You are now listening to World War 2 Stories. I'm your host Steve Matthews. Today, I'm going to tell you about one of the most extraordinary battles of World War II - a battle so unusual, so contrary to everything we understand about that conflict, that it sounds like Hollywood fiction. Yet it happened.

In the final days of the war in Europe, American soldiers fought alongside former German Wehrmacht enemies to protect French VIP prisoners from fanatical SS troops. It was the only time during the war when Americans and Germans served as allies on the battlefield - a remarkable footnote to history that deserves far greater recognition.

This is the Battle of Castle Itter - a medieval fortress in the Austrian Alps that became the setting for an unlikely last stand as the Third Reich crumbled around it.

You are now listening to World War 2 Stories. I'm your host Steve Matthews. Today, I'll take you into the heart of one of the most consequential covert operations of the entire war - a mission so audacious and against such impossible odds that it reads like fiction. Yet every word of this story is true.

February 1943. While battles rage across Europe and the Pacific, a small group of Norwegian commandos are about to embark on a mission that might determine whether Hitler acquires the most devastating weapon ever conceived: the atomic bomb.

Their target: the Vemork heavy water plant, nestled in a nearly impenetrable mountain fortress in Nazi-occupied Norway. Their odds of success: virtually none. Their margin for error: absolutely zero. This is Operation Gunnerside - the remarkable sabotage mission that may have changed the course of history itself.

This is the story of the Great Raid on Cabanatuan – a pulse-pounding tale of courage against overwhelming odds, where the clock was ticking, and failure meant certain death for everyone involved. What happened on that fateful night of January 30, 1945, would become legend – a mission so audacious that even Hollywood couldn't have scripted it better.