‘The Saboteurs’: Stopping Hitler’s Atomic Bomb

The six-part television series The Saboteurs (2015, originally titled Kampen om Tungtvannet, “The Heavy Water War”) was directed by Per-Olav Sørensen, written by Petter S. Rosenlund and produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The story focuses on the Nazis’ efforts to develop an atomic bomb during the Second World War and how they were foiled by a small group of Norwegian resistance fighters.

The series is told from four different perspectives: the German side, the Allies’ side, the saboteurs’ point of view, and that of Norsk Hydro, the plant ordered to produce the rare and essential component for the construction of an atomic weapon: heavy water, or deuterium oxide.

Liten tue kan velte stort lass.
(A small tuft can topple a big load)
               —Norwegian proverb

The series begins in Berlin in 1938. Hitler has been in control of Germany since 1933. Professor Werner Karl Heisenberg, recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, is invited to lecture…