![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nwhikerBook review and rec: The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb by Neal Bascomb.
It's such a good book.
Yes, I had heard the story before and mostly knew the outcome, though not the general details.
The book? Has all those details, of the men whose goal it was to sabotage a hydro-electric plant in Norway where heavy water was being refined. Heavy water (D2O) can be used as a neutron moderator in a nuclear reactor. Hitler wanted the bomb. His regime needed heavy water. Norway -occupied Norway- produced it. This did not make the Allies happy. So they decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works, so to speak.
First the no-so-good. The book starts out rilly slow with probably too much detail on atomic reactors, heavy water, neutrons etc. This part could have been condensed, and indeed, for a popular non-fiction history book, I'd argue it should have been.
The rest? Is all good. The people. The descriptions. The OMG, bite your nails drama of the mission. As I said... I knew the outcome. And yet. I was up until 2 am last night, reading until I was falling asleep because it was that engrossing.
The brutality of the Nazis and both its systemic and random nature was in full display. Frightening, always, Nazis.
This is one of the books when I gasped out loud a few times, wept more than once. It was everything a good adventure book should be (well, dragons would have added something) and it was all real. It all happened.
Highly recommend.
It's such a good book.
Yes, I had heard the story before and mostly knew the outcome, though not the general details.
The book? Has all those details, of the men whose goal it was to sabotage a hydro-electric plant in Norway where heavy water was being refined. Heavy water (D2O) can be used as a neutron moderator in a nuclear reactor. Hitler wanted the bomb. His regime needed heavy water. Norway -occupied Norway- produced it. This did not make the Allies happy. So they decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works, so to speak.
First the no-so-good. The book starts out rilly slow with probably too much detail on atomic reactors, heavy water, neutrons etc. This part could have been condensed, and indeed, for a popular non-fiction history book, I'd argue it should have been.
The rest? Is all good. The people. The descriptions. The OMG, bite your nails drama of the mission. As I said... I knew the outcome. And yet. I was up until 2 am last night, reading until I was falling asleep because it was that engrossing.
The brutality of the Nazis and both its systemic and random nature was in full display. Frightening, always, Nazis.
This is one of the books when I gasped out loud a few times, wept more than once. It was everything a good adventure book should be (well, dragons would have added something) and it was all real. It all happened.
Highly recommend.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}