The Mare's Nest

The Mare's Nest is a 1964 book by English author David Irving, focusing on the German V-weapons campaign of 1944–45 and the Allied military and intelligence effort (Operation Crossbow) to counter it. The book covers both sides of the story – the Allied arguments over how to interpret intelligence concerning the status and existence of the V-weapons and the German debate over how to deploy the new weapons to make the most of their supposed capacity to reverse the tide of the war. During his research for the book, Irving discovered that the Allies had broken the German Enigma code, over a decade before that became public knowledge, but agreed to keep it secret. The Mare's Nest was well received by reviewers and those involved in Operation Crossbow and has been widely cited by authors writing about the V-weapons program. Publication history The book was Irving's second, published the year after his best-seller The Destruction of Dresden, and had its origins in the success of that book. Irving had intended to return to studying for a degree but abandoned his plans when his publisher proposed that he should write two more books, covering the V-weapons programme and the life of Adolf Hitler. He discovered that Winston Churchill's scientific adviser, Lord Cherwell, had been closely involved in tracking the V-weapons and that Cherwell's papers were held at Nuffield College, Oxford. Irving was given full access to the archive and made a startling discovery: that the Allies had been reading the German codes, a fact that was still regarded as top secret. He began to fear that he would be denied access to the archive if the authorities realised that he had uncovered ULTRA, the Allies' wartime programme of decrypting the Enigma machine codes and other German codes and cyphers. As he later put it, he resorted to doing "the unthinkable. I began borrowing documents, taking them down to London to copy. But I always sedulously returned them." Irving nonetheless worked the secret material into his book, writing an entire chapter about Enigma in the first draft of The Mare's Nest. When it came to the attention of the authorities, "one night I was visited at my flat by men in belted raincoats who came and physically seized the chapter.