A small group of WWII Norwegian commandos are skiing away from an Arctic Nazi base with 3,000 German soldiers on them. Norwegians just set off explosive charges inside the aforementioned base, ruining Germany’s chances of producing nuclear weapons. So, Adolf Hitler could produce nuclear bomb if it wasn’t this situation.
During Operation Gunnerside in 1943, when the Germans rudely came to crash on Norway’s couch in the early ’40s, they took over a factory up in Telemark that produced heavy water (is a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope deuterium (2H or D, also known as heavy hydrogen), rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope (1H or H, also called protium) that makes up most of the hydrogen in normal water. The presence of deuterium gives the water different nuclear properties, and the increase of mass gives it slightly different physical and chemical properties when compared to normal water.)– aka, exactly the thing they needed to make plutonium. The Allies, realizing that “Nazis with ingredients for an atom bomb” was a somewhat undesirable situation, sent 30 British Army officers to sabotage the plant, but a combination of awful weather conditions and the Gestapo killed the entire group. So, the Allies tried the other way and sent even more deadly than 11 Norwegians commandos.
Germans then decided to beef up the plant’s defenses, sprinkling mines, floodlights, and guards all over the plant. The only way to get into nuke factory was a Nazi-held bridge over a 660-foot ice gorge.
…or at least the Germans thought that was the only way in — the Norwegians simply climbed down the supposedly un-scalable ice gorge and snuck into the factory. They laid the explosives and were about to light the fuse and escape, but the base’s Norwegian caretaker, whom they were holding at gunpoint, announced he’d lost his glasses and refused to leave until they were found. Naturally, the commandos put the “stop Hitler from getting the bomb” plan on hold until they’d located glasses of their commandos’ colleague.
Not only did the commandos complete their mission without casualties, they released the caretaker and another civilian as soon as the fuses were lit, and get medals.
One of them (and three other Norwegians) actually came back later to sink the ferry the Germans were trying to use to evacuate the heavy water they already had.
Movie title, that was inspired by this story, is “The Heroes of Telemark”. The film stars Kirk Douglas as Dr. Rolf Pedersen and Richard Harris as Knut Straud, along with Ulla Jacobsson as Anna Pedersen. It was filmed on location in Norway.
from: http://www.cracked.com/article_22714_5-true-wwii-stories-too-insane-history-books.html