Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  Dornberger had the perfect scheme that would save them all. The major, still overcome with emotion, refilled his glass and listened, more in hope than expectation. Dornberger’s plan was simple. The major and his thirty men were invited to lose their SD identity completely, to burn their uniforms and hand over their weapons to Dornberger, who would supply ordinary German army uniforms that would complete the metamorphosis. When the US arrived, they would all become prisoners of war with a life ahead of them. As SD soldiers they would almost inevitably be shot.

  The major was impressed by such a luminous understanding of the problem. He pulled himself together and agreed wholeheartedly to the plan. Next day the uniforms were burned, the guns were handed in and thirty more ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers joined Dornberger’s one hundred. The easing of the tension that had plagued the little village was felt immediately. The major was seen to smile, as was Dornberger, fully aware that SS tattoos were not so easily removed.

  The days thus passed unnoticed. They were all in limbo, waiting, divorced momentarily from the real world of war. They played cards or chess, drank quietly through the night or sat in the late spring sunshine and talked companionably. The silence of the mountains acted on them like a calming drug. ‘About us towered the snow-capped Allgau Mountains,’ Dornberger wrote in his diary, ‘their peaks glittering in the sunlight under the clear blue sky. Far below us it was already spring. The hill pastures were a bright green. Even on our high mountain pass the first flowers were thrusting buds through the melting snow. It was so infinitely peaceful here. Had the last few years been nothing but a bad dream?’

  The spell was finally broken by the sounds of human voices and traffic in the valley road below. At first it was insignificant: people calling, a line of carts, possessions piled high. Then the trickle increased, trucks appeared, and lorries, the stream turning into a never-ending flow of people on the move, of refugees and army convoys and all the noise and paraphernalia of war.

  There was no news, but rumours emerged like ghouls on Halloween. Munich had fallen to the American Seventh Army which was about to make an all-out attack on the Allgau foothills. It was suspected that the Nazis were gathering there for the redoubt. In the west, the French could almost be seen in the blue distance, and a company of French colonial soldiers would soon be in Oberjoch. The final end to the war in Europe was close. Everyone in the hotel was sure of that, but the threat of violence was undiminished. One could almost smell the scent of peace and understand what it would be like to wake in the morning without fear. But at the moment there was still nowhere to hide.

  By the end of April, the once handsome city of Berlin was a pile of rubble, a vast tomb. A smell of death hung in the air. So many thousands had been killed in the Allied raids and were buried by the rubble where they fell. The soldiers of the Soviet army had fought relentlessly and were now within a few hundred yards of the Reich Chancellery which hid the deep bunker where the architect of this monumental catastrophe still enjoyed his freedom.

  Hitler’s little world was shrinking. The Soviets would soon arrive. He could just hear the faint music of war: the staccato sound of machine guns, the sharp crack of rifle fire echoing in the streets; a fitting requiem for the many dead. The Soviets lost 300,000 men clawing their way through the streets of Berlin to get to Hitler, the prize they wanted to take back to Stalin.

  Hitler had received news that Himmler had tried to surrender to the Allies. Momentarily his corpse-like demeanour became animated as he gave one of his more demonic performances, screaming at this betrayal by his former right-hand man. But there was little strength left in him now and he soon lapsed into listlessness. Buried 50 feet below ground, in the heart of the deep bunker, so grave-like and joyless, Hitler married his devoted blonde mistress. Eva Braun wore his favourite dress, with the décolleté neckline and roses over the bodice. A simple woman, her composure did her credit. She smiled although the mood was sombre. Goebbels and his wife were witnesses and a few old generals were there too. It was time for the bride and groom to be alone. Then, behind the heavy padded door where custom decreed long-held marriage rites should begin with kisses and affection, in a solitary, unwitnessed, very private moment, he offered her the kiss of death. Historians believe she swallowed a cyanide pill and that he did too. He then raised a pistol to his head, just to make sure. Marriage to Hitler meant so much to Eva Braun that she was prepared to accept this ignominious, shuffling exit from the maelstrom he had created.

  On 1 May, in the hotel in Oberjoch, Bruckner’s 7th Symphony was playing on the wireless, trying to compete with the babble of laughter and conversation in the lounge. Suddenly the music was interrupted by the sound of an announcer’s voice. Silence descended as though responding to an unheard command. Into the stillness came the beautifully articulated, disembodied voice from the wireless:

  Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery.

  The room was still quiet as everyone waited for a fuller explanation but no details about the end of the war were forthcoming. The announcer continued with the news that Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Commander in Chief of the Navy, was the new Führer and would continue Hitler’s war. In reality the conflict was over but as yet there was no peace. The country was in a vacuum. The situation was without precedent; anything could happen. Von Braun considered the position of the scientists to be more dangerous than ever.

  He summoned the team to a private meeting and outlined their position. The French First Army was known to be approaching; they might arrive before the Americans. Worse, it was rumoured that a detachment of French Colonial Moroccan troops was creating havoc in a nearby valley. Most sinister of all were the SS who were in the area in large numbers. Extremists among them, ever-loyal to Hitler, shot anyone they thought would surrender to the Allies. Equally, the scientists could all be shot in cold blood to prevent their knowledge falling into the hands of the enemy. The scientists were unarmed. There was nowhere to hide and von Braun’s ability to act was hampered by the cumbersome plaster around his torso and arm. The question was how to engineer ending up in American hands?

  They formulated a plan that they hoped would not draw attention to themselves and entrusted von Braun’s young brother, Magnus, whose English was good, to carry it out. On 2 May, as sunlight struggled to break through the early morning mist, he left the hotel on a bicycle, conscious that their future depended on him. His hopes centred on meeting the Americans rather than a welcoming party led by Hans Kammler.

  In late April, the American Seventh Army, after taking Munich, had proceeded south with all speed to the edge of the Bavarian Alps expecting to meet heavy resistance from the rumoured Alpine redoubt. Their 44th Infantry Division had passed quite near Oberjoch on its way south, meeting little hostility. On the morning of 2 May, one of the anti-tank units was easing its way along the isolated mountain roads near Oberjoch, on the lookout for Nazi resistance, when a figure appeared out of the mist.

  The soldiers debated whether or not to shoot. Could this be preliminary to an ambush? The sun’s rays cut wide beams through the pines bordering the steep-sided road, still thick with winter snow. The misty figure became clearer, a young blond man on a bike cycling frantically and waving madly. Private Fred Schneiker from Wisconsin narrowed his eyes. Was the figure waving something white? He did not have time to work it out. The young man was suddenly among them, his face split by a broad grin that would not go away once he learned they were American even though he was ordered to put his hands up. His first words to Schneiker made the private doubt the young man’s sanity. He needed to see Ike (Eisenhower), he said. Then he revealed that he was a messenger representing a group of rocket scientists who were staying at a hotel nearby. They were responsible for making the V-2 and they wanted to surrender. Would the private come with his tanks and fellow soldiers and rescue them? They were in grave danger from the SS Obergruppenführer Han
s Kammler, who was in the mountains somewhere nearby and had orders to shoot the scientists rather than allow them to be captured by the Allies.

  Private Schneiker, who knew little about rocketry, sensed the situation was taking on a bizarre quality as they stood deep in enemy territory, talking about rocket scientists, conscious that fanatical Nazis were in the area. ‘I think you’re nuts,’ he replied, ‘but we’ll investigate.’ After searching Magnus, they took him back to their headquarters in the nearby town of Reutte and delivered him to the Divisional Counter Intelligence Corps. The American officers listened as the young man in the grey leather coat told his story with an eagerness that became more vehement as he watched the growing disbelief in the eyes of his interrogators. They were unsure how to proceed but after a discussion they gave him ‘safe passes’ and instructions to came back with the rocket scientists.

  Magnus returned to the hotel in the early afternoon and explained the situation. Losing no time, von Braun commandeered three cars. Ten of them, including von Braun himself, Magnus, Dornberger and his Chief of Staff, Huzel and Tessman, were to make the momentous journey along the winding roads; each man was conscious that he was taking a step into the unknown. It was dark as they arrived at the Counter Intelligence Corps in Reutte. They were questioned briefly by Lieutenant Charles Stewart, who was in charge of them overnight, then given comfortable rooms. For von Braun and his core team, the apparently insurmountable barrier of getting from Nazi-ridden Germany to cosy quarters under American protection had finally been accomplished. Nothing could hurt them now, it seemed.

  But as they lay asleep upstairs, confident that at last they had reached safety, a Polish kitchen hand, hearing that Germans were sleeping the sleep of the innocent in feather-bedded luxury under American protection, decided to take retribution into his own hands. He crept upstairs, gun at the ready. There was only one thought in his mind: he would ‘kill those German swine’. In the semi-darkness, there was the unmistakable sound of a safety catch being released on a pistol.

  Fortunately for the sleeping scientists, he was intercepted by the observant Lieutenant Stewart who had gone downstairs to investigate suspicious noises. The scientists never knew how close they had come to death that night – ironically the first time they believed themselves to be safe. Over the following days, US counterintelligence found most of the remaining scientists around Oberammergau. With von Braun and Dornberger they were taken to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a ski resort in Bavaria, for questioning. Housed together in a large building under guard, their future now depended on their perceived value to America.

  Two days later, on 4 May, Helmut Gröttrup, the one man who was quite certain that America was not his preferred destination, at last arrived back in the Nordhausen area. He had escaped the SS when he jumped from Kammler’s private train and laboriously walked the long journey home to the haven of his wife and family. Irmgardt Gröttrup was overjoyed. ‘The sun is shining and Helle [Helmut] has returned,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘He was beaten. His arms and legs look dreadful, covered in bruises. What he has gone through – how he escaped the SS. He should be dead!’

  But their trials were far from over. Unlike von Braun and most of the other scientists, the Gröttrups wanted to stay in Germany. The idea of being forcibly taken to Russia or America had no appeal, but it was difficult to see how their skills in rocket science would be accommodated by a Germany completely bankrupt and divided up among the Allies. As they struggled to eke out a living ‘like peasants’, Irmgardt noted ominously, ‘I cannot sleep. I keep thinking that someone is coming to take me away.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘First of all, to the moon’

  In the week after Hitler’s death events moved quickly. German armies north of the Bavarian Alps surrendered and the war in Europe came to an end on 8 May 1945 when Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The scourge of Nazism had finally been eliminated. Six years of war gave way to victorious celebrations to mark the end of the worst turmoil Europe had ever known. More than fifty million Europeans had died; there were thirty million refugees and huge areas had been laid waste.

  Now, with the end of the Third Reich, the bells rang out across Europe. Blackout curtains were torn down and people marvelled to see streetlights again. In Paris, the crowds took to the streets for a huge party. Allied soldiers, pelted with flowers, became heroes. Wine appeared from hiding places, saved for this day. In London, crowds packed the city to a point where movement was impossible. They roared with joy to see Churchill give his V for Victory sign standing beside the royal family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace.

  In Germany, government did not exist. At a conference held in Yalta by the Allies in February 1945 in an air of optimism, the division of a defeated Germany had been decided. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed on the zones that each country’s forces would occupy and manage for the foreseeable future. Communication of every kind was in ruins. Food was like gold dust; cigarettes were currency; bartering became the order of the day. The SS quickly disappeared and those German soldiers that could quietly walked home, praying that home was still standing.

  At Mittelwerk in central Germany, Major Robert Staver was obsessed with trying to recover as much as possible for the Americans and suddenly found that time was not on his side. At the end of the war, the position of the Allied armies bore no relation to the zones agreed at Yalta. The US armies had progressed more swiftly than was thought possible. A large section of Germany, some four hundred miles long and 120 miles wide, which had been captured by the Americans, was now to be ceded to the Soviets. Nordhausen and Mittelwerk were in the allotted Soviet zone and due to be taken over by them on 1 June. If Staver was to stop the vital secrets of the V-2 falling into Soviet hands, he had to act fast.

  He had the support of Colonel Toftoy in Paris who immediately authorized an operation to recover as much as possible from the underground factory: this was called Special Mission V-2. A recovery expert, Major William Bromley, was sent out to Mittelwerk to retrieve everything of value from the mine: any drawings, assembly jigs and components to create a hundred V-2s. Hundreds of tons of equipment were to be sent by train to Antwerp, Belgium, ready for shipping to White Sands, New Mexico. Bromley set about hiring and requisitioning anything on wheels and found employment for the recently freed workers packing hundreds of tons of parts. He achieved his objective, removing almost everything of value within days, leaving very little for the British or the Soviets.

  Meanwhile, on 8 May, Dr Richard Porter, leader of General Electric in Paris under contract to US Army Ordnance, flew out from London to start interviewing the scientists who had surrendered. The Americans wanted to know as much as possible about the V-2, but von Braun and Dornberger had already briefed everyone ‘not to be too chatty’. They were to be spare with information until they saw what sort of opportunities might arise with the Americans or British. ‘Our primary concern was stability and continuity,’ von Braun admitted later. ‘We were interested in continuing our work, not just being squeezed like a lemon and then discarded.’ They wanted to see just what they could get out of the situation – surely a three-year contract from the Americans at the very least?

  The interviews were not recorded and very little documentation remains to show just what ground was covered. Rather than investigating possible war crimes and the use of slave labour at Mittelwerk, it appears that the overwhelming concern of the interrogators at this stage was to try to establish what value these men might have in America and whether they would be cooperative. According to the scientists themselves, the response from the interviewers was ‘disappointing’. There were far too many interrogators working for different interest groups and they often showed little understanding of the science. Von Braun answered questions at some length on jet motors and V-2 oxygen vent valves, only to find himself answering the very same questions from a different interviewer a week later. ‘They didn’t know what to ask us,’ Dornberger said later. ‘It was li
ke they were talking Chinese to us.’

  Hoping to provide enticing glimpses of the future if the rocket team were able to continue their work, on 15 May von Braun wrote an eight-page report which he hoped would assure the Americans that the future of rocketry promised ‘revolutionary consequences’ for civilization. Interned in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the country all around them in ruins, von Braun set out his dreams for the future of space exploration. Rocket aircraft, space telescopes, spy satellites, the lengthening of daylight hours with giant space mirrors to reflect light, even interplanetary travel – all this was confidently promised:

  Survey of Previous Liquid Rocket Development in Germany and Future Prospects

  We are convinced that a complete mastery of the art of rockets will change conditions in the world in much the same way as did the mastery of aeronautics … In the more distant future, the development of rockets offers, in our opinion, the following possibilities:

  1. Development of long-range commercial planes … The flight duration of a fast rocket aircraft going from Europe to America would be approximately 40 minutes …

  2. Construction of multi-staged piloted rockets, which would reach a maximum speed of over 4.7 miles per second outside earth’s atmosphere. At such speeds the rocket would not return to earth, as gravity and centrifugal force would balance each other out. In such a case, the rocket would fly along a gravitational trajectory, without any power, around the earth in the same way as the moon … The whole of the earth’s surface could be continuously observed from such a rocket. The crew would be equipped with very powerful telescopes and be able to observe even small objects, such as ships, icebergs, troop movements etc …