The Eagle Has Landed

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The principal characters in The Eagle Has Landed include two real-life leaders of the Third Reich, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, and Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and widely regarded as heir apparent to Adolf Hitler, who also figures in the plot as a minor character. It is Hitler who conceives the idea to land paratroopers in England to kidnap or kill Winston Churchill, inspired by the real-life rescue of Benito Mussolini by a German agent. To carry out this outlandish scheme, Himmler turns to a senior member of Canaris’ staff, Colonel Max Radl, and forces him to carry out the scheme against his will. Radl recruits a highly decorated paratrooper, Lt. Colonel Kurt Steiner, and Liam Devlin to play the leading roles in the plan. They proceed on the basis of intelligence reported to them from England by Joanna Grey, a pro-Nazi Afrikaner woman who has inherited a large home on the Norfolk coast. I read this book because it was recommended by Reader's Digest as one of the best all time. Needless to say that they weren't wrong. I enjoy reading war & related fiction & have read many books but what Higgins presented here was beyond doubt extraordinary. Here are a few elements that I was amazed to see:

There's a lot of detail & it's all worth it. It was amazing how the plan came together & what happened. So many moving pieces & communication trials. The extended version contains a number of scenes that were deleted even before the European cinema release: [19] Harvey Preston – A SS British Free Corps officer attached to Steiner's unit to add credibility. A convinced Nazi, and a convicted con-man prior to his enlistment, Preston is viewed with disgust by Steiner, Devlin, and their fellow commandos. After Steiner, Neumannn, and Devlin escape, Preston is lynched inside the village's Roman Catholic Church by a mentally-ill resident of Studley Constable. He asked me what I wanted to get out of my writing,” Higgins said. “I replied that I wasn’t really sure, before adding as a joke it would be nice to make a million by the time I retired. He then said: ‘Well you’re a bloody fool. Because you’ve just earned that much this week. So what are you going to do about it?'”Alternative opening: originally, the film was intended to start with Heinrich Himmler ( Donald Pleasence) arriving at Schloss Hohenschwangau for a conference with Hitler, Canaris, Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels. It precedes the scenes under the opening credits which are a long aerial shot of a staff car leaving the castle in question. The deleted scene explains why Schloss Hohenschwangau appears in the credits but not in the film. First, Higgins has an eye for character in a way that Alistair Maclean , for example, never had. He uses that skill to make Steiner and Devlin as sympathetic as possible to the reader. In fact, to a modern eye, he potentially even goes too far, as anti-heroes are much more mainstream than they used to be.

In 1959, Higgins began writing novels. [1] One of his aliases was James Graham. The growing success of his early work allowed him to take time off from his teaching, which he quit eventually to become a full-time novelist. Col. Kurt Steiner – highly decorated Fallschirmjager officer who survived the events that occurred at Studley Constable. After the war, Otto Skorzeny, who the Soviets said was behind the plan, claimed it never existed and the story was Soviet propaganda. The Household Cavalry". Archived from the original on 23 February 2015 . Retrieved 23 February 2015. Patterson was born on 27 July 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne to an English father and a Northern Irish mother. He was raised in Belfast until his mother remarried and he moved to Leeds.The fact that the final outcome of the story was known at the very beginning of the story took away much of the suspense/mystery for me. Now this is not always the case when reading about real life events in which the final outcome is well known, as I have read a lot of historical ficiton and real life crime fiction that kept me at the edge of my seat. However, in this case, the slow, methodical planning of the kidnapping just never seemed to pull me in and so I found the story very slow moving. He said: “Forty years later, Curtis Brown became his agent … and it was thrilling to work again with Harry, and I look forward now to working with his wife, Denise, and daughter, Hannah, and the family on preserving and promoting his extraordinary legacy.” Himmler is portrayed as one-dimensional, a sociopathic killer fanatically dedicated to the Nazi cause. Everything I’ve read about Nazi Germany supports this characterization. By contrast, every one of the other major characters, and many of the minor ones, are complex and credible. Devlin, Steiner, and Radl, in particular, are all eminently likable despite the roles they play in the plot. Churchill didn’t have a double, but he had a vocal impersonator, Norman Shelley, who may have recorded some of Churchill’s speeches for radio broadcast. Scene on the boat at the end of the film showing the fate of von Neustadt; the scene is also featured in the Special Edition DVD stills gallery.

Higgins died at his home in Jersey, [1] [14] on 9 April 2022, at the age of 92. [15] [16] [17] Bibliography [ edit ] N°There is no definitive answer as to whether or not the film The Eagle has Landed is based on a true story. However, there are some elements of the film that suggest that it may be based on real events. For example, the film is set during World War II and follows a group of German soldiers who are sent to England on a secret mission to kidnap Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This plot is similar to a real-life operation that was conducted by the German military during the war. Additionally, the film includes several historical figures, such as Churchill and Adolf Hitler, which adds to its plausibility.