Sunday, November 22, 2015

Joachim Ronneberg: The WWII hero who stopped Hitler's dream of developing a nuclear bomb

This is a fascinating article in The New York Times titled, "WWII Hero Credits Luck and Chance in Foiling Hitler’s Nuclear Ambitions". The reporter, Andrew Higgins, writes about Joachim Ronneberg's purchase of bolt cutters "entirely by chance" that ended the Nazi effort to build a nuclear bomb in 1943. Here is an excerpt from the article on the sabotage mission that likely altered the course of WWII and modern history:

     Still mentally sharp at his advanced age [96 years old] and still possessed of the unflappable calm that so impressed British military commanders more than 70 years ago, he [Joachim Ronneberg] recalled how, during a day off from training in Cambridge, England, in early 1943, he went to a movie theater and then happened “entirely by chance” to walk by a hardware store selling heavy-duty metal cutters. He decided to buy a pair on the off chance they might come in handy, and he took them on his sabotage mission.
     Without this happenstance purchase, Mr. Ronneberg said, he and his men would never have been able to gain entry to and destroy the heavily guarded heavy water production plant at Vemork, in southern Norway. The handsaw that British planners had intended for use on a heavy padlock on the plant’s side gate, he said, would have taken too much time, made too much noise and alerted Nazi guards.


In the article it's pointed out the movie, The Heroes Of Telemark (1965), is based on this British mission by their sabotage and intelligence service, the Special Operations Executive: