It took awhile to appreciate one of the great adventure novels of its day. I think I get it now. A masterclass of immersive yarnspinning, Where Eagles Dare is a clever plate-spinner emphasizing fun and thrills at every turn, a game writer’s playful take on the wartime thriller.
Does it help or hurt this book that it was made into a classic movie? After years of struggling with this question, and preferring the film, I have reached the happy conclusion that the book is its own thing, quite a different sort of entertainment, and all the better for it.
Reality takes a holiday as commandos banter over gunfire while implausible ploys find ways of succeeding in the end, but for me this time, it comes back to the plate-spinning. Alistair MacLean defies gravity and logic across 219 pages, and I found myself enjoying the ride.
In the run-up to D-Day, the mysterious Major Smith is sent with an elite team of strangers to infiltrate a Bavarian castle where an American general named Carnaby is imprisoned. Their job: get him back home before he can reveal to his captors all details of the big invasion being planned. What stands in their way? An elite German mountain force and the inaccessibility of the castle itself.
A British colonel explains: “Schloss Adler. The castle of the eagle. Believe me, it’s well named, only an eagle could get there.”
Hence the title.
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| "General Carnaby is the overall co-ordinator of planning for the exercise known as Operation Overlord," Smith and his men are told. "It would be absolutely true to say that he knows more about the Allied preparations for the Second Front than any man alive." Above, a map of D-Day as it went down. https://www.combinedops.com/Overlord.htm |
For seasoned MacLean fans, it recalls the formula of his best-known book, The Guns Of Navarone, except with snow rather than sea as the challenging element. While that earlier novel had a kind of grim spirit of mission, Where Eagles Dare comes across in its characterizations, situations and especially its dialogue as something of a lark:
“We’ll think of something,” Smith said soothingly.
“I’ll bet you think of something,” Schaffer said moodily. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Schaffer is Smith’s American comrade-in-arms. In the movie he’s played by Clint Eastwood, partnered with Richard Burton as Smith. Usually the movie follows the book; here MacLean was contracted to write a script for the movie producers, then wrote his book around that. According to Wikipedia, Burton wanted to star in a movie his young stepsons could enjoy, and you see MacLean working to that end.
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| MacLean at home beside his radio, circa 1960. One of the most famous radio calls in film may well be "Broadsword calling Danny Boy..." as heard repeatedly in the film version of Where Eagles Dare. I noticed it used only once in the book, however. Image from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/books/in-praise-of-alistair-maclean-and-the-male-romance.html |
While both movie and book feature the same plot twists and character revelations, the movie is much different in its execution. A lot of people die in the movie, as Burton and Eastwood sweep through the castle with German machine pistols that never run out of ammo or melt from overuse. Dialogue between them is terse and mostly functional.
In the book, Smith and Schaffer are more like a comedy team. Schaffer is written rather goofy at the beginning, full of corny jokes about his Montana upbringing. No doubt Eastwood had that cut from the movie script, as it bogs down the exposition. But once they are inside Schloss Adler, their deadpan exchanges in the heat of the moment develop a kind of goony rhythm and are a lot of fun.
“…we’re going to need some distractions.”
“I’m distracted enough as it is.”
The other thing about the book is how concerned Smith is not to kill anyone. Most of the time, he doesn’t. If you have seen the movie, you know about the violence. But in the book, Smith looks after fallen enemies, pursuing his mission mostly with stealth and brazen effrontery.
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| In the movie, we see the main male character sneak off for a quick one. In the book, the romance is kept to talk of getting married someday. Above, the principal players in the movie: Clint Eastwood as Schaffer, Ingrid Pitt as Heidi, Mary Ure as Mary, and Richard Burton as Smith. Image from https://picclick.com.au/Where-Eagles-Dare-Clint-Eastwood-Richard-Burton-387480778870.html |
A break in the action is followed by this crazy exchange:
“Well, where the bloody hell have you been?”
“The man we left tied up in the room beside the telephone exchange. The records office is directly above. I just remembered. I cut him free and dragged him out to the passage. He’d have burnt to death.”
“You did that, did you?” Schaffer said wonderingly. “You do think of the most goddamned unimportant things, don’t you?”
Smith’s qualms are even exploited by a bad guy, who sneers Smith is too much of a “noble sucker” to kill an unarmed man.
I remember the first time I read Where Eagles Dare, I was frankly frustrated at Smith’s no-kill policy. I liked my war stories more savage as a teen. Reading it again decades later, Smith’s humanitarianism bothered me again, this time for lack of realism. I felt the book too soft.
Now, as I say, I have come around. MacLean is not writing serious fiction, he is telling a Boys’ Own adventure with a lot of smart surprises, constructed in a highly ethical way so the entertainment doesn’t consist mostly of painful death and dismemberment. Yes, some grisly advantage is taken of a funicular, but for the most part, MacLean avoids these ploys. It shouldn’t work, war is not a game. But it does, because of a uniquely inviting, immersive bubble of funhouse reality MacLean constructs around his story.
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| Did the Third Reich really have helicopters? Yes, actually, though they were more in the way of prototypes like this Focke Wulf Fw 61, first flown in 1936 but never mass produced. In Where Eagles Dare, Schloss Adler's inaccessibility is underlined by the use of a somewhat anachronistic helicopter to ferry in a high-ranking Gestapo officer. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_61. |
It begins at the start, when we are introduced to Wing Commander Cecil Carpenter, flying a high-speed Mosquito to drop Smith and his team near Schloss Adler. Carpenter does this while puffing away on a large pipe and reading a paperback thriller with a lurid cover. Occasionally he checks his bearings by popping his head out of the cockpit.
“He does seem to navigate his way across Europe by opening his window and sniffing the air from time to time,” Major Smith observes.
Because Carpenter is a capable professional, the type MacLean enjoyed celebrating in his novels, this proves effective navigation and not grounds for a mental discharge. Again and again, we are confronted by people who manage crisis by shrugging off the high stakes with a quip and trusting things to work out. This is especially true of Smith.
Is it realistic? No, but it is entertaining and reassuring and keeps it light.
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| "The castle itself was another dream, the dream of the apotheosis of medievalism." Schloss Adler was based on real Bavarian mountaintop castles like Schloss Hohenschwangau, seen above, where the legendary Mad King Ludwig lived as a child. Image from https://www.visiteuropeancastles.com/germany/beautiful-castles-in-bavaria/ |
Where Eagles Dare is pure escapism of a very high standard. My third time reading it I kept marveling at just how well constructed the chapters are, each having its own set-up, its moment of insurmountable crisis, and a playful yet suspenseful resolution. MacLean could be a lazy writer, he certainly didn’t enjoy the craft, yet when he was on his game like he is here, he conveys a rightness you don’t come across often.
MacLean’s vivid prose pictures are also a plus. He was a chronic overwriter with a wordy habit of getting in his own way, but here his descriptions of scenes in a crowded German tavern or the interior of a wind-buffeted cable car crackle with energy and detail.
It was a dizzy, vertiginous and frankly terrifying spectacle. The entire valley below seemed to be swinging through a forty-five degree arc. One second he was looking at the line of pines that bordered the western slope of the valley, then the floor of the valley rushed by beneath them and seconds later he was staring at the line of pines that swept up the eastern side of the valley….The wind howled its high and lonely threnody through the cables and the suspension bracket.
The book, no doubt mirroring MacLean’s script, consists of three acts. The first is a mission of stealth, complicated by the fact members of Smith’s team are mysteriously being taken out. We then move into a different arena of intrigue, a cozy den deep in the enemy fortress where Smith plays his cards and keeps everyone misdirected. That’s the best part of the book for me, by turns suspenseful and hilarious.
Then we get to the finale, a mad rush for the exit that pulls out all the stops. Even if the movie does this part better, you get in the book a continuation of the droll send-up atmosphere with only the slightest relaxation of tension. The best part is a harrowing battle high over a valley, but the ending is also well done, with one last card turned.
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| Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the military intelligence unit known as the Abwehr, is invoked late in Where Eagles Dare to help Smith's mission. In reality, the question of Canaris's allegiance is open. A once-dutiful officer, he was executed by Hitler in April 1945 for treason. Canaris is remembered as a "good German" who died to save his country. https://www.grunge.com/1560298/what-happened-wwii-german-saboteurs-tried-blow-up-america/ |
In many ways, the book makes an impression by upsetting expectations. Smith wants to make his way past a crowd of enemy officers, so he makes a loud pass at a pretty woman, knowing they will be less suspicious of him if he is more obstreperous. Bluff is the rule, along with a cocksuredness that would be annoying if it wasn’t used just right:
“It’s not important! But don’t you see?” Her voice was imploring, almost despairing. “They know – or will any minute – that you’re alive. They know who you are. They’ll be expecting you up there.”
“Ah, but you overlooked the subtleties, my dear Heidi,” Schaffer put in. “What they don’t know is that we are expecting them to be expecting us. At least, that’s what I think I mean.”
Many readers prefer the MacLean of an earlier time, when his plots were leaner, his villains meaner, and his focus cleaner. For a harrowing straight-forward adventure tale, you are better served by Guns of Navarone or his first novel, H. M. S Ulysses, which is both a darker and more realistic vision of men at war.
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| Released in December, 1968, Where Eagles Dare was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1969. In a year dominated by downbeat counter-culture films like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, no doubt many found comfort in a straightforward action yarn. Many still do. https://visitgreenfieldma.com/event/the-clint-eastwood-film-festival-where-eagles-dare-1968/2025-01-26/ |
Where Eagles Dare finds MacLean at the height of his middle period, somewhat skeptical of the thrills he doles out, but doling them out with finesse and a bit of camp self-awareness. I can see why I missed this in my earlier readings, because I was looking for comic-book thrills or plausible action and not so much for wit. I get it now.
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