Breaking the Chains of Gravity

by Amy Shira Teitel

  U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had been watching as the clouds of war gathered over Europe, and he worried that his American forces wouldn’t be ready should the country be forced to enter the conflict. With less than 190,000 active personnel, a portion of which were stationed overseas, the United States Army existed almost as a token establishment in the country and hadn’t been through any kind of field exercise since the First World War. Worried about America’s overall unpreparedness, Marshall urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate the Protective Mobilization Plan—a draft—which went into effect one week after Hitler’s attack on Poland. As the American Army grew, new conscripts went through small-scale training exercises, and by June 1941 the U.S. Army comprised more than 1.4 million men. But Marshall’s concerns remained. The men needed a large-scale training exercise to ready them for battle, and their commanding officers needed the same training to learn how to handle forces in a combat situation. Field maneuvers had long been a staple in army training, and the war’s development in Europe afforded Marshall the rare opportunity to conduct a massive-scale field maneuver training exercise before formally entering the war. It was a way for mistakes to be made at home, not overseas where men’s lives were on the line.

  In Louisiana on the morning of September 15, 1941, dirt roads turned to mud as rain soaked fields and the nearly five hundred thousand soldiers who had begun battling for control of the Mississippi River. The Red Army of Kotmk, a fake country made up of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Kentucky, was commanded by Lieutenant General Ben Lear. It was fighting the Blue Army, the army of the equally fictitious country of Almat comprised of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, led by Lieutenant General Walter Krueger. In his bid to win the war game, Krueger assembled a staff of men he considered brilliant if little-known, among them Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Eisenhower, who served as his chief of staff.

  Eisenhower’s previous military experience had been largely focused on strategy. He hadn’t seen combat in the First World War; much to his chagrin his repeated requests for overseas duty had been denied. Instead, he had spent the war commanding a unit that trained tank crews, and while his unit never saw combat he did gain a keen sense of military strategy and organization. After the war he spent time reading through documents to understand exactly how the U.S. Army had moved through France, an academic study of war he now recalled during the Louisiana Maneuvers. He skillfully directed his men, outmaneuvering the opposing forces, and when the exercise ended three weeks later the Blue Army emerged victorious. The coup earned Eisenhower a place in Marshall’s little black book where he kept a list of all the officers he believed could lead the U.S. Army in battle in Europe. Journalists covering the Maneuvers were equally impressed with Eisenhower; the smart, handsome young officer graced a number of front pages when the training exercise was over.

  Two months later and newly promoted to the rank of general, Eisenhower spent the morning of December 7 catching up on paperwork. He took a brief break to lunch with his wife, Mamie, before retiring for a short Sunday afternoon nap. He’d barely fallen asleep when the phone rang. It was Ernest R. “Tex” Lee, Eisenhower’s aide during the Louisiana Maneuvers. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, Lee said, and America’s Pacific Fleet had been destroyed. Within hours, orders started pouring in for Eisenhower’s Third Army, which had served as the Blue Army of the Louisiana Maneuvers, from the War Department. Four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and the phone on Eisenhower’s desk rang again. This time General Walter Bedell Smith was on the line with orders from General Marshall for Eisenhower to get on a plane to Washington immediately. He had been called to join the War Plans Division of the army general staff. The United States had joined the war with General Marshall commanding the U.S. Army’s entrance into the arena. Eisenhower was brought in as commander of the European Theater of Operations, a role that would demand the abstract understanding of a large-scale war effort he had demonstrated during the Louisiana Maneuvers.

  The war gained steam with its newest participant arriving in Europe, and still Germany was without a field-ready missile. But the Peenemünde team was getting closer. Just before noon on the morning of June 13, 1942, a forty-seven-foot-tall rocket 5.5 feet in diameter rose off its launchpad, somewhat unsteadily at first then gaining confidence as it climbed higher into the sky. Von Braun was elated as he watched a decade of work take flight for the first time. Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect turned minister of Armaments and War Production, looked on in astonishment as the rocket disappeared into the clouds over Peenemünde. The other technicians and visiting military personnel on hand cheered as the rocket rose, though they could scarcely be heard over the thundering engine. The A-4 could fly, and it was a powerful rocket. As the gathered crowd celebrated, the sound of the distant rocket changed, growing louder as the rocket veered off course. It exploded on impact, unsettlingly close to where the visiting dignitaries stood watching. The next A-4 took flight on August 16. Again, it rose boldly off the pad before being struck down by failure. A flaw with the guidance system left it carving a jagged supersonic path through the sky before it exploded. But von Braun welcomed failures. Every failed launch brought a new problem to light, and identifiable problems were easier to fix than unidentifiable ones.

  The next test came on October 3. Dornberger stood, binoculars in hand, on the flat roof of the Measurement House at Peenemünde. The sky overhead was clear and cloudless as it stretched over northern Germany. On a television screen was the picture of a rocket painted black and white and gleaming in the midday sun. It was alone, service platforms and personnel having cleared the area. With one minute to launch, Dornberger could feel the tension in the air rise. Looking through his binoculars he could see clouds of smoke issuing from the bottom of the rocket, followed by a shower of sparks that was quickly replaced by a flame. Pieces of wood and grass flew through the air as cables detached from the rocket, which began to climb. Dornberger followed along as it traveled north to rise out of the forest into the clear sky, its thunderous roar reaching him a full five seconds later. He watched as the missile began its scheduled roll and turned almost imperceptibly to the east, all the while traveling faster until it reached the speed of sound. A thin white trail began streaming out behind the rocket, sending the men watching the launch into a panic. The missile had exploded, some yelled, while others were sure the trail was just the liquid oxygen venting. But the rocket kept flying, and Dornberger wept with joy, and when the rocket landed in the Baltic almost five minutes after launching, he could rightfully call the test a success. It was the culmination of a decade of work, and the spaceship, Dornberger knew, had been born with that launch.

  Just before the end of 1942, Heinrich Himmler, the ruthless head of the SS, chief of the Gestapo, and the man behind the infamous concentration camps, arrived at Peenemünde unannounced. Dornberger gave Himmler a tour of the site that involved more conversations in the officers’ mess than demonstrations; there were no launches planned for that day. It turned out that, in spite of the Führer’s apparent disinterest in rockets, there was great interest in the rocket among Hitler’s inner circle, and Himmler was there to learn as much as he could about the weapon with the goal of using his position to help Dornberger’s team get the funding and the support they needed. What was more, continued Himmler, the rocket’s development was no longer just the army’s concern. It was now the concern of the German people and had to be protected as such. Himmler wanted to establish his own men on the base. Dornberger was pleased about the interest in his program but balked at the idea of Himmler taking control of the site and suggested instead that the SS take control of security in the surrounding town of Peenemünde. Himmler agreed, though as he left the rocket site, he promised to return.

  Himmler did return to the rocket site on June 28, 1943. The visit started with a modest dinner in the officers’ mess with a small group that included Dornberger, von Br
aun, and a handful of local dignitaries and colleagues. After the meal, the group retired to the Hearth Room, a warm space with wood-paneled walls and brass details, for social conversation. Talk eventually turned to rockets, a subject von Braun happily took the lead on. He shared with Himmler his personal history, from his work at Kummersdorf West and Peenemünde to his dream of using rockets to explore space. However, for the head of the SS, rockets were a way to deliver a bomb onto a target from a great distance; they had no use off the Earth. But none of the rocket men in the Hearth Room that night paid much attention to the disparate views on their creation.

  Rockets took center stage again the following day. At a quarter past nine in the morning, an A-4 lifted off its launchpad and promptly exploded. A second rocket launched that afternoon fared much better, flying perfectly straight until it disappeared into the clouds. Lost to sight, the continued, thunderous roar of the engine signaled that it was still traveling toward its target. The demonstration gave Himmler a sense of what had the rocketeers so excited, and he left impressed by the group, a favorable opinion that reached Hitler quickly. Less than two weeks later, the Fürher invited Dornberger and von Braun into his inner circle to present on their program at the army’s guesthouse in East Prussia.

  When von Braun and Dornberger arrived for their meeting with Hitler, they were ushered into a restricted area and left to wait in a room with a projector. They would wait there until five in the afternoon, they were told, at which time Hitler would arrive, and they would promptly begin their presentation. But five o’clock came and went, and still they waited. The time seemed to drag on interminably when the doors to the room banged open, announcing Hitler’s arrival. Von Braun and Dornberger sprang to their feet, greeting their host and his entourage. The men all took seats, and the presentation began, von Braun giving a run-through about the mobile launch system at Peenemünde before showing a film of the October 3 flight. Dornberger followed, presenting the hard facts and walking through the development schedule and technical details of the A-4. He showed pictures of the impacts his rockets had left after successful tests. When Dornberger finished speaking, Hitler got up and shook both men’s hands.

  The Führer was impressed, far more than he had been after his 1939 visit to Kummersdorf West. This time he had immediate questions. Could the payload capability of the A-4 be increased to ten tons, he wanted to know, and how many rockets could Peenemünde produce each month. It was clear that having seen the power of the rocket, Hitler finally believed in the project. He granted the program the priority status Dornberger had coveted for so long, but Hitler also asked for two thousand A-4s each month, a figure well beyond Peenemünde’s means. To compensate, the Führer said, there would be new factories built and a new workforce applied to the rocket program. Hitler saw in the A-4 the means to annihilate major cities, forcing his enemies into submission. It could be the secret weapon he needed to win the war. He could only hope it would remain secret long enough to be fully operational.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Turning Tide of War

  Just before midnight local time on August 17, 1943, eight British Royal Air Force Mosquito bombers edged into the skies over Berlin. As part of Operation Whitebait, each plane dropped its three five-hundred-pound bombs and chaff—masses of radar reflective metal foil, used to mask their true location from enemy tracking stations on the ground. The Germans knew this small fleet was a standard forerunner of a heavy raid and reacted accordingly. Air raid sirens started blaring, sending civilians running for cover as searchlights started sweeping the sky to illuminate the coming battle. The Luftwaffe deployed 150 fighters. The Mosquitos left the area, and for the first time, the Germans were pleased to have aircraft ready and waiting for the coming Allied bombardment fleet.

  More than a hundred miles away at Peenemünde, the sound of the air raid sirens woke Wernher von Braun. It was a familiar sound, as were the sounds of planes overhead; aircraft frequently passed over the rocket station on their way to Berlin. A radio announcement confirmed the activity over the German capital, a safe distance away. But then a red marker appeared in the sky over Peenemünde followed by sixteen more, dotting the night with white lights. Von Braun saw them floating in the moonlight, hanging like Christmas trees. Then, fifteen minutes after midnight, a wave of bombers appeared in the skies over the rocket site, releasing their ordnance over the Siedlung, one of the housing estates. Von Braun heard the roar of the bombers followed by the thumping of German antiaircraft guns and immediately ran to take cover in one of the concrete blockhouses.

  The sound of gunfire woke Walter Dornberger. He threw on clothes and, remembering that he’d sent his boots away for polishing, slid on his bedroom slippers before running for the air raid shelter. As bombs continued falling from the sky, searchlights illuminating the action from below revealed that German air cover was scant. The Luftwaffe had taken the bait over Berlin and left the rocket site unprotected.

  Determined to save his work from the raid, von Braun left the safety of the shelter and ran into the burning building that housed his office. His secretary and a handful of others followed him. Groping along the walls as the building collapsed around them, they made their way into von Braun’s office. His secretary carried armfuls of documents from the burning building while her boss threw more materials out of the window to save them from the fire. Dornberger, meanwhile, rushed into the Measurement House to save the team’s guidance, control, and telemetry work. All the while, bombers flew overhead, and bullets streaked through the sky. When the Luftwaffe finally arrived, the new planes only added aerial fighting to the chaos.

  An hour after the first RAF forces arrived at Peenemünde, the last wave dropped their bombs and turned back toward England with forty fewer planes in their rank. And while Peenemünde had taken a heavy beating, the damage could have been far worse. The sky over the Baltic that night was spotted with clouds, and the radar on the lead planes wasn’t working. The bombardiers tried to calculate the correct drop points for their first target markers but missed. Some flares were dropped as markers over the water while others fell two miles south of where they were intended to drop. These first flares had marked the Trassenheide labor camp at Peenemünde and not the leaders’ housing building, which had been the Allies’ main target. The RAF eventually corrected the error and reached the main buildings on the rocket facility, but that initial miscalculation led to a slight delay that gave the rocket scientists time to take shelter. In all, eighteen hundred tons of Allied bombs rained down on Peenemünde as part of Operation Hydra, killing 180 Germans and around six hundred foreigners in the workers’ camp where there were no concrete shelters. Though the facilities had suffered serious damage, the raid failed in its main goal. It didn’t take out the leading talent behind the A-4 program. Von Braun, Dornberger, and the core men whose knowledge was vital to seeing the program to completion had survived. They buried their dead colleagues two days later.

  The raid on Peenemünde had been in the works for months. The first indication that the Germans were developing a long-range bombardment weapon had reached the Allies in the form of anonymous letters delivered to a British attaché in Oslo. The so-called Oslo report mentioned a site on the Baltic called Peenemünde where tests of long-range weapons were underway, though the Allies had no way to corroborate the claims made in these letters. But evidence appeared before long. Danish fishermen reported seeing objects streaking through the sky leaving flaming trails. Word from the Polish underground was that forced laborers on the island of Usedom had found missile-looking objects in a shed. German prisoners of war told their Allied captors about large rockets they had seen under development. It was enough evidence for the RAF to investigate by aerial photography. In June, the Allies saw unmistakable evidence of finned, torpedolike objects. It was clear these were long-range missiles. The air raid was an attempt to neutralize the threat.

  But Operation Hydra had the reverse effect. Not only did bombers fail to kill key German scientists
, the raid spooked Hitler into taking increased measures to guard the team at Peenemünde and their valuable work. To protect the newly prioritized rocket program from another attack, the Führer ordered all A-4 production moved underground. To ensure nobody building the rockets could leak secrets, he decreed that the A-4 program use concentration camp labor. On August 20, Hitler appointed Himmler as his new minister of the Interior, which put him in charge of organizing the A-4 program’s new subterranean factories. Himmler in turn brought in Hans Kammler, a high-ranking officer. The SS was slowly but surely wresting control of the rocket program, exactly what Dornberger and von Braun had been wary of for years.

  The A-4 program began preparations to move from its coastal site to central Germany, a spot southwest of Berlin nestled between the Elbe and Weser Rivers. Its new home was a disused sodium sulfate mine and former motor fuel storage site that was little more than a cavern carved into the Harz Mountains. A nondescript name masked the existence of the future rocket factory: Central Works Limited, or Mittelwerk in German. On August 23, the first trainload of prisoners arrived from the Buchenwald concentration camp. Working twelve-hour shifts, the slave labor widened the tunnel and extended it to the other side of the mountain two miles away. As more trainloads of prisoners arrived, they joined the work cycle. Bunks were eventually built in the cave, which remained poorly ventilated and without a sanitation system. Prisoners were forced to drink what water they could find pooled on the floors. Disease ran rampant in this subterranean hell, eventually called Dora but eerily reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. When Dora became overrun by prisoners, a second camp called Nordhausen was established to also feed laborers into the rocket factory. As far as the workers knew, the equipment they were slowly bringing into Mittelwerk was from a place called Peenemünde, and it was intended to build a secret weapon for the SS under Kammler’s direction.