How two Illinois men helped keep Adolph Hitler from developing the atomic bomb.

One reason Adolph Hitler was so anxious to invade Norway during World War II was that it offered him access to heavy water, or D2O, a key ingredient in his plans to build an atomic bomb. In the mountainous region of southern Norway, near the village of Vemork, the Fuhrer in 1941 commandeered a hydroelectric plant to separate heavy water (deuterium oxide) from its common cousin, H2O. Allies and Norwegian resistance fighters were aware of the plant. It was sheltered under a rocky ledge, though, and could not be bombed from the air. Thus the Nazis were able to separate the heavy water and ship it to Germany. Had it not been for the efforts of a small-town pastor and an editor from Gardner, Illinois, they might have been able to build their bomb and drastically alter the outcome of the war.

Reverend Christian Christiansen
outside his home in Gardner, Illinois.

Christian Christiansen was born in Sandnes, Norway, not far from Vemork, in 1859. As a child, he became intimately familiar with the Fjords, rivers, and mountains of his native land. As a young man, he joined Norway's massive merchant marine fleet and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean several times. 

In 1881 he crossed the Atlantic one last time and settled in Chicago. There he worked all day for up to $1.50. At night, he attended a Lutheran seminary.

Ordained in 1888, Christiansen became a circuit rider between York, Illinois, and Gardner, about 60 miles south of Chicago. Near the turn of the century, he accepted a call to pastor churches in Gardner, Gardner Prairie, and Grand Prairie. After a decade there, a dispute with parishioners drove him to northern Wisconsin for 23 years.

When his Gardner congregation asked him three times to come back, he finally agreed to spend the twilight of his career there. Among his neighbors when he returned were the Parkinsons, publishers of the Gardner Chronicle since 1865. He became particularly good friends with young Burt Parkinson, who would soon become the third generation to head the paper. 

Although Burt was in his 80s, he still has a vivid memory that separates editorial wheat from the chaff.

Burt Parkinson and his Heidelberg Press, 1985.

"My grandfather once published a daily paper in Braidwood," he said. "It was a much bigger city then because of coal mining. Anton Cermak was his paperboy. I remember we used to visit him after he moved to Chicago. My grandfather would set me on that big desk while the two of them went to work on memories. Later Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak was shot and killed in an assassination attempt while shaking hands with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt during an event in Miami, Florida in 1933.

"Walt Disney used to be a good buddy of mine, too," Burt continued. "We used to go drinking once in a while. He was with the Chicago Herald and Examiner, a Hearst newspaper. They were the first ones to publish his Mickey Mouse strip. The Chronicle then was eight pages long. We bought prepared inserts from Chicago. They were four pages of world news about a month late. The other four pages we did ourselves."

"The old reverend was a friend of mine," Burt said. "I loved him. Every morning he would come in the office and we'd sit there and chat. One morning he came in with a Chicago Tribune article about the plant "Look here, Burt," he said. The English had been bombing it, but that shelf of mountains protected it. The reverend said, "I can show them how to get up underneath and bring a warship in." Nobody knew the depth of the fjord or anything that might be in the way. I said, "Let"s call the Navy." I knew one of the guys up there. The reverend said, "Fine."

"The next Sunday morning after the sermon, the reverend invited me over. A line of cars was parked out front. Out on his kitchen floor two admirals, one from England and one from the U.S., had laid out a map as big as a dining room table. We all got down on our hands and knees. The reverend took a red pencil and drew his own map on the bigger map. Then they left."

The Vemork Hydroelectric Plant (1935) - Heavy water was produced in the Hydrogen Production Plant (the front building).

Burt believes that English warships destroyed the heavy water plant within a week of the Gardner meeting that he arranged. This cannot be easily documented. What is known is that Allies and Norwegian commandos attacked and seriously damaged the plant on at least three separate occasions. These operations—codenamed Grouse, Freshman, and Gunnerside—finally managed to knock the plant out of production in February of 1943.

In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October 1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following month by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders crashed short of their destination, as did one of the tugs, a Handley Page Halifax bomber. The other Halifax returned to base, but all the other participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated, and executed by the Gestapo.

In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside, later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II. These actions were followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans elected to cease operation and remove the remaining heavy water to Germany, but Norwegian resistance forces sank the ferry carrying the water, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinn in late 1944.

The U.S., meanwhile, was able to develop its A-bomb without using D2O.

In September of 1946, in a letter from the Norwegian Embassy in Washington D.C. advised Christiansen's family of his valuable service to the war effort. It read, in part:

"It gives me great pleasure to inform you his Majesty the King of Norway has instructed me to present to you a Diploma in recognition of your valuable services for Norway during the last war... May I extend to you my heartiest congratulation upon this well merited award."

The letter was signed by the Ambassador of Norway.

The specific impact of Reverend Christiansen's contribution to the war effort has never been officially detailed. This is due in large part to its classified nature. However, Burt has a copy of the diploma from the King of Norway thanking the reverend for his "valuable services" to his native country during World War II. And he also has the surety that he and his old friend did the right thing at the right time.

Christiansen died in 1947 and is buried in the Norwegian cemetery near Gardner, Illinois.

The movie, The Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris is roughly based on this event was released in 1965. It was filmed on location in Norway with former members of the underground serving as technical advisors.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The History of the Illinois Country from 1673-1782.

The Illinois Country (1673-1782), sometimes referred to as Upper Louisiana, was the vast region of "New France" (hereinafter called Canada). These names generally referred to the entire Upper Mississippi River watershed. The French colonial settlement was concentrated along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the states of Illinois and Missouri, with outposts in Indiana. 

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The word "Mississippi" comes from the Ojibwe Indian Tribe (Algonquian language family) word "Messipi" or "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River" or "Gathering of Waters." French explorers, hearing the Ojibwe word for the river, recorded it in their own language with a similar pronunciation. The Potawatomi (Algonquian language family) pronounced "Mississippi" as the French said it, "Sinnissippi," which was given the meaning "Rocky Waters."

Explored in 1673 from Green Bay to the Arkansas River by the Canadien expedition of Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, the area was claimed by France. It was settled primarily from the Païs d'en Haut [French: "up country" or "upper country"] in the context of the fur trade. Over time, the fur trade took some French to the far reaches of the Rocky Mountains, especially along the branches of the broad Missouri River valley. The French name, Pays des Illinois, means "Land of the Illinois [plural]" and is a reference to the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian tribes (usually referred to as  "Illinois" or the "Illiniwek" or "Illini." who were a group of Indian tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley. The tribes were the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara).

The Illinois Country's landscape of today's Illinois boundaries was a patchwork of prairies, forests, marshes, and swamps. Bison and elk roamed the upland prairies, bears and mountain lions prowled the forests and swamps, and the skies were often darkened by large flocks of pigeons. Bordering the land were three large streams: the Mississippi, Ohio, and Wabash rivers. One of the world's largest freshwater lakes, Lake Michigan, lies to the northeast. These and other aquatic and wetland environments teemed with many different species of waterfowl, fish, and freshwater mollusks.

FRENCH FORTS BUILT IN ILLINOIS:

1680 - Fort Crèvecoeur, Creve Coeur, Peoria County
1682 - Fort Saint Louis du Rocher, North Utica, La Salle County
1691 - Fort Pimiteoui, Peoria County
1720 - Fort de Chartres, Randolph County
1729 - Fort Le Pouz, Joliet, Will County
1757 - Fort Massac, Massac County
1759 - Fort Kaskaskia, Randolph County 

Païs des Ilinois (Illinois Country) in this 1717 French map.

Until 1717, the Illinois Country was governed by the French province of Canada, but by order of King Louis XV, the Illinois Country was annexed to the French province of Louisiana, with the northeastern administrative border somewhat vaguely on or near the upper Illinois River. The territory thus became known as "Upper Louisiana." By the mid-18th century, the major settlements included Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Chartres, Street  Philippe, and Prairie du Rocher, all on the east side of the Mississippi in present-day Illinois, and Ste. Genevieve across the river in Missouri and Fort Vincennes in what is now Indiana.

Due to the French defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River was ceded to the British and the land west of the river to the Spanish. Following the British occupation of the east shoreline of the Mississippi in 1764, some Canadian settlers remained in the area, while others crossed the river, forming new settlements such as St. Louis.

Eventually, the eastern part of the Illinois Country became part of the British Province of Quebec, while the inhabitants chose to side with the Americans during the Revolutionary War. 

Although the lands west of the Mississippi were sold in 1803 to the United States by France—which had reclaimed possession of Louisiana from the Spanish in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso—French language and culture continued to exist in the area, with the Missouri French dialect still being spoken into the 20th century.

Because of the deforestation that resulted from cutting down forests for wood for fuel during the 19th-century age of steamboats, the Mississippi River became shallower and broader, causing severe Mississippi flooding between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River. Consequently, many architectural and archaeological resources were lost to flooding and destruction of early French colonial villages near the river, including Kaskaskia and St. Philippe.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Cahokia Mounds and the Indian Village of Cahokia.

The name Cahokia is a reference to one of the Indian tribes of the Illinois Confederation, a group of related Algonquian tribes (usually referred to as "Illinois" or the "Illiniwek" or "Illini," who were a group of Indian tribes in the upper Mississippi River valley. The tribes comprised the Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Peoria, Tamaroa, Moingwena, Michigamea, Chepoussa, Chinkoa, Coiracoentanon, Espeminkia, Maroa, and Tapouara) who were encountered by early French explorers to the region.

Early European settlers also named Cahokia Mounds after the Illinois Confederation, an extensive prehistoric Mississippian urban site located north of present-day Collinsville in Madison County. Cahokia Mounds is the site of a pre-Columbian Indian village directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. This historic park lies between today's East St. Louis and Collinsville. The park covers 2,200 acres, or about 3.5 square miles, and contains about 80 mounds, but the ancient city was much larger. In its heyday, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and included 120 manmade earthen mounds in various sizes, shapes, and functions.

Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1000 years before European contact. The city's original name has yet to be discovered.

The mounds were later named after the Cahokia tribe, a historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants, the Cahokia tribe was not necessarily descended from the earlier Mississippian-era people. Most likely, multiple indigenous ethnic groups settled in the Cahokia Mounds area during the time of the city's apex. It is a World Heritage Site and an Illinois State Historic Park.

The "New France" (hereinafter called Canada) association with Cahokia began over 320 years ago, with Father Pinet's mission in late 1696 to convert the Cahokia and Tamaroa Indians to Christianity. Father Pinet and the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Quebec built a log church, and it was dedicated to the Holy Family. During the next 100 years, Cahokia became one of the largest French colonial towns in the Illinois Country.

Cahokia had become the center of a large area for trading Indian goods and furs. The village had about 3,000 inhabitants, 24 brothels, and a thriving business district. The nearby town of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi became the region's leading shipping port, and Fort de Chartres became a military and governmental command center. The 50-mile area of land between the two cities was cultivated by farming settlers, known as habitants, whose main crop was wheat. As the site expanded, the relationship between the settlers and the Indians became peaceful. Settlers were mostly Canadien migrants whose families had been in North America for a while.

In the following years, Cahokia suffered, mainly from the French loss in the French and Indian War in 1763. Defeated by Great Britain in an extension of the Seven Years' War in Europe, the French were forced to cede large parts of the Illinois Country to the victors. Many Cahokians fled in fear of the British or because they wanted to live in a Catholic province, Louisiana, where they founded new Canadien villages west of the Mississippi River, such as St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

The Odawa leader Pontiac was assassinated by other Indians in or near Cahokia on April 20, 1769. The Potawatomi blamed the local Illinois Indians and took revenge on them at Starved Rock by cornering them on the top of Starved Rock, waiting for their food and water to run out -- then killing all of them. (Fact or fiction? Click the link to read the article.) 

In 1778, during the American Revolutionary War, George Rogers Clark set up a court in Cahokia, making Cahokia an independent city-state even though it was part of the Province of Quebec. Cahokia officially became part of the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Soon after, the 105 Cahokia "heads of household" pledged loyalty to the Continental Congress of the United States.

In the 1800s, a Trappist Priest built a church on top of what they called "Monk's Mound." The New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-1812 was why this structure was vacated.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.