Quotes from Neal Bascomb

We will bring Adolf Eichmann to Jerusalem," Harel said, striking the table, "and perhaps the world will be reminded of its responsibilities. It will be recognized that, as a people, we never forgot. Our memory reaches back through recorded history. The memory book lies open, and the hand still writes.

much like a fingerprint, the size and shape of the ear, as well as the angle at which it joins the face, are unique to each individual.

Our memory reaches back through recorded history. The memory book lies open, and the hand still writes.

Our home villages with the hills, mountains and forests, the lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, waterfall and fjords. The smell of new hay in summer, of birches in spring, of the sea, and the big forest, and even the biting winter cold. Everything . . . Norwegian songs and music and so much, much more. That's our Fatherland and that's what we have to struggle to get back.

When you have a chest of jewels, you don't walk around it. You plant yourself on the lid with a weapon in your hand.

In mid-1944 Hitler, increasingly deluded and desperate, proclaimed Axis victory was imminent. "Very soon I shall use my triumphal weapons, and then the war will end gloriously . . . Then those gentlemen won't know what hit them. This is the weapon of the future, and with it Germany's future is likewise assured.

He found rabbit-fur-lined underpants

Foremost, they proposed building a plant to separate rare U-235 from its cousin U-238. This plant would cost as much as a battleship. In July 1941 the group delivered a road map for an atomic bomb program.

He held the post until the end of the war, an end that Leif Tronstad did not see for himself.

Other reports chronicled a mysterious September 1941 meeting where Werner Heisenberg admitted to Niels Bohr, who was living in Nazi-occupied Denmark, that a bomb could be made, "and we're working on it.

The best intelligence the British received came through German activity at Vemork. As early as April 1940 Jacques Allier had alerted his British allies to Nazi efforts in uranium research using heavy water from the plant.

The winter fortress was prepared for an all-out assault. All these heightened defenses signaled the importance of the atomic program to the Nazi war effort

The storm raged with renewed power. Visibility was zero. The general lassitude of all members of the party was still very much in evidence." All the world was snow and wind, and there appeared no escape from its hold.

You have to fight for your freedom," he said. "And for peace. You have to fight for it every day, to keep it. It's like a glass boat; it's easy to break. It's easy to lose.

In August 1939 Albert Einstein, in contact with a group of scientists who had recently emigrated from Europe, sent a letter to Roosevelt warning of the need to exploit the explosive potential of fission before the Germans did.

They had been told that the plant produced something called heavy water, and that with this mysterious substance the Nazis might be able "to blow up a good part of London.

From the start, they had known that the odds of their survival were long. They might get inside the plant and complete their mission, but getting out and away would be another

Dressed for the minus-thirty-degree temperatures at high altitude (wool underwear, two pairs of wool socks, a wool sweater, a brown leather jacket lined with sheep's wool, and heavy trousers), Roane crossed the cold, fog-ridden airfield and gathered with the other pilots and aircrews in the huge Nissen hut used for briefings.

They were there for Norway, for the freedom of its lands and people from Nazi rule.

If you're careless and disorganized, you lose your ability to see things clearly.

Soon he was assigned to fly the B-17. The four-engine, long-range bomber had an arsenal of machine guns and could take punch after punch and still deliver its bomb load—over ninety-six hundred pounds. Crewed by ten men, the B-17 was known as the Flying Fortress and was a giant in the sky.

With an ever-increasing number of fast-moving neutrons flinging themselves about, splitting atoms at an exponential rate, scientists could create what was called a chain reaction—and generate enormous quantities of energy. Which prompted the obvious question: To what purpose?

Within a week of Hahn's discovery, American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer sketched a crude bomb on his blackboard.

Given the aggression shown by Nazi Germany by the end of summer 1939, such a bomb, if it could be built, might be needed in a world on the precipice of war. Plans to obtain it were rapidly put together on both sides.