Reckoning
Good Fit
- Readers curious about WWII's lesser-known threads — heavy water sabotage, the atomic bomb race
- Fans of fast-paced, cinematically written popular history
- Anyone interested in the decision-making of Hitler, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt
- Readers who like documentary narrative enriched with dialogue and scene-setting
Not a Fit
- Readers looking for a rigorous academic history with citations and a bibliography
- Those wanting a narrow book focused on a single front only
- Readers who tire quickly of a sprawling, multi-thread 400-page narrative
The book opens at 05:15 AM on April 9, 1940, with Hitler's sudden strike on Norway and Denmark. The author sets the scene with a strange information chaos: that morning's newspapers had printed the previous day's story (British-French naval mining of Norwegian waters), while the radio simultaneously announced German troops had already landed. The public is caught between two contradictory reports, unable to grasp what's happening.
The truth is stranger than either report: with just one heavy cruiser, a handful of cruisers, fourteen destroyers, twenty-eight U-boats, and a 10,000-strong landing force, the Germans seize Norway's capital and key ports within hours — inside waters supposedly controlled by the British navy. The author attributes this to the psychological shock of the Blitzkrieg doctrine and the Luftwaffe (800 aircraft overhead), noting that Norway, having never invested in its own defense industry, quickly concluded resistance was pointless against such a fast, coordinated assault.
On a parallel track, the book follows the royal family's escape. Crown Prince Olav gets word early and rushes to gather his family, reaching his father King Haakon VII's palace. To the king's puzzled "Why are you driving yourself — what happened to the chauffeur?" Olav's answer — "I can't trust anyone anymore" — captures the chapter's tension well. The family and government officials gather at the train station and, led by parliamentary speaker Carl Joachim Hambro, board an "escape train" north to safer ground.
The book's tensest scene involves a naval engagement. The heavy cruiser Blücher, carrying 800 specially trained German troops sent to capture the king and government, comes under sudden fire from the hidden batteries of Oscarsborg — an island presumed "harmless" — as it enters the Oslofjord. Torpedoes strike the ship, fire reaches the ammunition stores, and the Blücher finally explodes and sinks. The author renders the scene in cinematic detail: survivors leaping into freezing water, chaos on deck, and Norway's unexpected resistance.
These opening chapters function as a prologue to the book's real subject — the heavy water campaign and the atomic bomb race. The Blücher's delay and Norway's resistance buy time for the sabotage operation against the Vemork heavy water plant described in later chapters (the book's focus shifts from here on, which this review does not cover).
The author's style reads more like an adventure novel than a history book — real dialogue (drawn from survivors' memoirs and historical records), cinematic scene transitions, and narrative techniques built for tension. This makes the book highly accessible to a general audience, though readers expecting rigorous academic precision may occasionally find it "over-dramatized."
- Scenes are constructed like film sequences — real dialogue, visual description, tension-building techniques
- Parallel threads (the royal family, the German ship, later scientists) are woven together with crosscutting
A similarly cinematic, documentary-style WWII narrative
A far more academic, comprehensive treatment of the atomic race this book touches on in later chapters
The first attempt on the Vemork heavy-water plant in occupied Norway, Operation Freshman, relies on British commandos landing in gliders. Experts warn that Norway is the worst possible place to land a glider, but the decision stands. The commandos are told plainly: inject the wounded with morphine and leave them; anyone captured must bite the cyanide pill.
In the second attempt the Norwegian «Gunnerside» team gets in through a cable tunnel. Rønneberg and Kayser reach the heavy-water room, joined by Strømsheim, who breaks a window to climb in. «Nobel 808» charges are fixed to all eighteen electrolysis cells and the fuses are set to 120 seconds. After the sabotage the plant is turned into a fortress; even its windows are bricked up.
So the final target is the «SF Hydro» ferry that will carry the heavy-water stock. Haukelid boards it disguised as a musician with a cello case and times every step to the minute; the blast is to come from a time bomb made by the elderly watchmaker Diseth. On the night of the operation, the soldiers meant to guard the ferry are playing poker. According to the table of contents, Part III goes on to the Manhattan Project, the Alsos mission, the Trinity test and «the redivision of the world».
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