World War II · Film · 1965
The Heroes of Telemark
A Norwegian physicist and a resistance leader smuggle plans of a heavy-water plant to Britain and return by parachute to stop the Germans getting what they need for an atomic bomb.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 4 places.
Stop 1: Rjukan, Telemark
A physicist who wanted to sit out the war is pulled into the resistance when he learns what the Germans are producing at the local plant.
Stop 2: Hardangervidda plateau
Back from Britain by parachute, the team waits on the frozen plateau and learns that the British glider force has been lost.
Stop 3: Vemork hydroelectric plant
Key location
The small Norwegian team crosses the gorge and slips into the plant to plant their charges.
Stop 4: Lake Tinn
To stop the last shipment of heavy water, the saboteurs target the passenger ferry that will carry it across the lake.
What really happened
The film dramatises the real sabotage of the Norsk Hydro plant at Vemork, near Rjukan, the only large source of heavy water in occupied Europe. A British glider assault, Operation Freshman, failed in November 1942 and its surviving soldiers were executed; Norwegian commandos of Operation Gunnerside then destroyed the plant's heavy-water cells on the night of 27 to 28 February 1943.
When the Germans tried to ship the remaining stocks to Germany in February 1944, resistance fighter Knut Haukelid sank the ferry SF Hydro on Lake Tinn. Kirk Douglas's professor is fictional and Richard Harris's Knut Straud is based on Haukelid; the film adds gunfights, a traitor and a heroic rescue on the ferry that did not happen.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- The Heroes of Telemark
- Directed by
- Anthony Mann
- Countries
- United Kingdom
- Languages
- English, German
- Released
- 1965
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Western Europe
- Themes
- Resistance
- Combat
