The Winter Fortress – How Nine Norwegians Saved the World!!

The Winter Fortress - Neal Bascomb

The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb – Neal Bascomb The Winter Fortress recounts the tale of the 1942 sabotage of the Vemork hydroelectric plant in Norway. The plant was one of the few places in the world that produced heavy water. Nazi Germany wanted all the heavy water that Norway could produce.. Heavy water was a key element for the production of an atomic bomb. I never had really heard of the mission before reading the book, but now I feel that I lived through it! Bascomb did a great job researching and writing The Winter Fortress, The book reads more like an action novel than a work of non-fiction. The Story By 1942 Norway was and the Vemork hydroelectric plant were under the control of Nazi Germany. The Vemork hydroelectric plant was producing heavy water that was headed to German researchers. Researchers who were researching nuclear fission, which ultimately could be used in the creation of an atomic bomb  Aware of this research, the Allies knew that something had to be done. The Norwegians felt that an air attack would actually miss the parts of the plant that need to be destroyed. What would be required was a commando attack on the facility. The Winter Fortress tells the story of the brave Norwegian resistance fighters. Several of these fighters escaped to England. They were trained in England, and reinserted back into Norway. Where they fought bravely for their homeland. During the months leading up to the attack the fighters…

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The Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in the US in 1915!

Dark invasion - Howard Blum

  Dark Invasion:1915: Germany’s Secret War & the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America – Howard Blum The Beginning of World War I The hunt for the first terrorist cell in the United States had its beginnings on June 28, 1914 when….. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, visit Sarajevo in Bosnia. A bomb is thrown at their auto but misses. Undaunted, they continue their visit only to be shot and killed a short time later by a lone assassin. Believing the assassin to be a Serbian nationalist, the Austrians target their anger toward Serbia That began the march towards World War I. In the subsequent month Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia,on July 28th. That was followed by Germany declaring war on Russia on August 1st. On August 3rd Germany declared war on France and invaded neutral Belgium. After Germany ignored Great Britain’s ultimatum to withdraw from Belgium. Great Britain declared war on Germany on August 4th and the United States declared its neutrality. Dark Invasion:1915: Germany’s Secret War & the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America As the war progressed the United States maintained its neutrality, but was selling supplies and ammunition to the Allies. In 1915 the German ambassador to the US is instructed to find and finance a team of undercover saboteurs who can disrupt this flow of supplies to the Allies and potentially keep America out of the war. The results of those orders were terrorist attacks on…

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The Presidents’ War – Chris DeRose

The Presidents’ War: Six American Presidents and the Civil War That Divided Them       Chris DeRose (Book 18 of 2015)   Through the years,I have read many books about the Civil War. Most of those books center around the battles and the Generals. Until I saw the book The Presidents’ War I never thought or knew about the former Presidents who were alive during the conflict. As a matter of fact, the book’s author Chris DeRose writes in the Acknowledgments of the book ….I had never known of the former presidents who lived to see the Civil War until a visit to Seattle in 2012 and a conversation with my friend. It was that friend Rob Peck, who inspired the book! Anyway, the point is if Mr DeRose author of two previous Congressman Lincoln: The Making of America’s Greatest President(2013) and Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election That Saved a Nation ( 2011) and  a visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Arizona Summit Law School, where he teaching Constitutional Law, International Law, and Election Law/Voting Rights hadn’t heard about the presidents alive during the Civil War until 2012, I don’t feel so bad about not thinking about them until after reading his book!! The five living ex-President’s alive at the start of the Civil War were John Tyler, Martin Van Buren, Millard Filllmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.  Each of those Presidents faced the underlying causes of the War and did little to avoid the coming…

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Treacherous Beauty – Peggy Shippen, the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Plot to Betray Anerica

So in Book No 11 for 2013 Treacherous Beauty, the authors Mark Jacobs and Stephen H. Case make the case (no pun intended, well maybe a little) that the subject of the book was the Scarlett O’Hara of the Revolutionary War: “a woman whose survival skills trumped all other values. Had she been a man, she might have been arrested, tried and executed. And she might have become famous. Instead, her role was minimized and she was allowed to recede into the background – with a generous British pension in hand”  the Treacherous Beauty is Peggy Shippen, Mrs. Benedict Arnold! Once again, much like I felt after reading about the assassinations of both Garfield and McKinley I felt like saying, “Hey why didn’t I learn this in school”. We all learned that Arnold was a traitor and was going to allow the British to capture West Point and split the colonies and block their path from north to south, but did we learn that Mrs. Arnold was a co-conspirator and probably introduced Arnold to British Adjunct General John André who was Arnold’s British contact. Peggy had spent considerable time with Andre when the British were occupying Philadelphia! Among the other things that I really didn’t know was the way that the conspiracy fell apart and Arnold fleeing down river from West Point into the arms of the British with the colonists hot on his heels or the capture of John André. I thought it was interesting that André was told…

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