Thread by @Gurdur

1/n Watching the Norwegian series "The Heavy Water War" (a.k.a. "The Saboteurs", en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heavy…). The first episode, in which Werner Heisenberg first attempts to defend/excuse the Nazis, then has to defend himself against the Nazis, is well-done.

2/ The series is in a mixture (depending on context & characters) of English, Norwegian & German. Thank heavens for subtitles, since no dubbing. I can manage the English and German, but the Norwegian leaves me out to sea. It's now on the R0 of neutrons from splitting U236 atoms

3/n The Allies can thank Leif Tronstad for saving them. Not only was Tronstad key to stopping the export of heavy water to Nazi Germany, but he was also responsible for alerting the Allies to Peenemünde & the V-2 rocket.

4/n I'm watching it on DVD. It's apparently available on Netflix Germany; I do not know about Netflix elsewhere. It's also available on Amazon Prime. It's very good so far. No short-cuts, no easy tropes, lots of explanations, lots of grey areas.

https://twitter.com/johnlappin/status/1478843041620365314

5/ oh, I see. Difficult to grasp how come Heisenberg didn't get a clue, especially after being attacked as a "White Jew" (i.e. an Aryan who fraternized w/ Jews) by the Deutsche Physik scumbags. But he'd fought in the Freikorps in Munich 1919, at the age of 17~18; early imprinting

6/ The arrogance of Heisenberg in describing his days in the Freikorps in Munich, 1919, as "playing cops and robbers". That was one vicious civil war, lots & lots of civilians murdered by the Freikorps. This isn't in the series, I just looked up background.

7/ Anyway, Heisenberg came under attack from Deutsche [i.e. Aryan] Physik jihadists, & in Himmler's SS newspaper, so his life was on the line. Lo & behold, his mother knew Himmler's mother, so between that & an appeal direct to Himmler, Heisenberg saved his life, got a cushy job

8/ And now the Brits & Norwegians are throwing unwilling people out of airplanes. The bloke's first parachute jump, & he doesn't want to do it, so they just shove him. LOL. He survives. Meanwhile, the still arrogant Heisenberg tries to spy on Niels Bohr.

9/ Niels Bohr tries to convince Heisenberg to leave the Nazi nuclear program. His attempt founders upon the rock of Heisenberg's arrogance, naïvety, blinders, and intellectual greed.

10/ The utter catastrophe of Operation Freshman, the first attempt to take out the heavy-water facility, in November 1942. British personnel in gliders to land near Vemork. The Gestapo insist on having all the survivors shot, despite full uniform.

11/ As far as I know, the Nazi nuclear program never got all that far in practice; the most they came up with was dropping a reactor on the enemy, i.e. no proper bomb. Even so, it was all a near-run thing, no? The Man In The High Castle was never all that far away.