Wernher approved the proposal and brought it before the A-4 Special Committee. The committee discussed and approved it, and forwarded it to the SS for action on 2 June 1943. The committee requested 2,200 concentration camp laborers and a suitable number of SS guards for oversight. The intention was to solve a manpower shortage while reducing costs and increasing security — things of critical importance to von Braun. The proposal was quickly approved, and the first 200 skilled laborers for the V-2 assembly line arrived from Buchenwald with their SS guards two weeks later.25
One month later, in July 1943, von Braun met with Hitler to narrate a movie showing the launch of a V-2 rocket. Hitler was so enthusiastic about the presentation that he granted von Braun the title of Professor, an unusual accolade for someone just 31 years of age. Hitler also awarded him the War Merit Cross First Class with swords, a German military decoration second only to the Knight’s Cross. All of Hitler’s inner circle knew Wernher’s quirks, including the fact that he took great pride in having his importance and superiority acknowledged. The Third Reich fed his ego a steady diet of honors (“Professor”), awards (War Merit Crosses), and titles like “Technical Director“ or “Vice President” as they loaded him with responsibility for program after program, and put him on committee after committee, usually as the committee chair. Wernher responded by jumping into each new project with great enthusiasm.
A second group of 600 skilled laborers arrived in early August. The V-2 rockets were assembled in enormous hangar-like buildings, designated Halle F-1 and Halle F-2. Each was 750’ long and 750’ wide, with lofty ceilings, doors 60’ high, and a full-length basement. Half of the basement was a sophisticated machine shop, the other half an ersatz barracks. Up to six hundred skilled slave laborers could live in squalor in each basement, working in the machine shop and emerging only for a shift on the assembly line above.
If a Peenemünde employee felt that a prisoner was doing shoddy work or not working to capacity, a word to the SS would see them removed and replaced. General Dornberger, Wernher’s confidant and patron, said “I say to you now directly that they are all murderers, thieves, and criminals, and every criminal will always protest that he is innocent.”26 As such, they were not worthy of a second’s consideration, and the Peenemünders casually referred to them as “zebras,” a reference to their distinctive vertically striped prison uniforms.
All of Wernher’s carefully orchestrated plans fell apart on the night of 17-18 August 1943, when the RAF bombed the technical facilities and residences at Peenemünde. This was part of a British campaign code-named “Operation Hydra.” Altogether, 1,795 tons of explosives were dropped on the facility. Both assembly halls burned, and the design offices, the women’s residence halls, three-quarters of the staff housing, testing facilities, and many of the V-2 launching sites were destroyed. The death toll was 600 slave laborers (including many living in the basements of the assembly halls) and 135 German staff, including several of von Braun’s close friends. The bombing was so successful, and the defense such an unmitigated disaster, that the officer in charge of air defenses committed suicide shortly afterward.
Wernher was shocked and distressed by the deaths in his close-knit community. It was a sudden glimpse of the realities of war and the devastation Germany’s enemies could and would inflict if they weren’t forced to abandon the fight. The war had become immediate and personal, rather than theoretical and remote, and it brought a new intensity to the work underway. The Allies had succeeded in damaging the facility and ending the idyllic lifestyle the Peenemünders had enjoyed, but doing so only increased their determination to rebuild and return the favor in kind.
The Führer had already decided to move important manufacturing operations underground, where they would be protected from air attack, but Peenemünde wasn’t originally considered as a candidate because it was supposedly top secret and well defended. Both assumptions were clearly incorrect. A week after the bombing, General Dornberger ordered Wernher to plan the shift of production from Peenemünde to a facility that would be prepared near Nordhausen, in Thuringia, a mountainous region in central Germany. Although Wernher preferred having everything in one place and under his direct supervision, he was glad to be staying at Peenemünde, as his work could continue without interruption. Several key testing areas and other facilities, like the liquid oxygen plant, had survived the bombing, and the Peenemünders had taken care to avoid obvious repairs or upgrades that might attract attention and additional bombing strikes. So Wernher and the design team stayed in place, while the assembly operations were shifted to an underground factory complex to be called the Mittelwerk because it was near the mittel (middle) of Germany. The shift would, however, dramatically complicate his life. Nordhausen was at least 300 miles away, an hour by plane or a day by car.27
Wernher chaired a meeting on the transfer of slave laborers from Peenemünde to the new facility at the Mittelwerk on 25 August 1943, and four days later he flew to Northausen to inspect the site for the Mittelwerk. He was the first Peenemünder to do so. One reason it had been selected was that extensive tunneling work had been done by a gypsum mining company a decade earlier, and the rock was soft enough that further extension would be relatively straightforward. When Wernher arrived, he found a dirty, dank underground maze that was already full of equipment and fuel storage tanks. There were two parallel tunnels, each roughly a mile in length, interconnected by smaller lateral tunnels like the rungs in a ladder. Railway tracks ran the length of the tunnels, and the facility had long served as a storage depot for oil and gasoline. It was shockingly clear to Wernher that it would be many months before this subterranean complex would be ready to start churning out V-2 rockets. All of the stored tanks and machinery had to be hauled away, the existing tunnels had to be enlarged, and additional cross tunnels had to be added. After all that, the entire complex needed to be wired, plumbed, ventilated, surfaced, and air conditioned.
Preparations to begin the work were already underway. Less than a day before Wernher flew to the Mittelwerk, the first batch of slave laborers arrived from Buchenwald Concentration Camp, located roughly 37 miles to the south. The relative proximity of Buchenwald was critical to the success of the venture and another reason why this site had been selected. SS-General Hans Kammler, who directed the construction effort, was quite familiar with Buchenwald, as he’d been responsible for the construction of an adjacent factory, the Gustloff Werke (Gustloff Works), that relied on prison labor to build military equipment. He had used slave labor from Buchenwald to build both the Gustloff Works and the railway lines that connected the concentration camp to the nearby city of Weimar.
The construction was managed by Sonderinspektion II, the SS division for labor, materials, and security. One of the officers reviewed the plans with Wernher as he gave a guided tour. When completed, each of the main tunnels would be almost 2 miles long, 46’ wide, and 32’ high. There would be 47 cross tunnels, each 650’ long. Some of these cross tunnels were 100’ high to allow completed rockets to be stood upright. The 27 tunnels at the south end would be assigned to V-2 production, and the other tunnels would be used by the Luftwaffe to build V-1’s and the engines for Me-262 jet fighters. Raw materials for V-2 assembly would arrive on railroad cars that entered the main tunnel. These would be offloaded and the parts distributed to the cross tunnels, each involved with the assembly of specific components. The finished components would then be fitted together in sequence on railroad cars in the second tunnel. Completed missiles, mounted, secured, and ready for shipment, would emerge from the front of that second tunnel, ready to be delivered to mobile launch sites in Germany and the occupied territories.
Wernher spent five days inspecting the tunnels and discussing the remodeling required, moving past and around the slave laborers from Buchenwald. He returned later in September, in early October, and in late November when construction had been underway for three months. Although pleased by the progress he saw, Wernher was disgusted by the noise, the sm
ell, and the suffocating clouds of dust and debris, and he spent no more time in the tunnels than absolutely necessary. At that point, there were 10,000 slave laborers in the tunnels. This was manual labor at its worst, for no tools were provided because they could be used as weapons. Digging was done by hand after shattering the surfaces with explosive charges. They labored around the clock, the exhausted men sleeping on makeshift pallets or at the sides of the tunnels, with no water or sanitary facilities. The noise was deafening, the air almost unbreathable. There was little food, and no medical care for men injured by heavy equipment and explosives. Dysentery and disease were rampant, and corpses lay by the sides of the tunnels and stacked by the entrance. If asked, Wernher’s guide would have told him they were awaiting transport to Buchenwald, for disposal in an industrial-style crematorium.
On 12 November 1943, Wernher wrote to Degenkolb discussing a shortage of prisoner laborers for critical aspects of production and quality control. He noted that for critical work formerly done by 180 German employees, prison laborers could be introduced at a ratio of 2:1, which would free up 120 employees for other tasks.
After Wernher’s inspection visit on 26 November 1943, he suspended missile production work at Peenemünde and had the skilled slave laborers transferred to the tunnels of the Mittelwerk. Employees moving from Peenemünde to supervise production left behind what they would later describe as a paradise, but they got substantial raises, a generous moving allowance, a housing allowance, and many other benefits. Most of the raises were associated with loftier job descriptions and greater responsibility, so they were seen as positive career moves. Once the laborers and supervisors were on site, they began to assemble missiles on a small production line, as at Peenemünde, rather than on the grand scale planned for the Mittelwerk. That massive complex would gradually emerge as the facility was completed. At the moment, tunneling work was continuing, and many of the completed tunnels still needed to be plumbed and wired.
Because he was responsible for final acceptance, Wernher had oversight power for all aspects of design and production, which meant he needed to monitor operations at the Mittelwerk closely. Fortunately, he was on good terms with both Albin Sawatski and Arthur Rudolph. Sawatski, a fanatical Nazi even by SS standards, was in charge of production planning and the design of the assembly lines, whereas Arthur Rudolph, the production manager, had been responsible for missile production at Peenemünde before the bombing raid eliminated that capability.
The quality control division at the Mittelwerk reported directly to von Braun rather than to Sawatski, Rudolph, or Georg Rickhey, the general manager at the Mittelwerk. There were 200 quality control personnel monitoring the assembly lines, and they needed to be kept updated on design changes and specifications, as did Arthur Rudolph, whose office was located at a key position within the underground factory. Von Braun had set up the QC division and written the service manual that specified the treatment of workers who were not performing up to his standards. The QC group was to order the “removal of specialists (foreigners) [from the assembly line] who are not particularly qualified.” Nobody could have had any illusions about the fate of a slave laborer fired from the production line. If they were of no value for manual labor, they would be eliminated by execution or starvation.
As technical director, Wernher was still in charge of test firings, design modifications, and specification changes. His travel schedule was chaotic. A typical month included trips to testing grounds in Poland, Reich offices in Berlin, visits to subcontracted engineering firms across Germany, and flights between Peenemünde and the Mittelwerk. He also managed to squeeze in regular inspection visits to potential launch sites in and around Paris, where he was careful to keep his rank and his mission secret from his Parisian girlfriend. And as if all of that travel weren’t enough, whenever he returned to his office, he found it awash in a sea of paperwork.
Despite his best efforts, progress was frustratingly slow, and he was behind the eight-ball. Based on his optimistic projections, Dornberger had committed them to producing 900 missiles per month by the end of 1943. As things turned out, only four had been manufactured, none of them operational. As they fell further behind, the pressure on staff and management increased. This did nothing for the condition or treatment of the slave laborers, but more important from Wernher’s perspective, it reduced his credibility and put his funding at risk. The main problem was that their prototypes had been works of art, each one individually hand-crafted and flawless. They were now trying to reproduce that quality on an industrial scale, using semi-skilled laborers unfamiliar with the principles and constraints. So he and his design staff were continually searching for ways to simplify and idiot-proof the design. Sabotage was certainly a risk as well, but even small inadvertent mistakes could have fatal consequences during a launch.
Quality control was not the only problem they faced in the first half of 1944, as the A-4 design entered mass-production as the V-2. There was also political infighting between the various military departments and government agencies. The rocket program found itself competing with other projects and agencies for ever-scarcer resources. To save weight, major components were built of aluminum, but the supply of aluminum was limited, and the Luftwaffe needed it to build aircraft, especially jet fighters. Fuel in general was a problem, even for trucks and tanks, but fuel for rockets was in even shorter supply. The V-2 burned a mixture of liquid oxygen and ethyl alcohol. Both were hard to source at that point in the war. Each V-2 required roughly 16 tons of liquid fuel for launching (10 tons of alcohol and 6 tons of liquid oxygen) that were mixed and burned in the first 65 seconds of flight. They could stretch alcohol supplies by diluting the alcohol with water to a concentration of 74%, rather than using pure alcohol, but there was no way around the liquid oxygen requirement. Liquid oxygen was difficult to produce, hard to store, and very expensive, and there were not many sources of supply. Fortunately, the liquid-oxygen plant at Peenemünde had escaped the bombing and was still fully operational, and another plant had been set up at the Mittelwerk.
Wernher had been around Hitler often enough to know that his support could open any door. Everyone in Hitler’s inner circle knew this, and as a result, his subordinates were continuously jockeying for his attention and affection. The three men whose maneuvering had the greatest impact on Wernher’s projects were Hermann Göring, the Minister of Aviation and President of the German parliament (Reichstag), Heinrich Himmler, the Interior Minister, head of the Nazi Party and Reichsführer in charge of the civilian police and the various divisions of the SS, and Albert Speer, the Minister of Armaments and War Production, who had streamlined and optimized wartime production through nationalization of industries and the wholesale use of slave labor.28
It was a three-way battle for supremacy. Göring was officially Hitler’s second in command, but Himmler’s influence steadily increased as the Luftwaffe proved unable to conquer the skies over Britain, nor to defend Germany from Allied bombing attacks. But Himmler’s SS and Göring’s Luftwaffe were both dependent on the funds and materials provided to them by Speer. As resources became scarce, and internal competition for those resources increased, Speer gained tremendous power. Fortunately for Wernher, Speer was an admirer and a firm believer in the power of rocketry, and his ministry provided generous support.
Hitler’s enthusiasm and Speer’s support of the Army rocket program and the Luftwaffe V-1 and jet projects did not sit well with Himmler, who distrusted the German Army, disliked Speer, and detested Göring. Thus, when the Peenemünde group requested slave laborers from the SS, Himmler took the first steps toward wresting the rocket project, and its associated influence, from the Army. His plan took another step forward when the decision was made to build the Mittelwerk, since the construction was assigned to Sonderinspektion II of the SS.
Himmler next tried to outmaneuver the Army. He invited Wernher to a meeting in late February 1944 to try and convince him to leave his position at Peenemünde to become the di
rector for rocket programs for the SS. Wernher probably wasn’t too surprised at this, as he was already a ranking SS officer, and without him. the Army program would collapse. Pressed for an answer, he realized that there were tactical reasons to decline the offer. The first was that it would undercut his mentor, General Dornberger, with whom he had worked for the last nine years. Wernher expected loyalty from his team, and he felt equally loyal to Dornberger. The second reason was that given the vagaries of German politics, there were advantages to the current state of affairs. It was better for his rocket program to have both the Army and the SS involved when neither was in a commanding position. That arrangement gave him near autonomy and access to the resources of both. Wernher had always been careful to spread his allegiance around. He had joined the Nazi party, he was employed by the Army, he had received his pilot’s certification as a Luftwaffe reservist, and he held a commission from the SS.
Wernher was relieved to find that Himmler listened politely as he declined the offer, and the meeting ended cordially. However, Albert Speer, Wernher’s main supporter in the Reich administration, developed a mysterious but serious illness that required hospitalization.29 Himmler took the opportunity to flex his muscles and attempted to force the issue. Three weeks after his interview with Himmler, Wernher had a visit from the Gestapo (the Nazi Party’s secret police), who placed him in “protective custody.” The reason given was that he was not serious enough about winning the war through missile production — a claim that, given his work schedule, was hardly credible.30
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 7