The Winter Fortress

by Neal Bascomb

  Three-quarters of the way up the northern wall of Vestfjord, the men were long past exhaustion. Pure will and the fear of capture drove their bodies now. When one of their team fell back, another slowed to urge him on. At times, a gap in the trees gave them a view either of Vemork or of the Krossobanen base station. Mysteriously, floodlights had yet to illuminate the area around the plant, and the funicular station was still dark. The Germans might easily have sent a band of soldiers up in the Krossobanen to cut them off at the top. There would be a bitter fight if it came to that.

  After four hours of climbing, they reached one of the last switchbacks. Avoiding the station at the top, they returned to the woods, an even tougher hike. At last, they were at the top. They celebrated only briefly, then refastened their skis. The wind was beginning to gust in their faces, and the temperature was falling fast. A storm was on the way. They struck out into the open hills of the Vidda. Then, as dawn was breaking, Rønneberg called for a break. The men sat down on the hillside and rested. They ate some chocolate, raisins, and crackers, and gazed quietly across toward Vestfjord Valley. Silvery blue clouds hung overhead, and to the southeast the towering peak of Mount Gausta was framed in red by the rising sun. Unseen, a bird chirped.

  Lingering there, the men thought back on their mission. With the operation behind them, there was a general sense of amazement that they had all come through it alive. And that they now had their lives ahead to consider.

  Helberg prepared to ski back to the cabin in Fjøsbudalen to retrieve his passport and the civilian clothes he had used during his reconnaissance around Rjukan. The others had kept theirs at Fetter, where Helberg planned to join them after they stopped at Lake Langesjå to rest. If there was any trouble, he would meet Poulsson at a café in Oslo in a week’s time. Before there were any farewells, he’d skied away.

  The other men set a course northwest through the Vidda toward Lake Langesjå. At around 7:00 a.m., the storm finally hit, and winds struck with such force that the men could barely stand. Bent over their poles, they fought for every step. At times they were flung backward—almost off their feet. The snow turned brittle and slick in the sudden freeze, making their advance harder still. If there was any advantage to the storm, it was that it would remove all trace of their movements. Hour after hour, the men struggled on, until at last they sighted the cabin on the edge of the lake.

  Inside, they stripped off their rucksacks and collapsed. They stayed awake just long enough to raise a toast to their success with the Upper Ten whiskey they had left behind. There was no need to post a watch. The Nazis would never venture into the Vidda during such a storm. Lying in his bag, waiting for sleep to come, Poulsson felt a curious mix of emotions. He was proud the mission had come off so well. However, for five months he had endured almost nothing but hardship. Now, within a few short hours, it was all over and without an actual fight. He couldn’t help feeling a tinge of disappointment that he had yet to test his mettle against his country’s invaders.

  The men slept for almost eighteen hours straight, the raging wind clamoring through their dreams. In the morning, the storm still blowing, they set off for Fetter, wanting to get deeper into the Vidda. As they made their way, the relentless wind broke hunks of ice and snow from rocks and ridgelines, sending them hurling through the air, pummeling their faces and bodies. So far, the Nazis had been nothing compared to the wrath of the Vidda.

  When his car swept along the road to Vemork, thirty minutes after the reported explosion, SS Second Lieutenant Muggenthaler had failed to see the nine saboteurs hiding behind the bank of snow at the side of the road. Formerly a Munich policeman, Muggenthaler was Fehlis’s right hand in Rjukan, responsible for collecting intelligence and breaking up resistance cells. The sabotage of a key industrial site was a major problem for him.

  As soon as Muggenthaler arrived at the plant, Bjarne Nilssen and Alf Larsen brought him down to the basement of the hydrogen plant. The pumps for the cooling system had been shut off, but the floor was a swimming pool. Larsen informed him that they had lost all the heavy water in the cells and that rebuilding the high-concentration facility would take months.

  Muggenthaler then proceeded out toward the railway line with Nilssen and Sergeant Major Glaase, the head of the German guard, to investigate how the saboteurs had come in and gone out. A severed lock and shears had been found in the snow by the gate, and there were traces of blood along the tracks. Guards were looking for where the saboteurs had gone, but the truth was that they might be moving in any direction now: up the southern wall of the Vestfjord, across toward Rjukan, down the gorge and up the northern wall. It would be dark for hours, and waking soldiers in Rjukan to hunt through the snowbound, wooded hills was sure to be an exercise in futility.

  When they returned to the plant, Muggenthaler began his interrogations. He started with Johansen and the foreman who had encountered the saboteurs. Then he questioned Larsen at length. He kept his gun on the table, toying with it, making clear to the men what they faced if they lied to him. On the surface, the events were clear: three men with heavy weapons, wearing British uniforms but speaking flawless Norwegian, infiltrated the high-concentration plant. They had clear knowledge of the facility. They set the charges with efficiency, and then made their escape without firing a shot. This was not the work of amateurs, a fact made all the more clear when a rucksack of explosives and detonators was found by a patrol.

  Who had helped them? How? And where were the saboteurs now? These were open questions that Muggenthaler needed answered. By the end of the day, he had arrested several Vemork workers, including Johansen and Ingebretsen, who were present during the attack. He had scores of locals brought in to his headquarters in Rjukan’s Grand Hotel for interrogation. The best description he could glean—“three strongly built men who spoke Norwegian”—was essentially useless.

  Nevertheless, house-to-house searches began. Identity cards were checked. Roads and railway stations into and out of the valley were closed. The telephone lines were shut down. Notices were posted on walls and signposts throughout Rjukan, instructing residents to notify officials immediately if they had any knowledge that could lead to the arrest of the perpetrators. There would be “sharp coercive measures” taken if they did not obey.

  Soldiers tracking the saboteurs had discovered a trail down into the gorge, almost a mile from the plant, and another up to the power-line track on the other side, but the storm that continued to blow through the dark, half-frozen valley had erased any further traces. The saboteurs were clearly skilled skiers. If they had retreated up to the Vidda, there was nothing the Germans could do while the current weather conditions prevailed.

  Muggenthaler notified his superiors in Oslo of the sabotage and his investigations. A report was sent to SS headquarters in Berlin, stating, “an installation of importance to the war economy was destroyed” by attackers likely from British intelligence and the Norwegian resistance. The report continued that they had targeted the “most important part of the plant.” While Muggenthaler waited for reinforcements and orders, a list of five key townspeople, including Nilssen, was drawn up and posted throughout Rjukan. Those whose names appeared on it would be shot if there were any further attacks.

  Early the next day, March 1, General von Falkenhorst himself arrived, in spite of the blizzard. It was his men who had been on guard at the plant, and he wanted answers too. He had alerted his superiors in the Wehrmacht about the events, and notified his officers throughout Norway to expect further attacks. Falkenhorst inspected the wreckage of the high-concentration room and remarked that it was “the most splendid coup.” The attackers were clearly military.

  His admiration for their work did not dull his wrath toward those guarding the plant. Even though Larsen and several other Norwegians were present, he berated his men, chiefly Sergeant Major Glaase and Captain Nestler. “When you have a chest of jewels, you don’t walk around it. You plant yourself on the lid with a weapon in your hand!” Then he walked along t
he icy path to where the saboteurs had entered through the railway gate. Turning to Glaase and his men, all of them wrapped in heavy fur coats, caps drawn tightly over their heads to ward off the cold, he barked, “You lot look like Father Christmas. How can you see or hear saboteurs with all those clothes on?”

  Glaase tried to defend himself, saying that they had completed laying land mines around the penstocks but had not yet finished doing so around the railway line.

  “Why have you not finished it?” Falkenhorst demanded.

  “We haven’t enough men to do these jobs.”

  “Men? You know in Russia they use women for that sort of work?”

  Glaase tried to list the plant’s many defenses: The barbed-wire fences. The double guard on the bridge. The machine-gun nest. The floodlights.

  “Then put them on,” Falkenhorst ordered.

  Glaase sent a guard to switch on the lights. Several minutes passed. The lights stayed off. Falkenhorst stamped his feet impatiently. Glaase sent off one of the plant’s workers to see what was wrong. The guard had been unable to find the switch.

  Falkenhorst left Vemork in a rage. He ordered Glaase and some of his guards be removed to the Russian front and instigated a range of new security measures. In Rjukan, he ordered the release of most of those who had been arrested and warned that there must be no reprisals against the local population. The sabotage of Vemork had been a military operation, and revenge killings would not change that fact. A manhunt for the saboteurs and anyone who had aided them would be launched, and SS Lieutenant Colonel Fehlis was in charge of its execution. As for the plant, whether it would be razed to the ground or reconstructed was for the German scientists who needed the materials produced in Vemork to decide.

  At Kingston House that same day, having returned from Oxford on the early-morning train, Leif Tronstad was passed a note from the BBC Monitoring Service. They had missed the first part of the Swedish radio broadcast, but what they did transcribe provided enough information to spark celebration throughout the office: “. . . perpetrated against Norsk Hydro installations. The damages are said to have been extensive, but at one point where the attack was made the destruction is said to be complete. The attack was performed by three Norwegian-speaking soldiers in British uniforms who are now being searched for.”

  The Nazi atomic program had been delivered an assured blow, and Tronstad was eager to know more.

  It was turning out to be a banner day. A wireless message transmitted to London reported that Odd Starheim and his team had captured the seven-hundred-ton coastal steamer Tromøsund and were making for Aberdeen. The Royal Navy had dispatched destroyers to escort Tromøsund, and a pair of long-range RAF fighters was also en route to intercept any German planes that might attempt to thwart their escape. Now all that Tronstad wanted was for the Vemork saboteurs and the Carhampton commandos to make it back to safety.

  Through the blur of snow and biting winds, Poulsson led his team across the Vidda to Fetter. They had to turn back earlier in the day during the storm, but as soon as it eased, out they went again. When they arrived at the cabin, the winds strengthened again. There they stayed for thirty-six hours. Helberg did not arrive, and even though Poulsson always said there was no better man in getting out of trouble, worry crept in that he had either got caught out in the blizzard or been captured.

  When the weather cleared, the eight men departed for Lake Skrykken in the north. As previously arranged, Rønneberg left a message for Haugland hidden in a hut along the way, to pick up and send to London: “High-concentration plant totally destroyed. All present. No fighting.”

  At Jansbu, the cabin where Gunnerside had spent its first nights in Norway, the team got ready to split up, portioning out food, weapons, ammunition, clothes, and other supplies. All of Gunnerside, apart from Haukelid, were setting off on the ten-day trek to the Swedish border. Haukelid and Kjelstrup were off to the southwest to organize resistance cells. Poulsson was heading east, to Oslo, in the hope that Helberg would meet him there.

  The next day, March 4, the Gunnerside five departed first. They continued to wear their British uniforms under their white camouflage suits, in case they were caught. In parting, the men shook hands and wished one another luck. Before Rønneberg turned to go, Haukelid said, “Give our best regards to Colonel Wilson and Tronstad. Tell them we shall manage whatever happens.” Any doubts Rønneberg had about Haukelid’s suitability for second in command had long since been dispelled. Together, the two had orchestrated a flawless operation.

  Wearing civilian clothes and carrying only a few supplies in his rucksack, Poulsson was next to leave. He grabbed Haukelid’s hand and wished him well. Then he moved to Kjelstrup. They had spent months together through the worst hardship and danger. “Remember the day you carried those heavy batteries through miles of fog and snow?” Poulsson said, choked with emotion. “You looked just like a snowman when you got back.”

  “I felt like one,” Kjelstrup said.

  “Well, Arne,” Poulsson said finally. “Goodbye and good luck. If we don’t meet sooner, we’ll meet after the war.” Skis fastened, he started away.

  Haukelid and Kjelstrup watched him disappear into the distant white of the countryside. They felt very much alone themselves and worried that Poulsson was even more so.

  After thirty miles of skiing, a night in a cold hut, and spare rations, all Poulsson wanted was a good sleep in a soft bed. The welcoming lights outside a small roadside inn were too much to resist. Nobody had seen him during the Vemork operation who might provide a description, and he had a fake passport—it was in the name of Jens Dale. A hot meal alone was worth the risk, he decided.

  He went in. The fireplace crackled with flames, and the smell of fish and potatoes wafted out from the direction of the kitchen, comforts that softened the reticence he felt when he saw the Quisling newspaper, Fritt Folk, open on the reception counter.

  “On holiday?” the innkeeper asked.

  “That’s right. Good skiing,” Poulsson replied. There appeared to be few guests. After dinner, he retired to a room on the second floor. He took a bath, washed out some of his clothes, and relaxed on the bed, half-dressed. Months on the Vidda made the simple room a luxurious experience. Then he heard voices downstairs. Easing open the door, he made out two men asking who was staying there. Then footsteps, fast and heavy, coming up the stairs. Poulsson shut the door, threw on pants and a shirt, and considered leaping from the window. There was a sharp rapping on his door. Sticking his pistol in his right pocket, he opened it. A police sergeant with big teeth and a face that seemed to retreat into itself entered the room, followed by a burly, younger man—his deputy. The sergeant asked Poulsson for his identification, while the deputy took a hard look around the room. Poulsson followed his eyes, from his clothes hanging out to dry to his rucksack half-open on the floor. Unwisely, it contained Kreyberg rations, printed maps, chocolate, and English cigarettes. While the sergeant checked his passport, Poulsson sat on the edge of the bed, his hand gripping the pistol in his pocket. If either officer moved to inspect his bag, he would shoot them both.

  The deputy stepped toward the worn sleeping bag on the floor, and commented on its high quality. Stitched on the inside was an English label, but he did not examine it that closely. “What are you looking for?” Poulsson asked, his palms beginning to sweat.

  “Something happened in Vemork. Saboteurs attacked the hydro plant,” the sergeant said, passing back Poulsson’s passport. He explained that the Germans wanted any strangers in the area inspected.

  “Hope you have luck finding those men,” Poulsson said.

  “No,” the sergeant said. “I think they’re armed . . . I’d rather not meet them.” The two policemen apologized for the disturbance and closed the door behind them. Poulsson let go of his gun and eased his hand from his pocket.

  Leaving the inn now would only raise suspicions. Instead, he got dressed, packed his bag, and slept under the feather-filled comforter, his pistol close at hand. />
  The wireless radio set and the Eureka device on his back, Einar Skinnarland was headed for Skårbu, a cabin some fifteen miles northwest of Fetter. He needed to rest. On each of the past three days, he had skied roughly a marathon back and forth across the Vidda, bringing food, equipment, and weapons over to the cabin, which would serve as a temporary base for him and Haugland. There was still no word from Gunnerside about the operation. Haugland had gone to check the prearranged dead drop, but if this day, March 6, was like the previous ones, there would be no note.

  Approaching Skårbu across a frozen lake, Skinnarland spotted a pair of tracks in the snow. As he neared the cabin, he saw skis leaning against the wall. Then, out through the door came Kjelstrup and another man, a stranger. He was introduced to Knut Haukelid—and given the good news about Vemork. Almost a year had passed since Skinnarland started his double life, spying on the plant. Almost a year since he had brought so much hardship on his family and the friends who had helped him. Finally, the sabotage was done. He quietly celebrated the moment; the sacrifices had not been in vain.

  Inside the cabin, Skinnarland brewed some coffee. Haukelid and Kjelstrup recounted the night of the operation, after which the conversation turned to what lay ahead. All three were dedicated to remaining in Norway to foster the resistance.