invade Manchuria ( occupied by the Imperial Japanese army back then ). The invasion began almost exactly at the same moment US B29 bombers had taken off from Tinian Island to go and bomb Kokura on August 9th 1945. ( but due to weather issues they had to divert and bomb the secondary target which was Nagasaki. ) The invasion of Manchuria told the Japanese one thing, i.e. that Japan itself was next and that's why they decided to surrender to the US and the allies ( except the soviets ) because they had a chance at survival with the US, something that was unlikely with Stalin's red armies. So, in obvious conclusion, Little Boy caused the war in the Pacific to end. The Nagasaki bomb didn't change a thing, in fact it was useless in ending the war or barely... but it took historians at least 30 to 40 years searching the Japanese Imperial archives to finally understand that...
@@stellarch4986 Small correction: the Soviet invasion had nothing to do with the US or the atomic bombings. Stalin had been told that the US was going to use a powerful new weapon, but no details were provided. At the Tehran and Yalta conferences, Stalin promised to declare war on Japan three months after victory in Europe. Thus, exactly three months after Germany surrendered, the Soviets invaded Manchuria. The timing with the atomic bombings was likely coincidental for the Americans.
Commie symps (like you, perhaps) LOVE to make the false claim that it was the Russian entry into the war that made Japan surrender. That's just preposterous. But...commie symps and preposterous claims just seem like a match made in heaven.
Hi, Kyle, please consider adding official subtitles to your video! Since the autogenerated caption is still not that good at catching foreign names. Would be very helpful to those also on the spectrum!
Today's Fact: In 1991, twins Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were reunited after being separated at birth; both had been adopted by different families named James, both had married women named Linda, both had named their sons James Alan, and both had dogs named Toy.
Thank you Kyle! This is off topic, but I just wanted to say I respect the hell out of you for using the proper words for serious issues like when you mentioned “Suicide Tablets”. I noticed this in your video on AI dark forest theory as well. You are the only UA-camr I have seen who has not resorted to self censorship and infantile language like “un-aliving” for the fear of being demonetized, and thus devaluing the seriousness of it. Keep using the proper words. I love you Kyle!
there was a spy working at the plant who kept the British - and the rest of the allies - abreast of what was happening at the plant. that was how the Gunnersides knew precisely where to go - and when the shipment that got sunk was being shipped out. his name was Anar Skinarland and he deserves to be remembered. nothing of what the Gunnarsides accomplished would have been possible without him
Yes, he even had a famous theory and everything (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - you can look it up). But that was before the war and before he traded his academic integrity and character and morality for a seat at the Nazi table. Once he fell in with the Nazi gang, he was basically nothing more than an ordinary Nazi functionary, trading elbow jabs with all the other Nazi functionaries.
Commenting to help with the algorithm, but also to say I love these videos. There’s so much history that people just don’t know or care to know, and this series helps bring that into the spotlight
3:40 - A correction, Britain was in WW2 from 1939, declaring war on Germany in September 1939 when Poland was invaded. By the time of Pearl Harbour, the UK had already endured the Blitz, 8 months of mass aerial bombing of the United kingdom. Including a period in September/October 1940 when London was bombed on 56 of 57 consecutive days.
It seems this is often a point of soreness when discussions of contribution to the war effort come up online.
Americans will often, quite rightly, point to the impact they had while Britons will often reply, quite rightly, that they were a tad late to the party.
And the battle/defence of France, Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Fighting Germany in Africa and Bombing Germany...
But to expand on the failed British part of the operation... The aircraft were flying with ZERO visibility... with only the commandos (UK+NORG) and command knowing the true stakes of the mission. The pilots did not want to continue under the conditions but were under explicit orders to continue "at any cost". One of the aircraft flew into a mountain and the other then had the pilots refuse to continue and abruptly aborted, breaking the glider free prematurely.
1/3 of all the personnel survived the crashes, half of which were seriously injured. All were brutality tortured and questioned. They did not give up any information. 2/3's were shot in the woods, striped and buried and the remainder were executed by air bubble to the blood stream. Unfortunately, a single map survived, later revealing the target.
There was a massive heated argument between the Wehrmacht and Gestapo, with Wehrmacht officers insisting that their prisoners are to be protected under the Genever convention and treated as prisoners of war, the Gestapo took complete command.
The local Norwegians tended to the unmarked graves of the British servicemen in secret, until the British 1st Airborne later arrived. They were all reburied and some were reburied near Oslo with full honours.
All involved Gestapo officers were identified and either "prematurely ended" or were later tried and executed for their crimes.
@@Jack93885 Both are right... but... "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"...
@@Jack93885 Which ignores that fact that they were also late to the party, the war starting in 1937.
@@babalonkie I wasn't disagreeing with OPs comment, more just speaking to the point that (in my experience online) Americans don't seem to perceive the gap between when Britain joined the war and when they did (like in the video).
As a norwegian, we all know this story but it is such a important piece of history. They would be proud to see how the country has evolved thanks to them.
As a Swede, we still feel a sense of national shame over the fact that the politicians at the time allowed germans to ship troops and weapons to Norway.
Granted, it was a hard decision to make too since the "official neutrality" wasn't really a point of principle but rather to avoid Germany setting it's sights on Sweden too (which was ill equipped to mount a proper defense against the wehrmacht).
So a lot of lives were probably saved, but it leaves an extremely bitter aftertaste.
One can only hope that the unofficial support extended to Finland during the winter war, the acceptance of large numbers of war refugees and persecuted jews and participation in rebuilding efforts of what had been destroyed in many countries across Europe (since Sweden still had a lot of intact key industries after the war) can make up for it a little bit.
@@sevenproxies4255 Dead politicians and their stupid decisions aside, Modern Norway is very fond of modern Sweden :)
We just don't admit it very often.
Sincerely, a Norwegian!
@@BouncyStickman The feeling is mutual.
We're all scandinavian brothers when all is said and done. Along with the Danes, Icelanders, the Faroese and (even though they aren't technically Scandinavian) The Finns.
A personal dream of mine would be that our countries created a nordic union instead of some being in the EU while others aren't.
I believe we would be able to run a much better union together due to many shared cultural values and ideals, whereas the EU is just constant bickering and everyone pulling in different directions.
I was visiting your country back in 1996. Stayed with a friend who took to me to visit the heavy-water factory (you guys had made it into a museum by then), and we sat for lunch on the banks near where the ferry was sunk. It was surreal to hear this fascinating story, whilst sitting less than 500mtrs from where it all happened.
For alt vi har. For alt vi er.
THE SLED !
One of the Norwegian saboteurs in the heavy water mission, Knut Haugland, discovered an old sled in the area where he used to play as a child. This sled turned out to be a lifesaver for the team. Without it, they would have had to make multiple trips to transport their equipment, increasing the risk of detection. Finding the sled allowed them to carry everything in one go, contributing significantly to the success of their mission
So, Rosebud deserves to be recognized as a hero?
calm down
Knut Haugland later went on to take part in the Kon-Tiki expedition as well
@@Efreeti Yep. He was described in the book "Kon Tiki" as a radioman for that operation. (Thor Heyerdahl, author and expedition founder/member. Don't bother with the recent movie: Hollywood had their dirty hands all over it. Check out the book for the REAL story) Not the only WWII veteran of note either, as mentioned in the book.
(I don't need to tell you, seeing as you obviously know the book enough to reference this: I leave this here as a "warning" to others to avoid that damned movie that Hollywood forked up and start making requests to their libraries and booksellers instead)
@@hornetscales8274 Indeed, I share a last name with Knut though I don't think we're related. However, I grew up with stories from the WWII resistance, my grandfather was a young member of it running messages and such, and I know much about the work of Thor Heyerdahl, his work didn't just involve archaeology and anthropology but cultural conservation on behalf of endangered native groups
Fun thing to add is that one of the French saboteurs who helped steal Germany's heavy water supply was Irene Curie, daughter of Marie Curie. She was a proud member of the French Resistance who refused to evacuate so she could spend the war sabotaging Germany from the inside.
The curies are just so badazz!!
Yea! Irene’s husband also stayed behind, and when the allies hit Paris he was on the ground with the resistance using supplies from his lab to make suped-up Molotov cocktails to throw at Germans
I wonder if her being partly Polish had anything to do with it?
SO cool! :O
When I hear French sabatours I imagine the parade of snail slime trails I used to find making figure 8s and swirls all over the floor around the crib when I first had my daughter almost 15 years ago. I like snails but was forced to make a salt perimeter because I can't just allow the outside to do whatever it wants to contaminate the only baby I was ever going to have.
Hitler stopped a lot of Hitler’s nukes as well. Considering a lot of the top nuclear physicists at the time were Jewish.
Bit of a neutron stream to the foot.
I was going to comment about that, too. They were never really close to having functional nuclear weapons. If anything, they were closer to having a reactor, and even that would have been a bit of a stretch for them at the time (especially as the war went on and factories were bombed).
Only the foot for now.
Yeah the nazis tended to be their own worst enemies. It's unfortunate that even today we're taught to see them as geniuses- basically just uncritically buying into their propaganda.
😂
I often joke Hitler's doctor won the war for the allies. Regular doeses of methamphetamine will definitely hinder your cognitive abilities lol
(In addition to the raging racism and paranoia)
Another factor that limited German nuclear research was the fact that the remaining nuclear scientists scientists were spread across multiple teams who worked independent. Where the Manhattan Project concentrated all those specialists, in Germany the multiple teams competed against their colleagues for resources.
Yeah, Hitler's paranoia drove him to create a hypercompetitive environment full of overlapping jurisdications and inefficient redundancies, all so that nobody could accrue enough power and authority to challenge his own. It started with the party/government, then the military, and it spread to the nuclear bomb program as well.
Since it was one big happy team it was easy to steal the results and plans from the US, and send them over to their fellow travelers in the Soviet Union.
Also nuclear science was considered “Jewisb”.
The Nazis were notorious for rivalries, petty disputes and nepotism.
Well shucks, do you mean to say that collaboration is provably more effective than competition? I wonder if this concept could possibly maybe be true in other places, too!
You could argue that by sabotaging the supply, it set back the axis from realizing heavy water was a dead end.
Even that realization would only have mattered in an alternate universe. The consequences of going down the heavy water route or the alternatives were unknown to both the German atomic project and the Manhattan project. Basically both groups tossed a coin, followed nothing more than their gut feeling. The Manhattan project picked right, the German project took the wrong path. In the end that kept the Manhattan project on track for a nuclear weapon in 1945 but it didn't derail the German atomic project. A key problem was the lack of resources. The German atomic project never had even remotely enough resources to compete with its American counterpart. It was competing with the war itself and development work on other "super weapons" including the V2 for resources and ultimately was just starving. When the Americans inspected the German nuclear reactor prototype after the capitulation they found it to be so far behind expectations they felt fooled - also because intelligence reports had made it look like a far greater threat than it ever was. Some materials also vanished after the end of the project including some of the uranium cubes intended to be used as fuel for the reactor.
The reactor was disassembled after the war. Later a small museum was created. It's not far from me but I've never visited it. I'm told it's pretty unimpressive not last because there's so little to show.
The German uranium project did use graphite. So they had two different moderators. It would seem they somehow preferred heavy water.
While heavy water wouldn't directly produce a weapon, a heavy water reactor could produce plutonium.
@@dongiovanni4331 Not sure if that was a relevant consideration yet. Most old German documents I've seen are calling a nuclear bomb an "Uranbombe", uranium bomb. A physicist named Friedrich Georg Houtermans who is virtually unknown today made a proposal to breed Pu239 from U238 but that seems to have been ignored. The proposals and draft patents by the far more influential Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker from 1941 even evolved into a non-weapon direction.
The reactor they were building was pretty small, at best a research prototype, certainly not suitable to produce the quantities of Plutonium required for further exploration. This is demonstrated by the size of the reactor, quantity of uranium, lack of a proper shielding required for safety of a breeding reactor and lack of cooling.
Then as Berlin got too dangerous as the location of a research project, the German nuclear research moved to Southwest Germany, to far more modest facilities. It would appear that latest by that time the primary inofficial research objective was to look like doing something important and to ensure participating research personal wasn't given a rifle and sent of to the front ;-)
Anyway, the reactor shown in the video is at that alternate location in the Southwest, in Haigerloch. Which these days is much more known for the brewery named after the town than the research project. The underground location was previously used to store potatoes and beer by a local pub, had been originally created for an abandoned railway tunnel project. Barely the prime real estate required for a major research project.
Not just sabotage, but information warfare as well.
True. I mean, if your enemy is going out of their way to destroy this one place in the middle of the woods, it must be important. Though, given the secrecy the US had, I doubt the Brits and other Allies knew it was a dead end anyways.
Technically heavy water can have very significant biological consequences iirc, but it does need to be ingested in some pretty unreasonable conditions (i.e essentially replacing natural water) in order to do so. And at that point, saying it’s toxic isn’t exactly a high bar to clear. This toxicity is much more visible in smaller organisms, but I gave up that dissertation project because the project lead seemed uninterested in engaging with the students doing it, so I can’t remember exactly why.
Basically even though it won’t hurt you, it’s still not recommended
Also, fun fact, heavy water tastes a little sweet so you'd be able to tell if you're given a glass of heavy water vs regular water.
42% of the water in your body would have to be replaced
Several scientists in Los Alamos actually swam in a pool of it with a reactor pile below them.
Cody's lab made a video tasting heavy water. he said it was slightly sweet iirc.
Iirc it's because of kinetics. Deuterium, being nearly twice as massive as normal hydrogen (protium), needs more energy to do chemical reactions (also hence why you can enrich it using e.g. electrolysis, tending to stay in the water), which makes some chemical reactions slow down significantly.
Also I think bcs its nucelar spin is 0, instead of protiums +1/2, it also contributes less to hydrogen bonding, hence destabilizing some structures, like proteins.
Japan attacking Pearl Harbor didn't "drag Britain... into the meat grinders of modern combat". We'd already been fighting for years before that
north africa
@@bomoose North Africa, France, Belgium, Greece, Crete, Norway, as well as the seas and oceans around the world.
Maybe he's talking about specifically the very long, consistent, and brutal European theater of the war that began with D-Day
WW2 started in 1939, the US showed up late
@Cotif11 I'm sorry, but no. From D-day to the end of the war in the European theater is 10 months. The war had already been going on for 5 years. I think Kyle just made a mistake.
Your Half-Life series is a gift to the wider world. Not enough people understand the history of Nuclear Science. Too many people are afraid of the things that human error cause to allow the massive benefits of having a nuclear power plant in their communities. Nuclear power should be the future of energy but too many outside forces demonize it for malicious purposes or straight up ignorance. Keep fighting the good fight and maybe one day we won’t be dependent on fossil fuels anymore and we will have an educated society that respects the benefits of Nuclear Power.
People like you are gonna kick yourselves in shame when society collapses and those plants are left unattended. I think I would rather live in your climate apocalypse boogeyman, that was inevitably bound to happen regardless of human technology or not. I don’t feel safe living next to a nuclear plant. Have you learnt nothing from Chernobyl? Jesus.
A lot of people are actually so un-informed about nuclear physics, that they are affraid that a nuclear power plant reactor is an atomic bomb. Great example is the history of trying to build the first NPP in Poland. They abandoed the constructionn site in 1989 because when there were public information panels nobody listened to nuclear phisicists and people who actually know a lot about it, because one man from the opposing side - a demagogist - came and said (paraphrasing) "Building an NPP is like playig cards with the devil himself" and the farmers living in that region (because of low levels of education and lack of understanding atom) got affraid and protested against it so much that they forsaken the construction site and never finished it despite some of the reactor buildings were almost complete.
As a part of my military service my team and I walked the route of the saboteurs during the night. We ended up getting lost in the woods, only to then realise that we'd forgotten our tent poles, and had to sleep outside in -10c. Great story, horrible experience :p
I read another book that suggested Heisenberg also self-sabotaged a bit, knowing that if he finished his work then he’d be sent to the front (he was able-bodied enough to fight). He didn’t want to do that, so he kinda waffled around and self-stalled…in addition to the fact that the heavy water system wasn’t exactly the fastest production they needed
Was it "Heisenberg's War?"
@@angelalmaguer311 I haven’t read that one yet, thanks for the rec! I think it was an aside during “The Girls of Atomic City”, there were multiple chapters that pulled out of Oak Ridge and took a look at what was happening elsewhere in the physics world/the war simultaneously. Helped give you the sense of urgency.
The entire German program had so much "sabotage" it's rather entertaining. Heisenberg over-estimated how much uranium would be needed by X2. One German scientist studying graphite moderator was too focused on his affair. The transcripts of the captured German scientists talking after they were told about Hiroshima shows how incompetent they all were.
I actually read a couple of books about it, but one of the ones mentioned in the comments here 😅 I can't remember what, if anything, Heisenberg says about this in his autobiography (it's been... 20 years? I may have to read it again!)
Anyway, the conclusions I got from those were the same as yours; lots of things going on in Germany that slowed this down even more - some speculated/claimed, some very definitely happening
9:13 correction; Norwegians don't shiver in the snow, the snow shivers because it knows we have conquered it
The ferry bomb was perfectly timed to go off exactly half way across Lake Tinn - at the deepest part of the lake.
Fun fact: this location was used as a map in Battlefield 1942- secret weapons. Game used British commandos over Norwegian ones however.
The operation was organised by the British Special Operations Executive, which routinely recruited, radicalised and supplied resistance groups across europe, along with giving them naughty suggestions.
It is also Call of Duty: Vanguards season 2 map "Gondola", during operation Gunnerside.
it was also a WHOLE mission in battlefield v... but they kind of screwed around with it.. it was origialy 9 commandos that whent it...
not a single woman.
Haven't played that game so I don't know how explicitly the British identity is established but the real Norwegians where dressed in British uniforms in hope of preventing retaliation on Norwegian civilians if they where captured.
@@max16Found the chud. Keep crying about this one particular instance of alternate history out of many in a *checks notes* VIDEO GAME.
6:15 Slight Correction: Heavy water is inefficient for the body to use for its chemical reactions because of the extra weight, and drinking heavy water consistently can actually cause some health problems because of that, but it would need to be at high concentration, for an extended period of time. Practically speaking, heavy water isn’t exceedingly dangerous but it’s not desirable for the body
It's not good if you want to lose weight.
I've read its not totally awful until you hit about 51%. Gotta be honest though sinking ice cubes is a pretty cool party trick
@@tachyon8317
Right, I didn't think of that. If you get heavier from the heavy water you won't be able to swim anymore, you'll sink like that ice cube.
@andrasbiro3007 it's not even that. In that case, muscle and determination can compensate. The 50%+1 bit comes into play because heavy water in that concentration becomes toxic. So, IN THEORY, one can have body water concentration of 49% "heavy water", and 51% "normal" water, and be totally fine. I would NOT recommend striving for that ratio, but if you have a cup with some sinking ice cubes for a night, I would SUSPECT, and ALLEGE, that one would, might, possibly, almost, be "ok". There's a thing called LD/50, or something like that, that would give a better idea on that, than I, myself, could ever give.
Note- that I am NOT a chemist, or anything/one like that, so my OPINON should NOT be taken as "fact". And that what I have posted is based solely on, if anything, 2nd (maybe, 3rd) hand knowledge.
@@tachyon8317
It would still mean like 40% higher weight. And in water that would pull you down like a rock, unless you are in very good shape.
This is the earliest I’ve ever been to one of these videos :D
Hitler also sabotaged himself, he saw physics as Jewish science. He didn’t want to listen when told that getting rid of Jewish scientists would be harmful.
Antisemitism kills progress seems like a good lesson to learn.
@shadowldrago or maybe just racism and hate in general, you are showing clear bias that obviously you don't see contributing to the problem.
@@Unknown-e8m3k I don’t understand the point you’re getting at.
@@shadowldrago I don't know why Jacob felt the need to insult you to make a point, but the point is that hate itself holds humanity back, not just any particular flavor of it.
@@VoltisArt Well, yeah.
Haha, I never expected to see a video from you about tungvannsaksjonen! This hits right at home.
Greetings from norway, and thank you for all the amazing videos you make!
This is a really good war story that isn't talked enough about. Thanks for bringing it into the spotlight
There was film made about it in 1965 "The Heroes of Telemark"
@@antonycharnock2993: That film _suuuuucked!_ It dragged on in the middle (about 80% of the total runtime), and the most interesting thing about it was the unintended sexual tension between the two male leads.
That drain the water show from discovery has an episode about the boat it was transported in if I'm not mistaken :)
Thanks for these videos. I also appreciate how you take your time when discussing the horrors of war (death, torture, execution etc ).
That sort of stuff always brings me back to Fallout.
War...war never changes.
Ah. But if you’re a Sabaton fan you already knew this.
What song?
@@shawnlylebond8873 Saboteurs from the album “Coat of Arms”.
@@mileshill7196 Thanks
Or saw the film "Heroes of Telemarken" from 1965, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.
Dropped onto a world of ice
Even If if Norway didn't, Nazi Germany wouldn't have been able to build a nuke during the war, there were no funds, no real interest from the military or Hitler and no industry to support such a project anyway, hence all the effort was put into ballistic missiles as no one believed they could pull off a nuclear bomb well into the 50s.
This and even if they canceled all their other wonderweapon projects it would still be am magnitude to low at least.
The US also had the benefit of not getting bombed daily by increasingly numbers of bombers.
They also dropped the nuclear bomb idea after an miscalculation but it did not matter because the cost.
Now the allies did not know this or the final cost of the nuke so they was very scared about this and slowing down the German nuclear program was an very high priority.
And no real focus, they were all over the place thanks to captain coocoo bananas
In interrogation after war Heisenberg was shown the error in his calculations that led to his belief that a bomb was theoretically possible but utterly impractical. At first he had a hard time believing it but did come to accept it in time and by repeating the calculations himself. The nuclear research and materials were distributed across many different sites in Germany and there was no coordination between the teams in the labs. Each pursuing their own ideas and jealousy guarding their small amounts of nuclear fuel whilst trying to make more in their tiny reactors. Heavy water is also a very poor choice of material for a weapon. As a result Germany was probably decades from making a viable bomb.
And even if they did somehow make nuclear bombs nothing would change significantly. The allies have such unfair resources advantage.
There was an interest, there was a research, there were results.
I think I remember reading that the German nuclear effort chose heavy water over graphite because the graphite samples they used to determine cross sections were contaminated with boron.
Just want to point out that Britain entered the war on the 3rd of September 1939, when it declared war on Germany after Germany's refusal to halt their attack on Poland.
Yeah, americans love to overstate their contributions while minimizing others'
I've been to the factory many years ago, it houses a really cool WW2 museum nowadays that i would recommend anyone passing by visit!
This is one of the videos that has several items of interest - not only the video itself, but the educational comments being given that provide even more information and understanding. For those of you whom are posting the extremely informative and interesting comments, I for one give you huge thanks!!
Havent gotten far enough in the video to see if you did, but I highly recommend traveling to Vemork to see the heavy water factory itself. It puts everything into perspective and makes the whole affair feel alot more real. The original building that housed the electrolysis machines was torn down, but a few years ago they restored the basement that did the final purification of the heavy water
The beard has Kyle going from Dollar Store Thor to Half Priced Hagrid.
These are some of the best and highest production quality videos on UA-cam. Bar none
I remember reading about this story in Neal Bascomb's book SABOTAGE. It is my favorite non-fiction book I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys fiction and not non-fiction because it is structured like a fiction book.
This is my favorite story of WW2 and I am glad you are sharing it for more people to learn about this incredible story.
I have a vial just like the one at 6:39 containing heavy water from the railroad ferry "DF Hydro" that the saboteurs sank in Lake Tinn on the 20th of February 1944. A company in Norway sold them a few years back. It is believed that there was between 29 or 39 barrels with heavy water on board. It was unrefined as well, so the contents in the vial is pretty murky.
As a technician in nuclear safety instruments in France and a true nuclear industry enthusiast. I must say your videos are absolutely fantastic !
The Half-Life Histories is how I found this channel and everything you put out is amazing.. but I doubt this was the greatest act of sabotage ever. Col. Hogan and the guys at Stalag 13 were not even mentioned once!! ;)
In all seriousness, I look forward to this series so much. Keep up the amazing work.
Haunt (Former 44SMW Minute Man II technician)
I saw an interview with one of the original commandos years ago, he must’ve been at least in his 70’s by then and still demonstrated how he abseiled down a cliff as part of the operation. He must’ve been a formidable force in his youth!
From what I researched in school it didn’t really matter anyways, since it seemed Heisenberg was secretly sabotaging it anyways, or at least not doing his best. But tungtvannsaksjonen is very interesting anyways, watched a movie on it, would recommend watching if you like stuff like that.
Oh I should also add: while not directly affecting the outcome of the war, the morale boost from these victories can not go unmentioned as they certainly did help
It didn't matter because they were on the wrong track, missing other components and Soviets were advancing
I’m sure that this likely won’t get read, but if it does, please never stop.
I am going to school for electrical engineering, and your half life history videos have made me want to find any possible way to include the nuclear power industry into my future career however possible. Thank you for what you do, please never stop making these videos Kyle. I recommend you to my friends and I hope you continue to upload these gems.
I thought the battle of Castle Itter was wild, this is a different flavor of Wild altogether
There's something so soothing about Kyle's essay reading voice. I don't want to say it's half the reason I love these so much... But it's more than I care to admit
In the US on the public broadcasting network PBS there was a show called “Secrets of the Dead”
They did a show were they went over the ferry bombing, recovered one of the barrels and tested it.
The heavy water percentage matched.
Also some barrels were recovered immediately after the sinking by the Germans. They hadn’t been completely filled so they floated
My parents just got done doing an ancestry trip to Norway and a long long way off relative was part of this sabotage crew. They chatted with the guy's kid and supposedly the Germans said "this was the most intricate and thought out sabotages done ever"
Heavy water does definitely have biological effects as deuterium bounds stronger to oxygen, having the effect of slowing down chemical reactions
you would eventually die if you only drank it instead of normal water but its safe in any realistic dose, in fact in low doses it could potentially slow aging
it also tastes sweet which is neat
6:27 - Enjoy crisp, clear, refreshing HEAVY WATER in moderation.
Watching an ice cube sink just doesn't compute in my brain...
When I was a kid the movie Heroes of Telemark, from 1965, was one of my favorites.
The way these videos are done, with the way of telling, intonation, and paying respect to unfortunate deaths with moments of silence while telling, is amazing.
There is a story playing Battlefield V that touches on this story about commandos sabotaging the Nazis heavy water production and it was one of best missions I ever played on that game and now its awesome knowing I played just a small (mostly made up story) about real events during WW2 of the sacrifices of those in Norways history
Ah yes, Nordlys. A very inaccurate and disrespectful portrayal of a real event. Where the real heroes are unceremoniously killed off, and replaced by a "girl boss".
@Ez3uwsacrq1m ya I agree that's why I said mostly made up but still a cool mission to play
Ah yes, I too helped defeat the Nazis when I parachuted behind enemy lines as a part of the 101st just before the D-day landings... In the Original Call of Duty game of course. I'm rather old you see.
@aSpyIntheHaus man I think my oldest call of duty was 4
My grandmother was Norwegian, described occupied Ålesund. I know I'm Norwegian-American, but it still gives me some pride. My great grandfather, who had apparently immigrated to the US during the occupation, got the rest of the family out of Norway shortly after. He then volunteered in WW2 for the US when he was about 40 or so, and died here in Portland. I moved here without knowing he died here as no one told me about him, found him at the veterans cemetery in Happy Valley. Anyway, this sounds like a pretty awesome video game.
2:38 why's the guy in the middle look like Mike Myers from Halloween
Because he got an early version of the Captain Kirk/William Shatner mask well before they became popular
Best Series on UA-cam. I love both the subject and format style. Keep up the fine work, Kyle.
6:20 apparently there is a taste difference, as heavy water has been noted to be sweeter than normal water
It's also bad for you in large quantities, as there is a small difference in the chemistry. But you'd have to drink a pretty absurd (and absurdly expensive) amount of it to cause health issues.
Thank you for making this one, Kyle. This was always something that peaked my interest, and now I'm happy that others can experience the information as well.
The heavywater sabotages are such an interesting topic! Operation Gunnerside was one of two major operations, the other one involved the sinking of a boat transporting heavywater.
This part of history is so interesting, and this video is a nice introduction
I love that you're doing these videos. Long time science and technology nerd here, and I've learned sooooooo much from you it's not even funny. Seriously, thanks for doing such good and important work. In 100 years, your videos (especially the half life histories series) will continue to educate and enlighten young minds who want to enter these fields.
I just remember learning all about heavy water playing Medal of Honor on PS1.
You, too? Ayyyy. 👊
My high school chemistry teacher told my class this story, really interesting!
Crazy to think that D2O used to be so rare when it's comparatively cheap nowadays and will commonly be found in any chemistry lab.
There are a lot of comments about how this did not matter, and Germany was failing at this time to get anywhere close. At the time, they lacked enough information to be able to say for certain how close or far Germany was from building a reactor or possible bomb, but Germany was willing to invest a lot of time and money into getting the heavy water. What it means to us and what it meant to them are not necessarily the same thing.
We also cannot say with absolute certainty that this did not help in some way. While it is unlikely Germany would have accomplished anything with the heavy water, thanks to these soldiers, they never got it to even try.
This is far from the only operation where later people could go, "For all that effort, it really did not change anything."
We put a lot of effort into things on a regular basis, and it turns out that maybe it was pointless. These soldiers still accomplished their mission, because at the time, that is what they believed they had to do.
And we will never know how close we might have been to heavy water making all the difference Germany needed.
Thanks to men like these.
Keep in mind that the Germans also had a stockpile of uranium from the Belgian Congo when they seized Antwerp, Belgium, and the files from Niels Bohr's lab when they seized Copenhagen, Denmark. So as far as the Allies were concerned, it looks like the Germans had a good hand in a game of nuclear poker. Bohr escaped Denmark and went to work on the British Tube Alloys project and later the US Manhattan Project. Tube Alloys? That was the code name for the theoretical work that the British started on the atomic bomb. The British concluded that it was too unsafe to continue the project in the UK and gave the data to the Americans. So the Allies had a good understanding of what could have been. The fact that Hitler was an idiot only became obvious later. (Look up: Operation Foxley)
>> willing to invest a lot of time
They were willing, but lot of time is not something they had. Also, heaving heavy water is not even part of weapon production.
7:10 : slight correction here. Regular water is a *better* moderator than heavy water, because its hydrogen atoms are (almost),exactly the same mass as the neutron. But regular water also ever so slightly absorbs neutrons, just enough that the chain reaction cannot sustain itself with natural (non enriched) uranium. Heavy water, OTOH, does not absorb neutrons.
The Heroes of Telemark, 1965, Kirk Douglas. Great movie
Thank you, I was looking to see if anyone mentioned this film.
Thank you so much for making this video, I had no idea about this story until now
Anybody finding this story compelling should seek out "Ray Mears' Real Heroes of Telemark" (BBC, 2003) which looks to be on UA-cam, the accompanying book is on internet archive. Also worthwhile is "PBS Nova: Hitler's Sunken Secret" which also looks to be on UA-cam and covers a then resent diving operation on the wreck of the ferry boat Kyle mentions.
Came to make the same comment. Mears' show is especially interesting because he's an expert in wilderness survival who has studied cultures around the world.
As soon as Kyle started describing the mission Ray Mears popped up front and center in my mind.
Man as a Norwegian, it is increadible to hear THE Kyle Hill make a video about it. It's a very well known story here up North, but one that has sadly been mostly left out of the bigger picture of WW2, and the other operations of Milorg and other recistance groups. So thank you! If anybody is intrested in a deeper dive, there are many amazing movies and documentaries about the heavy water - it's a recomended watch!
Great to see coverage of this raid! It deserves to be more well known. However, it really had very little impact on Germany’s nuclear program. The program was a mess, already plagued by infighting and a lacking the military leadership of the American program, had a poor reactor design, and for most of its existence didn’t think that the refinement needed to make a bomb was possible and were focused on making nuclear powered u-boats. The worst part is that there were elements within the intelligence circles of the allies that knew this at the time of the raids, but didn’t want to tell other branches due to rivalries and not wanting to reveal sources, making the series of raids a bad sabotage pointless risks that got people killed
Bear in mind that the British had no way of knowing the state of the German atomic program. They had little choice but to assume the worst case scenario.
@@Cailus3542 the Americans did, and chose not to share this information
I love this series, Kyle. I hope you never lose your passion for producing it.
Called in to serve
And they knew what to do
They were the heroes of the cold
Warrior soul!
They signed the book of history
They played the leading role
To win the second war
YEEEESSSS ANOTHER HALF LIFE HISTORIES EPISODE I'M SO HAPPY RN FINALLY YAYYYYYYYYY :3
Need to point out that Germany making the Bomb would have been worse than useless, given they didn't have the means to deliver it. Not when the Allies dominated the sky and the entire He 177 had been grounded for lack of fuel.
Bob
It’s honestly weird people are buying into the propaganda that Hitler miraculously created. WMDs are only as effective as its delivery platform and Germany even with a Nuclear bomb would only hope to create a temporary buffer zone.
The role of heavy water during WWII and the remarkable Norwegian missions to thwart its production were so significant in shaping history. Reminder of the importance of strategic little-known efforts in large-scale conflicts.
*We were basically just a few bits away from witnessing one of the most destructive men with one of the most destructive tools.*
what do you mean? we did - and it didn't end well for japan
@@gridemannPfff you call the Japanese innocent!? Holy shit you're truly special
The Americans used the bomb, the Nazis never did. So who is the pig?
We really weren't that close, as others have said. The nazis didn't have a realistic nuclear weapons program, and had self-sabotaged by putting some of the best minds in Germany into concentration camps.
@@AttackHelicopter987 They never said anything about the Japanese being innocent?
Honestly, the ambience you create in your videos is an unsung hero of your production!
Really? Right in front of my Austrian Painter?
Oy vey!
Lol
Every time I see this story retold on a channel .. I watch it.
And every time, I remember playing this very mission on MoH on PS1 back in the day and not realizing back then that it was based on a true story.
hello father
That's "science daddy" to you
Stumbled across Kyles channel a while ago, love the narration (great voice), story telling and overall production values. Regards from the UK
They were nowhere close to making nuclear weapons, it wouldn't have mattered if they got the heavy water anyway.
The Manhattan Project built bombs without so much as an ounce of it.
Awesome story and matching fantastic narration. Thanks for sharing Kyle.
1:16 isn't that up for debate alongside the Soviet invasion of Manchuria for bringing the war to an end?
The Soviets moving on Manchuria caused the Japanese to accept the terms instead of trying to negotiate. The emperor had already decided to surrender
@@leighbellouny3904Well, you hat, and the US saying we wouldn’t negotiate under any circumstances…
@@Pub2k4 We said that the terms were non-negotiable, but they were going to try, using the USSR as a middle man, and then the Soviet envoy said “Nyet, comrade. We are invading.”
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Wait so you’re telling me it wasn’t a teenage girl and her mom? Battlefield V lied to me?
There’s a song about this by Sabaton, appropriately titled “Saboteurs.” For those unfamiliar, Sabaton’s songs cover various topics in military history. Great content as always, Kyle!
Title is ridiculous. Germans weren't even close to producing nuclear weapon. Heavy water is only one of intermediate steps, there're lot of others. But even in unlikely event of producing 1-2 bombs, outcome would be still defeat as Germany lost to overall industrial capacity of US and USSR
15:25 - The 2015 Norwegian TV mini-series "Kampen om Tungtvannet" has an English subbed version that goes by the title "The Heavy Water War: Stopping Hitler's Atomic Bomb" (US/Aus), or "The Sabateurs" (UK).
I remember doing the heavy water sabotage in battlefield V lol
We needed a new episode thank you Kyle ❤
ABOUT TIME. Ive waited way too long for a new episode on HLH. Dont make us wait another 6 months!
Dropping the bombs didn't end ww2, faced with fighting Russia again in a third war is what caused Japan to drop out. The fighting minister were ready to keep fighting America but when it was heard that Russia was also going to invade the Empire stepped in and stopped the ministers that wanted to keep the war going and sided with the ones that wanted it to stop. That is what caused Japan to not want to keep fighting, not because we dropped two nuclear bombs on them but because they were going to fight Russia again. It sucks that most people think that it was the bombs that stopped Japan and don't really look at the history between Japan and Russia and how that effected the decision for Japan to stop fighting.
Well, yes and no. In reality, it was a combination of factors: the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bombings, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. All three played a role. Hirohito in particular was severely affected by the devastation of Tokyo and enormous civilian casualties. The atomic bombings made it clear that the Allies could quite literally annihilate all of Japan with ease, including their army. More, since the Japanese had stationed virtually everything they had left in Kyushu to defend against Allied landings, there was nothing left to stop a Soviet invasion in the north.
We'll never know if any of those factors could have forced the Japanese surrender without the other two. Notably, neither did the Allied governments.
The dropping of the Hiroshima bomb is what decided Stalin to invade Manchuria ( occupied by the Imperial Japanese army back then ). The invasion began almost exactly at the same moment US B29 bombers had taken off from Tinian Island to go and bomb Kokura on August 9th 1945. ( but due to weather issues they had to divert and bomb the secondary target which was Nagasaki. ) The invasion of Manchuria told the Japanese one thing, i.e. that Japan itself was next and that's why they decided to surrender to the US and the allies ( except the soviets ) because they had a chance at survival with the US, something that was unlikely with Stalin's red armies. So, in obvious conclusion, Little Boy caused the war in the Pacific to end. The Nagasaki bomb didn't change a thing, in fact it was useless in ending the war or barely... but it took historians at least 30 to 40 years searching the Japanese Imperial archives to finally understand that...
@@stellarch4986 Small correction: the Soviet invasion had nothing to do with the US or the atomic bombings. Stalin had been told that the US was going to use a powerful new weapon, but no details were provided.
At the Tehran and Yalta conferences, Stalin promised to declare war on Japan three months after victory in Europe. Thus, exactly three months after Germany surrendered, the Soviets invaded Manchuria. The timing with the atomic bombings was likely coincidental for the Americans.
Commie symps (like you, perhaps) LOVE to make the false claim that it was the Russian entry into the war that made Japan surrender. That's just preposterous. But...commie symps and preposterous claims just seem like a match made in heaven.
Hi, Kyle, please consider adding official subtitles to your video! Since the autogenerated caption is still not that good at catching foreign names. Would be very helpful to those also on the spectrum!
Today's Fact: In 1991, twins Jim Lewis and Jim Springer were reunited after being separated at birth; both had been adopted by different families named James, both had married women named Linda, both had named their sons James Alan, and both had dogs named Toy.
I like ass
@@RandomBoi-nd5zf What an insightful comment. Also OP is likely a bot.
@@adamk.7177how do you reckon?
There minds were connected even if they didn’t know
I think you posted this comment before bud.
Thank you Kyle! This is off topic, but I just wanted to say I respect the hell out of you for using the proper words for serious issues like when you mentioned “Suicide Tablets”. I noticed this in your video on AI dark forest theory as well. You are the only UA-camr I have seen who has not resorted to self censorship and infantile language like “un-aliving” for the fear of being demonetized, and thus devaluing the seriousness of it. Keep using the proper words. I love you Kyle!
15:34 It did not in fact. Not yet anyway.
there was a spy working at the plant who kept the British - and the rest of the allies - abreast of what was happening at the plant. that was how the Gunnersides knew precisely where to go - and when the shipment that got sunk was being shipped out. his name was Anar Skinarland and he deserves to be remembered. nothing of what the Gunnarsides accomplished would have been possible without him
Wait so the breaking bad guy was a real guy?
Yes, he even had a famous theory and everything (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - you can look it up). But that was before the war and before he traded his academic integrity and character and morality for a seat at the Nazi table. Once he fell in with the Nazi gang, he was basically nothing more than an ordinary Nazi functionary, trading elbow jabs with all the other Nazi functionaries.
Kyle I love this series on your channel, I consistently come back and rewatch these videos, pls more😊
Wow you really thought Britain joined the war the same time as the US? As an educational channel that's pretty poor.
Everyone can make a mistake. What do you have to show for yourself, beyond testing to make little of others?
Thank you very much for your video, when some bad actors are trying to rewrite or wash away history, this is the spotlight we all need.
8:40 Why are you using outdated measurement?
??? Gallon?
I would argue imperial units have more pull now then ever.
Commenting to help with the algorithm, but also to say I love these videos. There’s so much history that people just don’t know or care to know, and this series helps bring that into the spotlight
Battlefield 5
Fr
This is the type of content i love from you keep it up!
The Allies destroyed the German nuclear industry so thoroughly that it still doesn't exist 😅
Ouch
This was absolutely amazing! Wonderful video!