Worse was to come. In February a mysterious professor – in Germany no one could get far without some form of academic title – turned up to propose turning the factory into a private limited company, run by some such concern as AEG or Siemens, with the state owning all the capital until the war was won. 3 Two weeks later another professor who was actually a director of AEG appeared, supposedly to inspect the electrical side of the plant, before re-materializing as chairman of a new development commission for jet-propelled missiles. Then four hitherto unknown engineers arrived, sent by Degenkolb to acquire experience of the A-4 before becoming directors of the test plants which would approve the rocket prior to its delivery to the army, though Dornberger believed they were part of a plot by his hated rival to turn Peenemunde ‘into a private concern of his own’. Dornberger ultimately complained to Speer of Degenkolb’s interference but got a dusty answer. Unable to get higher priority for the rocket, Speer explained, he had done the next best thing, provided a man of proven ability and strong temperament to make the best possible use of existing resources, and the two should have ‘found some way of getting on together’. Meanwhile Dornberger was offered two consolation prizes, promotion to major-general, and the promise of an audience with the Fuhrer.
Hitler remained lukewarm about the future of the rocket. In January 1943 he had been enthusiastic when Speer had discussed with him plans for large bomb-proof bunkers in northern France to serve as both storage and launching sites for the rockets, but during a further visit, between 5 and 10 March, he told Speer, according to the official text circulated within the Ministry of Munitions, ‘I have dreamed that the rocket will never be operational against England. I can rely on my inspirations. It is therefore pointless to give more support to the project.’ Less used to Hitler’s strange mixture of intuitive brilliance and credulous superstition than those closer to him, Dornberger, when he discovered this statement, was outraged. ‘Not only had we to struggle with red tape and lack of vision in high places,’ he wrote in his post-war memoirs, when it was safe to put such thoughts on paper, ‘but also nowadays, with the dreams of our supreme War Lord’, and, most incautiously, he made a similar remark to his heads of department at Peenemünde. Whether or not Hitler’s dream ever happened – and it is possible that Speer invented the story to cover his failure to obtain higher priority for the rocket, though this seems unlikely – rocket manufacture went ahead and at least one new supporter in high places was secured, Fritz Sauckel, Reich’s Director of Manpower, who paid a highly successful overnight visit to Peenemünde on 13 – 14 May 1943. He was greeted with a guard of honour and was wined and dined in the senior staff mess, and next morning the sun beat down and the sky was clear during the firing of an A-4 for the visitor’s benefit. It functioned perfectly and a whole succession of VIPs followed, including Speer himself, Colonel-General Fromm, C-in-C of the German Home Army, and Grand Admiral Dönitz, overlord of the German navy. Enormous care was taken over their entertainment, even down to written orders assigning responsibility for ensuring that there was soap in the cloakroom, and the A-4 gained many new champions. The real challenge to it came from nearer home, in the Luftwaffe Experimental Station at Peenemünde West, where ever since March 1942, a totally different long-range weapon, the flying-bomb, had been under development.
The flying-bomb, then known to the Germans at the Fi.103 or FZG 76, was everything that the rocket was not: cheap, easy to perfect, simple to manufacture – and likely to be ready for action soon. Dornberger was well aware that the rocket programme, for 5000 rockets, was threatened by this upstart rival, which cost a mere £125 a machine and could, it was predicted, he turned out at the rate of 5000 a month. He was relieved, rather than alarmed, when it was decided to demonstrate both together for the benefit of an audience of Nazi ministers and generals, being confident that the awe-inspiring sight of the A-4 rising dramatically into the stratosphere could not fail to impress all who saw it.
The strange shoot-off, regarded by all concerned as something of a sporting competition, took place on 26 May 1943 in front of most of the recent visitors to Peenemunde, plus Goring’s deputy, Field Marshal Milch, and all the members of the Long-Range Bombardment Commission, headed by a recent less welcome visitor, Professor Petersen of AEG, which was supposed to oversee the production of both weapons. The day began with a wide-ranging discussion in the main Peenemunde mess of the relative merits of the two weapons on paper, in which, while acknowledging some of the flying-bomb’s advantages, Dornberger did his best to stress the rocket’s unique benefits:
The A-4 rocket could be freely launched in any direction with little difficulty . . . and, once launched, there was no defence against it. Dispersion, with proper servicing and testing before firing, was less than that of the Fi. 103. Because of the high speed of impact the effect . . . would be greater with the same load of high explosive. The impact would come as a complete surprise owing to the high supersonic speed. The launching site itself would be difficult or impossible to identify from the air.
He also candidly set out the case against the rocket.
Its disadvantages, in addition to higher costs, were vulnerable installations for testing and supply and the necessity for bomb-proof plants for liquid oxygen. Moreover, as a result of the high alcohol consumption and the low supplies of spirit available, output would be fairly low. Finally, in view of the complexity and delicacy of the components . . . spare parts would have to be available on a rather elaborate scale.
Rather than trying to denigrate his rival, Dornberger wisely suggested that there was room for both weapons in Germany’s armoury, advice which the commission accepted, and they decided to recommend that both should be put into production with top priority. The party then moved out to the firing range, where, in bright sunshine, it was 3 October 1942 all over again. Both rockets behaved perfectly, achieving the remarkable flight of 160 miles. But there was one difference. This time the Luftwaffe’s flying-bomb was tested too. The first to be fired crashed miserably into the Baltic after only a mile or two, and the second proved equally unsuccessful. Milch, leading the air-force team and a great advocate of the flying-bomb, put the best face on events that he could, clapping Dornberger jovially on the back, as he remarked: ‘Congratulations! Two-nought in your favour.’ Albert Speer was equally encouraging. ‘I was convinced you would succeed,’ he told Dornberger. Even more remarkable was the conversion of an old enemy, the head of the central office of Speer’s ministry, as Dornberger described:
On the way to the reception room I ran into Saur. He shook hands with me.
‘I never knew, I never even dreamed you’d get so far! . . . You have convinced me. From now on I shall be one hundred percent behind you. . . . Come and see me if you want anything, either alone or with Degenkolb.’
Saur’s support was to prove more embarrassing than his opposition, for he now began to out-Degenkolb Degenkolb in his efforts to increase A-4 production. At a conference in (somewhat inappropriately) huts erected in the Berlin Zoo in July, Saur astonished a conference of 250 managers and technical staff from the major firms assigned contracts for A-4 components, by announcing that the Degenkolb programme, which Dornberger thought impossible to achieve, was to be raised dramatically ‘from 800 to 2,000 units a month as from December’. While ‘Degenkolb, beaming, shook hands with me,’ wrote Dornberger, ‘Professor von Braun . . . was giving me imploring and despairing looks, shaking his head again and again in incredulous astonishment’ – as well he might. Even if, by some near miracle, the three existing factories, and a fourth now under construction at Nordhausen, could produce 2000 rockets a month, another great bottleneck, that of fuel supply, would remain, for ‘oxygen-generating plant could not be conjured from nowhere’, so that liquid oxygen ‘could not be guaranteed even for 900 units a month’, while ‘how much alcohol we should have depended on the potato harvest’. But Degenkolb, in the chair, and Saur, now his ardent supporter, were deaf to all entreaties. Dornberger tried to reintroduce a
note of realism by stressing that any increase in the supply of components at the expense of reliability would be worse than useless. ‘Better’, he urged, ‘fewer rockets of first-rate quality than masses of inferior ones that cannot be used except as scrap.’ But Degenkolb and Saur were interested only in production figures; they, after all, would not have to use the rocket in action. One manufacturer who attempted to explain his difficulties in increasing output of a key piece of equipment, the mechanism for feeding liquid oxygen to the A-4, was rudely interrupted. ‘I am not interested in your difficulties,’ Degenkolb told him, and when the industrialist replied that he must consult his staff before undertaking to meet the new schedule Saur also intervened, threatening to dismiss him from his post and to hand the firm over to trustees. Others who raised similar points met with the same treatment until, as Dornberger observed, ‘opposition and objections grew weaker and weaker until finally the heads of firms, when asked whether they could meet the schedule, merely nodded resignedly’. They were, he decided, demoralized by being publicly reproved like naughty schoolboys and ‘so completely convinced of the impossibility of meeting Saur’s requirements that they believed there would be no harm in agreeing’.
Peenemünde now acquired an even more powerful and even less welcome friend than Saur, Heinrich Himmler, Minister of the Interior and head of the Gestapo, who invited himself for a brief visit early in April 1943. To Dornberger Himmler looked, as they talked in the Mess, ‘like an intelligent elementary school-teacher’ and he ‘possessed the rare gift of attentive listening. Sitting back with legs crossed, he wore throughout the same amiable and interested expression. His questions showed that he unerringly grasped what the technicians told him.’ Less reassuring, however, was Himmler’s offer to protect Peenemünde ‘against sabotage and treason’ once Hitler had finally endorsed the A-4 programme, since the last thing the army wanted was a Gestapo presence there. The mere threat brought General Becker’s successor as head of the Army Weapons Department, General Leeb, hurrying to Peenemunde, and Himmler was, for the moment, bought off by the tactful suggestion that he should declare ‘a prohibited zone round Peenemunde’ and should order ‘a tightening up of security measures in northern Usedom and the adjacent mainland’, a task entrusted to the police commissioner for Stettin, himself an SS general. For the moment the army was allowed to retain responsibility for security at Peenemunde itself, though Gestapo spies were installed in the nearby town of Zinnowitz, where the scientists went for recreation, with instructions, Dornberger suspected, to ‘watch us rather than . . . local inhabitants and strangers’. More seriously, the official commandant of the whole establishment, Colonel Zanssen, was, on SS instructions, relieved of his duties on 26 April, after various vague but alarming charges had been made against him, and transferred back to Berlin.
On 29 June Himmler paid his promised second, and longer, visit to Peenemunde, entertaining the assembled scientists until four in the morning with an account of Hitler’s racial theories and the Nazi plans to colonize Russia and Poland. Although Dornberger claims to have ‘shuddered at the everyday manner in which the stuff was retailed’ – ‘We hardly ever discussed politics at Peenemunde,’ he insisted – he and his colleagues seem to have been untroubled to discover the sort of New Order their work was helping to establish and to have been undismayed by Himmler’s promise of ‘severe punishments’, at the first hint of sabotage or spying, for the foreign, forced labour he wished them to employ. Nor was he deterred from laying on the demonstration planned for Himmler’s benefit next morning, a grey, overcast day on which everything went wrong. By now thirty-seven A-4s had been fired, twenty-three of them since the first major success on 3 October 1942, but number 38 proved what the launching team had nicknamed ‘a reluctant virgin’. It had hardly left the ground when it plunged back to earth, this time on the Luftwaffe airfield at Peenemunde West, two miles away, where no one was hurt, though three aircraft were destroyed. Himmler, still in a good humour despite his late night, joked that he could now recommend the A-4 as a close-combat weapon, while one of the men from Peenemünde, not to be outdone in wit, commented that it had also justified its description as a revenge weapon; only a few days before, one of the Luftwaffe’s flying bombs had landed near the army’s Development Works, also without casualties. A second test that afternoon,4 however, went off perfectly, and Himmler parted from Dornberger on good terms, promising ‘to put our point of view to Hitler’, though adding ‘that he could help us only if Hitler’s decision were favourable.’
At last, on 7 July 1943, came the opportunity, promised months earlier by Albert Speer, for Dornberger and his colleagues to demonstrate their progress before Hitler in person. Dornberger prepared for the great occasion carefully, taking with him a whole range of visual aids that might capture Hitler’s interest, including ‘coloured sectional drawings . . . the manual for field units’ and a large-scale model of the massive storage and launching site already planned for the Channel coast, complete with ‘models of the vehicles one detachment required’. The star item was a film of a successful launching, for Dornberger attributed Hitler’s lack of enthusiasm for the rocket so far to his never having seen, ‘even in a photograph, the ascent of a long-range rocket’ or ‘experienced the thrill provided by the huge missile in flight’. To support him, Dornberger selected von Braun, the most impressive and articulate of his lieutenants, and the young and enthusiastic Dr Steinhoff now head of his Instruments, Guidance and Measurement Department, who was also a qualified pilot. Through the thick fog which blanketed eastern Germany Steinhoff groped his way, with radio help, towards Hitler’s ‘Wolf’s Lair’ at Rastenburg. Beyond the Vistula the skies cleared and ‘below us, as far as the eye could see,’ observed Dornberger, ‘stretched the dark forests of East Prussia, plentifully adorned with glittering lakes and occasionally flower-decked meadows’. Having risked their lives to get there on time the little party now found their appointment had been postponed till 5 o’clock that afternoon and when Hitler finally appeared, escorted by General Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Supreme Command, General Alfred Jodl, C-in-C of the army – their old friend von Brauchitsch had been dismissed in disgrace after the army’s failure in Russia – Jodl’s Chief of Staff, General Buhle, and Albert Speer, Dornberger was shocked by the deterioration in the Fuhrer’s appearance since he had last seen him at Kummersdorf in 1939. ‘A voluminous black cape covered his bowed, hunched shoulders and bent back. He looked a tired man. Only the eyes retained their life.’ To Hitler the presentation was clearly just one more event in a wearying day. To the rocket men it was the unique, all-important opportunity of a lifetime, and Dornberger later recalled every detail:
After briefly greeting us he sat down between Speer and Keitel in the front row. . . . On to the screen came the historic ascent of the A-4 which had so enraptured us at the time and everyone who had seen it since. Von Braun spoke his commentary. The shots were thrilling. The sliding gates, nearly ninety feet high, of the great assembly hall of Test Stand VII opened. . . . A completely assembled A-4 rolled slowly out of the hall and over the great blast tunnel sunk in the ground. . . . The men in attendance shrank to nothing. . . . The rocket was loaded on to the transporter scheduled for field use, a Meillerwagen. Driving tests on the road and in cornering proved the remarkable ease with which the rocket could be carried. Soldiers operating a hydraulic crane set the rocket vertically on the firing table, so astonishingly simple in design. The Meiller’s hydraulic machinery handled the 46 foot rocket . . . like a toy. Sequences showing fuelling and preparations for launching proved the missile capable for use under field conditions. Finally came the actual launching . . . followed by animated cartoons of the trajectory of the shot on 3rd October, indicating speeds, heights and range reached on that day. . . . The end of the film was announced by a sentence which filled the entire screen: ‘We made it after all!’. . . . Von Braun ceased speaking. Silence. . . . No-one dared utter a word. Hitler was visibly moved and agitated. Lost in thought, h
e lay back in his chair, staring gloomily in front of him. When, after a while, I began to enter into some lengthy explanations he came to with a start and listened attentively. . . . At last . . . I stopped speaking and awaited questions. Hitler walked rapidly over to me and shook my hand. I heard him say, almost in a whisper: ‘I thank you. . . . Why was it I could not believe in the success of your work? If we had had these rockets in 1939 we should never have had this war.’
As the team had foreseen, Hitler’s imagination was particularly caught by the model of the proposed firing bunker, which must, he insisted, with his familiar obsession with detail, have a roof 23 feet thick; Dornberger’s preference for small, mobile batteries he brushed aside. Within minutes a ‘strange fanatical light’ had flared up in his eyes and he was demanding 2000 rockets a month, each able to deliver a 10 ton warhead, and shouting ‘What I want is annihilation!’ Eventually, however, he calmed down and the meeting ended agreeably, with Hitler announcing that he had created von Braun a professor – though of what and where was not clear – while Dornberger was given an even more striking indication of the Führer’s favour:
Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s Page 6