Operation Damocles: Israel's Secret War Against Hitler's Scientists, 1951-1967

by Roger Howard

The forgotten cloak-and-dagger history of the former Nazi scientists who were recruited by Egypt to develop long-range missiles capable of striking Israel From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemu¨nde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.Would Israel fall under the shadow of long-range missiles held by a ruler who was sworn to destroy the Jewish state? Could the missiles be fitted with warheads filled with radiological, chemical, or even nuclear materials? Israel responded by using threats, intimidation, and brutal assassination squads to deter the German scientists from working on Nasser’s behalf.Exactly half a century later, this book tells the gripping story of the mysterious arms dealers, Mossad assassins, scientific genii, and leading figures who all played their part in Operation Damocles. 12 pages of B&W photographs and maps

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Israel, Science, Espionage, Historical, World History

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Roger Howard is a journalist and author writing on international relations and is an associate editor of an international magazine on intelligence issues.

His previous books include The Oil Hunters: Exploration and Espionage in the Middle East 1880-1939 (2008; Operation Damocles: Israel Versus Hitler's Scientists (2011)

His articles have appeared in The Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Independent on Sunday, Wall Street Journal, Spectator, New Statesman, International Herald Tribune, Jane's Intelligence Review and many other newspapers and journals.

He has a specialized knowledge of defence issues, having written for RUSI, IISS, Chatham House and Jane's Information Group.

One of his previous books has been judged as “a model of objectivity and dispassionate analysis in a publishing world where there is far too much sensationalism on such subjects” (A review in The Tablet by William Keegan of 'The Arctic Gold Rush' (Continuum, 2009).

Reviews

[Cropredy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lurid cover (swastika) and teaser sub title - 'Israel's Secret War Against German Scientists' promise the reader a story of Israeli Mossad derring-do and perhaps revelations long suppressed about a dangerous period of time in the Middle East.

Unfortunately for the reader, nothing much happens in the book as nothing much happened in real life. Yes, Nasser's regime employed German scientists to develop rockets and jet fighters. And yes, Israel conducted counter-measures, assassination attempts and espionage. Israel got into a tizzy over the implications of German scientists working for their enemy and escalated their response. But nothing of significance or military value was achieved by the German engineers and scientists - even had the Israelis done nothing.

The whole story reads like an early version of the Bush White House's push to claim Iraqi WMD capability.

The author does something rarely seen in a book about the Mossad - he is completely even-handed in his depiction of both sides - Israeli and Egyptian. This is no Mossad hagiography. Mistakes were made by both sides.

The book appears to have been written entirely from secondary sources. I was not familiar at all with this story so I guess I learned something and credit the author for retelling the history for today's readers.

[Sarah Weiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of good facts and gives a detailed account of Israeli-Egyptian relations and espionage during the 50's and 60's. However, as others have pointed out, the book is boring, especially for a story about spies. Further, while the facts seem to be accurate, the author is at times incorrect in his analysis. For instance, he states that the state of Israel was created due to the Holocaust, an assertion that ignores almost 2,000 years of Jewish history. Further, in trying to be completely balanced in his narrative, he unfortunately and unreasonably places Israeli government officials and spies on the same level as Abdel Nasser and Nazi scientists.

[Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent overview of Operation Damocles, the actions taken by the Israeli Intelligence Services (Mossad and Aman in this case) against the German scientists involved in the development of ballistic missiles for the Nasser government. A combination of threats, violence, diplomatic pressure, and incentives eventually led the scientists to return to West-Germany. The affair led to the resignation of Isser Harel, the head of the Mossad, whose actions in raising media publicity threatened the budding relationship between West-Germany and Israel (important as the former was to deliver weapons to the latter). It also involves one of Israel's most famous spies, Wolfgang Lotz, who was ultimately arrested but escaped the death penalty (it was suggested that the truth was too unpalatable for the Egyptians, i.e. that rather than an opportunistic former member of Hitler's army, he was an Israeli citizen and Mossad operative). The story of him and his wife trying to find out whether the Shaloufa site is a real missile test site makes for an exciting read. As the book argues the operation has many important lessons for the present age: the need for realistic intelligence assessments, avoiding escalating state interactions, the use of violence before other options are exhausted, mistaking words for actions, and being circumspect about outside informers.

Interestingly, I read this after Forsyth's "The Odessa File" and it is clear that the book cleverly uses many of the real-life facts (as he did for "Day of the Jackal").

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book with both good and bad points. On the plus side, it give the reader information on the issues surrounding the Israeli reaction to the Egyptian missile program. On the negative side, it is a bit light on the actual assassinations and threats against the Nazi scientists and extremely dry. I also disagree with the summary of the author that the Israeli actions were wholly unnecessary. The author makes this statement with the luxury of hindsight. He fails, in his summary, to account for the fact that millions of Jews had just been killed by the Nazis and these same Nazis were now allied with an enemy bent on the destruction of the Jewish State.

This book has good background information on a little studied aspect of the cold war. It is not by any means as exciting as the jacket describes, nor does it go into anything in much detail. It is an ok starting point for research on the subject. If there is something better out there on the subject, I would recommend skipping this one.

[شريف لطفي · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and captivating read despite the fact that the author knows very little about Egypt starting from the names of traditional food all the way to where Nasser lived.
In numerous occasions the author made serious mistakes regarding the use of wrong meanings of Arabic words which he included to try to show off that he knew some Arabic which he clearly does not. The author also continued his showing off using names of food that are not Egyptian and wrongly named the neighborhood where Nasser lived and as he clearly doesn’t know Egypt he thought it was in Alexandria since the name of his neighborhood in heliopolis was rather close to one in Alexandria.

This raises lots of questions regarding the credibility of the author and this text altogether

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent case study on intelligence and politics, with a bit of fun spy vs. spy thrown in. Howard looks at Egypt's use of prior Nazi scientists to build a missile and jet fighter program and Israel's subsequent (over)reaction, and then provides his own thoughtful analysis in a brief conclusion.

This was a thought provoking read and mentally stimulating. I did want more of the "spy stuff" and in that regard the title is a little misleading, but ultimately this was absolutely worth the time. This would be interesting to anyone interested in Middle Eastern politics, international relations/politics, or, with the above caveats, intelligence operations.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

An even-handed non-hagiographic account of relatively early actions good and bad by Israeli intelligence. Mistakes are frequent. Though not mentioned often, makes clear that the beginnings of Israel were also bathed in terrorism, then committed by Zionists against the British. And also that it is Israel’s policy alone to strike back all out of proportion; the British didn’t strike back overwhelmingly after Zionists bombed their installations.

[Barbara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was determined to finish this book even though I found it utterly tedious, boring and never ending.

[Chris Morrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting historical review... shows one of many ways in which that region of the world is constantly in trouble :(

[Milton Fulghum · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the subject was interesting, the presentation was often confusing. The time line did not always flow very well. The various perspectives (UAR, Israeli, other powers) were interesting.

[Matthew Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the topic. Very interesting and good lesson on international relations. Writing was fine but I thought the structure was problematic at times. The order didn't need to be chronological but it was confusing at times as to the order of events.

[Mark Phinney]

One-sixth of the way through the book. Have hit a stretch that seems more than bit dry. The subject seems very interesting and neglected in the popular history of the Middle East.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book from the library a few weeks ago, and I thought it looked interesting because of the whole spy/post-Hitler/Israel thing going on there. It took me a while to get into, mostly because I wasn't really familiar with the jargon and in the beginning it was basically just a lot about people and very detailed. The book was very taxing but fairly simple. I really enjoyed the conclusion, it summed everything up nicely, though I think that I could have just read that and it would have pretty much given me the same amount of substance as the book. There was definitely a lot of research put into this and I did notice that, however I do wonder where it came from, since the bibliography has more than 200 entries and I doubt anyone read it. Anyway, not the best book, but it was extremely pluralistic and well done.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry but thorough