FEBRUARY 26, 2013---7OTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF OPERATION GUNNERSIDE
(www.regjeringen.no)
"Faced with history like today I become respectful and humble. It is a great honour to take part in this commemoration - of a unique event - 70 years back in time here at Vemork, in Telemark. It is seldom Norwegians use grand language. We rarely apply strong and emotional words. We prefer modesty and humility. However, on a historical day like this, an exception should be made. "Operation Gunnerside” involved huge risks. It called for courage, and it called for knowledge, training and endurance. During the Norwegian World War II resistance, perhaps no other operation was more significant than “Gunnerside”."
(Excerpts from a speech given by State Secretary Eirik Owre Thorshaug (Norwegian Labor Party) on February 26, 2013)
(Excerpts from a speech given by State Secretary Eirik Owre Thorshaug (Norwegian Labor Party) on February 26, 2013)
Personal Interpretation and Analysis
I realize that this a timely topic not only because it is the 70th anniversary of the Gunnerside Operation, but we are currently facing threats from North Korea with nuclear weapons. The German nuclear bomb was halted by brave, courageous saboteurs which changed the outcome of WWII. I am convinced that the world would have been a different place had the German's dropped the 1st atomic bomb. The stories of the heroic men on the Grouse, Freshman, Gunnerside and Lake Tinnsjo Operations never get dull to me. The stories are timeless in importance to the world.
---Preston Joseph
I really thought that this project was interesting. I learned quite a few things about the risks and challenges all of the men in the project had to face, how many times they had to change plans or try again and and when they finally succeeded, it must have been a great feeling. I can't imagine if they had failed, and the Germans had made an atom bomb, what our world would have been like. Their success was a major turning point in history.
---Jacob Jones
---Jacob Jones
There may be some who believe that Great Britain and America would have won the race to build an atomic bomb even if the plant had not been sabotaged, but it was the Germans who spurred the Americans on to speed this bomb making process into action. Their fission discovery and desire to build the first atomic bomb was well advanced to the Americans and British. Operation Gunnerside was necessary to stop the Germans in building the first nuclear bomb. It has been an incredible to learn about these operations that stopped the atomic bomb process.
---Caleb Christiansen
---Caleb Christiansen