This is Why The Nazis Never Built a Nuke

[@KingsandGenerals]

No one can sabotage your nukes (ok, they can, roll with it) in Hearts of Iron IV: Arms Against Tyranny! Preorder today play.heartsofiron.com/KingsandGeneralsAAT

[@debbielungsodaitfllo]

Pls make an history video about winston churchill

[@matthew-jy5jp]

Most of the German jewish scientists that were involved with the nuclear program for the nazis left Germany to come to America

[@kristian2497]

As a Norwegian. Very grateful for this coverage of a very important event for us. Love the video ❤️

[@jsc7357]

​@@saulocppdu f8r acks8 skriver till ouppforstrad.

[@balabanasireti]

No one asked

[@kremepye3613]

​@@balabanasireti hold kjeft og ta søsteren din bakfra igjen

[@davidtierney3615]

@@balabanasireti😂

[@tyree9055]

As an American, I'm glad the Brits finally got their act together (Leading the way in Commando Ops), and asked the right people to do the job in the end. It took us a while to catch up, but Europe was eventually freed. 😂

[@AlBa-de2kl]

The guts and courage of these people, just incredible. Respect from Poland!

[@Advima]

One small note, it wasn't the Vemork hydroelectric plant which produced the heavy water, it was a artificial fertilizer plant located in front of the power plant (building removed today, only the power plant remains). The heavy water was a byproduct of the method used to make fertilizer, and in fact the power plant as well as the nearby town of Rjukan was all built to support the fertilizer production.

[@luxborealis]

Correct. The town of Rjukan housed an ammonium plant for the production of ammonium nitrates, a fertilizer base. In fact it was one of the largest such plants in the world; in the 1920’s Rjukan produced about a fifth of all the fertilizer on the global market. To produce ammonia you need to mix nitrogen from air with a constant supply, and in places lacking coal and oil like Rjukan that means large scale electrolysis (basically using electromagnets and lye to pull apart H2O into H and O2). This inevitably causes the formation of heavy water in the machines as it is naturally occuring around us yet much more resistant to electrolysis. This was documented in other factories as well, for example in Switzerland, but what made Vemork unique was the amount that could be produced there and the purification technology developed by Tronstad and his team.

[@FinnishDragon]

The Allies made the right decision to try to sabotage the German nuclear bomb program considering the knowledge they had then available. It should be noted that the German approach to build nuclear bomb led by Heisenberg was a technological dead end. Those men who were ordered to sabotage the heavy water plant were heroes as their actions delayed the German nuclear program and convinced the Allies that they can win the race to have a working nuclear bomb.

[@luxborealis]

It wasn’t a dead end, a deuterium reactor is very possible, and is still a reactor type today in certain countries. The main problems, according to the most recent research on the Uranverein, was that the Germans split their uranium and heavy water supply over multiple research reactors, unknowingly denying themselves the necessary mass to maintain a sustained fission reaction. Furthermore their research into transuranic enrichment was very primitive compared to the methodology developed by Fermi’s team in the US, largely as a result of underfunding from the German government. Both of these problems were caused by a combination of the German leadership having little trust in "Jewish science" and the usual internal rivalries of the Reich meaning the Kriegsmarine and SS were siphoning off researchers and materiel for their own research into nuclear energy. The idea of the heavy water reactor being a dead end was disproved almost twenty years ago by Dr. Günther Nägel when he proved Heisenberg’s team were working on a Plutonium device from 1941 onwards as opposed to a Uranium 235 device as previously believed. But it would have taken the Germans years to enrich enough plutonium even if they had the tech down pat and the sabotage never happened. Manhattan would probably still have finished first by a good margin.

[@williamjohnson4417]

@@luxborealis Yes this is what i have read, not that it was a dead end but impossible to do in the timeframe. One thing that many fail to consider though, is that Allied intelligence knew the process the Germans were using would take them too long, but they kept up the sabotage effort anyway because they didn't want the Germans to realize the allies had developed a better method and still deemed heavy water production to pose an eminent threat. If they all of a sudden stopped going after Heavy Water it was possible the Germans would have realized they had developed another method.

[@karo_walker_fan84]

Niinkö? Joka ikinen valkoinenmaa on statistiikoitten perusteella muuttumassa maiksi mis valkoisey on vähemmistö. Rikollisuus, raiskaukset lisääntynyt rahan ostovoima heikentynyt. Mutta silti "hyvät" tyypit voitti?

[@Spacemongerr]

The 1948 movie Operation Swallow: The Battle for Heavy Water (Kampen om tungtvannet) is about this, and in this film several of the Norwegian commandos are playing as themselves

[@VoidLantadd]

That's one of the strangest things about some WW2 movies when you actually have people playing themselves.

[@alexius23]

There have been two movies about these topics. One a Norwegian film about the sabotage raid. The second started Kirk Douglas that concluded with the sinking a passenger ferry that was hauling railroad freight cars which carried heavy water. The film was called Heroes of Telemark. The ferry sank in a very deep fjord unreachable by the technology of that time.

[@jsc7357]

Do you know the tittle of the norwegian film?

[@alexius23]

Kapen on Tungtvannet @@jsc7357

[@wolfu597]

@@jsc7357 Kampen om Tungtvannet.

[@Advima]

@@jsc7357 "Kampen om Tungvannet" aka The Battle for Heavy Water, it's from 1948, and had a lot of the people who were part of the actual operations working on it, it's a far far more accurate version than the American one, and one i enjoyed as a kid, though i have no idea how easy it is to get with english subtitles.

[@dirgniflesuoh7950]

There was a more recent Norwegian film, tv-series in 6 parts made 2015. "Kampen om tungvattnet" , regrettably I do not find the Norwegian title, or English, but it is probably the same, just Norwegian spelling, anyway NRK production. Needed to check ... It was pretty good anyway.

[@JOGA_Wills]

Idk any Norwegians, but using cod liver oil for sabotage sounds pretty dam Norwegian

[@Runningfromtheredqueen]

It is, indeed, pretty darned Norwegian, and I say this as a Norwegian. In fact, barring the use of an explosive brunost I can't really think of a way to make it much *more* Norwegian.

[@JOGA_Wills]

@@Runningfromtheredqueen haha thank you for your comment. Greetings from Phoenix, Arizona !!

[@Vatniks_are_clowns]

Thank you for the amazing uploads! ❤

[@DestroyerOfSense000]

I read a book about this a while back: Neal Bascomb's "The Winter Fortress". I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed this video.

[@hydrolifetech7911]

Thanks for the recommendation. Added it to my reading list

[@luxborealis]

That is a very good book, sadly difficult to get a hold of as it is no longer in print.

[@HannibalAfricanus]

WW2 was a whole world in & of itself. Endless stories.

[@cpurssey982]

One thousand people died every hour from 1939 to 1945 🤯.

[@mikemodugno5879]

I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole video. Fantastic work K&G!

[@Thunderstar7]

Finally some more content about this operation! It’s been years since I’ve seen anything about it

[@mnaglich]

While a successful raid, let's not OVERPLAY the significance. There was no way a German atomic bomb was going to be ready before the Americans either way. This was a psychological boost for the allies as well as helped with showing the "importance" of the Manhattan project. It did not however, stop the german atomic weapon

[@RouGeZH]

Because the German nuclear weapons program never existed, the raid had zero significance.

[@dasurmel1424]

Hitler considered it as Jewish tech so Germany didn't really gave it a shot. I don't know if the allies were aware of it and used it as justification to build the nuce or not .

[@connorhilchie2779]

Greetings Kings and Generals, another fantastic video! If I could possibly make a request of you, perhaps you might think about looking at the Canadian side of the war at some point. We learn very little of here in school and when it is mentioned it's only just about us freeing the Netherlands. Plus with all the humatilions my home has suffered over the past few years, we all need a reminder of who we once were and what we can aspire to be again. Thanks for the video, and looking forward to many more to come

[@IIIBig]

American here. My grandfather was armored infantry during the war. He told a story of how him and a friend got separated from their unit in eastern France. They were surrounded by Germans and only barely managed to escape the area before getting captured by a small group of SS. The story goes that shortly after while the SS officers were deciding what to do with them a group of Canadians had encircled their position and managed to kill the Germans before they even got a shot off. I’m a pilot in the USAF today and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your country and it’s contributions to the war.

[@connorhilchie2779]

​@@IIIBigI'm happy to hear your grandpa made it home. I hope that one day our military can be on oar with yours again some day, and that our countries remain friends because I would never want to fight our brothers

[@IIIBig]

@@connorhilchie2779 have some friends in the Army that say the alpine assault course your country teaches is the best in the world. You guys have immense expertise and are always very generous with sharing it to your allies

[@connorhilchie2779]

@@IIIBig with everything going on in Canada right now it does me a lot of good to hear such kind words. Thank you

[@IIIBig]

@@connorhilchie2779 it’s rough south of the border too. Regardless of politics I think we can all agree things have been better. The good news is we’ve been down rough paths before and we’ll come back again together

[@alex_spartan1805]

I love learning about these special operations. Though small in comparison to larger operations like Overlord or Husky, the impact of these operations was immense. Sometimes the smallest details make the biggest impact.

[@dirkuhdirk5534]

This sounds like a cool mission you would play in Call of Duty. Absolutely wild that this actually happened in real life.

[@christopherhanton6611]

it was one of the missions for the first one medal of honor in original PlayStation.

[@joshuaberberich420]

Battlefield V tried to do it but they went the feminist route.

[@DAToft]

Excellent video! I learned a lot. I also very much appreciate the pronunciations, too. Some of these sounds are very difficult to learn. It's very clear you made an effort to learn them, thank you.

[@jonbaxter2254]

British: Sneaky, beaky raid against the night. America: Bomb.

[@pabloacevedo763]

We need more of this !! As always you guys are amazing

[@asianbandit4054]

I ascended those same cliffs as a boy during a school trip when I was 17. We were foreigners but were taught the story and it significance.

[@robertpetersson5326]

I strongly recommend the tv-series "The Saboteurs" original " Kampen om tungvattnet" from 2015 on this topic. Really good

[@aciduzzo]

I love that you guys have Hearts of Iron 4 ads, best history channel I know and best video game make a nice pair.

[@2004082]

There should be a movie made about this mission operation

[@elvenkind6072]

So thankful, as a Norwegian, to see this story being told to a wider audience. The commandos was dropped in the middle of the mountains and had to survive on reindeer brains for Christmas food. Also they didn't just blow up the Hydro plant, but also sank a ship in the middle of a lake, with the last barrels of heavy water sent to Germany.

[@thechief00]

the germans wouldn't have been able to produce nearly enough fissile material anyways, even if the allies did nothing.

[@keenanhosking659]

Everyone should watch the BBC specials called "the real heros of telemark". A very well done telling of this story with interviews of some of the soldiers who were there. Good job on writing this one up.

[@LuigianoMariano]

Germany: IT'S NOT FAIR! I WANTED TO BECOME DESTROYER OF WORLDS! Robert Oppenheimer: NOPE

[@grimreaper6557]

Absolutely Awesome story that needs to be remembered of the bravery of the Norwegian people ❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@ИванКлименко-щ4с]

There’s a great power-metal song “Saboteurs” by Sabaton about this operation, if someone is interested

[@revoltx1]

Id love more videos similar to this on the World Wars/Cold war

[@WaterShowsProd]

Never heard of this operation. Fascinating. And tragic for the first attempt.

[@robertpetersson5326]

Great episode guys

[@swordsnspearguy5945]

Dropped down to a world of ice A platoe of frozen lakes A Nazi place of doom in their sights Training camps on Scottish Heights To commando saboteurs A mission of their lives lies ahead

[@henex1296]

Called in to serve And they knew what to do They were the heroes of the cold, warrior soul They signed a book of history They played a leading role to win the second war

[@Nerdvanna98]

According to Battlefield 5 you guys are wrong, it was a mom and her daughter.

[@xSavedSoulx]

lmao

[@BleedForTheWorld]

I like how historical events in video games and pop culture can make people lose their minds and I'm like, "Oh, you guys are actually serious about losing your minds over entertainment products".

[@jonbaxter2254]

Is that the game nobody played and doomed the studio?

[@Royinszki]

Yes, the world was saved by valiant special forces women in ww2, with a little help of dumb white men and Chad black dudes with a couple of disabled but highly skilled Asian (Japanese/korean ancestry) and Indian men in wheelchairs

[@drewb3490]

@@jonbaxter2254 Nah, that's BF2042 lol

[@AYVYN]

Always better to be certain than to hope. Great operation. I just realized there’s going to be Denmark and Finland videos and I’m pretty happy.

[@revoltx1]

A great video as always

[@napoleonibonaparte7198]

Cover Denmark and Norway's involvement in the war.

[@giannisnifiatis6712]

It would be very interesting if you made a video about Greek resistance during WWII and the local sabotages.

[@thearthritisgamer946]

You know it's going to be a good Friday when Kings and Generals releases a new video 😊

[@banerjeesiddharth05]

Very nice and informative video 📹 👍 👌 👏

[@----Jay----]

Heavy water molecule looks like a Baywatch bathing suit from behind. Now you can't unsee it either.

[@R11A380]

Awesome video!

[@GanyuSimpingDegenerate]

Called in to serve And they knew what to do They were the heroes of the cold Warrior soul

[@rabbitman4648]

They signed the book of history, they played a leading role To win the Second war

[@NegiTaiMetal011]

I'm familiar with this mission thanks to a Medal of Honor game and a mission that involves this at the Rjukan plant.

[@Crafty_Spirit]

I played this mission in a game called Hidden and Dangerous 2 :)

[@gordonchard6243]

Quite a tense video to watch. You know before the video that the mission was successful but especially given how much of a failure the first attempt went I was fully expecting the commandos to not make it out alive.

[@JAlucard77]

Unlike the American and the Manhattan Project, which had all scientists and technicians in one place and one project..The Germans had split their research projects into multiple different labs. These labs DID NOT share their research and where in competition with each other. It was because of this that Germany was NEVER able to come close to actually producing a viable weapon. This fact wouldn't be know to the allies until wars end.

[@vg4917]

these guys were pros this is like some real life metal gear solid shlt

[@ea5yliver]

"Ashewm." Kings And Generals' 'Assume' to Count Dankula's "Muldah" murder. I wait for it every video. 😂

[@Gokturk1307]

I wonder why this event doesn't have its own movie. It would be as interesting as Inglorious Bastards. Edit: I made mistake. Apperentaly there is a movie about it

[@TYBM88]

There actually is a movie based on this event. It's called "The Heroes of Telemark", and was made in 1965

[@Gokturk1307]

Wow! Thanks, i didn't know there was one@@TYBM88

[@arthasmenethil5748]

​@@TYBM88when we mean movie we don't talk about prehistoric shit ons. 1965 really? I bet the graphics will be worse than my blender animations lol. We need a new movie,like openheimer

[@TYBM88]

@@arthasmenethil5748 Grow up

[@normtrooper4392]

Incredible story.

[@Trsand111]

Norwegians came in clutch fr fr much appreciated 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴

[@midsue]

Interesting topic 🙂

[@Paul-yf6lq]

Hello, first of all I love your channel! I just have one question about your pacific series, I have noticed that from 88 onwards you can only access the rest if you are only a member only?? I have watched this series from the first video let alone all the other content I have watched. Is it a mistake or is this the only way I can watch the rest of the by becoming a member especially since rest of content is free to watch.

[@loupiscanis9449]

Thank you , K&G . 🐺 Loupis Canis .

[@tommy-er6hh]

There was an Italian Dam that could produce heavy water also, but inefficiently because it needed to be modified to do it.

[@tommy-er6hh]

oh, and the reason the German Nuke program failed was not because of shutting down the plant, they had enough heavy water to make a kind of reactor. But it turns out heavy water reactors are difficult to make. The western allies captured the plant but it had not worked. They pulled up a chain of blocks of uranium, the reaction was very low/slow. So while an exciting story, the whole thing was not as urgent as it was portrayed.

[@AWillforY]

Brilliant thank you

[@oliversherman2414]

The Nazis wouldn't have built an atomic bomb even if the heavy water power plant in Norway wasn't sabotaged. This is for three main reasons: 1) Many of Germany's top scientists were expelled in the 1930s for being Jewish and many of these men would go on to work on the Manhattan project in America 2) The Nazi nuclear program was all but cancelled by 1942/1943 as many German scientists were uninterested in the project 3) Hitler himself cancelled the nuclear program as he saw atomic science as "Jewish science" and insisted that Germany's attention should be placed towards the continued production of conventional weapons Also, the Nazis didn't even have a bomber large enough to carry an atomic bomb. So, even if they did get one, they wouldn't be able to use it or even produce a new plane capable of carrying it thanks to Germany's resource shortages in the latter years of the war

[@XxAverageJoexX]

Always amazing.

[@violakrone8429]

I watched a movie on this Operation when i was like ten years old or so 30 years ago 😂 what a flashback

[@debbielungsodaitfllo]

Pls make an history video about winston churchill

[@ykardasis]

What an amazing story! This could easily be a movie!

[@erlandnettum6680]

It is two movies. But both quite old.

[@welcometonebalia]

Thank you.

[@markpaul-ym5wg]

S.O.E. also sank a German freighter that had heavy water on it while leaving a Norway forge.

[@oso1165]

Someone didnt watch the video i take it

[@mohammedmouradouertani2585]

Can you cover a video about Jan baalsrud and operation martin red

[@Pyrokan]

I'm pretty sure I have seen a movie about those events, when I was kid

[@deecee796]

Didn't' have the time, resources and personnel to do so. There saved you a watch.

[@phucvinh2883]

Too bad Hitler could not live long enough to see the nuke, which will end the old kind of war with humans fighting. Instead only with one button to erase everything.

[@sichuancowboy]

I could've sworn I just saw a movie on this... edit: Ah yes, the HistoryDose version from a year ago. I knew I saw this topic covered somewhere.

[@michaelthomas5433]

A race the nazis tried to run one legged with the foot of that leg having only one remaining toe and wearing a hugely heavy iron boot. But still a race.

[@theotherohlourdespadua1131]

And the other leg they cut off because it's the Left (leg)...

[@crazyviking24]

Thank God for the risks those commandos took

[@asgautbakke8687]

Grandparents of mine lives in the neighborging with Kaspar Idland. It was an wellknown fact that all the war-resistant work had made him an inverterate alcholocic.

[@hilding2063]

What a story, I had no idea who close the world was to oblivion

[@RouGeZH]

The German nuclear weapons program never existed, this raid didn't stop anything.

[@williamkarbala5718]

It should be noted that being able to deliver a nuke is arguably almost as hard a building one. By 1945 the Allies had air supremacy over Germany and even then two or three bombs was not going to stop the Allies.

[@tomz5704]

Even without this whole operation the Germans still wouldn't have had a nuke before the Americans

[@Astr0b0y8]

If this isnt made into a movie. It should!

[@Roman_History_fan]

@kings and generals two questions: I have to restart my subscription, do I have to rejoin the discord channel or will the channels be free as soon as I payed? Secondly: King Titus Tatius ruled with Romolus over the sabines, but after his death did Romolus rule over romans and sabines? Because there were still in the centuries to come some battles between them

[@Dr4yer]

I think heisenbergs opinion mattered too ....

[@Blalack77]

I'm at the very beginning so I might have a skewed or incomplete understanding of this but, yeah, from what I think I know about this, it seems like this is definitely topic that isn't as covered, well-known, celebrated, etc. as it should be. I mean, just look at some of the insane, brutal, evil and irrational things that Hitler did in WW2; it doesn't take much of an imagination to think of what he might have done with nukes. And given how advanced Germany was with some of their other technologies, there's no telling what they could have developed to go along with nuclear weapons - they might have attached nukes to rockets or developed nuclear artillery or some kind of non-explosive radioactive bioweapon type of thing to just poison people. And that in turn could have drastically turned the tide - they could have nuked Moscow and London and then any large concentrations of American forces - like at Normandy. But either way, if Germany had developed atomic weapons and/or had developed them first, Hitler would have almost definitely used them immediately to kill thousands of people - and likely mostly civilians. But the Nazis never developed atomic weapons - to the benefit of the entire human race. But the story of the people and the operation that ensured that is barely even known - and _certainly_ not as much as so many other battles and operations...

[@brokenbridge6316]

It was quite a feat of luck and ingenuity to pull of this operation to begin with.

[@Fishbeings]

I read. "How the ALIENS sabotaged the Nazi Nuclear Program". Having dyslexic is just a magical trip

[@PreenuBino]

when the pacific war series will come to those people who haven't took the membership 😢😢

[@faenethlorhalien]

By this late in the war their submarine commandos were pretty much a joke and they'd have never been in range to hit DC or anywhere in the west coast, but they could have nuked London. Just imagine that: destroying the seat of an empire with a barrage of nukes. Terrifying.

[@sheilbwright7649]

Taking nothing from the brave Norwegians, some of the best nuclear scientists were Jewish or appalled at the Nazis anti-Semitism and fled Europe.

[@ThaAngelus1]

Heroes of the Telemark Carry Viking blood in veins Warriors of the northern land They live forever more

[@josephsarra4320]

Can you talk about next the Manhattan Project and Robert Oppenheimer’s role in it?

[@JimFrenowsky]

Played this mission in BFV

[@johnboxler8989]

Kings and generals is best ❤

[@harrythedirty4256]

Really one of the most heroic and tactical missions of all time can’t wait to see battlefield to depict it and pay to tribute to the heros 🙄

[@jonbaxter2254]

lmao

[@ramiere1412]

that mission had nothing to do with this.

[@rabbitman4648]

wdym, both has Norwegian sabotaging Nazis' plan with Heavy Water

[@Murrangurk2]

Carl Fairburne was here

[@flashgordon6670]

I don’t believe a word of it, pure fiction. I’ve seen the live documentary that the commandos made and it was Kirk Douglas who did it.

[@pax6833]

Hot take but I'm going to say no. The nazis were so far in the hole that, even without this raid, they were never anywhere close to a nuke.

[@DepressedMusicEnjoyer]

It seems Heisenberg didn’t really intend to create a nuclear weapon

[@fridrihdarko6876]

Heroes of Telemark ...

[@collintrytsman3353]

excellent

[@michimatsch5862]

*Allied time was running short* *They would race against the bomb*

[@thegamingwolf5612]

Thought it said aliens for a second lol

[@tedfio1tedfio1]

Didn't the plant continue to produce Heavy Water as the Hydro Ferry carrying Heavy Water exploded in February 1944?

[@sourabhmayekar3354]

Awesome

[@Lord_Afgul]

One of ww2 most important event imho💪