Book Review: 'The Eagle Has Landed'

1976-era paperback book cover. (C) 1976 Bantam Books

It is November 1943. The Second World War is in its fourth year. Adolf Hitler's Third Reich is fending off Allied advances in the Eastern Front and in Italy. German cities are being bombed "around the clock" by the American and British air forces. Across the English Channel, the Anglo-American forces are marshaling troops and making plans for history's greatest amphibious operation, which is tentatively scheduled for May of 1944.

But even though Germany has suffered great defeats in North Africa and the vast territories of the Soviet Union, Hitler still hopes to win the war. Desperately seeking a significant propaganda victory and inspired by the rescue of fellow dictator Benito Mussolini by a team of German special forces, the Fuhrer (egged on by SS chief Heinrich Himmler) orders the head of Military Intelligence (Abwehr) to carry out an even more daring special forces mission: to capture British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bring him to the Reich.

At first, it is an offhand remark, "a joke," as Abwehr Col. Max Radl notes, "...something the Fuhrer threw out in an angry mood on a Wednesday, to be forgotten by Friday." Soon, though, as Himmler orders a feasibility study and Radl ponders it, what seems like a fantastic notion soon starts looking as something that can, with the right men and conditions, be done.

This dangerous mission is assigned to Lt. Col. Kurt Steiner, the son of a German general and his American wife, and a small group of paratroopers. Their mission: to drop into East Anglia near the town of Studley Constable, where Abwehr agent Joanna Grey and IRA operative Liam Devlin are waiting to assist in the capture of Britain's wartime leader, and snatch Churchill from the estate where he is staying while on an inspection tour.

And so, in the early morning hours of November 6, 1943, as soon as Steiner's small band of paratroopers floats down onto English soil, Heinrich Himmler receives the coded message he has been waiting for with great anticipation: "The Eagle has landed."

Jack Higgins' bestselling novel was published in 1975, but its taut storyline and inventive blend of fact and fiction place this World War II thriller in the ranks of the best books of the genre. His descriptions of historical characters – such as Adolf Hitler – and his references to actual historical events give the whole scenario verisimilitude. All of the characters (hero, anti-hero, and even villains) are well-developed and believable. Higgins also has the creative chutzpah of injecting a first-person narrator named Jack Higgins, making the book sound like a reporter's expose of a German mission so daring that it had to be covered up by the Allies.

The novel launched Higgins' career as a writer of best-selling thrillers, and in turn inspired a 1977 film version starring Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, and Joanna Miles. It was followed in 1991 by a sequel, The Eagle Has Flown.