Showdown at the Nile
ARD documentary (2017)
The German missile rises steeply into the air over the desert. Egypt’s dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser announces that it could fly all the way to Israel. Just two days later, on July 23, 1962, more missiles are presented to the world at a parade in Cairo. Alarm bells are ringing in Jerusalem. The Mossad, which had just successfully hunted down Nazis in South America, redeployed its top agents. Packages explode in the Cairo-Heluan missile factory, the secretary of the German chief engineer, Professor Wolfgang Pilz, is seriously injured by a post bomb. Then the head of the materials supplier company for the Egyptian rocket project, Dr. Heinz Krug, disappears without a trace in Munich. Mossad chief Isser Harel obtains the information base in Madrid from ex-SS officer Otto Skorzeny, who had achieved dubious fame in 1943 through his involvement in the Mussolini abduction at Gran Sasso. Foreign Minister Golda Meir used the affair to drive state founder Ben Gurion to leave office. A tragedy, as former President Shimon Peres regrets. Because Nasser’s rockets were practically unfit for flight. “It was all a bluff.” The 45-minute documentary presents new eyewitnesses, facts and evidence in the political thriller about Nasser’s missiles, German experts and dubious actions by the Mossad.