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The Eagle Has Landed

The Eagle Has Landed

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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. 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. There is other good characterisation in Himmler’s portrayal as a cold, high official presiding from his office at Prinz Albrechtstrasse over the more human soldiers in the operation. In Molly as well, the spirited, Norfolk farm girl who brings the love interest as she falls for Devlin.

Hauptmann Erich Kraemer – a Fallschirmjager officer whose unit is enlisted by Steiner to thwart Himmler's assassination attempt on Hitler. The story of Patterson’s life had a rags-to-riches ring to it which would not have been out of place in his fiction. Son of Henry Patterson and Rita Higgins Bell, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, but by the time he was two, his parents had split up and his mother moved to Belfast, where young Harry was brought up by his extended family. He attended Nettlefield primary school (as did the future footballer George Best some 20 years later) and claimed to have witnessed his first sectarian bombing at age six. He was ever thankful for the public libraries in Belfast and became an enthusiastic and fluent reader. a b c Canby, Vincent (26 March 1977). "The Eagle Has Landed (1976)". The New York Times . Retrieved 17 August 2013. 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.Radl then has to find an officer to lead the paratroopers, who will be disguised as a Polish unit. He needs someone who speaks fluent English. He finds Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Steiner, who grew up in London. Disgraced, Steiner has been working in a penal unit because of an incident that happened in Warsaw. Horrified by the treatment of Jews at a railway station, he turned on SS officers to allow a young girl to escape. As punishment, he and his men are relegated to carrying out highly risky suicide missions in the English Channel. 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. The Eagle Has Flown relies on a retcon to get the plot going, as Steiner was clearly dead at the end of The Eagle has Landed: Now, at this point, the Soviet agent Nikolai Kuznetsov got wind of this allegedly from an SS-Sturmbannführer named von Ortel, who was deep into his cup of schnapps. At this point, Soviet NKVD agent Gevork Vartanian, who had compiled a list of 400 Nazi agents, was able to arrest six German radio-operators in the city of Qum, close to Tehran. This information led them to German operatives already in place in Tehran-who were the advance team, the second team was the actual operational team to be led by Skorzeny. After the war, Otto Skorzeny, who the Soviets said was behind the plan, claimed it never existed and the story was Soviet propaganda.

Asa Vaughan – an American pilot who fought with the Finnish Army against the Soviets during the Winter War, before joining the SS. Higgins conveys a powerful message in both stories: German soldiers are highly professional, but also humane. ” This is the only thing that has England,” the film concludes. He is based on Frank Ryan, an IRA operative who died in 1944 while working with the Germans. Higgins’ narrative style makes it seem like a true story, and the book’s structure helps to make this possible. Radl travels to Alderney and recruits Steiner and his surviving men. Steiner's father, General Steiner, is being tortured by the Gestapo for his alleged ties to the German Resistance. This serves as an additional incentive for the Colonel to accept the mission. Radl relocates Steiner and his men to an airfield on the north western coast of Holland, where they familiarise themselves with the British weapons and equipment they will be using. The team will be air-dropped into Norfolk from a captured C-47 Dakota with Allied markings. The commandos outfit themselves as Free Polish paratroopers, as few of them speak English; the plan is to infiltrate Studley Constable, capture Churchill, rendezvous with an E-boat at the nearby coast, and make their escape. As part of the ruse, they arm themselves with Sten guns, M1 Garands, Bren guns and revolvers, as well as Browning Hi-Powers, instead of German weaponry. Scene in Landsvoort where Steiner and von Neustadt discuss the mission, its merits, and consequences. In some ways a copy of the the original classic war novel and in other ways a bloody good yarn. Steiner & Devlin remain an interesting pair of antiheroes if there were ever any.

The Eagle Has Landed: Alternative Cover

So for all of the above reasons, I just never found myself pulled into this one. There were some parts I liked and it certainly had some moments, but there were not enough of the goodies for me to be able to say I liked it. As story theorists from Aristotle onwards have said, the goal of tragedy is catharsis: the creation of powerful emotion in the reader.

In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film "a good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible." [2] Canby singled out the writing and directing for praise: I read Oliver Twist when I was six. Not because it was a classic, but because it was a book that was available. I probably didn't understand everything in it—for years I used to pronounce the word rogue as rogger—but I didn't care. I just loved reading. [1]

Liam Devlin – Based on IRA man Frank Ryan, who during the Second World War liaised with Germany to get money and weapons for the IRA. [6]



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