Gladiators of WW II (8/13) : Norwegian Resistance Fighters
For educational purposes
Norway was strategically important to Hitler and endured five years of Nazi occupation,
but it developed one of the most effective resistance movements in the whole of Occupied Europe.
Its activities helped the British to contain and then destroy Germany's mightiest warships, as well as to ensure that the Allies won the race to develop the atomic bomb.
Norway was strategically important to Hitler and endured five years of Nazi occupation,
but it developed one of the most effective resistance movements in the whole of Occupied Europe.
Its activities helped the British to contain and then destroy Germany's mightiest warships, as well as to ensure that the Allies won the race to develop the atomic bomb.
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LearningTranscript
00:30For
00:57five years during World War II, Norway endured occupation by the Nazis. And throughout the
01:06war, resistance by relatively small numbers of brave men and women, operating in the bleak
01:11and mountainous countryside, tied down more than 350,000 German troops.
01:28Theirs was a war of small actions and narrow escapes. The threat of capture, torture and
01:34death was constant. Many acts of heroism went unreported, while the Germans were kept under
01:44constant surveillance and threat of attack. On at least one occasion, their sabotage operations
01:52could be said to have changed the course of history, by destroying a vital ingredient
01:56for the development of a Nazi atomic bomb. Right to the end, Hitler remained convinced
02:02that the Allies would invade Norway, and he never allowed the troops there to be moved
02:06to battlefronts where they were desperately needed. The gladiators of the Norwegian resistance
02:14played a little-known but nonetheless vital part in ensuring Allied victory. At the beginning
02:31of World War II, Norway declared her neutrality. But her geographical position meant that she
02:37was in an awkward political situation. Well before the war, the Germans had been using
02:44the northern Norwegian port of Narvik to bring out vital iron ore from northern Sweden. When
02:51the Soviet Union attacked Finland in November 1939, Norway's position became even more precarious.
02:57For the Finns fought off the initial Soviet attacks, and Britain and France wanted to
03:02send support to help them against a country then allied to Nazi Germany. They planned
03:07to use Narvik for this, but on the 13th of March 1940, just as the Allies finalized their
03:13plans, the Finns surrendered. The excuse for British and French intervention had gone,
03:22but in the meantime the Germans had also been plotting. In October 1939, Grand Admiral Erich
03:30Raeder, head of the German navy, had proposed to Hitler that bases be seized in Norway to
03:36help in the naval war against Britain. At the end of January 1940, Hitler was finally
03:45convinced and took personal charge of planning the invasion of Norway. The Germans struck
03:52at both Norway and Denmark on the 9th of April. They made seaborne landings at most
04:03of Norway's major ports, while paratroops seized the airfield at Stavanger. Within hours,
04:13German troops were in control of Oslo, and King Haakon VII and his government had been
04:18forced to flee northwards. The Allies countered with landings in the north, aiming to drive
04:29the Germans out of Narvik and to seize ports further south. They wanted to help the Norwegian
04:38troops trying to hold up the German advance, but the Luftwaffe proved decisive, and the
04:43Allies were forced to fall back. By early May, the only Allied forces left in Norway
04:57were those which had driven the Germans out of Narvik. And these were also withdrawn when
05:05the German blitzkrieg overwhelmed France. King Haakon and his government left with them
05:19and set up a Norwegian government in exile. His broadcast to his occupied country helped
05:27to show that all was not lost. While the Germans installed a Reichskommissar and a puppet Norwegian
05:39government under Vidkun Quisling, who had formed the neo-Nazi National Unity Party before
05:44the war. A large German garrison was deployed, but
05:52in contrast to those in many other occupied countries, its behavior was less harsh. Nevertheless,
06:08resistance in Norway soon began, with the king's name forming a symbol of defiance.
06:16At first, it was small local groups, but grew steadily into a nationwide organization, Milorg.
06:24Its leaders decided to prepare to support an eventual Allied invasion, but that any
06:29premature sabotage would put the population at too much risk.
06:37Other Norwegians were determined to get away and take a more active part in the war.
06:46Many, like Lars Ronneberg, escaped by small boat across the North Sea to Britain.
06:54When I left Norway in March 1941, I went by a fishing boat. It was a boat of about 50
07:01feet, ordinary fishing vessel. And I went together with six, seven other Norwegians.
07:09And our area was pretty easy to leave, because it was not what the Germans called prohibited
07:20area.
07:21After landing and being screened to ensure that they weren't spies, many joined the conventional
07:26free Norwegian forces.
07:34But others were recruited as agents by less conventional British organizations like SOE,
07:43the Special Operations Executive, or the Secret Intelligence Service, SIS. Their instructors,
07:50such as Colonel Charles Hampton, found them enthusiastic, but not always very careful.
07:55The security, which was one of the main things we had to teach Norwegians, because they were
08:01a little naive when they came first. And, you know, they rather took the line when you
08:06chased them on an exercise, and you surprised them. Of course, we wouldn't do that in Norway.
08:12This is the very thing we said, well, you've got to do it here. I mean, so you don't do
08:16it in Norway.
08:18Nevertheless, on the 5th of September, 1940, the fishing boat set off back to Norway from
08:24Scotland. On board were four Norwegian radio operators who had been trained by the SIS.
08:31Their aim was to set up radio stations in Trondheim and Oslo to send intelligence back
08:37to Britain.
08:40The radio spies' first attempts to establish contact with Britain failed, but soon stations
08:45Skylark B in Trondheim began to send back a steady stream of information. Within a few
08:51months, this enabled the Royal Navy to win a vital victory.
08:57The relative ease with which fishing boats could slip to and from the long coastline
09:03of Nazi-occupied Norway meant that the route soon became known as the Shetland Bus. It
09:09operated in all weathers for the next five years, with trips virtually every week.
09:18None of the agents sent in, like Olaf Reed Olsen, had any illusions about the risks they
09:24were running.
09:25The other guys, wouldn't they have the same wish that if anyone was hurt, we should shoot
09:32him? Just think what would happen to anyone of us being caught.
09:42Steadily, the number of ports under constant observation increased.
09:55The timing of convoys was passed back to the Royal Air Force. Visits were then arranged.
10:26The radio spy's first major coup came on 22 May 1941, when they reported the arrival
10:33of three German destroyers at Trondheim. This was a crucial message for the British Admiralty.
10:42It knew that the German battleship Bismarck, accompanied by the cruiser Prinz Eugen and
10:47a destroyer escort, had entered the North Sea from the Baltic.
10:53And air reconnaissance had shown that they had put into the Norwegian port of Bergen.
11:01But poor weather meant that the British could not tell whether the ships had left again.
11:07The radio spy's message confirmed that Bismarck had left her escorts and was heading for Trondheim.
11:14The home fleet was deployed, and five days later, Germany's most powerful warship was
11:21brought to bay and sunk.
11:44In March 1941, British commandos mounted a highly successful raid on the Lofoten Islands.
11:52The German response was to destroy houses and arrest a number of prominent local people.
12:00Seventy were sent to a concentration camp in Norway, and Milorg made clear that it considered
12:05this too high a price to pay for the success of the raid.
12:10The Norwegian government in exile was also angry at not having been informed of the raid beforehand.
12:17But it was wary of giving Milorg total support for fear that it intended to set up an alternative
12:22government in Norway after the war.
12:27Aware of growing resistance, German restrictions increased.
12:33And in July, a state of emergency was declared by the Reichskommissar.
12:40The following month, the Germans confiscated all radios in the country.
12:48Milorg responded by producing underground newspapers based on BBC World Service broadcasts to Norway.
12:56During the autumn, an agreement was reached bringing Milorg under government control as part of the armed forces.
13:10The military importance of Norway was radically increased in June 1941,
13:15when Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union.
13:19Within weeks, the first convoys had sailed from Britain to take military assistance to its new ally.
13:29And German air and naval attacks on this vital lifeline built up steadily.
13:40The general feeling of crisis was kept on the boil at the end of 1941
13:45by further major British commando raids on the Lofoten Islands and the port of Varksen.
14:00Winston Churchill was keen to follow up with an invasion of Norway.
14:04Although the British chiefs of staff managed to dissuade the Prime Minister,
14:07Adolf Hitler had also decided that Norway would be a vital theatre of war.
14:16The garrison was steadily built up until more than 350,000 German troops were stationed in the country.
14:26Milorg increased its sabotage operations to keep them occupied.
14:31But for most of the Germans, Norway was a comfortable posting,
14:35well away from the horrors of the war against the Soviet Union.
14:47For the Norwegian resistance, one of the most important tasks was to defend the island.
14:52For the Norwegian resistance, one of the most important developments came in early 1942,
14:57when Hitler ordered the major surviving units of his surface fleet to northern Norway.
15:06The battleship Tirpitz, Bismarck's sister, led the deployment,
15:10and the threat she posed to the Russian convoys became a major concern for British planners.
15:15Monitoring the whereabouts of the German fleet in the distant and isolated fjords
15:19became the main task of the Norwegian radio spies.
15:24Their surveillance activities were expanded,
15:26with radio stations along the length of Norway's 2,000-mile coastline.
15:35The activity of the Norwegian radio spies,
15:37which had been a major source of information for the British,
15:42the activity of the Shetland bus increased,
15:46and men such as Bjorn Roholt often had to take appalling risks to get into restricted areas.
15:52Getting a radio transmitter installed at the German-held Agnes Fortes, of course, was a bit of a headache.
15:59But it was solved in this way, that I was fitted out as an insurance salesman
16:06with the false papers, which the only correct thing about it was it said agent on it,
16:11and I simply took the coastal steamer out to the Agnes Fortes,
16:17and walked off the steamer and straight up to the commandant's office,
16:21and I explained to him that I had arrived that morning from Oslo on a night train,
16:27and I simply did not have time to get the special papers which were necessary to be permitted to enter the fortress,
16:34and here are my credentials, and would he please give his personal permission for me to go around and see my Norwegian clients.
16:45And he jokingly asked me if I wanted to make an insurance policy for him,
16:51and I told him that no, as a matter of principle, we never take risks on German naval officers,
16:57and he thought this was a huge joke, and he gave me his permission.
17:01We then parted, and I went to see the very brave man, Magne Hassel, who had promised to operate the transmitter.
17:10For almost three years, the German ships were tracked as they moved from hiding place to hiding place.
17:22Meanwhile, there was a major crackdown on Millauk by the Gestapo and Advern.
17:28Informers were successfully infiltrated, and by mid-1942, Millauk had virtually ceased to exist in southern Norway.
17:36German countermeasures and searches threatened the radio spies as well.
17:46Olaf Ried Olsen and his team had a lucky escape.
17:50Only hours after this photograph was taken, they found themselves fleeing for their lives.
17:56All around the district, they've circled the whole thing with close to 600 men,
18:03and we ran then from one machine gun post into another one.
18:16Machine gun posts into another one, constantly.
18:21And, of course, they started firing like mad, and then we had these running patrols after us.
18:27And if we hadn't had the physical condition that we did have, of course, we'd never make it.
18:33As I always said to the boys, that we are the boss.
18:37No Germans can outwit us when it comes to the woods.
18:43While the Germans and the police cars were running all the time up and down the valley,
18:49we took the ordinary bus in to town.
18:54Went through two controls, had our papers, nobody said a word.
19:00So, by doing what they didn't think we would do, certainly saved us that time.
19:11In a desperate attempt to destroy the Gestapo's records,
19:15RAF Mosquitoes made a daring low-level attack on its headquarters in Oslo on the 25th of September, 1942.
19:22One bomb struck home, but failed to explode.
19:28While the resistance war was hotting up,
19:32Allied intelligence had become aware of another threat.
19:38One which had the potential to win the war for Hitler.
19:49Deep in the bleak Telemark region, 70 miles west of Oslo,
19:54was the town of Ryukan.
19:59Disturbing reports were being received that the hydroelectric plant at nearby Vermork
20:05was playing a crucial role in Germany's race to develop an atomic bomb.
20:11As a by-product, the plant produced heavy water, deuterium oxide,
20:17a vital element to control nuclear weapons.
20:21Without this, German research would grind to a halt,
20:24and spies reported that the Norsk Hydrofactory had been ordered to step up production urgently.
20:36The information landed on the desk of Lieutenant Commander Erich Welsch,
20:40who was in charge of the Norwegian section of British intelligence.
20:45It was decided that the situation must be assessed,
20:48and that the first step was to get someone into the factory
20:51who had a knowledge of the plant and the technical background
20:54to monitor exactly what was happening.
21:03The ideal man was soon found.
21:06Einar Skinner, the head of the Norsk Hydrofactory,
21:11The ideal man was soon found.
21:14Einar Skinnerland had recently escaped to Britain.
21:18He came from the Ryukan area and was a hydroelectric technician.
21:22He was also an expert skier and amateur radio operator.
21:29After hurried briefings, Skinnerland was dropped back into Norway
21:33on the night of 29 March 1942.
21:38He managed to get a job with a construction team at the Norsk Hydroplant,
21:43and his report soon made it clear that the production of heavy water must be disrupted.
21:51British intelligence was instructed to do so.
21:54A four-man team was chosen from Norwegian volunteers,
21:58among them Jens Anton Poulsen, who later became a general in the Norwegian army.
22:03We were called into Colonel Wilson's office, I remember,
22:08and he gave us the outline of the operation and so on.
22:13But the thing I remember is that he told us that if the Trumans got hold of the heavy water,
22:19he didn't know what they were using it for,
22:22but if they got hold of it, they would be able to blow up the whole of London.
22:28The team, codenamed the Swallows,
22:31was infiltrated by parachute into the Telemark area in October 1942.
22:37They would guide the main group of paratroop engineers, who would arrive by glider.
22:44Once the team reached Ryukan, they contacted Skinnerland,
22:48who warned them that the Germans had recently reinforced the guard at the plant.
22:53The Swallows informed London of this, but the glider operation went ahead.
23:06Two gliders, each with 17 engineers,
23:09took off from Wick Airfield in the extreme north of Scotland on 19 November 1942.
23:17Operation Freshman was a disaster.
23:25Both gliders crashed and the survivors were shot by the Germans after a brief interrogation.
23:34It was not until after the war that their bodies were exhumed
23:37and the full details of the mass murder were revealed.
23:47The four Swallows, isolated and short of food, went to ground.
23:51They must survive through the bitter winter until another attempt could be made on the plant.
24:02On the bleak Hardanger Plateau in Telemark,
24:05the four-man team managed to avoid detection throughout the winter.
24:17Klaus Hellberg remembers the extremes they were reduced to.
24:21We had much food left, so we were anxious.
24:27I remember we started digging into the snow to get moss.
24:33The Swedish Air Force
24:43SOE now took over planning for another attempt to sabotage the Norse hydro plant.
24:48It would be codenamed Operation Gunnerside.
24:53Lieutenant Joachim Ronneberg,
24:55one of the Norwegian section's most experienced officers, was chosen to lead it.
24:59And then I was told that we were going to Vemork to blow up this heavy water factory.
25:05And we were also told about the trial which had been done already by British commanders with the two gliders.
25:15And we were told about the little group of Norwegians who had been back in Norway as a reception committee.
25:23Ronneberg selected five expert skiers,
25:26and they trained in Scotland, using a mock-up of the plot.
25:35On the 23rd of January, 1943,
25:38the new team took off by bomber to be dropped on the Hardanger Plateau,
25:42where the swallows were waiting for them.
25:45The first attempt failed,
25:47because the bomber crew could not spot the lights of the reception party.
25:50Ronneberg and his men had to wait for the next full moon to try again.
25:57This time, on the 16th of February, the drop went well.
26:03But high winds took them away from the landing zone,
26:06and it took several anxious hours to locate the swallows.
26:14I'll never forget that meeting.
26:16Oh, yeah, marvelous.
26:19I heard someone shouting,
26:22Hallo.
26:24And that was one of the men.
26:26And we were, of course, very, very happy.
26:31And then we saw the others.
26:33They had been hiding.
26:43The Norse hydro plant stood on the side of a precipitous gorge.
26:47The only approach across this was a bridge,
26:50but this was closely guarded,
26:52as were the slopes above the factory.
26:57However, the Germans seemed to think that the gorge was impassable.
27:02Klaus Hellberg went to investigate.
27:05I found a way down to the gorge,
27:08rather steep, but not too difficult.
27:10I crossed the river, and up on the other side.
27:13It wasn't so difficult.
27:15We could get down in daylight.
27:18It would, of course, be a little more difficult in the nighttime.
27:24He then returned to the hut and explained the two possibilities.
27:28We voted about it,
27:31and I think five or six were for the gorge,
27:38and the others for the bridge.
27:41The two officers, they were for the bridge.
27:45But we decided to use the gorge.
27:50It started about eight o'clock in the evening.
27:53It was dark.
27:56We crossed the gorge with weapons and demolitions.
28:01Shortly after midnight, they approached the perimeter fence of the plant.
28:08To their amazement, they spotted no sentries
28:11and were able to cut the single chain and padlock without difficulty.
28:16Although they could hear voices from a guardhouse,
28:19they reached the heavy-water production plant unseen and broke in.
28:26The charges were laid.
28:29The guardsmen were forced to retreat.
28:33The guardsmen were forced to retreat.
28:37The guardsmen were forced to retreat.
28:41The guardsmen were forced to retreat.
28:45The guardsmen were forced to retreat.
28:56Two-minute fuses were then lit,
29:06and the saboteurs slipped out into the darkness, still undetected.
29:11The heavy-water cells and storage tanks were totally destroyed.
29:21And even General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst,
29:24the German military commander in Norway,
29:27had to admit that it was the most spectacular coup he had ever heard of.
29:35Thousands of his men scoured the area,
29:38but most of the sabotage team got away to Sweden.
29:41None were caught, even though sometimes it was a close-run thing.
29:52The remainder, including Klaus Hellberg,
29:55stayed behind to plan further raids.
30:01A few weeks later, as he approached one of the supposedly safe houses,
30:05he momentarily let down his guard.
30:35I saw Germans.
30:41The Germans had discovered this particularity.
30:48I ran as fast as I possibly could into my skis and ran off.
30:54And then the Germans started shooting.
30:57Shouting and shooting.
30:59I thought, this is the end.
31:06Two men managed to keep up and chased me.
31:14After a while, there was only one.
31:18The only thing I thought was, you have to be faster, even faster, to get away.
31:27When I was skiing uphill, I was faster.
31:30When skiing downhill, he was faster.
31:33When skiing downhill, he was faster.
31:40In the long downhill, he was quite close to me.
31:58I took my pistol round.
32:00Shot. Two shots.
32:02He didn't hit.
32:04And he started shooting at me.
32:06He didn't hit me.
32:08And when he had no more shots,
32:11he turned as quickly as he could.
32:14I sent him two shots.
32:17Here and away.
32:19And I had escaped.
32:22Operation Gunnerside was an enormous boost to Norwegian morale.
32:26But within three months, the Germans had repaired the plant
32:29and production of heavy water began again.
32:34In November, the US 8th Air Force bombed the plant.
32:41It was not hit, although the town of Ryukan was damaged.
32:45But the attack persuaded the Germans
32:47that heavy water production at Norsk Hydro should be abandoned
32:50and the remaining stocks shipped back to Germany.
32:54London was told of this by Einar Skinnerland,
32:57and it was decided that the stocks must not be allowed to reach the Reich.
33:03Knut Haukelid, one of the Norsk Hydro team,
33:06who had stayed behind, was chosen to carry out the operation.
33:12Because of the danger of civilian casualties,
33:15his instructions came from the highest level.
33:18And it ended up with a very difficult operation.
33:22It ended up with a definite order to do it.
33:26I know for certain that it was taken up in a Norwegian cabinet meeting.
33:33And the order was to sink it at any cost.
33:39The only way the Germans could get the heavy water from the plant was by railway.
33:43But the train was too heavily guarded
33:45to make an attack on it feasible during its journey.
33:53The railway wagons were then parked
33:55to be loaded on a ferry the next morning to take them across Lake Tynsja.
34:02That evening, the wagons were closely watched by German troops.
34:13But they had forgotten to guard the ferry,
34:15and Haukelid seized his opportunity.
34:19We just walked aboard the ferry in the middle of the night,
34:23got around the Norwegian watchman who was there,
34:26and went down into the bilges
34:28and laid a delayed charge which would sink the ferry.
34:36Next day, 20 February 1944,
34:38the heavy water wagons were shunted on board.
34:49The ferry set sail.
34:55And as it approached the deepest part of the lake...
35:04The ferry sank within five minutes,
35:06taking all the heavy water wagons with it.
35:10It was the end of Hitler's dream of building an atomic bomb.
35:17Throughout the operations against Hitler's atomic plans,
35:20the radio spies continued to monitor the movements
35:23of German warships in Norwegian waters.
35:28The battleship Tirpitz remained there,
35:30and the German radio spies continued to monitor the movements
35:33of German warships in Norwegian waters.
35:37The battleship Tirpitz remained their major target.
35:44And during 1942, the RAF made a number of bombing attacks on the ship.
35:48None was successful in damaging it.
35:57That autumn, Tirpitz was based in a fjord near Trondheim.
36:02The Royal Navy now came up with an ingenious plan
36:05to attack her using their new chariots,
36:08torpedoes with a two-man crew and a removable warhead.
36:15To get the chariots close enough to their target,
36:18they would be transported by one of the fishing boats
36:21of the Shetland bus, the Arthur.
36:24In command was one of the Norwegian Navy's most experienced skippers,
36:28Leif Larsen.
36:33The Arthur set out from the Shetlands in October
36:36with two chariots lashed to the deck
36:39and their Royal Navy crews hidden below.
36:46Before reaching the entrance to Trondheim fjord,
36:49the chariots were lowered into the sea and towed below the Arthur.
36:54As they proceeded up the 75-mile fjord,
36:57a German patrol boat stopped and searched Larsen's vessel.
37:02His forged papers passed scrutiny
37:05and the Arthur continued towards Trondheim.
37:12But when they were less than 10 miles from their target,
37:15the Arthur was hit by a sudden squall.
37:18The chariots broke their tow,
37:20and were lost.
37:22All Larsen could do was scuttle his boat
37:25and set off by foot for Sweden.
37:30All but one of the party eventually made it back to Britain.
37:35Undaunted, the radio spies continued to report on the Tirpitz
37:39and the other German warships in Norwegian waters.
37:45And using their information,
37:47another attempt to cripple the Tirpitz was made in autumn 1943.
37:51This time, it was an attack on a ship
37:54that had already been sunk.
37:57And using their information,
37:59another attempt to cripple the Tirpitz was made in autumn 1943.
38:03This time, using midget submarines called X-Craft.
38:13These succeeded in damaging her,
38:15and the radio spies told London
38:17that she would be out of commission for six months.
38:21A few weeks later, their efforts were again rewarded.
38:24On Christmas Day 1943,
38:26the battle cruiser Scharnhorst sailed from Altenfjord,
38:30and a signal from the radio spies alerted the British Home Fleet.
38:40Scharnhorst was cornered
38:42while trying to attack a convoy off the North Cape,
38:45and sunk.
38:48Despite the disastrous sinking of the Scharnhorst,
38:511944 opened well for the large German garrison in Norway.
38:56Conditions were relaxed,
38:58a far cry from the appalling defeats
39:00the Reich had suffered in Russia and the Mediterranean.
39:04But their Fuhrer remained convinced
39:06that Norway would be an Allied invasion target.
39:09And as the date for their landing in France drew nearer,
39:12the Allies were determined to strike.
39:14As part of Operation Fortitude,
39:16the elaborate deception plan
39:18to keep the Germans guessing about D-Day,
39:20radio trucks toured the Scottish highlands
39:22broadcasting the radio traffic
39:24of a fictitious army preparing to land in Norway.
39:28The German garrison remained at full strength,
39:31even as the Allied troops boarded their landing craft for Normandy.
39:35As they did so, the Norwegian radio spies
39:38were given a new and urgent job,
39:40for the Allied landing was being threatened
39:42by storms sweeping in from the Atlantic.
39:46Information about the weather patterns in Norway
39:48was urgently needed to predict whether D-Day could go ahead.
39:54The German radio spies were given a new and urgent job,
39:57for the Allied landing was being threatened
39:59by storms sweeping in from the Atlantic.
40:02Information about the weather patterns in Norway
40:04was urgently needed to predict whether D-Day could go ahead.
40:09By now, Olaf Reed Olsen was a much-wanted man,
40:12with many aliases and a substantial price on his head.
40:22But he was still in the field,
40:24and had even managed to plug his secret transmitter
40:27into part of the national electric grid.
40:32We had a message saying that
40:35please send weather reports every hour.
40:39Well, it started every second hour, and then every hour.
40:49This was done.
40:51The radio spies found it a tedious task.
40:57But the reason why the information was so important
41:00but the reason why the information was so desperately needed
41:03soon became clear.
41:06The weather report was a pain in the neck.
41:09Anyway, we were sitting and listening to the news,
41:12and then suddenly we heard the invasion was on.
41:16The radio spies had played a vital part
41:19in building up the picture of a brief lull between the unseasonal storms,
41:23which enabled General Eisenhower to give the go-ahead for the D-Day landings
41:27after a nail-biting 24-hour delay.
41:31So we were very proud to have sent weather reports.
41:40As the Allied troops built up their bridgehead in Normandy
41:43and began to drive the Germans back,
41:45the pressure was kept up in Norway
41:47to prevent any of the garrison from being moved south.
41:58The air attacks on coastal convoys increased.
42:11And the Norwegian motor torpedo boat flotilla
42:14based at Lerwick in the Shetlands
42:16began to use more aggressive tactics.
42:20The crews made frequent crossings of the North Sea.
42:27On reaching Norway, they would hide up in a fjord.
42:33The crews became expert at camouflaging their boats.
42:39Local resistance men told them of shipping movements
42:42and provided other information about enemy ships.
42:46Attacks from these hidden bases added to the pressure on the Germans.
43:01But Tirpitz remained in being,
43:03and the radio spies monitored the series of carrier-borne air attacks
43:07on the German coast.
43:09But Tirpitz remained in being,
43:11and the radio spies monitored the series of carrier-borne air attacks
43:15made on her during the spring and summer of 1944.
43:31They were able to tell London
43:33that even though the Fleet Air Arm planes scored hits,
43:36they were not sufficient to knock out the German battleship.
43:57Finally, in November 1944,
43:59Tirpitz was struck by RAF Lancaster bombers
44:02using 12,000-pound Torboy bombs.
44:07She rolled over and sank.
44:25A threat that had obsessed the Royal Navy for almost three years was ended.
44:29The destruction of the beast, as Churchill called Tirpitz,
44:33could not have been achieved without the intelligence
44:36provided by the Norwegian radio spies.
44:45But all the while, the Norwegians were only too aware
44:48that the Allied strategy was a direct advance into Germany
44:51across northwest Europe.
44:53The Nazi forces in Norway would be left to wither on the vine.
44:56There would be no direct help for the resistance
44:59until German forces elsewhere surrendered.
45:04Belorg increased its sabotage campaign.
45:07One of their more imaginative projects
45:09was to contaminate fish bound for Germany.
45:21Nevertheless, the war did come closer to Norway in the autumn of 1944,
45:26when German forces in Finland began to withdraw
45:29through the far north of Norway,
45:31hotly pursued by the Russians.
45:34As the Germans withdrew, they laid waste to the area.
45:44A force of 350 Norwegians was sent from Britain
45:47to join the Russians and ensure that the inhabitants
45:50of the liberated area were not maltreated.
45:54With the end of the fighting in Europe in May 1945,
45:58Belorg's moment finally came.
46:00Its 60,000 members took the surrender of the German garrison,
46:04now swollen to 365,000 men.
46:07A single Norwegian in civilian clothes and wearing an armband
46:11took the surrender of the German garrison of Oslo.
46:14And British airborne forces were quickly deployed to Norway
46:18to help the Germans.
46:23They had disarmed the Germans.
46:35They were greeted by ecstatic cries.
46:40It had been a hard and frustrating five years.
46:46Much of the work of the resistance in Norway
46:49had been a secret and unglamorous war of the shadows.
46:53But the intelligence provided by the radio spies
46:56and the efforts of the Norwegian special forces
46:59and the gallant men and women of Milorg
47:01ensured that Norway played a substantial part
47:04in the ultimate Allied victory.