How Hitler almost got the atom bomb. A block-buster . . . brilliant and important.

Robert Pitman, The Sunday Express

An expert reviewed David Irving's history of the German atomic bomb program, and a Prof Laurence Rose's attack on a German Noble prize winner: "Getting even with Heisenberg"

"THE AUTHOR tells his absorbing tale with a pace that reminds one of a detective story. The race to make a reactor critical reads better than any thriller. It should be read by historians, scientists and all concerned with the role of science and technology in the present century."

Dr Anthony Michaelis,
The Daily Telegraph

Reviewing histories of Nazi atomic bomb effort, a real expert gives Mr Irving's book THE VIRUS HOUSE high praise (pdf, 200KB)

"IT WAS a long time coming, but when it came it was all that I said it would be. As long ago as August 6 last year in XV to Follow, of THE VIRUS HOUSE by David Irving (50s, Kimber, Jan 30), I said, 'The only reason, I suspect, that it isn't possible to announce serial rights being brought in this staggeringly sensational war book is that the typescript is still with the Authorities. But depend on it, some circulation-seeking sheet will pounce, when the time comes. . . A rare behind the scenes story, this, bristling with details of intrigue and (on the part of the SOE) much bravery. Author Irving, one of the world's great investigators when it comes to undercover matters, has written the autumn's most revealing war book beyond all doubt.'
"Last Sunday, without any reader-baiting announcement, The Sunday Telegraph started

serialising THE VIRUS HOUSE under the banner headline HOW THE GERMANS BUNGLED THE BOMB. And if it doesn't help stop the drift of the paper's sales (now around 641,000) since the launch, nothing will.
"For the first time, fact-obsessed author Irving tells the inside story of Hitler's near success with the annihilating Bomb, and how he ran the true story to earth in Tennessee over a year ago, and The Sunday Telegraph readers can never have had a more thrilling story handed to them on their Sabbath plate.
"The Sunday Telegraph serialisation will last up to the book's publication on January 30. For publisher Kimber, the book could well hit the Best Seller lists and stay there."

Whitefriar Talking:
(Lead item in Smiths Trade News, January 14, 1967).

A model of accurate and penetrating scholarship. The author is equally at home whether he is discussing details of reactor physics or describing the heroic exploits of the Norwegian saboteurs who destroyed the heavy-water plant at Rjukan ... the world was saved from a new Dark Age by the failure of the German scientists so brilliantly described in The German Atomic Bomb.

-- NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

I read it with great interest and learned from it a great many facts of which I was not aware before. The book presents a very informative and well-documented account of the German effort in nuclear research during the war and of the circumstances responsible for its failure...

-- BRUNO ROSSI Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A fascinating and meticulously documented account of the German attempt to manufacture an atomic bomb in the Second World War.

-- THE NEW YORKER

A scholarly and absorbing book. Mr. Irving has interviewed all the surviving authorities and has made good and methodical use of unpublished papers in Germany and the United States. It is clear that he has documented all his important statements of fact; it soon becomes clear that he also has an admirable acquaintance with the principles of nuclear physics and a gift for conveying these easily to the uninterested reader. He has already shown in The Destruction of Dresden and The Mare's Nest, on the German V-weapons, a mastery of easy narrative style.

-- THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, LONDON

Irving's account cannot be praised too highly. Those readers who might be lost by the scientific aspects that he relates in great detail will still find The German Atomic Bomb a fascinating and rewarding story. In fact, his harrowing tale of the Allied Commando raids on the Germans' heavy-water plant in Norway stands out as one of the great stories of World War II, and by itself justifies a reading of this valuable book.

-- CHICAGO TRIBUNE