learning of the War Office’s need it approached the Norwegians with an offer to buy all the heavy water on hand, about fifty gallons worth some $120,000, and to order more at the rate of at least thirty gallons a month. Norsk Hydro was then producing less than three gallons a month, enough in the prewar years to glut the small physics-laboratory market. It wanted to know why Germany needed so vast a quantity. I.G. Farben chose not to say. In February the Norwegian firm refused either to sell its existing stock or to increase production.
