The Eagle Has Landed
The Eagle Has Landed is a book by British writer Jack Higgins, set during World War II and first published in 1975.
It was quickly adapted into a British film of the same name, directed by John Sturges and released in 1976. It starred Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Jenny Agutter, and Robert Duvall.
The book makes use of the false document technique, and opens with Higgins describing his discovery of the concealed grave of thirteen German paratroopers in an English graveyard. The characters discuss the historic rescue of Hitler’s ally Benito Mussolini in September 1943. After Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned by the Italian government, Otto Skorzeny led a German team and achieved his release and escape from Italy.
Hitler, with the strong support of Himmler, considered a similar plan to kidnap British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), is ordered to make a feasibility study of capturing Churchill and taking him to the Reich. Canaris realises that although Hitler will soon forget the matter, Himmler will not. Fearing Himmler may try to discredit him, Canaris orders one of his officers, Oberst Radl, to undertake the study, despite feeling that it is all a waste of effort.
An Unteroffizier on Radl’s staff finds that one of their spies, code named Starling, has provided a tantalising piece of intelligence. “At any other time, in any other place, this information would be useless,” Radl said. “And then synchronicity rears its disturbing head.” Churchill is scheduled to spend a relaxing weekend at a country house near the village of Studley Constable, Norfolk, where Joanna Grey, an Afrikaner woman and longtime Abwehr agent, lives. She detests England because she was abused and raped by British soldiers, and her husband, daughter, and parents were killed during the Anglo-Boer War. As a result of her reports, Radl devises a detailed plan to intercept Churchill and transport him to Germany. Although Radl is certain the plan has real possibilities, Admiral Canaris orders him to abandon it.
Himmler, however, has already learned of the scheme and summons Radl. He orders him to proceed, but without informing Canaris. In response, Radl arranges for Liam Devlin, a member of the Irish Republican Army[1] who served as an officer in the Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War,[2] to be smuggled to Norfolk by way of Northern Ireland. Posing as a wounded veteran of the British Army, he contacts Mrs. Grey, who arranges a position for him as gamekeeper to the estate of Studley Grange. While awaiting further developments, Devlin becomes romantically involved with Molly Prior, a girl from the village.
Meanwhile, Radl selects the members of the “commando style” unit, to be led by disgraced Fallschirmjäger commander Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Steiner, which is supposed to carry out the operation.[3] While returning from the Eastern Front, Steiner had intervened when SS soldiers were rounding up Jews at a railway station in Poland. To the outrage of the SS and Polizei, he took one of their men hostage and helped a teenage Jewish girl to escape on a passing freight train. For this he was court-martialed, along with his men, who backed his actions. Too highly decorated to face a firing squad, Steiner and his men were allowed to transfer to a penal unit in the Channel Islands. There they are forced to make high-risk attacks with manned torpedoes against Allied ships in the English Channel.
