Page 36 - All About History - Issue 53-17

Spies That Won WWII

EINAR SKINNARLAND

The Norwegian nationalist who helped thwart Hitler’s atomic ambitions

When an SOE raiding party captured Undeterred, Skinnarland and the
a Norwegian ship in March 1942, they SOE tried again and with Operation The damage to the plant
helped scupper Hitler’s plans
discovered on board Einar Skinnarland, Gunnerside on 28/29 February 1943, for atomic warfare
who was eager to help fight the German they achieved their aim, Skinnarland
invaders in his homeland. He heralded helping commandoes to sneak into the
from Rjukan, which was close to Vemok, plant and set charges. The saboteurs only
home to Norsk Hydro, where the Germans met one worker during the operation. He
were bidding to propel their atomic bomb agreed to help, providing he was allowed
development with the use of heavy to retrieve his eyeglasses! The explosion
water (deuterium oxide). A mission to severely damaged the plant and wreaked
destroy the plant passed to the SOE who havoc with Hitler’s atomic ambitions. It
parachuted Skinnarland back into Norway is said that 3,000 German soldiers were
and there he befriended the chief engineer dispatched to comb the area for the
at the plant, learned plenty of information commandos, all of whom escaped, with
necessary for a coup de main operation, four remaining in the region for further
and relayed this by radio to the SOE. work with the Resistance.
On the ground, he then received a The story was immortalised in the 1948
number of operatives who were to help Franco-Norwegian film Operation Swallow:
with the landing of two British gliders The Battle For Heavy Water and then
carrying commando-engineers set to the 1965 Kirk Douglas film The Heroes
implement Operation Freshman. Sadly, Of Telemark. Skinnarland continued to
both gliders crashed in bad weather and maintain radio contact between the local
the survivors were captured, tortured and elements of the Norwegian resistance and
executed by the Gestapo. Security at the SOE headquarters in London until the end Av ia l of de ute ri u mo xi d e, av it a lc om p one nt of th e
A vial of deuterium oxide, a vital component of the
plant was beefed up. of the war. Nazi’s atomic bomb ambitions

EDDIE CHAPMAN
HENRYK ZYGALSKI The criminal turned agent who won the Iron Cross

The Polish cryptologist who Eddie Chapman’s release from prison in
Jersey saw him emerge into an occupied
helped crack Enigma land and he immediately offered his services
to the German secret service, the Abwehr.
One of a trio of Polish He agreed to sabotage the De Havilland
mathematicians who performed factory but on his return to the UK turned
early cryptanalytic work on himself in and worked as a double agent,
Enigma encoded German ciphers, , code-named ZigZag. With help from MI5
Zygalski developed perforated he faked the bombing of the factory before
sheets, later known as ‘Zygalski returning to Germany and may have been
sheets,’ as keys to a manual the only British citizen to earn an Iron Cross.
method of determining settings
of Enigma machine rotors. In
1939, Zygalski participated in a KIM PHILBY
pivotal meeting near Warsaw withh The most notorious member of the Cambridge Five
representatives of the British and
French intelligence communities, Britain ran an excellent double-cross
revealing the substantial progresss network but was not immune from the same
the Poles had made in cracking treatment. Appointed to MI6 in 1940 Philby
Enigma. Along with fellow Pole passed more than 1,000 secret documents
Marian Rejewski, Zygalski reached d to the Soviet Union. Notorious for his actions
England in the summer of 1943. after World War II, in a perverse way his
He joined the Polish Army and perfidy helped secure the allied war effort,
worked on other ciphers but convincing Stalin that Japan had no designs
was excluded from further on the USSR and letting them concentrate
involvement in Enigma. their forces on the Eastern Front.

36