 First edition | |
| Author | Jack Higgins |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War, Thriller Novel |
| Publisher | Chapmans |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 352 (hardcover edition) 356 (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | 1-85592-012-3 (hardcover edition) |
| OCLC | 60076919 |
The Eagle Has Flown is a book by Jack Higgins, first published in 1991. It is a sequel to The Eagle Has Landed . [1] [2] [3]
Following the events in the previous novel, it is revealed that Kurt Steiner did not die after attempting to kill the fake Churchill, but was only wounded. German intelligence learns that, after recovery in a Norfolk RAF hospital, he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London.
Brigadier Dougal Munro and Captain Jack Carter (recurring characters in several novels by Higgins) of the Special Operations Executive, arrange for Steiner to be relocated to a 'safe house' in a St Mary's Priory in Wapping, where he can be held whilst recuperating from surgery. Munro makes sure, via double agents at the Spanish embassies in London and Berlin, that German intelligence find out about Steiner's survival. They hope to catch the German agents attempting a rescue, especially IRA gunman Liam Devlin, in their net.
Learning of Steiner's survival, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler summons SS General Walter Schellenberg, the chief of intelligence of the Ausland-SD to a gothic castle. Giving Schellenberg the same authority he'd given Max Radl, Himmler orders him to launch an operation to rescue Steiner. Himmler hopes to present Steiner to Hitler as a propaganda coup for the SS that will greatly embarrass Abwehr chief Wilhelm Canaris, who had originally opposed Steiner's operation. Schellenberg manages to track down Liam Devlin, who is working in a bar in Lisbon whilst trying to earn enough money for passage to the United States. When Schellenberg offers him £25,000, £5,000 more than he received for the first mission, Devlin agrees to participate.
Devlin parachutes into Ireland before entering England via a ferry to Scotland in the guise of an army chaplain. Whilst Schellenberg recruits Asa Vaughan, a pilot in the fictional American Free Corps, to pilot Steiner's escape flight. Schellenberg then enlists the help of two fascists and 'sleeper agents', Sir Max Shaw and his sister Lavinia. Their home, Shaw Place, an isolated country house located near Romney Marsh, Kent is seen by Schellenberg as an ideal landing field for Vaughan.
In London and now under the guise of Father Harry Conlon, an army chaplain, Devlin seeks sanctuary at the home of an Irish republican and old friend Michael Ryan. Ryan is living near the priory along with his niece, Mary, who takes an instant shine to Devlin. In need of an army radio, Devlin and Ryan make the mistake of buying the communications equipment from the Carver brothers, vicious London gangsters and black marketeers. Using his disguise, Devlin manages to gain entry to the priory where he takes the confession of the prisoner and the staff.
The rescue of Steiner from the priory, meticulously planned, is successful, although they are forced to take Munro along as a hostage. They drive to Shaw Place, but as Vaughan is making his landing in thick fog, a shootout ensues in which both Carvers and the Shaws are killed. Leaving Munro behind, Vaughan flies Devlin and Steiner to occupied France and make a dangerous landing near the headquarters of Erich Kraemer's detachment, also badly fog-bound.
About to present Steiner to Himmler and Hitler at a chateau on the French coast, Schellenberg learns that Himmler is plotting to stage a coup and to assassinate Hitler, Erwin Rommel and Canaris. Deciding that the war will end quicker with Hitler in charge than under Himmler who intends to be his successor, he and Steiner commandeer Kraemer's paratroopers and foil the plot.
Himmler makes it clear that the incident must not become public knowledge – in effect, it 'never happened'. Schellenberg opts to remain in Germany, and allows Steiner, Vaughan and Devlin to 'escape'. They fly to Ireland, landing in County Mayo and sinking their airplane. Their subsequent fate is not revealed, although it seems that both Devlin and Steiner are alive in 1975.
As in several of the novels by Higgins, the plot is surrounded with a prologue and epilogue. In 1975, the author, Higgins, meets an American historian in London, who gives him a photocopy of an illegally obtained secret dossier, with a one hundred-year hold, from the Public Record Office. The document purports to tell the story of Steiner's rescue. Shortly afterwards, the historian is killed in a suspicious road accident, which is investigated by a senior police officer – possibly from Special Branch. Higgins contacts Devlin, still living in Belfast, and obtains most, but not all, of the story to corroborate the contents of the dossier.
The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II.
Sicherheitsdienst, full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and the Gestapo was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office, as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich, intended for the SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision".
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi regime. However, following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during the war.
The Venlo incident was a covert German Sicherheitsdienst operation on 9 November 1939, in the course of which two British Secret Intelligence Service agents were captured five metres (16 ft) from the German border, on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Venlo.
Walter Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming one of the highest ranking men in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and eventually assumed the position as head of foreign intelligence for Nazi Germany following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.
Henry "Harry" Patterson, commonly known by his pen name Jack Higgins, was a British author. He was a best-selling author of popular thrillers and espionage novels. His novel The Eagle Has Landed (1975) sold more than 50 million copies and was adapted into a successful 1976 movie of the same title.
Heinrich Müller was a high-ranking German Schutzstaffel (SS) and police official during the Nazi era. For the majority of World War II in Europe, he was the chief of the Gestapo, the secret state police of Nazi Germany. Müller was central in the planning and execution of The Holocaust and attended the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which formalised plans for deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe—The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". He was known as "Gestapo Müller" to distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller.
The Eagle Has Landed is a book by British writer Jack Higgins, set during World War II and first published in 1975.
SS-Verfügungstruppe was formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 17 August 1938 Adolf Hitler decreed that the SS-VT was neither a part of the Ordnungspolizei nor the Wehrmacht, but military-trained men at the disposal of the Führer. At the time of war, the SS-VT were to be placed at the disposal of the army.
During World War II, the Gran Sasso raid in 12 September 1943 was a successful operation by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos to rescue the deposed Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from custody in the Gran Sasso d'Italia massif. The airborne operation was personally ordered by Adolf Hitler, approved by General Kurt Student and planned and executed by Major Harald Mors.
Frank Ryan was an Irish politician, journalist, intelligence agent and paramilitary activist. He first came to prominence as an Irish republican activist at University College Dublin and fought for the Irish Republican Army during the Irish Civil War. Ryan fell under the influence of Peadar O'Donnell, an advocate of socialism within Irish republicanism, which resulted in him breaking with the IRA and becoming involved with founding a new political organisation, the Republican Congress, and editing its associated newspaper: An Phoblacht.
Operation Osprey was a plan conceived by the German Foreign Ministry and Abwehr II. mid-1942. The plan was an enlargement of Operation Whale. Planning took place in the context of American troops landing in Northern Ireland 26 January 1942, and Hitler's immediate fears surrounding this.
The Eagle Has Landed is a 1976 British war film directed by John Sturges and starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, and Robert Duvall.
The 500th SS-Parachute Battalion was the parachute unit of the Waffen-SS. The idea to form a paratrooper unit within the Waffen-SS allegedly came directly from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
Liam Devlin is a protagonist and recurring character in the novels of Jack Higgins. "Liam Devlin" is a pseudonym and his real name is never revealed.
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1944. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defence against foreign espionage: an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
Josef Albert Meisinger, also known as the "Butcher of Warsaw", was an SS functionary in Nazi Germany. He held a position in the Gestapo and was a member of the Nazi Party. During the early phases of World War II Meisinger served as commander of Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland. From 1941 to 1945 he worked as liaison for the Gestapo at the German embassy in Tokyo. He was arrested in Japan in 1945, convicted of war crimes and was executed in Warsaw, Poland.
Night of the Fox is a 1990 made-for-TV film by Charles Jarrott, based on the 1986 novel of the same name written by Jack Higgins. It was broadcast in France on TF1.
Night of the Fox is a World War II spy thriller novel by Jack Higgins, first published in 1986. It was adapted into the 1990 television film Night of the Fox, starring George Peppard as Martineau and Michael York as Erwin Rommel.
In Nazi Germany, the Standarte was a paramilitary unit of Nazi Party (NSDAP), Sturmabteilung, NSKK, NSFK, and Schutzstaffel (SS). Translated literally as "Regimental standard", the name refers to the flag paramilitary formations carried in formations and parades.