Review of Guy Walters' Stealing Hitler’s Rocket: The Incredible Mission to Smuggle a V-2 Rocket Out of Nazi Occupied Europe to Britain.
Reviewed by David Griffiths for Spybrary
For history and spy fans Stealing Hitler's Rocket by Guy Walters ticks all the boxes; espionage, special operations, military history, aviation and, even, rocketry. A remarkable wartime true story that until now has been little known. It is a story of bravery, resistance and ingenuity from Nazi occupied Poland.
Author Guy Walters has crafted a story that has all the hallmarks of an adventure novel, creating a non-fiction page turner. Yet the author never losing sight of the history, this is an informative and engaging read.
David Griffiths
“One of our missiles is missing”
We all know about the German V-2 ballistic missiles that terrorised London and, even, the Belgian capital Brussels during 1944 and 1945. They were tested in occupied Poland and these test launches were routinely observed by members of the “Home Army” – the Polish underground resistance force. Their covert observations were being relayed to London.
One test flight gave its inventors a scare when the V-2 returned to Earth, luckily for the Germans and the scientists, it landed almost intact, unexploded.
What this book tells us is the story of an audacious and successful operation to remove one of these rockets, dismantle it, hide its component parts in various locations and then transport them to Warsaw for inspection and analysis. Finally, the rocket parts were shipped by the Special Operations Executive and Royal Air Force from Poland to Britain. It almost seems impossible mid-war but it actually happened.
Author Guy Walters has crafted a story that has all the hallmarks of an adventure novel, creating a non-fiction page turner. Yet the author never losing sight of the history, this is an informative and engaging read. We learn of the origins of the German rocket program and the leaders of it. General Walter Dornberger, the Wehrmacht officer who grasped that the rocket could be used as a weapon, and in particular Wernher Von Braun, the space enthusiast who made a Faustian pact with the Nazis to secretly pursue his dreams of creating a machine capable of travelling to the Moon and Mars. He was later, controversially, the brains behind the US Space Programme. The gruesome truth about the Mittelwerk underground factory where the V-1 and V-2 weapons were assembled by slave labourers – prisoners of war and concentration camp victims – comes to light. Many of these people were starved and worked to death.
There is a fascinating portrait of the British scientist who persuaded Churchill’s government that the Nazi missile threat was real, and the young War Cabinet minister who supported him. Also the Polish underground’s scientists who understood what the Nazi rocket tests meant and the SOE/RAF personnel given the dangerous assignment of rescuing the rocket from Poland. Then there are the “spies” – not intelligence agents as such but ordinary Polish patriots from farming communities, villages, small towns and even, the capital Warsaw, who hid the stolen V-2 and moved it in bits and pieces across their country to the RAF rendezvous point.
I enjoyed reading about an episode of the Second World War that I hitherto knew nothing about. This account is at times tense; it is a tale of extraordinary heroism by ordinary people who knew they risked certain death if caught.
It would make a very good movie, mini-series or, perhaps, more appropriately a docu-drama. This is certainly a wartime episode that deserves to be more widely known. Spybrarians with an interest in WWII will enjoy this book.
Guy Walters is a journalist and writer with an interest in WWII and the Nazis. How first novel The Traitor was published in 2002. His histories include Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream and Nazis, Spies and Fakes: Ten Years at the Coalface of History.
David Griffiths for Spybrary.
Edited by Paul Burke
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