Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  By mid-February the enormous task of dismantling Peenemünde had been completed and the first train carrying more than five hundred people moved slowly away from the approaching Soviets. The families travelled in freight cars in uncomfortable conditions, sleeping on straw. There was room for a few cows on the train, so that the children could have fresh milk – but there was no food for the cows. They ate the straw, and the beds slowly disappeared.

  Leading the first convoy of trucks by road, von Braun ran into an army roadblock. Unknown to him, civilian traffic was forbidden to travel by road and an extremely efficient army major would not allow him through. The major was adamant but so was von Braun, who recalled that ‘they faced each other like bulldogs’ while precious time was slipping away. The whole expedition hung in the balance while the major considered ringing the army group commander at Peenemünde for confirmation that the exodus was legitimate. If this happened von Braun knew that they were in trouble, as the Gauleiter would make no such confirmation. They would be sent back to fight the Soviets or even arbitrarily shot as traitorous escapees.

  Thinking on his feet, von Braun now rose to the occasion. He explained that VZBV was the abbreviation for Vorhaben zur Besonderen Verwendung – Project for Special Dispositions – and that perhaps the major would care to continue his dispute with Himmler personally as the convoy was under his direct command. Upon very brief reflection, the major decided to forego that particular experience and the convoy was allowed through.

  The journey had hardly begun. It seemed that danger was waiting round every corner. The 250 miles ahead to Mittelwerk would take many days as they could only travel at night, slowly, under dimmed headlights, stopping when low-flying fighters appeared. Fighters strafed the roads and railway lines. There were many roadblocks and if the convoy ran into a crack troop of SS, von Braun doubted they could survive. Their ridiculous VZBV stickers would fool nobody.

  And as von Braun counted the dangers, he was unaware that he himself was a wanted man: both American and Soviet intelligence had him in their sights and were busy hunting him down.

  On 3 February 1945, a young American engineer, Major Robert Staver, was sent from US Army Ordnance to London to find out everything possible about the secret German weapon. He lost no time in contacting British intelligence who dryly noted his air of confident enthusiasm and the strong signals he conveyed that he was not someone to be tied up in red tape. He was a man of action who could be relied upon to get things done. Indeed, his enthusiasm overrode any fear he might have felt on first close encounter with the V-2, which happened when he visited the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Staver claims he soon observed the destructive power of the V-2 at first hand: he was in a meeting when, without warning, a powerful blast flung both him and his senior officer across the room.

  Staver was astonished at the silent, deadly approach of the V-2. He could hear the crash of falling debris, and from a window he observed ‘a big round cloud of smoke where a V-2 had exploded overhead’. Later, at his hotel near Marble Arch, he was thrown violently out of bed when a V-2 landed at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. The amateur orators were silenced; more than sixty people died. In spite of protective covering, thousands of windowpanes in nearby buildings were shattered and Staver watched ‘the drapes of his window stand straight out from the wall’.

  Staver was impressed. There was nothing in the US armoury to compare with the V-2. He had been sent by Colonel Gervais Trichel, US Army Ordnance, chief of the rocket branch, who was concerned that America was twenty years behind the times. Trichel had already established a firing range at White Sands, New Mexico, with a view to creating a US rocket programme that could benefit from the German expertise. To develop the technology, he wanted to examine a V-2, obtain all possible technical data and interrogate the men who had designed the weapon; the blueprints alone would help advance the US armoury. He contacted Colonel Holgar Toftoy at the US Ordnance Department in Paris to ask him to track down V-2s that could be brought over to White Sands. Staver was to acquire the technological secrets in this field that would put America firmly in the lead.

  Staver soon found British intelligence was generous with its information and had pieced together quite a story. The scientific intelligence officer at Bletchley Park, R. V. Jones, had been aware of the possibility of a German rocket programme since the beginning of the war, when an anonymous report outlining the development of experimental new weapons including rockets was posted to the British Naval Attaché in Oslo in Norway. At the time, leading officials had doubted the authenticity of the ‘Oslo report’ and believed it had been a hoax planted by the Germans. However, in March 1943, a secret recording between two captured German generals revealed that a rocket programme did indeed exist. Unaware that their conversation was being recorded, one of the generals speculated over what could have caused the delays in attacking London. He was reassured by the other general: ‘wait until next year and the fun will start … There’s no limit to the range.’

  That same month, the Polish Intelligence Service gave an idea of the scale of the research. They passed on reports of an SS camp almost 180 miles south of Warsaw at Blizna. It was suspected that the site was being used for missile test firings. British aerial reconnaissance soon revealed craters a few miles from the camp and other signs of equipment and machinery similar to that at Peenemünde. Polish agents attempted to reach some crashed missiles before the Germans in the hope of finding out more about the technology, and on 20 May they discovered a complete, unexploded rocket by the River Bug some eighty miles from Warsaw. Hearing the Germans approach, they pushed it into the river and watched from cover while the Germans searched for but failed to find it. Later, they dismantled it and, in grave danger of discovery, cycled through enemy lines to take key components to an airfield, en route to England.

  By June, Peenemünde itself had been infiltrated. A student from Luxembourg sent by the Germans to work on the secret rocket site smuggled out letters to his family describing the huge rocket and the ominous sound it made, like ‘a squadron at low altitude’. That same month, R. V. Jones was studying photographs of Peenemünde when he suddenly spotted on a railway truck ‘something that could be a whitish cylinder about 35 feet long and five or so feet in diameter, with a bluntish nose and fins at the other end’. It was direct evidence. ‘I experienced the kind of pulse of elation that you get when after hours of casting you realise that a salmon has taken your line,’ he said.

  As news of the scale of the problem reached Churchill, instructions went out to Bomber Command. Over two nights in mid-August 1944, six hundred aircraft set out to destroy the site and target key personnel in the camps and sleeping quarters. Without warning, the camp became a maelstrom, vibrating to the whistle and crash of bombs. Dr Walter Thiel, von Braun’s brilliant engine designer, died with his wife and four children, but most of those who perished that night were foreign labourers rather than the key German staff. The raid also failed to do as much damage as was hoped to key installations and launching facilities.

  By early September, there was such confidence in London among senior officials that Hitler’s secret weapon had been destroyed that this was even announced at a press conference. The very next day, the first V-2 struck London. R. V. Jones recognized the chilling significance of the V-2 programme. The V-2, he had written in a report as early as 1944, might be ‘a feasible weapon to deliver a uranium bomb, should such a bomb become practical. It would be almost hopeless to counter by attacks on the ground, because the increased range would allow an almost unlimited choice of firing site … production would probably take place underground.’

  British intelligence learned that the bombing of Peenemünde had not stopped production, and that the Germans were still manufacturing the missile in the vast underground site at Mittelwerk. They also knew the hidden factory was buried in the side of the Harz Mountains and consequently was impossible to destroy by bombing.

  Major Staver’s file grew thick. He knew wher
e the work on guided missiles was carried out in Europe. He understood the significance of Peenemünde and what was being manufactured in the secret factory near Nordhausen. And he had a growing number of names of men he needed to trace for their expertise before the Soviets got to them. The Combined Allied Intelligence Report for August 1944 identifies a number of key personnel including a ‘Dr Hans von Braun’. By January the Allied report was updated and listed his name correctly. Dr Wernher von Braun had moved to the top of Staver’s black list.

  Unknown to Major Robert Staver, in the Soviet Union the NKVD, or People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs – the predecessor of the KGB – had been on the trail of Wernher von Braun since 1935.

  When Adolf Hitler first came to power, Soviet intelligence had been put on high alert. Vasily Zarubin, one of the NKVD’s most successful agents, went to Germany along with his glamorous wife and colleague, Lisa. There they met a German spying for the Soviet Union, ‘Agent Breitenbach’, who worked for the German police under the name of Willy Lehman. Encouraged by Zarubin, Breitenbach provided much information, some of which even reached Stalin. Although these reports are still classified by the KGB, according to the German historian Matthias Uhl one letter sent to Breitenbach from the NKVD reveals the extent of Soviet interest in von Braun. They asked Breitenbach to find out more about von Braun including where he lived and worked and even whether there was a chance of infiltrating his laboratory.

  When Zarubin left Germany in 1937, Agent Breitenbach continued to provide reports on the German rocket programme. He was so successful as an agent that on 19 June 1941 he was able to warn the Soviet administration that Hitler intended to attack the USSR on 22 June at 3 a.m. He was out by just half an hour – but it was his last report. In 1942, the Gestapo exposed a Soviet spying ring, Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra, and Breitenbach got caught up in the same sweep. Hitler himself took a personal interest in the trial of the fourteen leaders of Red Orchestra. The eleven members of the ring who faced the death penalty were executed in the most barbaric way: they were thrust on to meat hooks and left to bleed to death, hanging by the throat. Whether Breitenbach met the same fate is not known: on Himmler’s instructions, details of his execution that December were never released.

  After the death of Agent Breitenbach, Stalin was anxious to receive more information on the V-2 through the NKVD and military counterintelligence – but this proved difficult. Consequently, in early 1944 a team of specialists was recruited to develop Soviet rocket technology and investigate German progress; this was headed by Major General Lev Mikhailovich Gaidukov, a senior military figure known to the men simply as ‘Desk General’. The team was established in a specially designated scientific research institute, NII-1, in Likhobory, on the outskirts of Moscow.

  As concerns escalated over the programme at Peenemünde, in the summer of 1944 Soviet intelligence officers devised another way of spying on Nazi rocket research. Putting their faith in German prisoners of war, who were equipped with radios and false documents and parachuted into Pomerania, close to Peenemünde, they were to report back to the Soviets. One prisoner of war, Lieutenant Brandt, duly filed several reports before he was picked up by German intelligence services and shot.

  On 13 July, Winston Churchill too advised Stalin of the secret German technology. At the time, Soviet forces in Poland were closing in on the test facilities at Blizna, where Polish agents had previously uncovered the German missile launching site. Recognizing that the weapons were ‘a serious threat for London’, Churchill asked if British experts could examine the site, but Stalin was in no hurry to help the British representatives. He delayed while a Soviet team of experts was hastily dispatched to the front line in Poland. Eventually, Stalin agreed that the British could examine Blizna but again delayed access. Five weeks elapsed while the experts were held up in Tehran, first for failing to meet the Soviets’ visa requirements, then with dysentery. They were further delayed by a curious and no doubt spurious detour to Poland via Moscow. When they finally reached Blizna in mid-September, they sent a signal back to London describing the success of their mission. They claimed to have found various V-2 components which were crated up to be sent to England. On arrival, however, the crates were opened to reveal old aircraft engines, the Soviets having seized the crucial parts for themselves. The British team were far too naïve, reported R. V. Jones, for the ‘wiles of the Soviets’.

  Stalin was all too aware that any allegiances between the Allies were temporary, necessary while Hitler was the common foe. After the war political differences would isolate the Soviet Union, which he knew had often presented itself as an inviting target for petty European dictators. He needed the new weapons technology. Components recovered from the remarkable new missile, including a rocket engine, were hastily dispatched to NII-1 for exhaustive analysis. Initially, only senior party members were allowed to investigate, but eventually ‘sense took over and the engineers were allowed in’, recalled one scientist at the institute, thirty-two-year-old Boris Chertok. His expertise lay in rocket plane engines, radar and precision instruments.

  Chertok entered the large hall and at first all he could see were the legs of a man who was right underneath the rocket engine: ‘His head was somewhere inside.’

  ‘What is this?’ Chertok enquired.

  ‘This is what cannot be,’ came the immediate reply. It was his colleague, a rocket engine specialist named Alexei Isayev.

  To Isayev and Chertok, studying what remained of Dr Walter Thiel’s V-2 engine in Moscow, it seemed almost unbelievable that in wartime conditions the Germans had developed such a bold and innovative design. By testing various components, such as fuel pumps, and taking careful measurements of the engine’s combustion chamber and the smooth curvature of the exhaust nozzle, the Soviets gradually deduced that this extraordinary vehicle was not powered by traditional fuels like kerosene, but by alcohol and liquid oxygen. To their amazement they calculated the rocket itself must weigh over 12 tons and had a thrust of around 20 tons. ‘We were shocked,’ said Chertok.

  Stalin realized the Soviets were behind in many technologies, including rocketry. He was eager to import as much German military industry as possible and to step up his search for the secrets of the missile technology. Early in 1945, he set up a special committee under the chairmanship of Georgi Malenkov, a member of his inner circle

  who is estimated to have been responsible for many thousands of deaths during Stalin’s purges. The engineers at NII-1 were instructed by Malenkov to try to gather data on the V-2 – and to do so speedily – because Stalin personally required the information. Malenkov’s team of experts, accompanied by the NKVD, were to follow the Red Army into Eastern Europe and hunt down both the secrets of the V-2 – and the men who made it.

  And so it was that Wernher von Braun, pursuing his vision of space travel, had attracted the interest of world leaders. While Hitler saw him as the saviour of a last-ditch ‘final redoubt’, von Braun topped the list of every Allied intelligence service. Stalin, with the despot’s expectation of the immediate fulfilment of an order, was ready with roubles. British intelligence, gentlemen of course, tempering their ardour with good manners, were politely giving carefully plotted information to the Americans. Meanwhile, Staver, embodying all the brash confidence of the New World, began the chase in earnest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘The Germans have set up a giant grill’

  When von Braun’s team finally reunited in central Germany in early March, they were absorbed into villages in the Nordhausen– Bleicherode area near Mittelwerk where the V-2s were made. This immense underground metropolis had been designed by Kammler to produce almost one thousand V-2s a month under the general manager, Dr Georg Rickhey, and the director of V-2 production, Arthur Rudolph, a committed member of the Nazi Party. Towards the end of the war, it was one of the largest operational industrial complexes in Germany.

  Von Braun was reunited with his younger brother Magnus, whom he had installed as a manager a
t the factory to oversee the production of gyroscopes for the V-2 guidance and control system. They were instructed to continue with research and production, even though Germany’s fall looked imminent. Although plagued by scarcities and despite the absurdity of the order, von Braun told his team: ‘For now, let’s do what we can to get our people settled and back into operation.’ It was essential to give a strong signal to watchful SS eyes that he was loyal to the Führer and dedicated to producing V-2s for the ‘ultimate victory’. Any hint that he might feel otherwise, any small gesture of defeat, could be noted and reported to Himmler, with the direst of consequences.

  On 17 March, von Braun made his way to the Ministry of Armaments in Berlin to raise more funds for V-2 production. Travelling at night to avoid Allied planes, he soon fell asleep – as did the driver. The car crashed into a wall, somersaulted over it and down a railway embankment on to the track. In spite of a broken arm and shoulder, von Braun managed to pull his unconscious driver free before the car burst into flames. When he awoke in hospital, he found that he had suffered a head wound that needed stitches, broken his arm in two places and badly smashed his shoulder. Although the injury was complicated, he soon discharged himself from hospital. Wrapped up like a mummy, swathed in bandages and plaster casts, his broken left arm permanently held out before him, von Braun was gratefully installed in one of the grander houses in Bleicherode to recuperate.

  This imposing two-storey house was called the Villa Frank and had once belonged to local Jewish cotton-mill owner who had been deported from Germany by Hitler. On 23 March, in the lavishly furnished accommodation, a party was held for von Braun’s thirty-third birthday. All his old friends and colleagues were gathered, men he had worked with for years. According to his technical assistant, Dieter Huzel, everyone attempted to maintain ‘at least a façade of normal activity’, but the atmosphere was nonetheless subdued. Uncertainty hung in the air like the cigarette smoke that lingered in the beautiful rooms. The soft-carpeted opulence could not blot out the war; defeat seemed imminent.