Norwegian saboteurs, who had escaped from their country when the Nazis invaded and overran Norway in 1940 plotted the Telemark Raid with British allies in this London flat in Chiltern Court. Their raids scuttled the Nazi heavy-water program, preventing Adolph Hitler from building the world's first nuclear bomb.
Birger Stromsheim, one of two surviving heroes of that raid, died in 2012. The London Daily mail ran this story about him: (
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"HERO OF THE TELEMARK DIES AGED 101: WWII COMMANDO CARRIED OUT RAID ON NORWEGIAN HYDRO PLANT TO THWART NAZI'S A-BOMB PLANS
Norwegian Birger Stromsheim was one of the last two living survivors of operation Gunnerside
Key member of the six-man team that blew up heavy water facility at the Norsk hydroelectric plant in Norway
The attack effectively ended Germany's chances of developing a nuclear weapon
By DANIEL MILLER
PUBLISHED: 12:48 EST, 10 December 2012
One of the last two survivors of the legendary Second World War 'Heroes of the Telemark' raid, which helped thwart Hitler's plans to build a Nazi nuclear bomb, has died aged 101.
Just 31 at the time, Norwegian Birger Stromsheim was the oldest member of the team who successfully destroyed the heavy water production facility at the Norsk Hydoelectric plant in Telemark, southern Norway.
The raid, which is regarded as one of the most successful acts of sabotage in World War II, was also remarkable for the fact all the team managed to escape by cross country skiing 250 miles into Sweden.
The heavy water, or deuterium oxide, which the Norsk plant produced was essential to the German scientists working on an atomic bomb project and the allies were desperate to destroy it.
But it was no soft target. Perched on an icy ravine, surrounded by machine gun-toting guards and floodlights the plant was virtually impregnable.
An earlier attempt to destroy it had ended in bloody failure when some of gliders carrying the team of 30 Royal Engineers crashed in bad weather.
Those who escaped were captured by the Gestapo, tortured and then executed.
For the second attempt the Special Operations Executive gambled on a small six-man squad, all Norwegian, who would parachute in.
After intensive training using a mocked up model of the basement of the plant painstakingly recreated at the explosives base in Brickendonbury, Hertfordshire the team were ready for action.
They were issued thick nordic-style woollen jumpers and brilliant white camouflage smocks to protect themselves from the elements.
The plan was for them to meet up with four members of the previous mission's advance team who had manged to survive a harsh winter living in an abandoned cabin and eating lichens and moss scraped off rocks.
Mr Stormsheim would play a vital role. An explosives expert, he was known for having a cool head - something that would prove invaluable if things didn't go to plan.
And of course they didn't.
Operation Gunnerside began in ernest on February 17 1943 and got off to a disastrous start when bad weather resulted in the team landing some 18 miles form the planned drop zone.
They were forced to spend five days struggling through fierce snow storms before finally linking up with their compatriots.
By February 27th the team had regrouped and was ready to launch their assault.
The Norsk plant was connected by a bridge stretching over the steep ravine so to avoid the German guards the commandos opted to climb down one side of the ravine, wade across the icy river Maan and scramble up the other side.
They would then follow a railway track that led all the way into the plant, get inside through a door which a plantworker was supposed to leave open, set their charges and escape.
Leaving their radio operator at the top of the ravine in case anything went wrong, the rest of the party struggled for hours through thick snow to make it to the river before beginning the arduous task of climbing up the other side.
Exhausted and soaking wet they eventually scrambled to the top and broke into the grounds of the facility using a pair of bolt cutters.
When they arrived at the basement door which was supposed to have been left open they were devastated to find it still locked.
They split up into two parties Stromsheim and Kasper Idland found a window at the back of the basement and took the risk of smashing their way in.
Meanwhile the other party, led by the 23-year-old commander Joachim Ronneberg, managed to crawl through a cable duct before taking a Norweigan plant worker by suprise.
Ronneberg heard Stromsheim smashing the window as he began to lay charges and when Stromsheim and Idland entered the room they were nearly shot by their own colleagues who had mistaken them for guards.
Stromsheim then placed the remaining charges while Ronneberg set the fuses. Fearing the Germans could discover them at any moment they used 30 second fuses instead to the planned two minute ones.
The team dashed outside the plant as the charges went off with a dull thud. Mercifully the guards were not alert.
The mission had been a stunning success and around 1000lbs of heavy water - so vital to Hitler's dreams of world domination - was washed away.
Now there was just the small matter of escape.
The commandos managed to make it all the down the ravine and back up the other side before the Germans were alerted, but now a chase was on.
Stromsheim and his comrades ploughed on into a snowstorm, using their wooden cross country skis to make the epic 250 mile journey into neutral Sweden.
'They didn’t reckon that they would get out alive,' Mr. Stromsheim’s son, also named Birger, recalled. 'They weren’t sure of that. They were scared in some ways, but there was no panic.'
Back in Britain the the SOE chiefs were delighted at their success - and heralded the mission as the most successful act of sabotage of the Second World War.
The Nazis were forced to relocate their heavy water project and move their remaining supplies of the essential ingredient Potassium Oxide. But the ferry they used to move it was subsequently sunk by a Norweigan resistance.
In his report the mission's commander Joachim Ronneberg described Stromsheim as 'beyond doubt the best member of the party'.
For his part in the mission, Stromsheim was awarded the British Military Medal and the Norweigan St Olav medal, the US medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre.
His escapades were later given the Hollywood treatment in the 1965 film Heroes of the Telemark starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.
Mr Stromsheim and his wife were among the many Norwegians who fled to England when the Nazis occupied their country in 1940.
Although he had never been a soldier he became part of Britain's Special Operations Executive, which had been set up to coordinate resistance in occupied Europe.
Following the assault on Norsk Hydro, Mr. Stromsheim would join Mr. Ronneberg on a series of other missions.
He is survived by a son, a daughter, four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Aase Liv, died in 1997.
Joachim Ronneberg is now the mission's only living survivor aged 93."
This event of everlasting world-wide significance is marked with a small blue plaque on an apartment building in the 200 block of Baker Street in Westminster, directly across from where most tourists are: visiting 221b Baker Street, the home of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.
The blue plaque, erected by the Anglo-Norse Society, reads as follows:
"In this building, S.O.E.'s NORWEGIAN section planned the TELEMARK raid to disrupt development of Nazi atomic weapons, 1942-1944."