Table Of ContentDavid Irving
The Mare’s Nest
The War Against Hitler’s Secret
‘Vengeance’ Weapons
[UNCORRECTED PROOF, UPLOADED 29.3.01]
“Lord Cherwell still felt that at the end of the
war when we knew the full story, we should
find that the rocket was a mare’s nest.”
Defence Committee (Operations)
25 October 1943
F
FOCAL POINT
Panther Books
Granada Publishing Ltd.
Grafton Street, London WX LA
This revised edition published by Panther Books
First published in Great Britain by
William Kimber and Co. Limited
Copyright © William Kimber and Co. Limited
Copyright © David Irving ,
Electronic edition © Focal Point Publications
ISBN ---
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired
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purchaser.
David Irving is a military historian who has written a number of highly
original books about the Second World War, including the controversial
Hitler’s War and The Destruction of Dresden and The Destruction of Con-
voy PQ . This revised edition of The Mare’s Nest includes a hitherto un-
published chapter.
“David Irving is the forensic pathologist of modern military history.
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He dissects, analyses and describes with an un inching, unsqueamish
surgical skill. His knife exposes the tumours, the cancers and horrors of
war. The reader becomes a spectator in an operating theatre. Coolly de-
tached himself, Mr. Irving spares him nothing.”
The Economist
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Prologue 9
Introduction 13
Programmes of Revenge 16
The Intelligence Attack 32
Operation Hydra 84
The Bodyline Investigation 122
The Rocket in Eclipse 146
Retribution 186
The A4 Ascendant 214
Account Due 244
Appendix 257
Index 258
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The author of this work was given access to of cial documents; he alone
is responsible for the statements made, for the conclusions drawn and for
the views expressed in this work. In accordance with established practice
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in these circumstances he was not permitted to identify of cial documents
of which he made use.
6 David Irving
The Mare’s Nest 7
Acknowledgements
No book of this nature would be possible without the unselfish co-opera-
tion of several hundreds of people who, having participated in the events
portrayed, are able to assist in establishing the circumstances, successes and
failures of the Allied Intelligence attack on German secret weapons in the
Second World War. It is not possible to give all their names: many have asked
that their names should not be recorded in these pages, and others I am not
at liberty to identify – the brave army of Allied agents who channelled back
to London the raw material upon which that Intelligence attack was based.
My greatest thanks are due to Sir Donald MacDougall for allowing me
access to certain records of which he is the trustee, and to Professor R. V.
Jones for adding a large part of the unknown details of this story.
Sir Alwyn Crow, Sir William Cook, the Earl of Birkenhead, Marshal of the
RAF Sir Arthur Harris, Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Sir Frank Whittle,
Air Commodore J. S. Searby, DSO, DFC, Colonel T. R. B. Sanders, Dr. Barnes
Wallis, Mr. G. J. Gollin, Brigadier Charles Lindemann, Mrs. I. H. Lubbock,
Mr. Jules Lubbock, Mr. P. A. Coldham, Squadron Leader E. J. A. Kenny, Mr.
W. R. Merton, Mr. T. A. Stewart, and many others have provided me with
material and personal records upon which much of the British side of the
story has been based.
I wish to express particular thanks to Dr. Albert F. Simpson, Chief of the
US Air Force Historical Division, through whose kindness a volume of in-
terrogation reports of former Peenemünde scientists was made avail-
able to me. A further great volume of material was provided for me by the
National Archives in Washington.
the library of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and its director, Profes-
sor Klemm, generously provided me with copies of documents held by them,
and permitted me to study their unparalleled collection of Peenemünde
documents; I wish to record my gratitude to Dipl.-Ing. Ernst Klee, curator
of the Peenemünde archives at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
I am indebted to Dr. Wernher von Braun, to Colonel Leo Zanssen, former
military commandant of the Peenemünde establishment, and to: Herr Walter
Barte; the Landesarchiv Berlin; Herr Eckart von Bonin; Dr. K. Diebner; Herr
Horst Diener; Herr Fritz Hahn; Professor Walter Hubatsch; Professor
Friedrich Kirschstein; Dr. J. Krinner; General Emil Leeb; Herr Hans Meissner;
8 David Irving
Herr F.-K. Müller; Dipl.-Ing. Walter Riedel; Herr Hans Ring; Herr Rudolph
Schlidt; Herr Peter Spoden; Dipl.-Ing. Detmar Stahlknecht; Colonel Max
Wachtel; Herr Wilhelm Henseler; Colonel Hajo Herrmann; General
Kammhuber; the Deutsches Wetterdienst; General Paul Deichmann; and the
staff of the West German Staff College, Hamburg-Blankenese, for the assist-
ance that all have rendered.
I wish to thank Messrs. Collins (London) for permission to reproduce the
brief quotations I have used from Sir Arthur Bryant’s Triumph in the West
().
I also acknowledge the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Sta-
tionery Office to quote from publications and all official records in which
the Copyright is vested in the Crown.
David Irving
The Mare’s Nest 9
Prologue
Like all manuscripts based in part on official files, this book was submitted by
the author, then aged , to the government for clearance. In July the GCHQ
security officer wrote to him: “The new chapter beginning, ‘Just as the analysis of
inconsistencies...’ must not appear in any shape or form.” With the official rev-
elation of the Ultra secret and the Enigma story in this prohibition no longer
applies.
Just as the analysis of inconsistencies has led to the most unexpected
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discoveries in the eld of applied science, so the examination of appar-
ently inexplicable contradictions in terms can illuminate history’s more
jealously guarded secrets.
The genesis of this particular story was a process developed and ap-
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plied by a consortium of Intelligence of cers in an establishment forty-
seven miles from London, a process of such secrecy that neither Cabinet
Ministers nor Commanders-in-Chief nor even our most gallant Allies
could be entrusted with the burden of its knowledge.
Three inconsistencies will be found to occur in the story which fol-
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lows, of which only one is signi cant; these are the documentary clues
which we can best label “the petrol form,” “the radar plots,” and “the bills
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of lading.” The three clues are to play signi cant parts in this narrative as
they, respectively, established that Peenemünde was genuine and the sec-
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ond most important research station; identi ed certain structures in France
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as ying-bomb catapults; and established the probable existence of ,
German rockets.
Of the three, the alleged existence of the “bills of lading” is the most
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questionable. Ostensibly, the bills were thrown up like cha as the grind-
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ing mechanism of an ef cient network of SIS agents meshed momentar-
ily with the machinery of Germany’s secret weapon development pro-
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gramme. In fact, their provenance was rather di erent.
On th November , after Peenemünde had been devastated by RAF
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Bomber Command, ring trials of the A long-range rocket, operation-
ally to be termed V- , were resumed at the SS training ground at Blizna in
Poland. Intelligence learned of this in London. In a report to the Cabinet
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in mid-July , a senior Air Intelligence of cer claimed that from cap-
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tured “bills of lading,” referring to the traf c between Peenemünde and
10 David Irving
Blizna, serial numbers of certain objects, shown by photo-reconnaissance
of Blizna to be rockets, had been extracted. The serial numbers ranged in
part from , to well over , .
This evoked consternation in the Cabinet, as will be seen in a later chap-
ter. But what is even more revealing is an analysis of their provenance.
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The Intelligence of cer suggested to the Cabinet that the “bills of lad-
ing” had been secured by an SIS agent operating in Poland. This is impos-
sible: on th January , the chief of Major-General Walter Dornberger’s
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rocket transport sta had directed that “in virtue of a special dispensa-
tion from the Reich Transport Ministry, no conveyance papers, either
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military tickets or bills of lading, are to be lled out for A traf c.”
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This regulation came into force on st February, ve days before the
trainload of ten A rockets, of which number , was one, emerged
from the exit-tunnel of the Nordhausen factory, and several weeks before
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it was red at Blizna.*
The “bills of lading” do not therefore exist.
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So what was the Intelligence of cer’s true source? Long before the on-
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set of the war, Intelligence had made strenuous e orts to break into the
German ciphers intercepted by the United Kingdom’s radio monitoring
organisation. No one underestimated the gains which would derive from
successfully cracking the high level ciphers used by the German High
Command, while at no time permitting the enemy to become aware of
this. “Correct information about the enemy does not by itself win wars,”
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one Intelligence of cer observed. “But it can stave o defeat a very long
time, and allow one to strike just when and where it hurts most.”
The Germans had by that time developed one particularly reliable ma-
chine cipher named Enigma. A senior civil servant, Joshua Cooper, con-
ceived that if the German codes were machine-made, then a machine ought
to be able to comprehend them. (In , Cooper had been transferred to
the Air Ministry for Intelligence duties, while still attached to the Foreign
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Of ce.)
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His idea bore fruit. Post Of ce engineers were invested with the task,
and were so successful that their device was able to tackle a far wider range
of ciphers than that for which it had originally been planned. This was
installed at a certain Joint Services establishment in Buckinghamshire, to
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which a considerable sta of translators, interpreters and evaluators was
* Rocket No. ,, for example, was launched from Peenemünde on th April .
