The Winter Fortress

by Neal Bascomb

  The next day, February 15, Haukelid and Sørlie climbed down the northern wall of the Vestfjord Valley into town, where they met Diseth. The pensioner had been in the resistance since the start and had spent time in a Gestapo prison in the aftermath of the failed glider attack in November 1942. He offered to help them in any way he could.

  In the early evening, Haukelid and Sørlie went to an apartment where they met Gunnar Syverstad and Kjell Nielsen. The four decided that the best day to attack the ferry would be Sunday, February 20. There was only one crossing that day, which meant that they would know exactly where the heavy water was, and when. Further, there would be fewer passengers onboard. Nielsen and Syverstad could not guarantee that they would be able to delay the transport until that date, but they would try.

  They also warned Haukelid and Sørlie that a number of Gestapo agents had come to town, and a battalion of elite assault troops was expected. A host of other soldiers had just arrived in Rjukan, ostensibly for some mountain training, and two German planes would sweep the area every day in advance of the shipment.

  Both Nielsen and Syverstad pushed for the operation to be called off. Norwegians were likely to die, and reprisals would be inflicted on the local population. Despite the thousands of liters of heavy water being shipped, neither believed the Germans would make any headway in purifying them without electrolysis. Haukelid listened to the men and agreed to communicate their reservations to his bosses in London. They would have the final word.

  When the meeting finished, Haukelid and Sørlie sent a coded letter to Skinnarland via a messenger. It contained a brief account of the meeting and once again asked Tronstad to confirm that the “effect of the operation” was worth the many risks. They returned to their hideout in the ravine only to find that Fehn was missing. Sørlie set out to find him but soon concluded that their third man had abandoned them, whether out of fear or an unwillingness to take part in the mission. He and Haukelid both knew they would have a hard time finding someone else suited to the task.

  After dinner that night, Sørlie produced a bottle of aquavit. Diseth had given it to him earlier, and he knew that Haukelid could surely use a drink. They sat by the fire and drank glass after glass. Haukelid told Sørlie the story of his love affair with Bodil, the long absences, and his belief that if only he could see her, he would be able to save their marriage. By the end of the night the bottle was empty. Haukelid’s torment was somewhat eased; and he and Sørlie had grown to understand each other and the determination they both had to see this mission through.

  A heavy snow was falling outside Nilsbu on February 16 when Skinnarland made contact with Home Station and sent Haukelid’s message. At the next scheduled hookup, he got the answer: “The matter has been considered and it is decided that it is very important to destroy the juice. Hope it can be done without too great misfortune. We send our best wishes for success in the work.” Skinnarland did not like the order: it meant Norwegians would die. With a troubled conscience, he passed a coded message to Hamaren, who brought it to Jon Hovden, who conveyed it to Haukelid’s hideout above Rjukan. The phrase “Ten kilos of fish” meant there would be no operation. “Five kilos” gave the green light.

  Having no other choice, Skinnarland sent five kilos of fish.

  27

  The Man with the Violin

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY after dusk, Haukelid and Sørlie came down from their mountain hideout. They kept their eyes peeled for the German soldiers who were practicing their winter maneuvers on the plateau less than a quarter mile away from their cabin. Both of them knew the steep woods inside out, so many times had they taken the journey into Rjukan.

  They went to a stately guesthouse owned by Norsk Hydro. Sørlie rang the bell, and a maid answered. She brought them up to Alf Larsen’s room—he had been living there ever since being bombed out of his own home beside Vemork. Larsen, who was suffering from the flu, stayed in bed, but reassured the two men that he was committed to assisting the sabotage, namely by making sure that the Germans didn’t ship anything until Sunday.

  Soon after, Syverstad and Nielsen joined them in the room, and Haukelid informed the assembled group that London had sent the order to proceed with the attack on the ferry. “I know it’s tough,” he said. “Sure it’s tough—but London says there’s no other way.”

  It was one thing to send a platoon of soldiers toward an enemy position, knowing that some of them would die. But this mission, no matter how well they executed it, put their own compatriots in jeopardy. They must accept that risk against the hope that their actions would save many more lives. They all accepted the responsibility grimly.

  Haukelid continued. They had three options: One was to persuade the engine-room staff to open the seacocks and shut off the engine. With the ferry disabled and unable to reach the shore, a small explosion would cause it to sink slowly in the water, allowing time for more passengers to get away safely. A second option was for him to get onboard himself, to disable the engine when they were in the middle of the lake and then use a limited charge to sink the ship. Their third option was to “place a time bomb onboard and sink the vessel quickly before it could be run ashore.”

  The first option was not possible. The others, all Rjukan locals, admitted that they did not know any of the ferry staff well enough to trust them. The second option was not practicable. Given that the ship would be so closely guarded, it was unlikely that they would escape the notice of the German sentries when they stopped the engine and placed an explosive charge. The third option was by far the best, so long as Haukelid could sneak onboard to set the timed explosives, and so long as the ship stayed on schedule.

  The operation still needed another man. Besides Sørlie, whose training was limited, to say the least, none of the others had any experience with commando work. Things could go wrong. They might have to fight their way out. Furthermore, it would raise too many questions if Larsen, Syverstad, or Nielsen were seen lurking about the ferry on the night before its departure. Sørlie promised he would recruit someone they could depend on soon.

  Next they needed to plan for what happened after the operation. Haukelid urged Larsen to escape with him to Sweden. Otherwise the Germans would continue to avail themselves of his heavy water expertise. Larsen agreed. Sørlie would move out to Nilsbu to live with Skinnarland and continue the resistance work. Syverstad wanted to remain in Rjukan. He had a wife and children he did not want to leave, and he thought it unlikely that he would come under suspicion. Nielsen was keen to stay as well, but because he was the transport manager, it was clear to all that he needed to arrange a foolproof alibi for the day of the action. He promised that he was working on one.

  After the meeting, Haukelid and Sørlie went to see Diseth. The pensioner had a small workshop crammed with tools, disassembled radios, and boxes of wires, hinges, springs, and screws. Haukelid needed some kind of accurately timed detonator, as he had no easy way to set an explosion on a long delay. Diseth proposed an alarm clock. Instead of hitting the bell on top of the clock, the strike hammer would close an electrical circuit attached to a detonator and set off the explosive. Diseth offered to have the device ready within twenty-four hours.

  The next day saw Haukelid strolling through Rjukan, wearing a borrowed blue suit and dress shoes and carrying a violin case. He looked like any member of the orchestra that was visiting the town, scheduled to play that night. Their conductor was the well-known composer and violinist Arvid Fladmoe. It seemed like there were Germans everywhere: standing on street corners, sitting in restaurants, driving past in cars. Time and again, Haukelid witnessed residents called aside to show their IDs. Neither the Sten gun in his violin case nor the hand grenades and pistol in his rucksack would be of much help to him if he were stopped. At the railway station, he bought a ticket for Mæl and waited for the train.

  Now that the plan was in place, Haukelid wanted to check out everything for himself. He knew the schedule for the Sunday ferry, and Nielsen had pro
vided him with a diagram of the vessel, but he wanted to determine exactly when the ferry would reach the deepest point of the lake and the best place to lay the explosive charge. If anybody asked about his presence on the return ferry, he would simply say that he was out for some sightseeing before the evening’s concert.

  The train arrived, and Haukelid took it the eight miles down the Vestfjord Valley to the ferry terminal at Mæl. With only a surrounding fence and a single attendant at the ticket booth, the terminal was far from being a fortress on a par with Vemork. In two days, however, when the shipment came down, Haukelid knew a heavy guard would accompany it.

  The ferry, the D/F Hydro, was in port, readying to depart. One of three that worked the crossing, it was also the vessel scheduled for the Sunday run. Once, years before the German invasion, Haukelid had taken the ferry to Rjukan to buy fingerling trout before heading up to his family’s mountain farm. He remembered now that there was nothing beautiful about the Hydro. Launched in 1914, the 174-foot flat-bottomed ferry had a broad angled bow that could break ice. A set of tracks ran along either side of the main deck. Together they would fit a dozen railcars of whatever was to be transported across the lake—usually fertilizer and potassium nitrate. Under this deck there was room for 120 passengers. The captain’s bridge, flanked by two tall black funnels, stood over the deck.

  When Haukelid boarded, these funnels were belching steam into the dreary, overcast sky. He watched some railcars being shunted down a ramp from the quay onto the deck. Shackles secured them in position. Checking his watch and taking notes in his head, Haukelid timed everything, from the boarding of passengers, to the ship’s actual moment of departure, to when they cleared the terminal. From his study of maps of Lake Tinnsjø, and using the landmarks on both shores, he knew that they reached the deepest spot in the lake thirty minutes into the two-hour crossing. The lake ran thirteen hundred feet deep at that point. Recovering anything sunk at that depth would be all but impossible.

  For the rest of the four-hour round trip, Haukelid kept busy. He headed up to the bridge and chatted with the helmsman about navigating the lake. He walked the length and breadth of the ferry, searching through any compartments to which he could gain access. He managed to drop his pipe through a metal grate above the engine room, giving him an excuse to go down and get a look at the two 250-horsepower engines driving the ferry. After retrieving his pipe, he offered the chief engineer a pinch of tobacco. They discussed the building of the Hydro, and the engineer even gave him a little tour. All the while, Haukelid was looking for the best place to put his explosives. He tried to force from his mind the thought that this same engineer might die in the sinking.

  By the time they neared Mæl again, he was fairly sure of his plan. He could blow a hole in the ferry with a couple of charges attached to its bow. Water would pour through the front holds, and its weight would pitch the ferry’s front end down into the lake. This might cause the railcars to roll forward, speeding up the sinking of the ship. Even if the cars remained in place, the rudders and screws in the stern would rise out of the water, immobilizing the vessel.

  The key question was how big a hole he should make. Lake Tinnsjø was narrow enough that it would take only five minutes to steam from its center to either of its banks. Haukelid needed to balance the risk of the captain bringing the crippled ferry to shore against allowing enough time for as many passengers as possible to escape.

  Thinking on it still, Haukelid returned by train to Rjukan. By chance, he passed Nielsen on the street. Neither gave any sign that they knew each other. Anyway, Haukelid was in a hurry to meet Sørlie’s new recruit.

  It turned out that Knut Lier-Hansen, the twenty-seven-year-old former Norwegian Army sergeant with a boulder of a chin and a level gaze, was as much of a maverick as Haukelid himself. A local Rjukan boy, his father worked as a Norsk Hydro electrician. Lier-Hansen had graduated from infantry school and was studying at a technical school in Oslo when the Germans invaded. After fighting in a few skirmishes, he was captured, but when the truck bringing him to a prisoner camp stalled, he leaped out of the back and escaped into the woods. From there, he shed his uniform and joined in the struggle to resist the German advance.

  When Norway surrendered, Lier-Hansen hitched a ride on a milk truck toward the Swedish border. Since then, he had been back and forth between Stockholm, Oslo, and Rjukan, working for Milorg as a weapons instructor, radioman, and spy. In the past few weeks he returned to his hometown to work in maintenance for Norsk Hydro. Most people in Rjukan knew he was in the resistance, which made him something of a target for the Gestapo, yet he continued to evade arrest.

  Haukelid liked Lier-Hansen straightaway. He was eager for the job. He knew how to handle a gun. He had seen action. And he could tap connections of his own if they were needed. Less than forty-eight hours before the ferry was due to be sunk, Haukelid had his team in place.

  Every few weeks, Fehlis and his staff sent a “Mood Report from Norway” to the military and security leaders in Berlin, chronicling their success in “smashing” and “rolling up” one underground Milorg or communist cell after another. From late 1943 into February 1944, his men broke up a huge organization led by Bergen firefighters. In Trondheim, they uncovered a large cache of weapons and explosives. In Oslo, bands of “radical socialists,” mostly students, were rounded up. In Kongsberg and Notodden, they arrested many of the top leaders of the underground, including the brother of Knut Haugland. Overall, arrests were up. Executions were, too.

  In these reports, Fehlis also bluntly reported the many continued acts of sabotage and resistance, both active and passive. The Norwegians, who Fehlis and his superiors had hoped would come to appreciate their place in the Nazi Reich, were more recalcitrant than ever. Fehlis reported a quote from an illegal newspaper that encapsulated the attitude of many Norwegians: “Anything that can be aligned with resistance against the Germans must necessarily be done. No one may voluntarily provide his labor, his expertise, or his business to the Germans. Take the Norwegian farmer: each liter of milk, each piece of butter or bacon that fails to come into German hands is a loss for them and a win for us . . . Not the slightest attempt of Nazification, not a single thought or sound, must penetrate into the soul of our people. We are fighting not only for the destruction of Nazism but for the reconstruction of our democratic country. This idea is to serve all of our actions.”

  The efforts to destroy Vemork were a further example of Norwegian intransigence. The American bombing raid had pushed Berlin to dismantle the plant and ship its stores to Germany. However, in the past few weeks, wireless transmissions hinting at sabotage had been intercepted, and Muggenthaler, Fehlis’s man in Rjukan, was making last-minute changes to the transport plan. Fehlis had sent his elite Seventh SS Police Regiment to Rjukan to protect the heavy water on its route to Menstad, and Himmler himself sent a pair of Fieseler Storch airplanes to guard the train and identify any move to attack it.

  On February 18, Tronstad was hiking through the Scottish Highlands outside the village of Spean Bridge. He gazed out at Ben Nevis and Aonach Mòr rising in the distance, heavy water and the impending attack on the Hydro never far from his mind. According to a recent Swallow report, the Germans were tapping almost 15,000 kilograms of heavy water of various concentrations from Vemork, and 100 kilograms of that was 97 to 99.5 percent pure. He calculated that if the German scientists managed to concentrate this whole supply, they would have 633 kilograms of pure moderator. Added to what they had already received from the plant, and any production they had managed on their own, they might have enough to start a working reactor.

  When Einar Skinnarland had communicated that the plan was to blow up the ferry, Tronstad recognized that it was a drastic but unavoidable solution to their problem. He consoled himself with the thought that there was no way to destroy the supply of heavy water without loss of life. Brun pleaded with him to stop it, but Tronstad knew that if he refused to dispatch Haukelid to take care of the ferry, the Allie
s would bomb Vemork again before the shipment left the plant or while the train or ferry were in motion. Many more innocent civilians would die in these scenarios.

  Nonetheless, Tronstad and the British arranged backup plans in case the shipment did make it off the ferry. Wilson sent instructions to a two-man Kompani Linge team working in the Oslo area. They would prepare a limpet-mine attack on the cargo ship in Menstad. They would sink the ship before the heavy water left the harbor. If that failed, the RAF Bomber Command would launch an aerial attack on the ship while it was at sea. A lot could go wrong with these operations. Attacking the Hydro was still the best option.

  After his hike, Tronstad returned into Spean Bridge to oversee a training exercise for a new crop of Linge commandos. They were in fine form as they attacked a building kitted out as a Gestapo headquarters riddled with traps. Tronstad hoped that Haukelid and his hastily assembled team would be equally ready for surprises.

  Two pops ripped Haukelid from his dreams. He was sure they were rifle shots. On his feet in an instant, gun in hand, he moved toward the door of the cabin high above Rjukan. Sørlie was already at the window, his Sten gun pointing out toward any threat that might be approaching. It took a moment for the fog of sleep to lift before they both realized the source of the sounds. “At least they work,” Sørlie said, referring to the two alarm clocks on the floor.

  The explosive time delays Diseth had made were ingenious. He had removed the alarm bells from both clocks, then screwed strips of Bakelite in their place, taken from a broken telephone he had in his shop. On top of these strips, he fixed copper plates, which were then connected by wires to detonator caps pilfered from Norsk Hydro. The caps would go off when triggered by an electrical current, supplied by four nine-volt flashlight batteries. Diseth welded their terminals together to keep everything secure.