Projekt 1065 Summary
Alan Gratz’s tale revolves around Projekt 1065, which began before World War II. Projekt 1065 was a genuine German attempt to create an airplane with a turbojet engine that could fly faster than propeller ships already in use. However, the Germans were not the only ones working on the creation of a jet engine, nor were they the first.
Frank Whittle, a British Royal Air Force engineer, created a turbojet engine in the 1920s. Hans von Ohain, a German scientist, came up with his concept seven years later.
The Germans eventually created a jet airplane, the Messerschmitt Me 262, under Projekt 1065. It made its first flight with a jet engine in 1942, but due to repeated issues, it did not see serious combat until 1944, too late to have a significant influence on the outcome of World War II.
In Projekt 1065, a young boy is charged with learning about German intentions for building a jet plane in order to give the Allies an advantage in the war.
Michael O’Shaunessy, thirteen, lives in Berlin, Germany, with his parents Davin and Megan. Michael’s father serves as the Irish ambassador to Nazi Germany, a position he was appointed to in 1937. Ireland, which has stayed neutral during the conflict, maintains an embassy in Berlin. Michael, like other German youngsters, is a member of the Nazi youngsters, but he is not a Nazi. Instead, he pretends to embrace the Nazis, to despise Jews, and to want them to win the war.
Berlin has changed drastically since 1937. When Michael and his family first arrived in Berlin, the city was draped in red Nazi flags, with streets bustling with cheerful people and parades in abundance. However, in November 1938, Berlin changed forever. Michael and his family got caught up in the “Night of Broken Glass” on their way home from seeing a film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. On this memorable night, Jewish shops’ windows were shattered, and any Jews found in the streets were mercilessly assaulted. Michael’s parents tell him that they can’t stop helping others since they’re not just ambassadors, but also on a mission for the Allies.
Michael is currently involved in this. Berlin has become an untrustworthy place, and “people kept their eyes down, whispered if they had to talk, crossed the street to avoid having to give the Hitler salute to someone they knew in case they didn’t say ‘Heil Hitler!'”
Michael is charged with gathering information regarding the site of a new engine facility during a dinner hosted by a guy associated to Daimler-Benz, the German automotive firm that manufactures engines for the Nazi war. He discovers the information he requires in his host’s study and, using his photographic memory, recalls it and relays it to his parents.
Herr Professor Doktor Major Melcher, Michael’s teacher, is an old man with white hair who served in the First World War and was once a college professor. He is unfriendly to the students he does not wish to educate. Herr Melcher informs them that Berlin is now officially “Jew-free” and that all seventeen-year-old males would be drafted into the German army. Unlike his classmates, who are only aware of the Nazi regime’s propaganda, Michael understands that this is due to the surrender of the German Sixth Army to the Russians at Stalingrad. This implies that Michael and the rest of the Jungvolk will join the Hitler Youth a year sooner.
The guys rejoice, oblivious to how badly Germany is doing in the war. Hitler Youth Leader Horst orders the lads to burn their books, but Fritz Brendler, a small, shy youngster who doesn’t fit in, protests. Despite the fact that both he and Fritz have been beaten, Michael comes to Fritz’s rescue. Michael, on the other hand, pledges that one day he would “teach Horst how to take a beating.
” The SRD -Hitler’s Youth’s “Patrol Force” summons the Junkvolk away from their book burning to assist in the search for the pilot of a British plane shot down near Berlin. Michael is well aware that he must locate the pilot before the Germans do, or he will be tortured and killed.
Michael discloses to Fritz his terrible fear of heights while searching the barn for the fallen pilot. Fritz informs Michel that he would not tell anybody since “in Nazi Germany, every weakness was punished.” Michael finds the injured pilot hidden in a thicket but manages to steer the search team away from him. He then conceals the pilot. Michael locates the injured pilot before the other lads, after initially examining the haystack in the barn near where the jet was shot down.
He conceals the British airman in the barn, but the pilot informs Michael that he must retrieve the camera he buried in one of the haystacks because it has vital reconnaissance photos. Later that night, Michael and his parents return to the property, where they meet the British pilot, Lieutenant Simon Cohen, a Jew.
Although returning Simon to Berlin is exceedingly dangerous, Michael’s parents have no other option. They conceal him in a hidden chamber off of da’s study. Simon explains that he was flying during the day because the Nazis are “developing some kind of airplane…Works without propellers…Super fast…Caught it on the runway during testing…They call it…Projekt 1065.”
Unbelievably, the next day in class, a weary Michael is given the first page of Fritz’s designs for the Nazi’s secret jet. According to Fritz, this is a brand-new plane with two jet engines that can “go twice as fast as any other airplane in the world!” Fritz admits that his father is a member of the plane’s design team. He shows Michael since he attempted to defend Fritz from the rest of the squad.During an air strike, Michael rushes home to tell his parents and Simon about the plan he has just seen.
Michael decides to befriend Fritz in order to acquire access to all twelve pages of the blueprints. However, Michael’s willingness to become close to Fritz requires him to make decisions and do things he knows are wrong. It may also imply forsaking all he values in order to aid in the defeat of the Nazis.
Projekt 1065 Review
During World War II, the son of Ireland’s ambassador to Germany poses as a member of the Hitler Youth in order to aid the Allies.
Michael O’Shaunessey, 13, from the politically neutral country of Ireland, becomes a spy in Nazi Germany, just like his parents. When a downed British pilot informs him of the existence of Projekt 1065—a Nazi German endeavor to construct a speedier warplane that does not require propellers—Michael finds that his classmate Fritz’s father is designing the plane, giving him unprecedented access to the plans. Michael’s photographic memory helps him recall enemy codes and mathematics.
When he joins the crew ordered to murder a Jewish physicist working on constructing an American atomic weapon as a junior Gestapo officer, he becomes engaged in a complicated drama of espionage and treachery. Gratz throws light on the relationship between Fascism and bullying, the moral challenges of war, and the lesser-known, frequent employment of children for severe jobs by the Nazi dictatorship through Michael’s narrative and an appealing tale and characters. He is not afraid to challenge his readers, providing them with a coming-of-age novel that ends that sometimes good people must be sacrificed or bad things must be done in order to win a greater war.
Projekt 1065 Author
Alan Gratz is the New York Times bestselling author of nineteen young adult novels and graphic novels, including Two Degrees, Captain America: The Ghost Army, Ground Zero, Refugee, Allies, Prisoner B-3087, and Ban This Book. Alan is a Knoxville, Tennessee native who currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and children as a full-time writer.
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FAQs
Was Projekt 1065 a real thing?
Alan Gratz’s 2016 novel Projekt 1065 is historical fiction. The story is set in the middle of the twentieth century during World War II and is considered a work of spy and adventure fiction.
What is Projekt 1065 summary?
This story chronicles the lives of young Michael O’Shaunessey during World War II, whose father is the Irish ambassador to Nazi Germany and his mother works for Irish Intelligence. Despite Ireland’s formal neutrality, all three spy on the Nazis and surreptitiously provide intelligence on the Germans to the Allies.