Norwegian here In typical humble Norwegian fashion, much of the people involved in this who returned to Norway barely if ever spoke of it afterward, they didn't live the rest of their lives as war heroes but as regular people. Bragging even when you have every right to do so is so not our culture that's probably in part why not many know anything about what it was like in occupied Norway
Apparently German fans tend to chant "Noch ein Bier", which roughly translates to "one more beer", instead of "Sabaton" during concerts. As a result they wrote alternative lyrics to the song "Gott mitt uns" where they sing about drinking beer.
There is a film about this - "The heroes of Telemark" made way back in the day - remember seeing it as a child - may rewatch it again after watching this!
Heroes of Telemark was generally scoffed at for it's inaccuracies though. Shortly after the war, in 1948, "Kampen om tungtvannet" (English title "Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water") was made with a lot of the saboteurs playing themselves. There's also a modern TV adaptation, The Heavy Water War, available on Prime Video or Disney+ depending on your market. This also has taken some dramatic license, but is fairly close to the story.
The true story is actually much more extreme. Like they spent four months without real food and had to eat moss to survive, which they knew how to do because one of them had read the books of Ingstad. If you want to learn more about the sabotage action, the actual heroes of Telemark played in a recreation movie about the sabotage after the war. It is better than any documentary could ever be, because it was done by the team itself. Do _not_ confuse this with the American movie ("Heroes of Telemark"), which is "pure nonsense", according to the team leader himself. The Norwegian movie was said by the actual people to be highly accurate. It was also made in 1948, right after the war, so it was also fresh in their memories. The name is "Kampen om tungtvannet", which means "The fight for the heavy water". I would also recommend Ray Mears documentary "The Real Heroes of Telemark", where he takes Norwegian and British soldiers to recreate the mission.
The video game he refers to is battlefield V the Nordlys campaign I believe. It has a mother daughter team who sabotage heavy water production. I can't remember the mother's name but the character you play as (the daughter) is Solveig Bja Bjornstad. (Boy I hope I didn't butcher that) It was about as historically accurate as Hollywood does braveheart😂
I had no idea, getting in to the game, but when that mission came up! As a Norwegian, i was so ready and proud! The mother "actress" was the same as the mother in the Ragnarok tv series. Recognised her voice and looks at once. I thought it was an "ok" depiction of the mission, but sooo historically inaccurate.
This is a documentary series( 16 episods), where Ray Mears and a group of UK comandos follow the tracs of the actual raid, and also intervius with the actual sabotage crew. The documentary ends with the 60th aniwersary of the action. The Real Heroes of Telemark: Ray Mears Part 1
a fun fact is that every year Norway gives Britain a tree for Christmas that gets displayed in London every year. the UK and the Scandinavian countries have been very close in that way. for example, during napoleon, Sweden was forced to declare war on Britain, instead of fighting, the British just sent ships to Sweden and both countries just hung out and partied while lying to napoleon that we were fighting. and frankly, i dont know why. i literally have no idea when this close relation started it just seems to have sort of developed, unless someone who passes this comment knows the answer. edit:sorry i forgot but there is also a joint armored vehicle manufacturing program between Britain and Denmark today, as well as joint naval missions.
Loved it. The streets bear their names.Their story in ewry bookshelf in norwegian patriots home . Their names newer will be forgotten. Them live forewer. As true Vikings always will. Thanks.
@27:30 The clips in the music video is from a 6 episode mini series they made back in 2015. Norwegian title is "Kampen om tungtvannet". It seems to be available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime titled "The heavy water war".
One of my favourite movies about the second world war in Norway it is "The King's choice" and I highly recommend it. It follows three POVs; The Royal family (Norway's first king after being freed from Sweden is the "main pov"), the German envoy Curt Bräuer, and the military. I've watched it so many times and I always get chills when I see the scenes.
In the Original Medal of Honor from 1999 there was a mission to sabotage the heavy water plant. The woman you're thinking of may have been Manon, who would give briefings sometimes.
one thing that they didnt mention in that sabaton history was that there was civilians aboard the Hydro ferry, but to limit the civilian losses, they decided to sink it during a sunday. 18 died when it went down or in the explosion, 4 of them were german soldiers and the rest were crew members or passengers. Horrible to think about, but that heavy water could not be allowed to reach Germany.
The Norwegians made a very thrilling mini-series in 6 parts about this which was released in 2015. If it can be found with English subtitles, the original title is "Kampen om tungtvannet" (the battle for the heavy water) . It's been some years since I saw it, but it's possible that's where the images in the video were taken from?
If you want to watch movie about this event there is a movie called: The Heroes of Telemark made in 1965. There is also another movie where I heard the commandos played themselves but I can't remember the name of the movie.
The 6 episode "Heavy Water War" miniseries shows the sabotage operations as described in the sabaton history video. The show does take some liberties for entertainment sake but the Grouse, Freshman and Gunnerside operations and the ferry sabotage is portrayed as historical as possible in honor of the brave Norwegian and British commandos. I highly recommend to watch the miniseries with subtitles if possible. The miniseries also shows the tragic truth of the American bombing of the Vemork plant that did little to no damage to the plant itself which instead killed several innocent Norwegian citizens. I believe the American movie of this bombing operation ends with the American bombing being successful which could not be further from the truth. The sinking of the ferry with heavy water cost the lives of innocent Norwegian citizens who were on board. As for the videogame campaign you described, that is from battlefield 5. A big BIG dishonor to the brave men by replacing them with a teenage girl to fulfill a woke fantasy.
Yeah, the game that swapped the soldiers of Op Gunnerside to a mother-daughter pair was Battlefield 5. It deserved all the bashing it got and then some.
A lot of people misremember or jumped on the hate train. The game does not credit the duo for the operation, it literally mentions at the end of the mission in text what actually happened. The story itself is dedicated to resistance, not trying to change who did it.
@@icantthinkofaname7293 " it literally mentions at the end of the mission in text what actually happened" This was ADDED in a patch much later then when the game came out as someone who has the game and played it when it was new and it was absolutely trying to do what you claim they did not try to claim. The game as it was when released did not have that. The Backlash for them doing this is precisely why that was added. The games original release date would have had people who lived through it still alive they delayed the game just long enough for the person to be dead before they released it (to be sure this is somewhat coincidence) however not one we can ignore. Dice the makers of Battlefield KNOW the history they are in Sweden AND the story was in Battlefield 1942.
@@icantthinkofaname7293 Not going to touch on the fact what you said was not true at launch, and was only included because of the well-deserved spanking they took. Someone else covered that. The resistance had a minimal part to play in that operation. If they wanted to make it about resistance, they could have easily done a mission with Virginia Hall, a woman who lost one of her legs (knee down) and served in the SOE in Occupied France. She was even awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for her actions (the only one awarded to a civilian woman in WW2). If that wasn't good enough, there's an entire roster of women in the SOE that did some very heroic things that they could have made a campaign out of, and all of it without erasing the actions of the men of Operation Gunnerside and crediting it to a fictional mother-daughter pair. Instead, they went with the quick and easy fiction over "telling the less known war stories of WW2" (one of their marketing slogans that they tried to forget about when people started pointing out that their idea of "less known" was, in fact, fiction).
@sierramike0913 Um yes, every story was fake. It's a battlefield game, the campaigns are never real stories. And what do you mean not true at launch? Nothing changed?
@havtor007 Oh I didn't know it was added after. Regardless Battlefield has never tried tocpresent anything it includes as a real story so I don't see why this is different.
It is worth noting that even if the germans had gotten the heavy water it was very unlikely (but not impossible so ofc the Norweigian efforts were still super important) that they would have been able to finish a bomb mainly for two big reasons. A lot of the german Physicists at the time who were dealing with atomic science were Jewish and had fled the country early on (even a good chunk of the non Jewish ones had left). And the second reason was that Hitler viewed atomic science as Jewish science and saw the bomb as too unfeasable so therefore not enough resources were really put into the project in the first place. Instead he wanted to focus on more conventional weapons and experimental projects that seemed more likely to be finished like the rockets. Still of course the allies could not be sure of any of this and therefore had to do whatever they could to sabotage the project.
James Bond, Norwegian Style. Meaning, out-skiing the pursuers until one was left. They fired upon oneanother, but no one hit. The German ran out of bullets first, and ran away.
The best documentary series about this is made by Ray Mears for BBC in 2004 i think it was. Its on YT if you search "The real heroes of telemark" with Ray mears youll finde it.. He goes deeply into the survival aspect of the raide,, reinacts the entire thing with 2 british and 2 norweagian ,mountain commandoes..
Nerf as in the childs toy gun?? i guess i can see that, but i dont see it being too practical since it would be short distance and might also kill the person who shoots the projectile??
The whole "Germany could've made an atomic bomb" thing is more myth than reality. This is for 3 main reasons: 1) Germany's best atomic scientists were expelled for being Jewish and many of these men would go on to work on the Manhattan project 2) The German nuclear project was cancelled by 1943 as the remaining scientists involved weren't fully convinced that an atomic bomb was possible 3) Hitler himself disliked the project as he saw it as "Jewish science" and insisted that Germany's main priority should be directed to producing conventional weapons Also, the game with the gender switched soldier you're thinking of is Battlefield 5
Yes but do remember the Allies did not know this at the time and all they knew is that germany was trying to use it for making nuclear weapons. And people did not even know Nazis was gone until the middle of the 1950s people believed they where just hiding ready to spring up again.
The movie scenes from the music video is from the mini-series "Kampen om Tungtvannet"
Norwegian here
In typical humble Norwegian fashion, much of the people involved in this who returned to Norway barely if ever spoke of it afterward, they didn't live the rest of their lives as war heroes but as regular people. Bragging even when you have every right to do so is so not our culture that's probably in part why not many know anything about what it was like in occupied Norway
Janteloven ftw :)
So happy to see our neighbouring countrys heroes brought into the light. Not many ppl outside Scandinavia and Europe knows about the sacrifices made.
Apparently German fans tend to chant "Noch ein Bier", which roughly translates to "one more beer", instead of "Sabaton" during concerts. As a result they wrote alternative lyrics to the song "Gott mitt uns" where they sing about drinking beer.
There is a film about this - "The heroes of Telemark" made way back in the day - remember seeing it as a child - may rewatch it again after watching this!
Yes a movie from 1965 with Kirk Douglas about this mission. Great movie 😄
Heroes of Telemark was generally scoffed at for it's inaccuracies though.
Shortly after the war, in 1948, "Kampen om tungtvannet" (English title "Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water") was made with a lot of the saboteurs playing themselves.
There's also a modern TV adaptation, The Heavy Water War, available on Prime Video or Disney+ depending on your market. This also has taken some dramatic license, but is fairly close to the story.
@@faust82 thanks for this! - will try to have a look at both!
@WillyAndreBergstrom and of course had to have an American in as its Hollywood!!! 🤦🤦
Not to mention a woman@@glastonbury4304
The true story is actually much more extreme. Like they spent four months without real food and had to eat moss to survive, which they knew how to do because one of them had read the books of Ingstad. If you want to learn more about the sabotage action, the actual heroes of Telemark played in a recreation movie about the sabotage after the war. It is better than any documentary could ever be, because it was done by the team itself. Do _not_ confuse this with the American movie ("Heroes of Telemark"), which is "pure nonsense", according to the team leader himself. The Norwegian movie was said by the actual people to be highly accurate. It was also made in 1948, right after the war, so it was also fresh in their memories. The name is "Kampen om tungtvannet", which means "The fight for the heavy water". I would also recommend Ray Mears documentary "The Real Heroes of Telemark", where he takes Norwegian and British soldiers to recreate the mission.
The video game he refers to is battlefield V the Nordlys campaign I believe. It has a mother daughter team who sabotage heavy water production. I can't remember the mother's name but the character you play as (the daughter) is Solveig Bja Bjornstad. (Boy I hope I didn't butcher that) It was about as historically accurate as Hollywood does braveheart😂
I had no idea, getting in to the game, but when that mission came up! As a Norwegian, i was so ready and proud! The mother "actress" was the same as the mother in the Ragnarok tv series. Recognised her voice and looks at once. I thought it was an "ok" depiction of the mission, but sooo historically inaccurate.
the mashup uses clips from the norvegian tw show Kampen om tungtvannet. or The Heavy Water War in English.
Speaking of commandos, Jeremy Clarkson's The greatest raid of all is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it.
This is a documentary series( 16 episods), where Ray Mears and a group of UK comandos follow the tracs of the actual raid, and also intervius with the actual sabotage crew.
The documentary ends with the 60th aniwersary of the action.
The Real Heroes of Telemark: Ray Mears
Part 1
a fun fact is that every year Norway gives Britain a tree for Christmas that gets displayed in London every year.
the UK and the Scandinavian countries have been very close in that way.
for example, during napoleon, Sweden was forced to declare war on Britain, instead of fighting, the British just sent ships to Sweden and both countries just hung out and partied while lying to napoleon that we were fighting.
and frankly, i dont know why.
i literally have no idea when this close relation started it just seems to have sort of developed, unless someone who passes this comment knows the answer.
edit:sorry i forgot but there is also a joint armored vehicle manufacturing program between Britain and Denmark today, as well as joint naval missions.
Loved it. The streets bear their names.Their story in ewry bookshelf in norwegian patriots home . Their names newer will be forgotten. Them live forewer. As true Vikings always will. Thanks.
@27:30 The clips in the music video is from a 6 episode mini series they made back in 2015. Norwegian title is "Kampen om tungtvannet". It seems to be available on Apple TV and Amazon Prime titled "The heavy water war".
One of my favourite movies about the second world war in Norway it is "The King's choice" and I highly recommend it.
It follows three POVs; The Royal family (Norway's first king after being freed from Sweden is the "main pov"), the German envoy Curt Bräuer, and the military. I've watched it so many times and I always get chills when I see the scenes.
In the Original Medal of Honor from 1999 there was a mission to sabotage the heavy water plant. The woman you're thinking of may have been Manon, who would give briefings sometimes.
In Battlefiel V there is also a campaign where you do that and you play as the Norwegian woman Solveig Fia Bjørnstad
"Vemorkaksjonen" was a....a...it was remarkable! But there are many forgotten WW2 heros here in Norway. As it is in many other countries.
one thing that they didnt mention in that sabaton history was that there was civilians aboard the Hydro ferry, but to limit the civilian losses, they decided to sink it during a sunday. 18 died when it went down or in the explosion, 4 of them were german soldiers and the rest were crew members or passengers. Horrible to think about, but that heavy water could not be allowed to reach Germany.
The Norwegians made a very thrilling mini-series in 6 parts about this which was released in 2015. If it can be found with English subtitles, the original title is "Kampen om tungtvannet" (the battle for the heavy water) . It's been some years since I saw it, but it's possible that's where the images in the video were taken from?
If you want to watch movie about this event there is a movie called: The Heroes of Telemark made in 1965. There is also another movie where I heard the commandos played themselves but I can't remember the name of the movie.
"The real Heroes of Telemark" by Ray Mears is a good seriers. Its not about the sabotage itself, but the survival until the mission started.
Kompani Linge first Norwegian Commando unit during WWII
The 6 episode "Heavy Water War" miniseries shows the sabotage operations as described in the sabaton history video. The show does take some liberties for entertainment sake but the Grouse, Freshman and Gunnerside operations and the ferry sabotage is portrayed as historical as possible in honor of the brave Norwegian and British commandos. I highly recommend to watch the miniseries with subtitles if possible.
The miniseries also shows the tragic truth of the American bombing of the Vemork plant that did little to no damage to the plant itself which instead killed several innocent Norwegian citizens. I believe the American movie of this bombing operation ends with the American bombing being successful which could not be further from the truth. The sinking of the ferry with heavy water cost the lives of innocent Norwegian citizens who were on board.
As for the videogame campaign you described, that is from battlefield 5. A big BIG dishonor to the brave men by replacing them with a teenage girl to fulfill a woke fantasy.
Yeah, the game that swapped the soldiers of Op Gunnerside to a mother-daughter pair was Battlefield 5. It deserved all the bashing it got and then some.
A lot of people misremember or jumped on the hate train. The game does not credit the duo for the operation, it literally mentions at the end of the mission in text what actually happened. The story itself is dedicated to resistance, not trying to change who did it.
@@icantthinkofaname7293 " it literally mentions at the end of the mission in text what actually happened"
This was ADDED in a patch much later then when the game came out as someone who has the game and played it when it was new and it was absolutely trying to do what you claim they did not try to claim.
The game as it was when released did not have that.
The Backlash for them doing this is precisely why that was added.
The games original release date would have had people who lived through it still alive they delayed the game just long enough for the person to be dead before they released it (to be sure this is somewhat coincidence) however not one we can ignore.
Dice the makers of Battlefield KNOW the history they are in Sweden AND the story was in Battlefield 1942.
@@icantthinkofaname7293 Not going to touch on the fact what you said was not true at launch, and was only included because of the well-deserved spanking they took. Someone else covered that.
The resistance had a minimal part to play in that operation. If they wanted to make it about resistance, they could have easily done a mission with Virginia Hall, a woman who lost one of her legs (knee down) and served in the SOE in Occupied France. She was even awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for her actions (the only one awarded to a civilian woman in WW2). If that wasn't good enough, there's an entire roster of women in the SOE that did some very heroic things that they could have made a campaign out of, and all of it without erasing the actions of the men of Operation Gunnerside and crediting it to a fictional mother-daughter pair. Instead, they went with the quick and easy fiction over "telling the less known war stories of WW2" (one of their marketing slogans that they tried to forget about when people started pointing out that their idea of "less known" was, in fact, fiction).
@sierramike0913 Um yes, every story was fake. It's a battlefield game, the campaigns are never real stories. And what do you mean not true at launch? Nothing changed?
@havtor007 Oh I didn't know it was added after. Regardless Battlefield has never tried tocpresent anything it includes as a real story so I don't see why this is different.
It is worth noting that even if the germans had gotten the heavy water it was very unlikely (but not impossible so ofc the Norweigian efforts were still super important) that they would have been able to finish a bomb mainly for two big reasons.
A lot of the german Physicists at the time who were dealing with atomic science were Jewish and had fled the country early on (even a good chunk of the non Jewish ones had left).
And the second reason was that Hitler viewed atomic science as Jewish science and saw the bomb as too unfeasable so therefore not enough resources were really put into the project in the first place.
Instead he wanted to focus on more conventional weapons and experimental projects that seemed more likely to be finished like the rockets.
Still of course the allies could not be sure of any of this and therefore had to do whatever they could to sabotage the project.
James Bond, Norwegian Style. Meaning, out-skiing the pursuers until one was left. They fired upon oneanother, but no one hit. The German ran out of bullets first, and ran away.
Love these reactions.
as usual hhey got us really stoked
The best documentary series about this is made by Ray Mears for BBC in 2004 i think it was.
Its on YT if you search "The real heroes of telemark" with Ray mears youll finde it..
He goes deeply into the survival aspect of the raide,, reinacts the entire thing with 2 british and 2 norweagian ,mountain commandoes..
Definitely watch "WW2 everyday with army sizes". It's entertaining and much educational.
I'll check it out
I love your channel keep up the great stuff
Thank you so much!
@@AmericansLearn no problem 👍
that plant is in Rjukan in telemark - norway
There is a movie about it with kirk douglas
Nerf as in the childs toy gun?? i guess i can see that, but i dont see it being too practical since it would be short distance and might also kill the person who shoots the projectile??
You should do a reaction to Tom lehrer I think of him and his songs whenever anyone mentions where we got the rockets to go to the moon.
Imagine how many surgical techniques we got from the Nazis.
Ernest Rutherford wasn't British, but a New Zealander,albeit of English parentage.
Sabaton is from Sweden
Screw bfv and 2042
Battlefield 5. The fourth campaign
The whole "Germany could've made an atomic bomb" thing is more myth than reality. This is for 3 main reasons:
1) Germany's best atomic scientists were expelled for being Jewish and many of these men would go on to work on the Manhattan project
2) The German nuclear project was cancelled by 1943 as the remaining scientists involved weren't fully convinced that an atomic bomb was possible
3) Hitler himself disliked the project as he saw it as "Jewish science" and insisted that Germany's main priority should be directed to producing conventional weapons
Also, the game with the gender switched soldier you're thinking of is Battlefield 5
Yes but do remember the Allies did not know this at the time and all they knew is that germany was trying to use it for making nuclear weapons.
And people did not even know Nazis was gone until the middle of the 1950s people believed they where just hiding ready to spring up again.
@@havtor007 I guess so. The Germans also didn't possess the right type of plane to carry the bomb either
America destroyed Japan. Not forget it. We had war for many years in our land. Yeah its sad so manny had to die. But it stop the war ?