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 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 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.
So he had sent 65,121 alternations to the workmen, and he could foresee another five thousand before the rocket functioned. It was in light of this that one day in 1943 he made in Kolff’s hearing his second reference to America: ‘It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you’re qualified to make a rocket. Russia has made maybe thirty thousand of them by now. America hasn’t made any. Therefore, men like you and me and the general, we’d be a hundred times more valuable to the Americans than to the Russians.’ When he showed no inclination to expatiate on this, Kolff asked no questions, but the comparison lodged in his mind, and not exactly in the way Von Braun intended. Kolff thought: If the Russians are so far advanced, they’d recognize the value of men like the general and me. Good God, that means the Communists will be out to capture us. And he began to watch nervously the progress of the Red Armies along the eastern front, for with every victory over Hitler’s troops, they moved a mile, a league closer to Peenemünde.
‘So you are all guilty of sabotaging our war effort,’ Funkhauser had said grimly, ‘and I’m sure you will be shot as soon as I submit my report.’
Obviously, they had not been executed, even though Funkhauser had recommended it. Powerful friends of Von Braun, and he had them everywhere, intervened with Hitler himself, and the Fuehrer spared him. Breutzl and Kolff were sentenced to death, but Von Braun would not allow this. For six days he devoted every minute to their rescue, when it might have been to his advantage to let them be executed on the spurious grounds that they were indeed saboteurs while he was ‘pure.’ But he could not do it, and in the end he carried his campaign to Hitler, convincing him that the A-4 would never fly successfully without the help of these two experts.
Dieter Kolff owed his life to Baron von Braun, as he took pleasure in calling him, since it was reassuring to be working with a baron, and he never forgot it.
So on the night of 27 October 1944 when he thought: Chickens! That’s what will save me … he was a man with a right to be terrified of what Colonel Funkhauser might do to him once he fell outside Von Braun’s protective shelter.
His strategy was this. Deep in his autonomic system Dieter realized that as long as he could retain control of General Breutzl’s papers, he had a bargaining power with whoever won this war, Germany, Russia or America, because it was easier for Von Braun to conceive fantastic concepts than it was for someone like Breutzl to translate them into practical manufacturing operations. And the combination of Breutzl’s plans and Kolff’s ingenuity might actually surpass what Von Braun was capable of, especially in countries like Russia and America, which had a plethora of imaginative theoreticians but not too many skilled in practical application.
Dieter Kolff knew that he was a valuable human being, one of the most valuable in the world at this moment, but he also knew that with his unimposing appearance and his lack o
f formal education, he could achieve little with- out the charismatic leadership of his hero Von Braun. He was welded to this brilliant baron, now and forever, but until he discovered what Von Braun was going to do in the aftermath of war, he must prudently protect himself.
I must act today, he told himself before dawn. Funkhauser and his SS men will start looking into the Breutzl case: ‘How did the general die? Where are his papers?’ Kolff would be interrogated, and he would be wise to have those papers far from Peenemünde in some safe place. He had no minutes to spare.
Waiting until dawn, lest he arouse suspicions, he took a large knapsack, went to where he had hidden the Breutzl papers, and stuffed them inside. Knowing that he would be shot immediately if these papers were found on him, he walked casually to the bomb-damaged kitchen, where he nodded to the helper with whom he had established a system to defraud the regulations—beer to the cook, chickens to Dieter—and in this way got hold of three dressed fowl, which he tossed casually atop the papers.
On his bicycle he pedaled his way to the Peenemünde end of the ferry, where he gave the SS guard one of the chickens, trying his best to appear noncommittal about everything and in no particular hurry: ‘I’m going to see my girl. She must have been terrified by the bombing.’
‘Anyone in your buildings hurt?’
‘Killed. Dozens of them.’
‘Those bastards. When do we blow up London?’
‘Any day now.’
At the far end of the ferry he was warmly greeted by another contingent of SS men, to whom he handed his second chicken.
‘What’s in the knapsack?’ they asked.
‘Chicken for my girl,’ he said, displaying no anxiety, no desire to be on his way.
‘Are you …’ The SS men made the common gesture indicating sexual intercourse.
‘Why do you think I’m taking the chicken?’ Dieter asked with a faint smile that made his little face with its inadequate mustache look quite ridiculous.
‘I’d better inspect the knapsack,’ the SS man said, pulling aside the covering. ‘Orders, you know.’ Dieter strained his throat to keep from gulping, and displayed no nervousness as the guard poked around the naked chicken.
‘Good luck!’ the other guards said. ‘And thanks for our chicken.’
Trying desperately to do nothing that might attract attention, even though his heart was thumping, he pedaled down the road toward the summer resort, where he found Liesl working with three other girls at preparing the place for winter. Keeping his left arm over the top of his knapsack, he joked with the girls, then indicated that he wished to be alone with Liesl, and blushed when the girls teased him about his intentions.
When they were alone, in broad daylight but in a part of the establishment where they were hidden from the others, Dieter faced his first life-or-death decision. There had been other moments of importance, like his landing the assignment to Peenemünde, and his sitting in Stettin prison waiting to be shot, but in those affairs he had not had much choice. Now he was making the first in a series of decisions which would determine the remainder of his life, and he took each step with full cognizance of its peril.
‘Liesl, we must go to your farm and do something of vital importance.’
‘Yes.’ Peenemünde had now been bombed several times, first by the British, now by the Americans, and in each raid errant bombs had come close to the Koenig farm, so that death had been imminent. Also, the Russians were moving always closer from the east, the Americans from the west. Decisions of great moment must soon be made by all Germans, and Liesl was ready. She knew no other unmarried man but Dieter and was prepared to follow his lead.
‘I think we’d better go now,’ he said, so she made excuses to the other girls, who teased her bawdily. When they reached the Koenig farm, he asked her to fetch a shovel, and when she produced one, he said, ‘We must find a safe spot. I have important papers. If these papers are found, we’ll both be shot. If they aren’t found, they’ll be our passport.’
‘To where?’
He had hoped that she would not ask this question, for it was one he had not yet answered in his own mind. What was Von Braun going to do? Join up with the Russians, who were actively engaged in the rocket race? Or with the Americans, who were so far behind? Desperately he wished to know Von Braun’s plans, but even without them he knew the right choice.
‘To America. They’ll be needing people like me. Somehow we must get these papers to the Americans. For the present, we must hide them.’
And after the hole was dug, he realized that he was placing his life in her hands. If she was a spy planted by Colonel Funkhauser, he was already dead, but he knew there was no alternative. He handed her his life, and she buried the knapsack.
When the ground was tamped flat she quietly returned the shovel to her father’s barn, then came and stood before him. ‘Does this mean you will marry me?’
‘I’ve thought about that. You’re the one girl I love. You know that. But it would be terribly risky to go before a magistrate now. Too many questions, and the SS might interfere.’
Her body sagged. He represented her only chance to escape this farm, to escape the Russians, and now he was refusing to marry her. She did not voice her resentment or even think of retaliating against him, for she realized that she was in a perilous position from which she could escape only with his help. ‘If you’re afraid …’ she began.
‘I am,’ he said with great force. ‘Everything’s in chaos. I was damned lucky to get past the guards at the ferry.’
‘I know,’ she said with a bitterness not entirely masked, but Dieter was too self-occupied to recognize her scorn.
‘But I know that you are my life, Liesl, and I think we should be married right now.’
‘How? If you’re afraid of the SS.’
‘By our own will. Here, under the sky.’ She stood there, silent, so finally he asked, ‘Would you be willing to marry me, right now?’
‘Will it be a real marriage?’ she asked with peasant caution.
‘The minute you touched the knapsack we were married,’ Dieter said. ‘God knows when a minister will be free to confirm it.’
‘How shall we do it?’ Liesl asked, as if she were a little child needing instruction.
Dieter took her left hand in his, but forcefully she changed this, aware that her right hand should do the pledging, and when she was satisfied, she looked at him, a twenty-eight-year-old farm girl placing her life in his care.
‘I take you as my wife,’ Dieter said, standing near the buried knapsack, which would be their wedding ring and documentation.
‘I take you as my husband,’ Liesl said, breaking into tears as she visualized the marriage she should have had, with the girls from the resort dressed in white. After an awkward pause, she asked, ‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’ And Dieter did. Then she maneuvered him cleverly toward the barn, where they consummated their unusual marriage.
‘You must always be ready to leave at any moment,’ he warned her. ‘And if I send a message to meet me somewhere, you must bring the papers.’ When she nodded dutifully, he said, ‘You know they’re our only passport to a new life.’ And she said she knew.
On his way back to the ferry he was assaulted by the sick suspicion that she might indeed be one of Funkhauser’s spies, and he could hear the colonel’s words in the Stettin prison: ‘Four spies that I inserted into the work force at Peenemünde …’ But even if she were a spy, there was nothing he could do about it now. He must live the next critical months in treble anxiety, for the world was falling apart and he was already dizzy from trying to hold on.
Such speculations were driven from his mind when he reached the ferry and learned that the SS troopers were about to launch a search party for him. ‘Colonel Funkhauser has been demanding that you report to him … immediately.’
He pretended surprise and indignation. ‘When did he arrive? I should have been informed.’
‘Flew in unexpectedly to check the dama
ge.’ Two guards from the mainland end entered the ferry with him, and when they reached the other side they were joined by two more, who mounted their motorcycles to form a cordon about his bicycle, and in this austere manner he traveled south to the bomb-ravaged dormitories, where he found Funkhauser’s men rummaging among his private possessions.
‘What happened to General Breutzl?’ the colonel asked. He was an untidy man, thirty pounds overweight, who always wore his SS uniform two sizes too small on the specious grounds that if it was kept tight, it would also be kept neat.
‘He was killed. By one of the first bombs.’
‘And what did you do about it?’ Funkhauser asked in his silky public voice.
‘As planned, I tried immediately to save him, but that was hopeless. So I assumed responsibility for his secret papers.’
‘And what did you do with them?’
‘They were destroyed in the fire. I rescued just a few sheets and …’ He looked toward where his envelope had been planted and saw with satisfaction that Funkhauser’s men had discovered it and turned it over to the colonel.
‘I see that you found something,’ Funkhauser said, staring at him with his pinched-together eyes. ‘These charred bits. But I wonder if they’re what you really found?’ He changed his manner abruptly and asked, ‘What were you doing on the mainland?’
Dieter felt trapped. Did Funkhauser mean on the night of the bombing, or now? Did he even know that Dieter had been away from his post on the night when Breutzl was killed? After just a moment’s hesitation he replied, ‘My girl. I wanted to see if her farm had been hit during the raid.’
‘Had it?’
‘No, thank God.’
There would have been deeper questioning had not the colonel been interrupted by a disheveled messenger with startling news: ‘The Fuehrer’s aide telephoned. You’re to fly to Wolf’s Lair immediately … with Dieter Kolff.’
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