Damien Lewis - Hunting the Nazi Bomb: The Special Forces Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Deadliest Weapon

Hunting the Nazi Bomb

Damien Lewis

For Rachel and Tumsifu, with thanks.

In the high ranges of Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama. Tangle with tangle, plot and counter-plot, ruse and treachery, cross and double-cross, true agent, false agent, double agent, gold and steel, the bomb, the dagger and the firing party, were interwoven in many a texture so intricate as to be incredible and yet true.

Winston S. Churchill

They did nothing less than save the world.

Charles Kuralt, CBS News correspondent, on the SOE nuclear saboteurs.

There are sadly few survivors from the Second World War operations depicted in these pages, or of the Norwegian resistance, or of the Linge Company. Throughout the period of the research for, and the writing of, this book I have endeavoured to be in contact with as many as possible, plus surviving family members of those who have passed away. If there are further witnesses to the stories told here who are inclined to come forward, please do get in touch with me, as I may be able to include further recollections on the operations portrayed in this book in future editions.

The time spent by Allied servicemen and women as Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents, Special Duty volunteers, and working with the Resistance was often traumatic and invariably wreathed in layers of secrecy, and many chose to take their stories to their graves. Memories tend to differ and apparently none more so than those concerning operations behind enemy lines. The written accounts that do exist of such missions also vary in their detail and timescale, and locations and chronologies are often contradictory. That being said I have done my best to provide a coherent sense of place, timescale and narrative to the story as depicted in these pages.

Where various accounts of a mission appear to be particularly confused the methodology I have used to reconstruct where, when and how events took place is the most likely scenario. If two or more testimonies or sources point to a particular time or place or sequence of events, I have opted to use that account as most likely. Where necessary I have recreated small passages of dialogue to aid the storys flow.

The above notwithstanding, any mistakes herein are entirely of my own making, and I would be happy to correct any in future editions. Likewise, while I have endeavoured to locate the copyright holders of the photos, sketches and other images and material used in this book, this has not always been straightforward or easy. Again, I would be happy to correct any errors or omissions in future editions.

A strange sequence of eventsserendipitous, perhapsbrought me to the writing of this book.

The first was an enquiry that came from out of the blue. My esteemed researcher, Simon Fowler, himself an expert in all things concerning the Second World War, put a tantalizing query to me, one that typified his unerring instinct for what might pique my curiosity, coupled with his mastery of understatement: I dont know whether this might be of interest?

The correspondence attached pertained to Adolf Hitlers last will and testament. Id never even conceived that he might have made one. What had the Fhrer to bequeath to human kind, other than sixty million deaths and a world convulsed by war, not to mention the advent of a new barbarismthe industrialized mass killing of entire races of peoples?

Yes, I replied, I would be interested in seeing Hitlers will.

It wasnt the easiest of documents to access at first hand, but eventually we succeeded. The two original papers, entitled simply My Political Testament and My Personal Will, can be viewed in a special invigilation room at the National Archives. An odd sense of heightened sensitivity still surrounds those six closely typed pages, which were signed by A. Hitler at 0400 hours on 29 April 1945 in his Berlin bunkertwenty-four hours before he took his own life.

What might one expect from Hitlers will and political testament, written on the very eve of Germanys defeat? A smidgen of remorse? A sense, perhaps, that the war hadnt been a very smart idea? A sense of bitter loss, especially of Germanys status in the world, and of the reputation of the German people? A suggestion, maybe, that Hitler had got it all wrong? A hint of an apology for the abject suffering and evil unleashed by the Nazi regime?

Not a bit of it.

The first few lines give the lie to any such expectations. It is untrue that I or anybody else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was wanted and provoked exclusively by those international statesmen who were of Jewish origin and worked for Jewish interests. The document goes on in such a vein, dripping delusional hatred and resonating with a misguided, almost childish sense of injustice.

Repeatedly, Hitler rails against the Jew, the race which is the real guilty party in this murderous struggle, describing how the Second World War will one day go down in history as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of the struggle for existence of a nation Centuries will go by, but from the ruins of our towns and monuments, hatred of those ultimately responsible will always grow anew. They are the people whom we have to thank for all this: international Jewry and its helpers!

I die with a joyful heart, Hitler declares, in the knowledge of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, of our women at home, the achievements of our peasants and workers and of the contribution, unique in history, of our youth which bears my name. He was referring, of course, to the Hitler Youth, at a time when the German nation was gripped by terrible suffering and lay in ruins.

On the final day of his rule over the Third Reich, the Fhrer urged no surrender. Not ever and not on any terms. His people should not give up the struggle under any circumstances, but carry it on wherever they may be against the enemies of the Fatherland I myself prefer death to cowardly resignation or even to capitulation the surrender of a district or town is out of the question above everything else the commanders must set a shining example of faithful devotion to duty until death.

Those words were penned even as Russian troops advanced to within 500 metres of Hitlers Berlin bunker, and his commanders petitioned to be allowed a last chance to break out, for they would soon be out of ammunition and at the enemys mercy.