THE MARE'S NEST

by David Irving ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

If Irving's present study of Germany's secret weapons during WWII is less spectacularly gripping than his The Destruction of Dresden (1964-Holt, Rinehart & Winston), the cause is two-fold. First, he has abandoned his eyewitness-interview technique of teeing the story; and, the subject deals as much with technology as with personalities. Hitler's aim was to terrorize Britain with secret revenge weapons: flying bombs, giant rockets, a weird cannon and with an anti-aircraft guided missile. This was in retaliation for the terror-bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin and so on. The author describes the internecine bickering that went on both on the German General Staff and in Whitehall over the development of these weapons. Churchill's Science Advisor, Lord Cherwell, thought that the Germans were maintaining a brilliant hoax, or mare's nest. But Intelligence units kept indicating the reality of the rocket project. Meanwhile Hitler was not at first very keen about the rockets. Then he succumbed to romantic visions about them and diverted a fatal amount of war production to their development. When the V-1 and V-2 rockets finally went into operation, the Normandy invasion had rendered them irrelevant. This is a densely detailed account of middling popular interest.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1965

Categories: NONFICTION