Blood and water

the long version

This is a story of courage, perseverance, and heroism - the story of one of the most daring and sustained campaigns of World War II: the top-secret Allied effort to keep Hitler, whose scientists had discovered fission in 1938, from making the atomic bomb. This gripping saga re-creates four attempts undertaken to destroy a hydroelectric plant in a remote, mountainous region of southern Norway. Commandeered by the Nazis in the spring of 1941, Norsk Hydro plant was the world's largest producer of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, a vital ingredient in the construction of the bomb. Pieced together from survivors' accounts in Norway and other primary sources, including the military archives of three countries, this is the story of the clandestine two-year ordeal, told in dramatic heart-stopping detail by Dan Kurzman, the author of several best-selling nonfiction thrillers about World War II.