On 9th April 1940 Germany invaded Norway, many of the officers who were at the spearhead, were men who as teenagers in the First World War, were evacuated from Vienna to escape the Italian bombing. They were especially chosen because they possessed an unusual intimate knowledge of the Norwegian people, their country and their language, It was Winston Churchill who gave them their contemptuous name "Vengeful Cuckoos" returning to foul the very nests that had once given them loving sanctuary.
This is the story of one of them, Kapitan zur See Otto Wilhelm Schmidt, 38, a German naval officer, ordered to return and occupy H ranger, a small fishing town on the edge of a fjord in Southern Norway.