Netflix Film: Number 24

Watch this movie recently released on Netflix: Number 24. The Norwegian film portrays the trials and exploits of Gunnar Sønsteby, among the most famous and highest decorated resistance fighter during the five years Norway suffered under Nazi Germany’s oppression and tyranny in World War II. Sønsteby was an agent working for the British secret organization, Special Operations Executive (SOE), which plugged operatives into occupied European countries to monitor and disrupt Nazi rule. SOE was dubbed “Churchill’s secret army,” and Sønsteby was assigned the code number 24.

This intense and exciting film parallels in many ways the story in A Coat Dyed Black: A Novel of the Norwegian Resistance, though Sønsteby’s activities took place in Oslo rather than Bergen and its environs, the setting for my book. I might add that I assigned my main fictional character, who also was an SOE agent, the number 83.

I named Sønsteby as a character in a scene outside the infamous Oslo prison, Møllergata 19, on liberation day when Norwegian inmates were released. It was a fictional account, but he really was outside the prison with other members of his resistance gang that day. They were dispatched to the prison after a rumor surfaced that a group of fanatical Nazis intended to storm the prison and kill as many prisoners as possible, according to his true account. The rumor proved unfounded. 

The movie is based on Sønsteby’s memoir, Report from No. 24, which was published in the United States in 1965. I read it many years ago while researching my book. He had immigrated to America after the war and later returned to live in his homeland. I wanted to share a brief excerpt at the end of his book. For me, it describes accurately a reason my own father-in-law, whose resistance activities form a large part of the story in A Coat Dyed Black, left his native country for America in the post-war years. Here are the parting words in Sønsteby’s memoir:

“With a sense of liberation, I boarded a boat for America and sailed away from it all. Only then was I convinced that those years were over and that I could concentrate on the proper objective of all who are only 27 years old—the future.”

For those interested in what happened in Norway during World War II, Netflix’s Number 24 is a must see.