Thursday, February 4, 2016

The Heavy Water War

I stumbled across an interesting television series on Netflix recently. It was a Norwegian production whose title translated as "The Heavy Water Wars". It can also be found under the title "The Saboteurs". It is the dramatization of the true story of the effort to destroy the deuterium oxide production in Norway in order to keep the Germans from gaining an edge on nuclear technology. It is well written and well acted by a mix of British, Scandinavian and German actors. And, while I am no expert, the costumes, scenery and cinematography look great.

There are three story lines. They flip between Werner Heisenberg who is leading the German research, the Brits and Norwegian volunteers who are trying to destroy the plant and the Norwegian plant manager.

A word of warning....as it is with most movies who try to be historically accurate, it is in the characters native language. You will have subtitles, even in the English parts, so you can't try to multi task while watching it.

It was presented in 6 segments designed to fit into a television hour. When it aired in Norway, it captured over 60% of the viewing audience. It's worth looking for.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

Thanks, that is quite a piece of history...