German Fallschirmjaeger assault against Churchill in 1943-True or False??

Hey guys!
I am wondering about events in the book "The Eagle Has Landed". I know it is fiction, but apparently there is a chance of the story being based on actual events. Has anyone heard of this? Was there a German attempt to get Churchill in 1943 in England, that turned out to be an actual Churchill impersonator? Winston himself was actually on a submarine in the Mediterranean at the time, apparently.
If there is a chance of this being true, is there any sort of info in any books that can support this fact? Thanks in advance!
Jon

 

I have never found anything that indicates such a plan in the making or having taken place.

 

I read a long while ago that Hitler did come up with such a plan; commando's were supposed to be brought ashore in the UK by submarine, kill (or kidnap) Curchill and at the same time assasinate Marlene Dietrich (If one high profile VIP wasn't enough), who, on the date that this raid was supposed to be executed, resided only a few blocks from where Chruchill was supposed to be. The operation was duly cancelled.

I truly cannot tell you the source of this information, but I would consider it suspect. I am sure the idea of killing/kidnapping Chruchill has crossed the mindsof the Germans, but I think the feasability was non-existant. Even the Germans must have realised that.

 

Actually a plan was brought up to capture Eisenhower and then murder him, the story being fiction was actually somewhat conceived around the real life- almost -attempt on the Commanding General.

E

 

Thanks guys!
I had my doubts about the events being true but when I heard that they were based on some truth it got me wondering! Now I know. Thanks again!
Jon

 

So far in the books ( on by Skorzeny, his memoirs ) no such attack was planned on Churchill (?? why not ) and then again the attack on Eisenhower was only a rumour that the captured men of Skorzeny ( before shot ) told to the allied soldiers at the battle of Bulge.

But here something interesting...

Ashley Wilkes-The 50-year old actor perished in a strange incident in WW2--an apparent attempt to assassinate Winston Churchill in the air. On June 1, 1943 the BOAC DC-3 commercial airliner Howard was aboard was shot down by the German Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay, the portion of the Atlantic Ocean immediately north of Spain and immediately west of France. There were 17 persons on board, 13 passengers and 4 crewmen. None survived.

It is now known from captured documents that less than ten minutes after it was sighted the Ibis was attacked by an entire squadron of eight Junkers Ju 88's.After the airliner fell into the bay, the attacking fighters photographed the smoking wreckage floating on the rough seas and then returned to their home base near Bordeaux in occupied France.

There is plenty of evidence supporting the mistaken identity theory. In late May 1943 Churchill was preparing to return to England from a trip to North Africa and Gibraltar; the Germans were planning to destroy Churchill's plane if they could find it; and partly due to a British secret service disinformation campaign, the Nazis actually believed that Churchill might fly the commercial route from Lisbon. In 1942 Churchill had traveled from Bermuda across the ocean in a scheduled commercial airline seaplane.

Nazi spies had the Ibis under surveillance before it took off, and at the Lisbon airport they scrutinized the boarding passengers. These spies may have mistaken for Churchill a passenger named Alfred Tregear Chenhalls, who physically resembled and dressed like Churchill and smoked cigars like Churchill.

In one of his books on WW2, The Hinge of Fate (1950), Churchill regarded the mistaken identity thesis as proven fact, and referred to Leslie Howard's death as one of “the inscrutable workings of fate.”

http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/other_1ashley.html

By the way, I don´t think he looks alot like Churchill at all unless he got quite alot of weight and lost his hair...maybe then!

 

False, false and false
This is a myth caused by the Hollywood publicity machine.

 

First of all....Ashley Wilkes was a "character" in Gone with the Wind, the popular Hollywood movie, played by Leslie Howard, the magnificent English Actor.

He was one of the 8 (?) passengers who perished when their commercial plane, named Ibis was shot down and destroyed, reportedly by a handful of the Luftwaffe. The "man who was the Churchill look-alike" is not in fact Leslie Howard, but a fellow by the name of Treapar Chenhalls....

You could always do a search for Leslie Howard and you are sure to find all that information about the fated flight from Portugal.

 

The answers quite simple.
The Germans lack of intelligence about what was happening within Britain was almost total.
So any attack on Churchill would fail because they would first have to find him

I can just see a unit of crack German troops wandering about London asking for directions on where the PM was

 

”Bitte englisher pigdog, mine hovercraft is full of eels?”

“Certainly, walk up Northumberland Avenue, turn left and left again at Trafalgar Square and you want No.10 down the third on your right.”

No.9

 

Not quite hollywood Red, book was by alistair mclean and its introduction (cut out of the movie) makes us far less certain it was a false story, Alistair publicly states that the story is 50% true, although which 50% he took to his grave

I started a thread not long ago on another forum and it got quite a lot of responses, very interesting read:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=31801

 

Pardon me, Bratwurst, but the original novel was written by Jack Higgins, not Alastair MacLean.

Yours,
Paul

 

Paul, it’s Christmas, why bring facts into this?

No.9

 

Good one!! and exactly what I was thinking after reading the thread. Heck My wife has made me watch old "Ashley Wilkes" in "Gone with the Wind" a couple of times in the last forty years... I thought the nazis would be after Scarlett and Rhett soon...

 

"I thought the nazis would be after Scarlett and Rhett soon"

I can see it now with Eva and Adolf in the title roles........

"But Schicky, vot about our lebensraum?"

"Frankly Scharlachrot, es ist mir schnuppe!"

No.9

[ 01. January 2004, 03:03 PM: Message edited by: No.9 ]

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! MY NAME IS MUDDD!!!!!!!!!!!

especially as I have the old hardback version

 

No Iy never happened, but like so many other myths and legends brought about by films, not a word of truth in any of it.
BRian

 

There was a plan considered by Koch and Witzig to land Fallschirmjagers in the park opposite the Houses of Parliament and kidnap Churchill and fly out in Storch planes. It was never past the initial planning stage but was put forward as a viable plan. See Mrazek book, Eben Emael

 

There was a plan considered by Koch and Witzig to land Fallschirmjagers in the park opposite the Houses of Parliament and kidnap Churchill and fly out in Storch planes. It was never past the initial planning stage but was put forward as a viable plan. See Mrazek book, Eben Emael

 

” There was a plan considered by Koch and Witzig to land Fallschirmjagers in the park opposite the Houses of Parliament and kidnap Churchill and fly out in Storch planes.”

There was? And what ‘park’ would this be exactly? I know bits of London have changed over the years, but opposite the Houses of Parliament was/is the small green known as Parliament Square with a number of statues, and south of the Houses, after the Victoria Tower, is the tapering Victoria Tower Gardens, more a river walk than a ‘park ‘ park?



No.9