Stealing the V2 rocket: Britain’s secret WW2 intelligence coup

Summary

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HistoryExtra Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Stealing the V2 rocket: Britain’s secret WW2 intelligence coup
Host: Emily Briffet
Guest: Guy Walters (author, historian, journalist)
Date: June 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the gripping tale of how British intelligence, in partnership with the Polish resistance, pulled off a daring mission to capture and smuggle parts of the Nazi V2 "vengeance weapon" rocket out of occupied Europe during World War II. Host Emily Briffet speaks to author and historian Guy Walters, whose book "Stealing Hitler's Rocket" uncovers this largely untold adventure that had significant implications for the Allied war effort.

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Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. The Terror and Significance of the V2 Rocket

• Setting the Scene: Walters paints a vivid picture of the devastation caused in London by the first V2 attack, describing how Staveley Road in Chiswick was “completely obliterated” in September 1944. ([01:10])
• Technical Leap: Unlike the V1 “doodlebug,” which was a slow, pilotless cruise missile, the V2 was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile, traveling at over 3,000 mph and falling with devastating, unstoppable force. ([02:52])
  • Quote: “A V2 rocket is something that there is nothing you can do to defend yourself against... If you’re lucky enough to survive a V2 rocket attack, you will hear the rocket approach after it has exploded and killed people around you.” — Walters ([01:54])
• Psychological Impact: The invention of these terror weapons marked a transformation in warfare, making civilians even more vulnerable and escalating the psychological dimension of modern conflict. ([07:23])

2. Nazi Motivation and Allied Intelligence Challenges

• Nazi Desperation: Hitler’s development of the V1 and V2 “vengeance weapons” stemmed from desperation as the Allies advanced and the Third Reich’s prospects dimmed.
  • Area bombing was believed to potentially demoralize enemies, but Walters notes this was a flawed assumption according to later evidence. ([05:00–07:23])
• Early Intelligence: British intelligence began to suspect and investigate rocket developments at Peenemunde and later Mittelwerk in Nordhausen, despite internal skepticism (e.g., Lord Cherwell vs. RV Jones). ([08:43])
  • Quote: “You’ve got this fight going on...a desperate need to find out: What is this rocket? Where is it being made? How many can be made? How destructive is it?... So we do have a good idea these things are being built. But, you know, is that enough?” — Walters ([09:46])
• Operation Crossbow: Churchill’s son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, led committees to gather and analyze intelligence, pushing aerial reconnaissance and sabotage. ([10:39])

3. Polish Resistance and the Crux of the Operation

• Ground Reality in Poland: The Germans tested V2s over occupied Poland, leading locals to witness crashes and gather rocket debris—but mostly just fragments, likened to a "fiendish jigsaw puzzle.” ([13:01–14:56])
  • Quote: “You’ve got basically a jigsaw puzzle in which you're just putting together bits of cloud and sky.” — Walters ([13:55])

4. The Turning Point: Capturing an Intact V2 Rocket

• The Marshland Miracle: In spring 1944, a V2 belly-landed almost intact in the marshes near Sarnaki, Poland. The Polish resistance hid it from Germans and began plans for smuggling it to Britain. ([16:38–17:00])
  • Quote: “There is basically an intact V2 rocket... The Poles know it’s a rocket... and they think, what are we going to do now? We can’t just drag it away with a couple of horses and oxen.” — Walters ([17:00])
• Dismantling & Smuggling: The resistance dismantled the rocket, hid parts across Poland, and eventually moved them to a clandestine airstrip.
• Critical Intelligence: The greatest question for British scientists—did the V2 have a radio guidance system? Understanding this would stop wasted efforts trying to jam guidance signals if unnecessary. ([19:42])
  • Quote: “If this rocket has a guidance system...and we can block the radio waves, we can therefore block the rocket. And this is incredibly important to know.” — Walters ([19:55])
• The Extraction: Polish resistance moved the rocket parts 200 miles, arranging for a British Dakota plane piloted by Stanley Culliford to land in secret and retrieve them. Technical difficulties nearly doomed the operation, but eventually, perseverance prevailed. ([21:20–22:51])

5. Impact and Historical Significance

• Operational Consequence: The intelligence gleaned from the rocket confirmed that jamming would not work; the only countermeasure was to destroy launch sites and factories. ([28:20])
  • Quote: “Actually what it did was make us realise we were more helpless than we could imagine. The only way to stop these things is to stop the means of production and... overrun sites.” — Walters ([28:20])
• Adventurous Undertaking: Walters highlights the mission’s under-recognized daring and its place alongside the great covert Allied operations of the war. ([22:52], [24:04])
  • Quote: “It’s not a forgotten mission because there’s always someone who knows about these things. But it’s just not something that had really been looked at before.” — Walters ([22:52])

6. Walters' Broader Work and Perspective

• The episode closes with insights into Walters’ ongoing historical adventures, including his recent documentary "The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold," which pursues Nazi treasure with a playful, road-trip approach to history. ([24:45–27:49])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “A V2 rocket is something that there is nothing you can do to defend yourself against...if you’re lucky enough to survive, you will hear the rocket approach after it has exploded and killed people around you.” — Guy Walters ([01:54])
• “You’ve got basically a jigsaw puzzle in which you're just putting together bits of cloud and sky.” — Walters ([13:55])
• “If this rocket has a guidance system...and we can block the radio waves, we can therefore block the rocket. And this is incredibly important to know.” — Walters ([19:55])
• “Actually what it did was make us realise we were more helpless than we could imagine.” — Walters ([28:20])
• On the extraction: “He lands the Dakota on this meadow, and the Poles load up all these cases with bits of V2 in it...and Culliford tries now for the third time [to take off].” — Walters ([21:30])

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:35–01:10: Introduction—The V2’s first strike and its mysterious devastation in London.
• 01:10–04:57: Description, technical details, and psychological terror of V2 vs V1.
• 05:00–08:43: Hitler’s strategy, bombing ethics, and the changing psychology of war.
• 08:43–10:33: Allied intelligence gathering and the internal scientific debate.
• 10:39–12:57: Churchill’s committee, Operation Crossbow, and Nazi shifts in testing/production.
• 13:01–14:56: Polish civilians and resistance gathering rocket fragments—intelligence puzzle.
• 16:22–19:55: Discovery of an intact V2, smuggling plans, and quest for technical knowledge.
• 21:20–22:51: Airstrip drama and episode’s climactic extraction story.
• 24:04–27:49: Walters’ wider engagement with WWII stories and recent documentaries.
• 28:20–End: The coup’s true strategic impact and closing thoughts.

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Conclusion

This HistoryExtra episode tells the astonishing, little-known story of Operation Most (Wildhorn 3): Allied and Polish cooperation that achieved a major WWII intelligence coup. It blends engineering intrigue, dangerous undercover efforts, and the high stakes of wartime science into an accessible, adventure-tinged narrative. Walters and Briffet deliver insights with wit, candor, and a sense of discovery, making this episode essential listening for those fascinated by secret missions, history, and the human capacity for ingenuity in crisis.

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Further Reading:

• Stealing Hitler’s Rocket by Guy Walters
• Walters’ article on the HistoryExtra website
• [Watch] "The Last Hunt for Nazi Gold" documentary for more historical intrigue with a lighter touch.

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Transcript

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[Narrator (History Extra Introduction)]

In 1944, as Allied troops pushed across Europe after D Day, the Allies faced a terrifying new threat. Hitler's V2 weapons striking without warning at supersonic speed. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Emily Briffet speaks to author, historian and journalist Guy Waters about his new book, Stealing Hitler's Rocket, which uncovers the extraordinary secret mission to smuggle parts of the Nazi vengeance weapon out of occupied Europe and into British hands. Guy starts by setting the scene.

[Guy Waters]

If you lived on Staveley Road in Chiswick today, well, obviously you'd be very lucky because you'd probably be quite well off. Chiswick, as most people know, is a pretty posh area and it's pretty nice. But one day in September 1944, wow. Bang. No one knew what had happened initially, and lots of people were killed and a whole section of the street was just completely obliterated. And the government said it was a gas main, and it wasn't a gas main, it was something else. Some people thought, could it have been a V1 rocket? Who? I'm sure all listeners will be aware of a V1 doodlebug. But it wasn't a V1 doodlebug, it was something else. And it was what Hitler called a vengeance weapon, and it was called a V2. And that is a V2 rocket. And that was a new and deadly weapon that will change the course of warfare and human exploration. But the first thing it's used for is for sowing death and destruction and fear. And a V2 rocket is something that there is nothing you can do to defend yourself against something that goes five times the speed of sound. If you're lucky enough to survive a V2 rocket attack, you will hear the rocket approach after it has exploded and killed people around you because it is going so fast, you know, over 3,000 miles an hour. So this is something that is completely devastating, completely new, and will change the course of modern warfare.

[Emily Briffet]

It sounds truly extraordinary. What made it such a leap beyond the V1? What was that difference there?

[Guy Waters]

The V1 was powered by a pulse jet engine. Don't ask me any more than that. I don't know anything about engines and engineering, particularly if this is an engineering compass. I'd be absolutely up a creek without a paddle. But we're not. A V1 is essentially a cruise missile. You launch it off a ramp and it's about the size of a small plane without a pilot in it, and it simply bumbles along. Then it runs out of fuel and it drops and it explodes. Doesn't go that fast. Just a few hundred miles an hour and enough for modern planes. Then in 44 light Spitfires, like typhoons, to be able to tip them over or shoot them down, you know, it's still going to be a good shot, don't get me wrong. But it's not a rocket essentially. It's just basically a pilotless aircraft without a rocket engine. A V2 rocket is something else entirely. It is 16 meters tall. So I am sitting on the fourth or fifth floor, depending whether you're American or British, of an apartment block in Prague. And if I looked out my window, I would see the tip of the V2 rocket standing on the ground. You know, that is, I know how many steps are up to my apartment, because I tried to do them. It's 133 steps up to my apartment. So I know that this is a big thing, most of a V2 rocket, and I'm sure people have got a pretty good idea what they look like. Most of it is a motor and fuel, and at the top of it, you've got this one ton in the nose of what's called amatol, which is high explosive. And if you whack that into a Street at 3,000 miles an hour and one ton of high explosive, you are going to cause a lot of damage. So it is essentially the first rocket of its kind. It is totally revolutionary, it is totally deadly, and there's almost nothing you can do to defend yourself, apart from run very quickly. But believe you me, even Usain Bolt is not going to get away from a V2 rocket.

[Emily Briffet]

Gosh. And with such a weapon, what was Hitler's plan?

[Guy Waters]

The vengeance weapons were born out of desperation. Hitler knew that his cities were being pounded by day by the raf, by night by the US Army Air Force on all fronts. He was retreating by the time, of course, Normandy, 6th of June. We'll know what happens there. We all know what's happening on the Eastern Front and everyone is encroaching on the ever diminishing Third Reich. And he knows that he's got one more roll of the dice in some ways, and one of them is to develop new and exciting technology that be A game changer. You know, hopefully with these weapons like the v1, v2, he can bring the Allies to their knees. The problem with the v2 is actually is range is not that great. You know, it's only a few hundred kilometers. But as the front goes smaller and smaller and smaller, the V2s have to be placed further and further away. So it is an attempt to, you know, if I can obliterate London, I can win the war. But what we know about bombing, and obviously this wasn't really appreciated at the time and I've just been filming a segment for a Nat Geo series called World War II secrets from above, in which I was looking at the bombing of Hamburg in 1943, Operation Gomorrah, in which we, the British, and along with the Americans launched hundreds of bombers over Hamburg and we deliberately dropped incendiary bombs on a civilian population in order to deliberately kill as many civilians as possible to stop them working in the factories and therefore help the Nazi war effort. And we deliberately set light to these people. And is that a war crime? That's not what we're going to today. But the whole point was also to destroy German morale and German resolve. Now, as we now know today, bombing people does not necessarily get rid of their resolve, it may even strengthen it. And during the war, RAF airmen, US army airmen, were regarded as the same way as we regard terrorists today. So if you are a downed airman, you were very lucky not to get lynched if you were caught, you know, in Germany. And a lot of war crimes I've written about war crimes, Axis war crimes. So therefore, you know, does bombing people change their mood? Oh no, we all give up now. It doesn't quite work like that. It's much more complicated. And that's why bombing is such an ethical problem. Anyway, sorry, that's a little bit of a byway.

[Emily Briffet]

No, this is fascinating. It sounds like as well as being completely destructive, it changes almost the psychology of warfare as well.

[Guy Waters]

The Second World War is the first time that area bombing, strategic bombing, whatever you want to call it, saturation bombing, it's the first time this really happens. You've got to remember, I mean, flight powered flight was only invented, you know, four decades before. I mean, that's nothing. I mean, four decades ago was the mid-1980s. I was nearly an adult then and giving away my age, suddenly you have this leap from SOP with camels, the trenches, to Flying Fortresses, Lancasters, Liberators, dropping ultimately hundreds of thousands of tons of high explosives throughout the war on civilians and the only time we've seen anything similar to that was when you got the old Zeppelin raid over. I forget where parts of east anglia in about 1916, 1917. And a few bombs are dropped here and there. I don't wish to belittle the fact that some people were killed, but it's not on the same scale ethically. And so therefore, this is the first time that we see this going on. So therefore, Hitler, who, who I will remind you, started the war and started bombing people felt that this was a totally legitimate way to perhaps help him win a war, was to use these incredibly powerful rockets to wipe people out. You know, fair game. It's a horrible thing.

[Emily Briffet]

So I've got to ask you, how far did Allied Intelligence know about the development of the V2 rockets? Or was it just at that moment of the first strike?

[Guy Waters]

They knew before that they were developing rockets? And I go into the book about how aerial reconnaissance and also discovered that rockets were being built in a sort of spit in the Baltic called Peenemunde. And there was this incredibly famous raid in 1943 in which we obliterated much of the German factory, killed lots of scientists, lots of slave laborers, unfortunately, Operation Hydra, and it absolutely devastated Pimmunde. So we had a very good idea these things were being developed. And there were intelligence reports coming back to Britain saying that the Germans have got a rocket. And you've got a real argument about how there are elements within the British military, scientific, political establishment who think, yes, this is possible. And then you've got Churchill's chief scientific advisor, Lord Charwell, saying, no, it's not possible. A rocket like that would have to be, you know, too big to produce. It's not technically possible. But you have this brilliant man called R.V. jones, who says, no, no, no, this is something that can be achieved. So you've got this fight going on and of course, so what you've got in sort of 43 and onwards is this desperate need to find out, what is this rocket, where is it being made, how many can be made, how destructive is it, and so on, so forth. And yes, we can bomb the facilities. So what happens after we do bomb the facilities? So we do have a good idea.

[Emily Briffet]

We.

[Guy Waters]

What do the Nazis do? Well, they like their subterranean facilities and so they move the V2 V1 production to a place called Mittelwerk in a place called Nordhausen, which is probably one of the most brutal slave labour camps in the whole of the war. So we have a good idea these things are being built. But, you know, Is that enough?

[Emily Briffet]

What does Churchill and his sort of inner circle, I guess, do with this intelligence?

[Guy Waters]

You have a man called Duncan Sands, who is Churchill's son in law. And Sands is basically tasked with chairing various committees called Crossbow. And those who've watched Operation Crossbow, that you. You've probably not watched Operation Crossbow, have you, Emily?

[Emily Briffet]

I confess I haven't, but I'm aware of it.

[Guy Waters]

It's a great movie. It's a great movie. You know, it's one of Those old fashioned Technicolor 60s war films in which everybody's terribly chaps and you know, blah, blah, blah. But yes. So therefore that there are committees formed to try what we need to find more intelligence about this stuff. And the problem is, is that the Germans not only put their means of production well underground, but they also moved their testing ranges to a place they called Heidelage, which is now known as Blesno. And they moved all the firing ranges right into the middle of what is today Poland, what the Germans then called the General Government, because of course, Poland was famously invaded by the Germans and indeed by the Soviets. And I guess the equivalent, you know, what they're doing is they decided, well, we'll just fire these rockets, we'll test them. Rather than fire them into the Baltic from Peenemunde, we will fire them them across the middle of Poland. So it's a bit like testing your rockets somewhere outside London and firing them in the direction of Birmingham and Manchester and then seeing how they get on. But WTF or sorry, wtaf, firing rockets across land where people live. Okay, the rockets don't have explosive in them. But I put it to you, if something 16 meters long and weighing several tons hits you on the head, explosive or not, it's going to hurt. And so this is what the polls start seeing is they're being fired from relatively southern Poland, right north to middle north of Poland to, and being aimed roughly about 100 miles east of Warsaw. So obviously, once, once you're doing this, the Nazis, they don't give a poo about the civilian population. And the major general in charge of the V2 weapons program, a man called Walter Dornberger, says to Himmler, listen, you know, I'm very worried that we're gonna hit civilians. And basically Himmler says, don't worry, it's on my head. I don't give a. I just don't care. So it's fine, go ahead. And Dornberger says, right, okay, well, you know, now I've got your say, so that's fine. You know, I mean, you know, great. Yippee. I'll do this.

[Emily Briffet]

Okay, so what do people in Poland, how did they respond to this?

[Guy Waters]

Well, they're very much aware, you know, you're going to see these things fall out the sky. And a lot of them were falling around a village called Sarnacki, which is on the River Bug. And around that area, the Germans are roughly aiming at the same place. But obviously, the rockets are very temperamental. Okay, so this is infant technology in many ways. So a lot of rockets just bang. And so, you know, they just explode or they sort of go up in the air and then they go off like a kind of firework, whizzing around in all sorts of directions. And then everyone goes, run, run, run, run, run. But some of them do go through their trajectory and they do land. And generally, when something big and heavy lands at five times the speed of sound, not a lot of it is left. But there are bits and pieces. And what the Polish Underground do, the Home army and other members of Polish resistance units, is that they go around gathering up the bits and pieces and they go, right, I've got some, you know, a bit of wire here. I've got this big, weird plate of aluminium or whatever it is, and what they're gathering it up. But of course, what you've got is the most fiendish jigsaw puzzle in the world because you've got lots of scraps. But, you know, obviously this stuff is. It's in smithereens. And so, you know, how do you piece it together? What can you learn from it? So you start learning bits and pieces. And there are scientists in Warsaw and also in Lublin who analyze it, but, you know, and they send the intelligence back to the uk, back to Britain. But it's a very incomplete picture. Very, very incomplete picture, what you're doing. As I say, you got basically a jigsaw puzzle in which you're just putting together bits of cloud and sky, right? I don't know. I haven't done a jigsaw puzzle since I was a kid. But, you know, I always remember the sky being really annoying. But also, you know that you don't have every piece in the box, you know, so you're thinking, great, so I'm going to make an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. And even, even if I put all the pieces together in the right way, I don't have the whole thing. I don't have it all. I need all of it.

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[Emily Briffet]

given that this is arguably one of the most complex puzzles ever, and as we know from the title of your book, Stealing Hitler's Rocket, what is the turning point that goes from this is a puzzle we can't solve to we're gonna go out and steal a rocket.

[Guy Waters]

So one day in the spring of 1944, the villagers at Salnaki, it's hard to know exactly what happens, but, but some of them here, a big squelch, essentially, let's call it a big squelch. And the River Bug is a major river in Poland and it's surrounded like lots of rivers by a lot of marshland. And one day a rocket goes

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and

[Guy Waters]

basically belly lands into a marsh and the locals discover it and there is basically an intact V2 rocket, okay? And it's sitting there steaming away, whatever it is, ticking over. And of course the Polish resistance are contacted very, very quickly and they're thinking, right, we've got the whole thing, we've got a rocket, it's right there. And what's happening is that the Germans know where the rockets roughly land. And so at the same time as the Polish resistance looking for the rockets, you also have the German army running around trying to find bits and recover scraps. And the Germans have been saying that this is just artillery Shells. That's all it is. It's all it is. And the Poles see this thing go, yeah, it's 16 meters long. That is a big, big whomping shell. There is no way that is, you know, just an artillery shell. And they know it's a rocket. And they think, what are we going to do now? We can't just drag it away with a couple of horses and oxen. You know what we're going to have to do? Well, first thing we have to do is we're going to have to hide it. So what they do, they cover it in reeds, hide it up, and all the time the Germans are getting near and they manage to hide it, the Germans cannot find it. And then the next thing that happens is that the Poles then think, okay, we got this massive rocket that weighs several tons and it's 16 meters long. It's just not something you can just put on the back of a cart. So what they do is they think, right, we can dismantle this rocket, we can study it, and even better. And this is the really ambitious bit, and the signal comes from London is basically, let's get it to Britain. So how do you get middle of the war over about a thousand miles, maybe 7,800miles? How do you get a V2 rocket from the middle of occupied Poland to the UK to Farnborough to the aeronautical research establishments there to examine it? And that's partly the story my book tells. I'm very keen to take this conversation with you, but I don't want to tell you what happens at the end, okay? And so I will tell a little bit more, but I'm determined not to tell everybody everything. So what the Poles do is they dismantle it and they hide it in barns and they smuggle pieces to Warsaw, where it is studied by various boffins who work out. Now, there's a really important thing that I can say to you today, and that is what was really, really needed to be found out about the V2, was did it have a guidance system? Right? So if something is remote controlled, just think of your basic remote control. Or think of a drone, right? Think of a drone. What is the best way to combat a drone? Well, you can try and shoot it down because they don't go that fast. And by and large, now, a lot of soldiers have shotguns in the front line to shoot down drones like you would shoot down a bird, but they're a bit faster than birds, so you shoot it down. But what's the best way of doing it? Is to jam it with radio waves. And that's why now a lot of drones in Ukraine operated with fiber optic leads, right? So you have just huge, like, fishing line following them around. You can't jam a closed system effectively, not that easily. And so you think, right, well, if this rocket has a guidance system that will be operated through radio waves, and if we can block the radio waves, we can therefore block the rocket. And this is incredibly important to know. Why is it important to know? Because if we know it doesn't have a guidance system, then we won't waste a hell of a lot of time, effort, money, manpower, you know, crudely boffin power on trying to develop a system to jam it. You know, so much of scientific research is, as you know, is other people have often got to go wrong, right? Before you make a success. You can do a Ph.D. proving yourself wrong. And that is helpful for science because then other scientists know we don't have to go in that direction and waste our time, right? And I remember when I did my. Now when I abandoned my PhD because I had to earn some money, but, you know, I remember my professor saying to me, look, I don't care if in the end that everything that you thought was wrong, it now means that we've learned something. Therefore, you know, we. You would get, you know, a PhD for that. And so this is what is really helpful. Does it have a guidance system, yes or no? And therefore whole rocket's got to be studied to see if it's there. Now, it is established that it doesn't have it, but the British still want to get hold of the rocket, and they say to the Poles, well, if you can just move it to the south of Poland, we'll be able to send an aircraft and pick it up. You know, just like, you know, Uber Dakota, you know, we'll take it there. So this is what the Poles do, is that they smuggle it 200 miles through, through Poland in the back of a lorry, all the way to a meadow in southern Poland. And then one night, they've made contact with the British, and a Dakota is sent from Brindisi in Italy all the way over the Carpathians, and in the middle of the night, piloted by a very brave man called Stanley Culliford. And he lands the Dakota on this meadow, and the Poles load up all these cases with bits of V2 in it, and then the Dakota, right? He says, right, okay, turn around. Let's. Time to turn, take off. Does whatever he does with his engines. I'm not a pilot, but Anyway, you know, starts it up and tries to move the plane forward and it doesn't go, doesn't go anywhere. And he goes, okay, I think we're stuck here. The poles start digging it out because the meadow's quite soft. And then Culliford tries one more time and again the plane doesn't move. And he goes, right, I know what I have to do now. There's something wrong with the brakes. I'm going to have to cut the hydraulics of the brakes. And too bad, when I come to land, I end up careering off the edge of the Runway. At least I've got the thing home. It's a very brave decision. And he goes, oh, I'm just going to blow the plane up. And we're just, I'll just join the resistance along with my two other crewmen. And then they turns around and the Poles say, no, no, let's try again, let's try again. And they put all these boards underneath the wheels and Culliford tries now for the third time.

[Emily Briffet]

Dare I ask where this goes?

[Guy Waters]

No, I'm not telling you. It is an incredible story and it's true. And when I first came across this story, just to sort of peel back a bit, if you're happy with that, I was in a TV show called Hitler's Secret Missions. And I now my other day job is working out here in Prague doing TV production and presenting and so on and so forth, but also getting involved in production. And we're quite keen to make a series called Churchill's Secret Missions in which we look at some of the best Allied secret missions. Sometimes the obvious ideas are great. Okay. And I just came across this, it was called Operation Wildhorn 3 or Operation Most 3. And I thought, this is extraordinary that this isn't better known. You know, this is a great Anglo Polish Cooperation. It's dramatic, it's extraordinary, really. So anyway, that's how it came about. And it's not a forgotten mission because there's always someone who knows about these things. Right. But it's just not something that had really been looked at before. So, yeah, so that's how it sort of came about.

[Emily Briffet]

You hear the stories about the V2 rockets, you hear a bit about the development of them, but this is, it's very much, as you say, not forgotten, but an untold or lesser told story. It seems very much like an adventure story.

[Guy Waters]

I'd always wanted to write a book if. I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of the film where Eagles Dare, like everyone is, and I sort of thought this has elements of reaching. This is a fantastical, substantial operation. I mean there was no real Where Eagles Dare and if there were, there would have been books about, well, I suppose Skis against the Atom, the Norsk Hydro raid is pretty near to Where Eagles Dare. You know, it's Men in Snow and doing Perilous things. So it was a great thing. And as you know, you know there is an insatiable appetite for all things World War II. And I appear quite a few documentaries about the war and about the Third Reich and it's a sort of never ending cycle really and. But you know, I enjoy it, you know, and people hope enjoy it.

[Emily Briffet]

And you've just done another documentary. Can you tell us about it?

[Guy Waters]

Yes, I am in a somewhat lighthearted documentary that I'm presenting called the Last Hunt for Nazi Gold in which my co host Justina Stroska and I, we drive around basically Central Europe looking for Nazi treasure shown on Sky. So you can get it on now, you get it on demand on Amazon, so on and so forth. And it's a lark really. I mean how it came, how that came about is that about once every year or two I get approached by a TV company saying we really want to make a documentary about Nazi gold. And you guy have written about Nazis escaping after the war. Nazi gold is in that. Could you tell us where we might find some Nazi gold? And then I just let the pin drop and I go, look, if I knew where there's Nazi gold, I'm not telling you. And B, I would keep it or I'd give it back to people or I'd be talking to you from my castle. And it's like a lottery win, right? I'm not telling you what the winning lottery numbers are for a day rate that's not happening. But I did think, and I've written about this for History Extra. One day back in early 2024, the Dutch national Archives released a treasure map where a bunch of German troops had drawn a treasure map of where they had hidden a load of treasure there, Nick, from a Dutch bank vault. And they hid it in a village called Omron in the middle of Holland. And it was a real classic hand drawn treasure map with parchment looked like yellow yellowing paper with a red X marking the spot. And I thought this is too good to be true, you know. So the next morning, literally 5:00am the next morning, drove from where I was then living in Wiltshire with my filmmaker's son William and a mate of his who did the sound with an iPhone. And I thought, right, let's go and film there and do a little, little mini doc. So we did a little mini doc about digging up Omron, trying to find Nazi treasure. We didn't find the Nazi treasure. We got a big ticking off from the Dutch police. I mean, imagine a bunch of Dutch people started digging up villages in Britain. You know, the local bobby would, well, they don't exist anymore, but the local bobby would have given a clip around the air and we certainly got that. So anyway, it was a very fun documentary and I then thought, hang on a minute, this could be made into something bigger because there are all these stories about the Amber Room missing, a whole train full of gold buried in a tunnel in Poland, paintings, you know, you name it. And so that's what the series is about. But it's partly a road trip as well. I sort of think the tone we're aiming at was kind of like, you know, a lot of history documentaries can be quite formal and there's a sort of boring middle aged man like me standing in front of a castle going, in 1502, this castle was sacked by, you know, Engelbert the Great, you know, and everyone yawned. Whereas what I wanted to do was something, you know, let's do a bit of a road trip. Let, let's, let's, let's have a bit of banter, let's have a bit of fun. So that, that, that's, you know, whether we succeed or not, I'll let people decide. But you know, certainly what I'm trying to do is make history documentaries. Maybe just a little bit more tongue in cheek at times, a bit more fun. So anyway, so that's what I, what I've been doing and you know, hopefully we'll, we'll do more last hunts. The last hunts will hopefully never stop.

[Emily Briffet]

It sounds like great fun. And obviously, as you've mentioned, that our listeners should go and watch this and also go and read your article that you've written for the History Extra website. To finish off, I'd like to circle back to your book, Stealing Hitler's Rockets. I suppose as a final question to you. Obviously we can't reveal too many secrets in this story, but I'll give you this one instead. This is a counterfactual one for you. So if this intelligence coup hadn't happened, how much worse do you think the V2 campaign would have been?

[Guy Waters]

It doesn't change the course of the V2 assault on London, Antwerp and so on and so forth. Where it really helps is giving the allies, as I mentioned earlier, the intelligence that we didn't have to jam this thing, actually what it did was make us realize we were more helpless than we could imagine. So basically we went from a position of thinking we could do something to be in the position where actually the best thing we better do. We can't stop these things. The only way to stop them is to stop the means of production and it's also to overrun sites where we think they're being launched from. And that's where it helps. So you realize the allies realize where they have to put their anti vengeance weapon resources, you know, and that's important, you know, and everything adds up. The key to the story is partly that, but also partly it's just damn good fun.

[Narrator (History Extra Introduction)]

That was author, historian and journalist Guy Waters speaking to Emily Briffet. His latest book is Stealing Hitler's the Incredible Mission to smuggle a V2 rocket out of Nazi Occupied Europe to Britain. And his latest documentary is the Last Hunt for Nazi Gold, which is available to watch now. You can find a link to a History Extra article Guy has written on this subject in the description of this episode.

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