Free Republic

One of history’s greatest “what ifs” is the question of what would have happened had the Germans been able to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. The Wehrmacht’s effort to do just that, called the Uranverein, or “Uranium Club,” began in 1939 when German Army physicist Kurt Diebner began to research the potential military applications of nuclear fission. By year’s end, the renowned German physicist Werner Heisenberg had expressed his belief that nuclear fission chain reactions, and thus, eventually, nuclear bombs, might be possible, but only if he had access to enough of a singular substance known as...

Whetstones are one of the most common finds from the Viking Age. What looks like a simple stone however, tells the tale of extensive trading systems - and perhaps even the reason for why the Vikings started raiding overseas.At the end of the 19th century, people emptied the water out of an old quarry in Trøndelag in mid-Norway. Some thought that it might contain a large silver deposit.But the only thing they found were lots of stones. A totally commonplace object...The ordinary stones were whetstones, also known as sharpening stones. They were used to, as the latter name suggests, sharpen...

Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan unofficially use the "Punisher-skull" (from the comic/movie The Punisher) as an emblem. It’s got the text "Jokke, we will never forget!" as a tribute to the fellow soldier who got killed by a roadside bomb in January 2010. The senior Taliban leader and bomb making expert suspected of arranging the ambush that killed Claes Joachim Olsson, was himself killed this summer in an operation by Olssons unit. Soldiers of the "Mek 4" are spray painting the skull on buildings of suspected Taliban members as warnings to them. There are reports of several irregualar patrols, where the...

Dozens of soldiers from a battalion famous for using the emblem of a vicious comic book avenger to strike fear into the enemy in Afghanistan are heading to Iraq with ISIS in their sights. The Telemark Battalion is an elite mechanised infantry unit of the Norwegian Army which has been involved in the fight against the Taliban as part of the NATO-led security mission since 2003. Around 50 soldiers from Telemark will be heading to the city of Irbil in northern Iraq to train Kurdish forces to help them in their fight against Islamic State, the Norwegian ministry of defence...

'One of the last two survivors of the legendary Second World War 'Heroes of the Telemark' raid, which helped thwart Hitler's plans to build a Nazi nuclear bomb, has died aged 101. Just 31 at the time, Norwegian Birger Stromsheim was the oldest member of the team who successfully destroyed the hard water production facility at the Norsk Hydoelectric plant in Telemark, southern Norway. The raid, which is regarded as one of the most successful acts of sabotage in World War II, was also remarkable for the fact all the team managed to escape by cross country skiing 250 miles...