SCOTLAND has a particular debt to Joachim Ronneberg, who died today. He was the last of the Heroes of Telemark and the leader of the brave band of Norwegian men who blew up the Nazis’ heavy water plant in Norway in 1943, thus preventing them from developing an atomic bomb.
Had the Nazis succeeded and developed atomic weapons before the Americans did, they could have deployed them to force the surrender of the Allies just as the Americans forced the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945 after Hiroshima.
What target would they have picked? Obviously America was beyond their bombers’ range so it would have been a large, second-ranking British city. There would have been no point in targeting London as that would have wiped out the government and there would be nobody left to negotiate with. Glasgow would have fitted the bill perfectly. A city of more than one million people and the second city of the British Empire, distant from London and most of British wealth. A key industrial production area and a key supplier of munitions and war material. The radioactive fallout would not have affected the bulk of British assets and industry further south, which the Nazis would have then seized and been able to enjoy. But Scotland would have been totally destroyed by a hit like that.
We in Scotland must feel a particular gratitude to the Heroes of Telemark and to Joachim Ronnenberg.
Mairianna Clyde
Edinburgh
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