Summary of Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In 1940, the French spy Jacques Allier was sent to bring back heavy water from Norway, which the Germans were also interested in. He needed to secure the stock before the Germans did.
#2 Allier traveled to Amsterdam, where he met with three French intelligence agents. He gave them the letter of credit and authority to recruit any French agents needed in smuggling out the heavy water.
#3 The American chemist Harold Urey won the Nobel Prize for his 1931 discovery of heavy water. While most hydrogen atoms consist of a single electron orbiting a single proton in the atom’s nucleus, Urey showed that there was a variant, or isotope, of hydrogen that carried a neutron in its nucleus.
#4 In 1933, Norwegian professor Leif Tronstad and his former college classmate Jomar Brun, who ran the hydrogen plant at Vemork, proposed the idea of a heavy water industrial facility to Norsk Hydro. They didn’t exactly know what the substance would be used for in the end, but they knew that Vemork, with its inexhaustible supply of cheap power and water, provided the perfect setup for such a facility.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Military
• World War II
• History
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 10 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822529403
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Neal Bascomb's The Winter Fortress
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1940, the French spy Jacques Allier was sent to bring back heavy water from Norway, which the Germans were also interested in. He needed to secure the stock before the Germans did.

#2

Allier traveled to Amsterdam, where he met with three French intelligence agents. He gave them the letter of credit and authority to recruit any French agents needed in smuggling out the heavy water.

#3

The American chemist Harold Urey won the Nobel Prize for his 1931 discovery of heavy water. While most hydrogen atoms consist of a single electron orbiting a single proton in the atom’s nucleus, Urey showed that there was a variant, or isotope, of hydrogen that carried a neutron in its nucleus.

#4

In 1933, Norwegian professor Leif Tronstad and his former college classmate Jomar Brun, who ran the hydrogen plant at Vemork, proposed the idea of a heavy water industrial facility to Norsk Hydro. They didn’t exactly know what the substance would be used for in the end, but they knew that Vemork, with its inexhaustible supply of cheap power and water, provided the perfect setup for such a facility.

#5

In the field of atomic physics, things changed quickly just as they did with heavy water. In 1939, Norsk Hydro audited the company and found it to be a loser. Nobody wanted heavy water, at least not enough to make it worth the investment, and the company abandoned the venture.

#6

The English physicist Ernest Rutherford observed that heavy, unstable elements such as uranium would break down naturally into lighter ones such as argon. When he calculated the huge amount of energy emitted during this process, he realized what was at stake.

#7

The potential energy released by the uranium atom’s nucleus when it was split was great enough to create a chain reaction that could be used to generate enormous quantities of energy.

#8

On September 3, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The German Blitzkrieg had begun and bombs would be met with bombs.

#9

The German scientists who were brought in to discuss the possibility of harnessing the atom’s energy for the production of weapons or electricity, known as the Uranium Club, decided that they had to pursue any such advantage.

#10

Heisenberg, along with the other members of the Uranium Club, worked on the theory and construction of a uranium machine that would generate a steady level of power. If they were successful, they would prove the importance of atomic physics.

#11

The Uranium Club needed heavy water, and the only producer of it, Norsk Hydro’s Vemork plant in Norway, was far away and difficult to access. Diebner considered building a full-scale heavy water plant in Germany, though it would cost tens of millions of marks and consume a hundred thousand tons of coal for each singleton of heavy water.

#12

On March 5, 1940, Allier visited Vemork and presented himself as a Banque de Paris official. He collected the heavy water and brought it to Oslo, where it was delivered to the French government. The three French spies in Stockholm booked flights on two planes leaving Oslo that morning. One was headed for Amsterdam, the other for Perth.

#13

By March 18, all 26 flasks were stored in the old stone-arched cellars of the Collège de France in Paris. The first battle of heavy water was won, but the next was all too soon to begin.

#14

The German invasion of Norway began on April 9, 1940, when the Admiral Hipper and four destroyers arrived in Trondheim. They were met by Norwegian patrol boats that signaled them to identify themselves, and the Germans responded that they were there with orders from the British government to proceed toward Trondheim. No unfriendly intentions.

#15

Tronstad had feared this would happen. As a reserve officer in the Army Ordnance Corps, he had standing orders to travel to Oslo if war broke out. He advised those with military experience to do the same.

#16

The Norwegian government, led by Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold, decided that they would not make peace with the invaders. They would struggle and fight until the invaders were thrown from Norway’s shores.

#17

The Norwegian government fled to Britain, and the Germans took over. The German presence was a violation of everything Tronstad held dear, and their occupation robbed him of the life he had built.

#18

Leif Tronstad was a rising star in chemistry. He had taken his mother’s maiden name out of respect for her years of sacrifice. He had courted his childhood sweetheart, Edla, who had graduated with the highest marks from NTH. They had married in 1928.

#19

Tronstad was a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, and he was very talented in both the lab and theoretical work. He was also a consultant for several Norwegian companies, advising them on the manufacture of steel, rubber, nitrogen, and aluminum.

#20

Tronstad visited Vemork in November 1940, seven months after the Germans invaded. He was there to help improve the hydrogen plant’s production levels, but he also wanted to know why the Germans were so interested in heavy water. He suspected it could be used for some sort of poison gas.

#21

Tronstad was the leader of the Norwegian underground resistance, and he was working to get information to the British. The Germans were close to breaking up the resistance, and Tronstad was nervous.

#22

Tronstad and his family left Trondheim and arrived in Oslo, where they took a train to Sandvika. They climbed up the hill past the small kiosk where Tronstad’s mother used to work. They reached Bassa’s childhood home.

#23

Tronstad flew to Britain, where he was met by SIS agents.