On that trip, Wernher was able to combine business with pleasure by taking the opportunity to visit his old high school at Ettersburg, relatively close to Buchenwald. He had fond memories of the school where he had first pursued his fascination with rocketry, and it was his last chance to do something other than work. He hadn’t returned to Paris recently, and with the enemy approaching the city, he wouldn’t be going anytime soon. Moving ahead, there would be no time for distractions — combat launches of the V-2 rockets would begin in early September.
Shortly after he returned to Peenemünde, a second US bombing raid smashed the main hangar and damaged both Wernher’s office building and the laboratory wings. It was another close call, and it reminded him to stretch his schedule to give more time to the Wasserfall anti-aircraft rocket program.
The SS was in charge of the physical facility and security at the Mittelwerk and the labor force at Dora, and they operated the V-2 testing facilities and the mobile launchers that were being distributed ahead of the first combat launches. That was the main reason Wernher made it a point to wear his SS uniform when visiting the testing, launching, and training facilities. The only aspects of missile production that the SS did not yet control were the design, manufacturing, and quality control of the rockets, which Wernher handled, and operational control of the mobile launch vehicles, which would, at least for the moment, continue to be operated by Army Ordinance rather than the SS (over Himmler’s strenuous objections).
Wernher had seen the preliminary plans that would dramatically increase the production of V-1 and V-2 rockets, jet engines, and other advanced weapons. Seven large underground factories were envisioned, centered in the area northwest of Nordhausen and interconnected by railways. It was called the Bauvorhaben X Project, and the facilities were referred to as B1, B2, etc, the numbers referring to their construction priority. When completed, 45,000 additional slave laborers would be provided by the SS. One of the factories was already operational, producing turbines for the V-2s assembled at the Mittelwerk,. It had been excavated by slave laborers from the Dora Concentration Camp and its Ellrich sub-camp. The increased production would be welcome, and if done fast enough, it could reshape the war. Unfortunately, the more factories involved in V-2 production, the greater the competition for Wernher’s time, as he had to be sure that quality control was adequate and the components as near perfect as humanly possible.
As evidenced by these expansive plans, Albert Speer continued to provide encouragement and support. Speer was also concerned that Himmler was inching closer to taking total control over the rocket program and shifting the balance of power in the Reich. In early August, he had attempted to thwart Himmler’s machinations by nationalizing the Peenemünde facility and reorganizing it under the Reich Armaments Ministry as Elektromechanishewerk (EW), GmbH. As a nationalized corporation, EW would have top priority for materials in short supply, such as aluminum and liquid oxygen. From that time onward, Wernher would no longer be technical director of an army research facility. He would be a senior vice president of a major corporation. The change in title had no real impact on his duties and responsibilities, but it made it easier for him to deal with the sometimes conflicting demands of the army and the SS.
On 15 August, Wernher prepared a letter to be sent to Herr Director A. Sawatski, Mittelwerk, Ltd. It read, in part:
DEAR MR. SAWATSKI,
DURING MY LAST VISIT TO THE MITTELWERK, YOU SUGGESTED UTLILIZING THE SKILLED TECHNICAL BACKGROUND OF VARIOUS PRISONERS BOTH AT THE MITTELWERK AND IN BUCHENWALD IN ORDER TO ACCOMPLISH ADDITIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORK AS WELL AS TO CONSTRUCT SAMPLE DEVICES . . . . I IMMEDIATELY ACTED ON YOUR SUGGESTION AND WENT WITH DR. SIMON TO FIND A FEW OTHER SUITABLE PRISONERS IN BUCHENWALD AND THEN, ACCORDING TO YOUR SUGGESTION, ARRANGED WITH STANDARTENFU..HRER47 PISTER FOR THEIR TRANSFER TO THE MITTELWERK . . . .
WITH BEST WISHES AND
HEIL HITLER!
SINCERELY,
B [WERNHER VON BRAUN]48
Shifts at the Mittelwerk were working around the clock, but despite a reduced laborer-to-manager ratio, there were still production problems caused by unfamiliarity with Wernher’s design changes. The SS was convinced that other failures were the result of deliberate sabotage, and SS guards had taken to hanging suspected saboteurs from the construction cranes outside Arthur Rudolph’s office as a warning to the prisoner workforce. Wernher received copies of the labor reports that tracked the number of laborers and the losses to death or injury. The losses had declined after the peak in March 1944, when the manual construction phase ended, but under the pressure for increased production, the death rates were climbing once again.
Wernher had no control over sabotage, and his only involvement in punishment, other than a few minor incidents on the assembly line, was through his insistence that laborers be replaced if they were incapable of meeting his quality control standards. What happened to incompetent häftlinge (prisoners) was none of his concern. He did have complete control over the design, and he continued to demand small modifications and improvements that he hoped would simplify assembly. These tweaks brought him into constant contact with both Albin Sawatski and Arthur Rudolph. To keep him in the loop, Wernher was cc’d on all correspondence and reports related to missile production.
Wernher sometimes felt he was a victim of his own success — his dramatic, charismatic, and flamboyant presentations had convinced Hitler and Speer that a massive V-2 bombardment would change the course of the war, and now they would accept nothing less. Although Wernher remained confident that he could deliver on his promises, given enough time and materials, it was still a struggle. He was certainly committed to that effort, and he and his engineering staff were driving themselves hard, putting in long hours every day of the week to overcome the logistical and financial hurdles. As Dornberger continually reminded them, this was Total War, and their work could save Germany from another humiliating defeat.
A year earlier, Wernher had tried to get additional funding to build the A-10, a three-stage rocket that could reach the east coast of the US and strike Boston, New York, and Washington DC. Surely, if rockets started to rain down on both London and New York, Germany could demand an armistice on the western front and turn its full attention to the eastern front and Germany’s real enemy, the Soviet Union. But for once, he had failed to convince Hitler, who wanted all of the available resources devoted to producing V-2s. Although he was still disappointed that the A-10 concept hadn’t been seen as a stroke of genius, he now returned to the preliminary designs. The third stage of the A-10 resembled a V-2 with stubby winglets on each side. Adding those winglets would potentially double its range. enabling them to continue the barrage of London even if Germany was forced to abandon France and the low countries. He made some notes, and decided to call the new iteration the A-4b.
45 The British obtained pieces of the rocket and were distressed to say the least. They estimated the rocket could carry an explosive load eight times greater than its actual capacity. It made them take Hitler’s “German wonder weapon” threat much more seriously.
46 This visit was thought to have been on 24 July 1944. Because he went by car, there is no flight log to determine an exact date.
47 An SS rank comparable to a Colonel in the German Army.
48 Fort Eustis microfilm collection, Roll 28/694, NASM, Chantilly, Virginia
CHAPTER 7
Transport
15-20 AUGUST 1944
AT FRESNES PRISON, MOST OF the captured airmen were held in the upper floors in the last portion of Division 3 to be evacuated.49 When all of the Allied airmen to be evacuated were assembled, trucks and buses carried them to the northeastern edge of Paris. It was almost an hour before the 18-mile trip ended with their unloading at the trainyard of the Gare de Pantin. They were offloaded near the end of a string of boxcars. Passenger cars near the front of the train, roughly 1,500’ away, contained members of the puppet Vichy or Laval governments, German military officers, counterintelligence ag
ents, and collaborators who felt it was time to leave Paris and never look back. Every other boxcar in the chain held prisoners, with the car in between reserved for a dozen guards and their equipment and personal gear.
The prisoner convoy was under the command of SS officers, but many of the guards were wearing different uniforms from those at the prison. These were Gestapo agents, hardened by service on the Russian front. There were also regular Waffen-SS troops providing additional security and leaving Paris on the same train.
The boxcars were small (10’ x 25’) and marked “40 hommes ou 8 chevaux“ (40 men or 8 horses). In practice, each car was loaded with 70-90 prisoners. The boxcars had a steel frame and steel corners, but the floors and walls were rough-cut planks, set parallel to the long axis of the train. The roof was a curved piece of corrugated iron. Behind the train was a tail of barbed wire netting. This was intended to prevent any prisoner trying to escape by dropping from a boxcar onto the tracks and waiting for the train to move past.
The station yard was chaotic. The guards needed to control and organize 2,453 prisoners. This involved verifying that all who had left Fresnes Prison had arrived at the train station, and recording who boarded each boxcar. Nerves were on edge, in part because of the heat and in part because they knew that it was their last chance to escape Paris. The clock was ticking. While the guards dealt with crowd control and paperwork, members of the French Red Cross moved through the throng with lemonade and aspirin.
All of the women from the prison were taken to the last five boxcars.50 The airmen, mixed in with French prisoners, were loaded into the three boxcars in front of the women. Each car contained two five-gallon buckets, one filled with water and the other empty, presumably for use as a toilet. Fred saw an airman from the Fresnes group bull his way through the throng to confront an SS officer. Fred’s first thought was that the guy was a force to be reckoned with. He was tall and rugged looking, and from the look of his nose he had been in a few brawls. He looked both determined and totally committed to his course of action. At attention before the officer, he loudly protested that the airmen were military prisoners, and under the Geneva Conventions they should be treated as POWs and not cattle. The response was curt and direct: an elbow to the face and an escort back to the cattle car. Fred saw that although he left the confrontation bloody, his bearing was unchanged, and he showed no signs of either discouragement or disappointment.
After giving their names to one of the guards with a clipboard, Fred, Sam, and Paul were each given a chunk of dark bread with a dollop of margarine on it and a small tin of horsemeat. They were directed into the last of the three boxcars, along with 25 other airmen51 and 63 French prisoners. A few of the prisoners had managed to secure Red Cross parcels from harried volunteers who were attempting to help. The small packages, intended for one person, contained a few biscuits, jam, margarine, some sugar, and a can of sardines. Each parcel was shared among six or more prisoners.
The only ventilation for the prisoners came through 2’x1’ openings that were guarded with a zig-zag network of barbed wire. There were four openings on each side of the train, but only two were left open. The other two were covered by steel shutters, locked in position. By the time the car was fully loaded and the sliding door closed and secured, it was 1400, and between the sun beating down on the steel roof and the severe overcrowding, conditions inside the car were almost unbearable. It was stiflingly hot, there was no way to sit down, and getting to the toilet pail or to the fresh-water bucket was so difficult as to be almost impossible except for men within a few feet of them. Many of the French prisoners and several of the airmen had contracted dysentery at Fresnes Prison, and all were still in the clothing they had worn at the time of arrest. It was clear that personal hygiene was a thing of the past, and the smell was at first overpowering.
All that day, the men stood and waited and wondered what would become of them. What with the heat and the crowding, everyone in the boxcar had a short fuse. There was pushing and shoving and angry words exchanged, often caused by a prisoner whose uncontrolled urination or noisy defecation fouled his neighbors. The situation was complicated by language, as the airmen were scattered within the crowded boxcar. Ralph Taylor, an American sergeant, was near a young Frenchman who spoke reasonable English. Together they worked out a plan to organize the car, and gradually, with a lot of wriggling and jostling, the airmen shifted so as to occupy one end of the boxcar. This did nothing to ease the overcrowding, but it made it possible to avoid miscommunication, and gave an opportunity for conversations that would help pass the time.
At first, Fred and Sam had plenty to talk about. Sam told the story of his time with the FFI. He had been sheltered for two months at Saint-Denis-le-Ferment, roughly nine miles from Hacqueville but in a different administrative sector. Jean Jacques had the same siren call in that sector, and on 7 August 1944, Sam, along with three RAF airmen (Flight Sergeants Leonard Barham, Eric Davis and Frank Salt) took a ride with Jean and a red-haired woman who sounded a lot like Collette. They soon found themselves in the clutches of the Gestapo. Fred and Paul spoke of their time with the Raulins, hiding in the church steeple, and the ride to Paris with Jean Jacques. Those around them chimed in, overhearing the conversation as it proceeded. It soon became evident that of the group in the boxcar, many had fallen victim to the same traitor.
Crammed into the boxcars, the prisoners waited through the long afternoon in the stifling heat. Thirst, smells, cramps, hunger, and anxiety all took their toll. Fred overheard a conversation among Red Cross personnel that suggested the long delay was the result of a French Railway Workers strike, which was an attempt to prevent the departure of the prisoner train. It took the increasingly frantic Germans ten hours to find both a locomotive and a crew they could force to drive it, ten precious hours during which the Allied forces moved ever closer and the FFI became emboldened. The train finally started to move shortly after midnight, and by then it was overcast and raining. This lowered the temperature outside, but with such limited ventilation, it did little to improve conditions for the prisoners. The sound of artillery was now very near, and flares could be seen in the night sky through the small ventilation ports. The airmen were on the last train to leave Paris before its liberation on 25 August 1944.
That first night and on subsequent nights, Fred and other prisoners struggled to find positions where sleep was at least theoretically possible. In Fred’s overcrowded boxcar, people around the edges tried to sleep leaning against the walls, while those in the interior took turns sleeping while crouched or sitting, wedged among their comrades, in 30-minute shifts. Over time, everyone became dehydrated, malnourished, and severely sleep deprived.
Near dawn, the train stopped while groups of guards started painting red crosses on the tops of the boxcars to deter air attacks. This effort had barely started before the train was strafed by a passing fighter. The plane made only one pass and caused no damage to the train or the tracks, although debris struck the sides of the boxcars. It was Fred’s second time under air attack (the first was at Great Ashfield), and he found it even more unnerving to be attacked by an American fighter. He knew how good those guys were at blowing things up, and he had no interest in dying by friendly fire. The incident seemed to motivate the SS management, however, and the train started moving almost immediately thereafter.
With all of the stopping and starting, progress was slow, and the FFI was doing what they could to make it slower still. There was occasional sniper fire and sometimes firefights, but to Fred’s disappointment, the German response — stopping the train and sending out heavily armed SS teams in sweeping movements — outgunned and outmatched the attacking parties.
Late that morning, the train faced a more concerted ambush. After passing Luzancy, the train had to cross a loop in the Marne River. This involved crossing a bridge, driving through a long tunnel, and emerging to cross a second bridge. The train station that serviced Nanteuil-sur-Marne and Saacy-sur-Marne was located just beyond t
he second bridge. As the locomotive emerged from the tunnel toward the second bridge, it came under heavy fire. In response, the train ground to a halt and then backed to safety inside the tunnel. While the engine idled, the SS troops geared up and left the tunnel to battle the FFI forces. It was nearly three hours before the attackers were driven off and the SS force returned to the train.
In the interim, the idling locomotive was generating dense clouds of exhaust that soon filled the tunnel, forming a cloud layer that over time extended lower and lower. The airmen were at first in the dark, and later within the exhaust cloud. It was thick, suffocating smoke that made it difficult to breathe. Fred was jammed against his fellow prisoners, and there was no way to get his head below the cloud bank. He tried to make a facemask by pulling his shirt up to cover his nose and mouth. It helped a little, but he was still coughing and fighting for air. There was general panic, and Fred heard someone say that the prolonged stop was intentional, and they were being executed. Despair was setting in by the time the train once again jerked into motion and began backing out of the tunnel. As Fred’s boxcar was near the end of the train, the air coming through the ventilation holes began to freshen almost at once.
The train stopped once the locomotive had emerged from the tunnel. Word soon reached the airmen, by relay from the prisoner cars ahead, that the railway bridge at the other end of the tunnel had been bombed. Their train had apparently reached the end of the line.
Betrayed: Secrecy, Lies, and Consequences Page 11