Max Manus - His Autobiographical Accounts

His Autobiographical Accounts

Two books were written by Max Manus shortly after World War II. The first, Det vil helst gå godt ("It Usually Ends Well") describes some of his enterprising and event-filled wandering and working in the jungles of South America and Latin America. He returned to Scandinavia before the outbreak of World War II, upon which he soon joined up with the Norwegian Army and went to fight in a volunteer detachment with the Finns against the Russians.

After the war in Finland, Max Manus returned to Norway as the Germans invaded on April 9, 1940. He fought during the Norwegian campaign, whereupon he decided to return to Oslo and work underground against the occupiers, both organising a resistance movement, illegal public propaganda and the manufacture of weaponry. He and his comrades tried to assassinate Himmler and Goebbels when they visited Oslo.

His work was effective and he soon became a wanted man by the Gestapo. He was eventually captured and received injuries trying to escape. He had to be treated in the main Oslo hospital. The doctor at the hospital gave the Gestapo officers a false explanation and said Max Manus needed treatment for a broken back, damaged shoulder and serious concussion. The truth, however, was that he was only bruised and had a light concussion. After 27 days, with the aid of a nurse, he managed to escape through a second-floor window using a rope. In a dramatic flight, he crossed the border into Sweden. By then, the Soviet Union had entered the war against Nazi Germany, so Manus travelled through the Soviet Union, via Turkey, Arabia, by ship via Cape Town to the US, to eventually be able to return to the fight in Europe.

He reconnected with the Norwegian military in the US and went on to further training in Canada and later crossed the Atlantic again to Belfast, then England. Here and in Scotland he trained further and developed professional skills in sabotage and undercover work of many kinds. He was then required to learn parachuting and was dropped in the forests near Oslo with a sabotage team.

In Norway he resumed his organizational work and made various sabotage attempts on ships in the Oslofjord with home-designed limpet mines and even ‘swimmer-assisted torpedoes’. The former were the more successful, sinking and damaging some vessels. It was a long but intense learning process of great practical difficulty and hazard. He made numerous hazardous trips back and forth across the border to Sweden, where he was able to get a respite from the constant mental and physical pressures of being undercover. Many of his comrades-in-arms were killed, captured and tortured, but Manus managed to survive through a combination of determination not to be taken and some very narrow escapes.

Max Manus’ second book was Det blir alvor ("It Gets Serious"), in which he continues the saga of his resistance work and his great successes in sinking in 1945 two large vessels of great importance to the German war machine. When peace was declared, Max Manus found himself to be chosen to be the personal protection officer of the then Crown Prince of Norway on his triumphal parade in Oslo, and then also with King Haakon VII. This was a great honour, and he was lauded as one of Norway’s most resilient and successful fighters, aged only 30 at the time.

Manus' books have been translated into English twice; initially an American, very loose and somewhat concise translation entitled 9 Lives Before Thirty, and, a few years later, Underwater Saboteur, a one-book adaptation of both of Manus' books, also somewhat concise. Both of these translations were made in the early years after the War, and names have been changed in the interest of "protecting the guilty"; although Manus himself never changed any names.