Liesl worked at this establishment, caring for rich Berliners during the high summer season and for modest Pomeranians during the truncated winter season. She was not a pretty girl, nor was she any longer young. Indeed, she might have been passed by altogether had not Dieter Kolff come to the island and met her during a walking trip on the mainland. She was now twenty-eight and would probably have moved to Berlin as a domestic had not the war intervened. She was a hard-working woman with a pleasing if subdued disposition, and Kolff felt that he was lucky to have found her.
On the highway west of the ferry he was stopped three times by guards, and his bicycle was well searched, even though the older guards were familiar with his visits to the Koenig farm. They nodded in friendly fashion as the younger men searched him, for nothing could move on or off Peenemünde without scrutiny.
Dieter spent a quiet afternoon with Liesl, had supper with her family, and walked in the autumn evening to the grounds of the resort, from which he could see the antiaircraft guns that lined the mainland shore. “We’ve grown afraid,” Liesl said, “since the big raid last year. Father saw scouting planes overhead this afternoon.”
“We saw them, too. They were Luftwaffe.”
“Not the ones Father saw.”
There were so many things that Kolff wanted to share with this responsive girl. She was, he was ashamed to tell anyone else, a lot like his mother, a good, reliable farm girl who would bring her husband stern qualities and much devotion. She understood whatever problems he was allowed to share with her, especially his fear of the Russians: “You should have seen their villages. They let their farmers live like animals. If they were ever to come here ...” He shuddered.
“Is there a chance they will?”
He hesitated. In Germany one was prudent never to [72] say what one thought, unless it conformed to some rote requirement, but it was also necessary for every human being to reach out and confide in someone. Liesl could well be a spy conscripted in this particular spot to trap Peenemünde workers like Kolff, so he must say nothing about the A-10, nor about any of the lesser bomb systems for that matter. But about Russia he could speak. He had to speak.
“Two years ago, when I was there, our officers were confident the Russians could never turn the tide on us. That was a poor country. A land of peasants. But now ...”
“They’re moving closer, Dieter.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I’m afraid.”
They said no more that evening, but each knew that now the agenda was clear and overwhelming: somehow they must avoid capture by the Russians. All that they did hereafter would be predicated upon that imperative.
When darkness fell, they retired to a barn on the resort premises and made love, a practice they had fallen into when they became aware that Russian armies were descending upon Germany and that terrible uncertainties might soon engulf them. Each depended upon the other in these perilous days, and each knew that salvation lay only in the other’s love. Liesl’s suspicious father had asked four questions: “Does he own his own farm? Was he ever really an officer in the army? What’s he doing on that island, anyway? And whatever happened to that Detterling boy? He owned a good farm.” Under the circumstances, she felt it unwise to discuss anything important with her father, who so far had made only one substantial observation about the visiting stranger: “He eats like a pig. Don’t they feed him over there?”
He had identified Kolff’s major peculiarity: despite his frailness, he could consume unlimited quantities of food without affecting his girth, but as Liesl pointed out, “You have no right to complain, Father. He usually brings us far more food than he eats.”
On a normal visit Dieter stayed with Liesl until about nine at night, when he cycled back to catch the last ferry, which crossed at ten, but on this night he was agitated by so many conflicting bits of gossip circulating on the island that he longed to stay, not to discuss the [73] possibilities openly, but simply to talk with someone.
So they lingered on the grounds of the summer resort, discussing trivialities, until Liesl stopped their walking and took him by the hands. “What is it, Dieter?” When he looked surprised, she added, “What big thing disturbs you?”
In silence he contemplated in order the seven major developments that disturbed him, not one of which could he openly state or even intimate: There was a rumor that Himmler’s secret police were going to make another move against Von Braun. There was another that General Breutzl was to be demoted and exiled to the Russian front. There were constant fears that Peenemünde would be closed down entirely, because the Russians were moving too close. And so on, plus an eighth one which he himself had generated, and this he could share with Liesl.
“The general has aged ... badly. They blame him for everything that goes wrong, but I can tell you that nothing goes right without him.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I wish all Germans were like him. I wish all fathers were.”
“Mine’s complaining again.” She hesitated, then said softly, “We should get out of here, Dieter. Both of us.”
“Yes.” After a long while he said, “It will be up to me, Liesl. I’ll tell you when.” And after another long reflection he changed the subject. “I promised Baron von Braun to look after the general. I must go back.”
“But you’ve missed the ferry.”
“I steal chickens for them from our mess. They’ll lift me over.”
It was ten-thirty when he bade Liesl goodnight, kissing her breasts at the gateway to her farm. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the sky.
The Moon was bright, deep in the west, and it glowed upon a lone aircraft that flew fantastically high. They watched it for some minutes, guessing wildly as to what it might signify. And then two streaking pathfinder planes came in very low, dropping not bombs but flares of different colors which glowed in the night.
“Oh God!” Dieter cried. “It’s a raid. With those flares it’ll be a major raid.” And he pedaled furiously toward the ferry, keeping his eye on that plane mysteriously high in the heavens, wondering what it could be, not realizing [74] that in it rode Master Bomber Merton, who would direct the oncoming Americans to the targets illuminated by the flares.
He had not reached the ferry when the first bombers came roaring in, much lower than he expected. They were huge, and dark, and the Moon disappeared just as they reached Peenemünde. “Someone planned this exactly,” he told the men at the ferry, and then the great explosions began.
“I’ve got to get across,” he said.
“Not in this,” the ferrymen said, seeking cover. And for almost two hours the men huddled there, listening with growing horror to the tremendous load of explosives being dumped upon the island.
“Where did those first yellow flares land?” Dieter asked the ferrymen.
“Down by your quarters,” the man said.
“Oh Jesus! They’re trying to kill General Breutzl.”
“And your Von Braun.”
“He’s in Berlin. Listen, I’ve got to get across.”
“Not now.”
Other planes moved in, German fighters this time, and some of the enemy bombers began to burn and fall into the Baltic. One came right at the empty ferry, kept aloft and crashed in the direction of the summer resort at which Liesl worked.
Now he had two worries, his general and his girl, but when the bombardment ceased, and the German fighters withdrew, Dieter hurried not to the Koenig farm but to the island, to see what had happened to General Breutzl. Wherever he went, guards stopped him, for the destruction was massive and buildings of all kind were afire. Commandeering a guard with a motorcycle, Dieter abandoned his own vehicle and rode pillion to the scientists’ quarters, the ones that Professor Mott had ordered spared.
The first set of flares had overshot their mark, not landing on the manufacturing and research facilities as intended, but directly on the living quarters of the scientists. The monitor aloft had warned each inc
oming flight of the imprecision, but the target was so tempting and the flares so distinct that whole sticks of bombs had struck the area. Dieter, approaching from the north, could see the devastation, the gaping, burned sections, and he realized that [75] had he not gone to visit Liesl, he would now be dead. But what of General Breutzl?
“Over there!” Dieter yelled into the ear of the driver, but the cyclist said, “Not me.” So Dieter dismounted and ran toward the shattered buildings. He did not have to enter, for on the lawn outside the dormitories were laid the thirty-one bodies, and toward the middle of the row, calm and kindly even in death, lay General Eugen Breutzl, whom the Nazis had never trusted but on whom they had been forced to depend.
When no one was looking, and for reasons of secrecy which he could have explained to no one, not even to himself, Dieter waited till all the others were preoccupied with the devastation caused by the raid, then moved to the concrete vault in which the general’s plans for the A-10 were kept. These work sheets, usually the result of long consultations among Von Braun, the general and Kolff, were safe. Allowing no one to see him, he removed them, carrying them to his own wrecked quarters, where he set fire to a few inconsequential ones, snuffed out the flames, and intermingled the charred pages with a few of his own diagrams. At that moment he had no clear idea why he was taking such precaution; it was instinctive and had something to do with the rumors that Von Braun might soon be arrested again by Himmler’s men.
Two nights later, at three o’clock in the morning of 27 October, when Norman Grant, wallowing in the waters of Leyte Gulf, had about decided that his dwindling crew of heroes would never be rescued by a forgetful Navy, Dieter Kolff sat upright in bed, awakened by an idea which flashed through his canny mind like a thunderous explosion of lightning: Chickens! That’s what will save me-chickens!
He had a right to be apprehensive about his security, because as soon as the bombs stopped falling, an old adversary, ominous and persistent, returned to the island, eager to pursue past suspicions. He was Colonel Helmut Funkhauser, forty-eight years old, a somewhat overstuffed would-be Prussian with no neck and pinched-together eyes. Son of a modest butcher in Hamburg, he had been an early volunteer for Hitler’s Brown Shirts, not because of any philosophical conviction but because membership was exciting and a glimpse of the future. By [76] extraordinary obedience to any orders from above and by attention to detail, he had risen to become one of Heinrich Himmler’s lesser aides, and it was then that he began claiming Prussian ancestry. His present assignment had been handed him by Himmler himself: “Bring those damned scientists to heel. Get rid of Von Braun. And make sure that our SS men take charge of everything.”
When Kolff saw Funkhauser step out from the black sedan he realized that trouble had returned, for several times in the past he had encountered this colonel, finding him to be an insecure petty dictator, subservient when superiors were present, arrogant when they were not. He was not a murderous Nazi acting from deep principle; he was merely one of the functionaries who carried out orders.
Kolff had first met Funkhauser in mid-1943 when the colonel swept down on Peenemünde from his headquarters in Berlin, one hundred and ten miles to the south, to arrest Von Braun, General Breutzl and Kolff, whisking them away, without Hitler’s knowledge, to a secret SS prison camp near Stettin. There he had grilled them for six days, building against them charges of disloyalty which could lead to their execution.
His charges were threefold: “You’ve been guilty of disloyal thoughts. You have used Peenemünde as a base not for military revenge against the English but for future space travel. And you have made secret plans to escape to England, where you think you will be free to work on your rockets without the Fuehrer’s supervision.” Any one of the accusations, if proved or even strongly suspected, would warrant death.
Colonel Funkhauser’s supporting evidence was ingenious, and illustrated the paranoia which Himmler was relentlessly introducing into German life: “Four of my spies, inserted into the Peenemünde work force, have heard you, Von Braun, wonder out loud in bars and the like whether the A-4 will bring England to her knees, despite the fact that the Fuehrer has publicly stated that it will do so. You, Kolff, have been heard predicting that the monthly quota of nine hundred rockets cannot be met.”
“Until we solve the problem of why they explode just as they’re about to come down-”
[77] “Silence. There’s grave suspicion that they explode because you personally have sabotaged our war effort. And all three of you are known to be planning for the years after the war, when your rockets can be used for travel to the Moon, or the planets.” Here he became livid with bitterness, bending his fat body forward and staring with beady eyes at the three men. “You are traitors to the Fatherland! You are disloyal to the Fuehrer! Your job is to destroy London now, not worry about space travel later on.”
There was much to this charge, Kolff admitted to himself at the time, not on General Breutzl’s part, for he was a military perfectionist, dedicated to the job of producing A-4s in the most effective manner. Von Braun and Kolff, however, had often speculated on how their mighty machines could be utilized in peacetime, and they saw clearly that with the power and control they were developing, man could be thrown far into space and brought back to safe landing. “It could be done,” Von Braun had once said, “within four years of when we make our serious start. And if we don’t make it, Russia will.”
“How about America?” Kolff had asked.
“They had the best start of all-their genius Goddard. But no one listened to him, and now they find themselves with no capacity whatever.” During the remainder of his life Dieter Kolff would recall that when Von Braun first voiced such thoughts about the future-Russia’s advances, America’s retreats-the baron had fallen silent, as if he had revealed much more than he intended, and it was obvious that he had more he wished to predict. But he did not dare to speak, for he, like everyone else in Germany, had to be afraid of who might be listening, or where the spies were planted. And Dieter remembered that as soon as he uttered those words, Baron von Braun stared at him, as if calculating whether he might be the spy planted by Himmler to trap him.
Colonel Funkhauser’s guess that the Peenemünde personnel were dreaming not of the present war but of the future peace was shrewdly correct, but his suspicions about his prisoners’ plans for fleeing Germany were paranoiac: “Von Braun, you’ve been seen twice. When you took off in your little plane, you headed not toward Berlin but out to [78] sea. Did you know that I gave orders to the air force that if you ever did it again, you were to be shot down? No questions, no warnings.”
“I fly my plane to get to the meetings your people keep convening,” Von Braun said softly. He was a big man, ample in all dimensions, with a large head and a very large face which seemed to be younger than its thirty-one years. Indeed, he looked like some enthusiastic university second-year student, and much of the animosity he encountered stemmed from the fact that he appeared insultingly youthful to be exercising the great responsibilities given him. He was arrogant, too, and for three good reasons: had he wished, he could have called himself Baron von Braun, for his father had held that title; as a putative baron, of Prussian heritage, he had a certain uncontrollable insolence, especially when meeting with the lumpen-proletariat that filled Himmler’s force; and indubitably he was a genius whose mind worked so swiftly that assistants were left behind and gaping.
General Breutzl, for example, never tried to keep up. When young Von Braun flew off into the scientific empyrean, he nodded, waited till the flight was over, then attended to the instant problems. One day Von Braun had explained how Albert Einstein had proved that if a man could travel outward from the earth at the speed of light to some remote star and then come back at the same speed, he would age from thirty-two to forty-seven, but when he returned to Berlin, that city would be eighteen thousand years older than it had been when he departed. This had agitated Kolff, for it went against reason: “How can there be
two times running at the same moment?” But Breutzl had merely nodded, saying, “So now our man is back home, and he still faces the problem of why these damned A-4s are exploding just before striking their target.”
In this 1943 confrontation Colonel Funkhauser did launch one substantial charge against the three Peenemünde experts, and he delivered it with bitter sarcasm: “You are supposed to be the ultimate brains in this operation. You’re supposed to draw up the plans for a rocket which will destroy London, then give those plans to the engineers and stand back while they make thousands of bombs which we can fire across the Channel. Professor von Braun, do you know offhand how many last-minute [79] changes you’ve made in your rocket plans? Since you started two years ago, that is?”
Von Braun fidgeted, for he knew that this was a weak point in his performance. More than a hundred times, and this was not a figure of speech but an actual count, General Breutzl had pleaded: “Wernher, you must settle upon one plan, no more changes. Then let me go ahead and show the factories how to duplicate those plans.”
But rocketry, with its insatiable demands for new metals, new fuel systems, new guidance controls, new everything, could never be easily nailed down. Changes were inescapable for the solid reason that unforeseen malperformances dictated them. If Von Braun had proposed a few changes, Hitler should be grateful that he was on hand to identify them, because in the end-say the beginning of 1944-Germany was going to have a massive rocket that would destroy London and end this war.
Colonel Funkhauser produced a piece of paper, which he waved before Von Braun. “Make a guess, Professor. How many changes have you sent to the factories?” And there the ridiculous figure was: 65,121. It was accurate. It was inevitable. To make a monster rocket from scratch and to ensure that it could perform a chain of intricate maneuvers was a trial-and-error process. Von Braun himself had retreated, lunged ahead, wobbled, stumbled in confusion, and at the end had come up with a rocket that looked fine but which failed in twenty-three of twenty-nine tests.
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