Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  3. It would be possible later on to build a station … as an ‘observational platform’ outside the earth … The work would be done by men who would float in space by means of rocket propulsion units, the nozzles of which they would point in the required direction.

  4. According to a proposal by the German scientist, Professor Oberth, an observation station … could be equipped with an enormous mirror consisting of a huge net of steel wire onto which metal foils could be suspended … This would enable large towns to get sunlight during the evening hours … The weather, too, could be influenced by systematic concentration of the suns rays onto certain regions …

  5. When the art of rockets is developed further it will be possible to go to other planets, first of all, to the moon … To conclude, we think after what has been said above that a well-planned development of the art of rockets will have revolutionary consequences …

  VON BRAUN, 15.5.45

  Recognizing that all this might seem a little far-fetched in 1945, he pointed out that any prophecy of the development of aviation made in 1895 for the next fifty years would have seemed ‘at least as fantastic’.

  In Washington, the authorities were aware that the horror of the concentration camps had caused great public concern. There were difficult questions to deal with before Hitler’s rocket team could be brought into the country. Why did von Braun join the Nazi Party and later the SS? Was he aware of what went on inside the concentration camps and to what extent was he himself guilty of perpetuating the inhumane conditions there?

  While there is no record of the extent to which these issues were explored at the time, it is evident from an affidavit von Braun gave in 1947 that, when questioned, he claimed he was under pressure to join the Nazi Party. His work was attracting more and more attention at higher levels and he said he could not continue without membership: ‘My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore I decided to join. My membership did not involve any political activity.’

  Interestingly, some of his colleagues, notably Dornberger himself, did not feel obliged to become a member of the Nazi Party. There is also the question of von Braun’s membership of the SS, which he joined in May 1940. He was promoted every year, reaching the rank of Sturmbannführer, or major, on 28 June 1943. Von Braun later claimed that Himmler himself pressured his leading rocket scientist to join. Early in 1940 an SS colonel, SS-Standartenführer Mueller, had arrived at Peenemünde in order to persuade him:

  Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I immediately called on my military superior for many years, Major General Dornberger. He informed me that … if I wanted to continue our mutual work I had no alternative but to join … After having received two letters of exhortation from Mueller, I finally wrote him my consent. Two weeks later I received a letter showing that Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler had approved my request for joining the SS and had appointed me Untersturmfuehrer …

  The extent to which von Braun was under pressure to join the SS, or whether he simply recognized the expediency of joining and went along with it, may never be fully resolved. In his defence, von Braun has maintained that he himself was left in no doubt that he had to obey his SS masters. Indeed, he was even arrested by the Gestapo, who made it clear that Hitler’s leading rocket scientist was expected to cooperate in full with the regime. In February 1944, von Braun had been summoned to meet Himmler at his headquarters in East Prussia. Himmler pressured von Braun to join his staff rather than report to the army. ‘Time is running out,’ Himmler had said. ‘I hope you realize that your A4 has ceased to be a toy and that the entire German people eagerly await the mystery weapon …’

  Three weeks later, at 3 a.m., the early morning hour favoured by the Gestapo, von Braun had been arrested and taken to the SS jail in Stettin. He was given no explanation but placed in solitary confinement to ponder the fact that those arrested by Himmler seldom lasted long. Arrested with him were Helmut Gröttrup and Klaus Riedel.

  When he heard what happened, Dornberger was incensed. ‘I could not believe my ears,’ he wrote. ‘Von Braun, my best man, with whom I had worked in the closest collaboration for years, whose whole soul and energy, whose indefatigable toil by night and day was devoted to the V-2! It was incredible!’ Dornberger was equally baffled at the arrest of Gröttrup and Riedel.

  He demanded to know the charge from Field Marshal Keitel, who represented army interests to Hitler. Their crime, he was informed, was sabotage. At a party the three men had been overheard saying that they were not really interested in weapons of war: space was what fascinated them. It was suspected that progress on the V-2 had been neglected in favour of their real interest and for this disloyalty they could pay with their lives. Dornberger argued strenuously for their release but Keitel had no inclination to bother Hitler and invite his rage with the information that, if von Braun was shot, the V-2 programme could be in jeopardy. Neither did he wish to interfere with Himmler’s orders. Dornberger was on his own. There was nothing to be done. He decided that, whatever the risk, he would try to see Himmler personally.

  Two weeks passed before von Braun was taken to a courtroom, where it became clear that he would be tried by the SS. He was accused of undermining progress on the V-2 and it was asserted that he had every intention of fleeing to England with valuable rocket data, travelling in a small private plane he kept. Although he had no such plan, this was impossible to disprove. The court had a way of making supposition appear to be fact, so that von Braun later claimed he felt he would be lucky to get away with being shot. A much worse punishment was probably intended for him. He had given up hope when Dornberger entered the room demanding to see the SS officer in charge.

  For the previous two weeks, Dornberger had been busy pleading von Braun’s case with the SS elite in Berlin, who informed him that he too was not beyond suspicion. By swearing an oath that ‘the arrested men were indispensable to the programme’, he obtained three months’ grace for them, to be reviewed every three months. Von Braun was released and left with Dornberger, intensely relieved but now acutely aware of the extent of SS power and careful not to provoke it. Incidents like these impressed on the rocket scientists that it was dangerous to express opposition of any kind to the SS. However, records of the arrest have not been located to verify their account of events.

  Neither von Braun nor Dornberger admitted to having had any say in the conception, design or running of Mittelwerk and the accompanying concentration camps. At the time, the evidence pointed conclusively to the fact that this had been under Kammler’s jurisdiction as head of the SS construction department and, by 1943, also in charge of the rocket programme. He had run the enterprise with the help of the Totenkopfverbande SS – the ‘Death’s Head’ units. Constantly driven by Hitler’s demand for five thousand rockets to fire on London, Kammler was untroubled by conscience. ‘No matter the number of human victims, the work must be executed and finished in the shortest possible time,’ he had said. If von Braun or Dornberger had wanted a more humane approach, they understood all too well that they would be throwing their lives away.

  With limited knowledge about quite what had happened at the V-2 factory, and under pressure to resolve the situation to America’s advantage with the continuing war in the Pacific, the moral issue did not appear to have the same urgency that it has had for later generations. Even so, the question of what to do with the scientists was to launch a massive row within the US government. The glorious future funded by American wealth that von Braun had envisaged was not quite as certain as he would have wished and more evidence was yet to emerge about his own role at Mittelwerk.

  Meanwhile, throughout May, Robert Staver and William Bromley were making progress in the race to seize anything of value from the rocket factory before the Soviets. Not satisfied just with securing the actual V-2s, Staver became convinced that documentation and blueprints must exist that would show how to construct the rockets. During his in
terviews with those who had been left in the area after Kammler had headed the five hundred senior staff south, he came across a former Peenemünde engineer near Nordhausen, Karl Otto Fleischer, who aroused his suspicions. Staver thought he detected a hint of anxiety in Fleischer’s behaviour when he asked about blueprints. Fleischer had indeed been given an approximate idea of where the papers were hidden by Dieter Huzel and was put on the spot. He was prepared to introduce Staver to some of the leading scientists who were still living quietly in the area but would do no more. The whereabouts of any blueprints remained a mystery.

  As he gathered more information, Staver decided that the time had come to approach Fleischer again. Calling Fleischer’s bluff, he told him that von Braun, Dornberger – even Kammler – were interned at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and had confirmed that the blueprints were buried in a local mine and that Fleischer alone knew how to locate them. Staver watched carefully. Would his lie work? Again he detected nervousness in Fleischer, who played for time. Fleischer was a worried man. Overnight, he considered his dilemma. If he gave away crucially important information to Staver, against von Braun’s wishes, he would be in deep trouble. And if he did not cooperate with Staver, apparently at von Braun’s request, he was still in deep trouble. He alone would be the man who had betrayed his country and given valuable information to the enemy.

  Next morning there was a message for Staver. Would he meet Fleischer in a village called Haynrode? The directions led Staver through dark alleyways to a priest’s house. Inside, Fleischer stood, dishevelled and unshaven, looking like a man under sentence of death. He admitted that he did know something. It was clear he was fearful of the implications of what he was doing and that he had been up most of night struggling with his conscience, helped by the priest.

  Slowly, he gave up the information he had. Staver listened, showing no sign of the excitement he was feeling. The papers were hidden in a mine – an old, disused mine near the village of Doren about thirty miles away. If Staver would supply petrol, he would try to locate the documents. They would find the mine more quickly, Fleischer claimed, if he was not accompanied by an American. Once Fleischer had set off, suitably equipped with the permissions, petrol and passes allowing him to be out after curfew, Staver looked at a map of the area only to discover that there was no such village called Doren. He wondered if he would ever see Fleischer again. He was called away for two days on a military inspection. During that time, Fleischer’s mission was constantly on his mind.

  Fleischer, however, was now committed. Enquiring at every village, calling at every abandoned mine – often half-buried, with their entrances overgrown with foliage so as to refute all evidence of previous activity – Fleischer hunted for the documents. He could not find them, and, worse, like Staver, he discovered there was no village called Doren. There was one called Dornten, however, and he felt sure the mine would be there. The caretaker lived nearby, but could not help. He was an old man and obstinately insisted that there was nothing of value in the mine, certainly no important papers. Fleischer persisted. The old man looked blank. Fleischer threatened him, saying that he was acting for important generals: Dornberger and Kammler. Was one old man to defy the orders of those running Germany’s rocket programme?

  Miraculously, the old man’s memory returned as he started to describe how in early April lorries had trundled through the darkness delivering boxes. They had been stowed in the mine, then dynamite had been used to block the entrance to the gallery. Fleischer could see that removing the papers would not be easy. An enormous pile of stone and rubble 30 feet deep sealed off access to the gallery.

  Staver was delighted when he heard the news. The top German scientists were in the American zone. A hundred V-2s were seemingly in American hands and now he had discovered arguably the most wanted documents in Germany. However, his satisfaction at finding the papers was diminished considerably when he learned that a decision at highest levels had changed the boundaries of control between American and British zones. In less than a week, the mine with its hidden treasure would be under British administration. Suddenly, there was no time to lose. Because there was no way of communicating to Ordnance Headquarters Technical Division in the Champs-Elysées for the appropriate authorization, a short trip to Paris was unavoidable. Meanwhile, he instructed staff from the US Technical Intelligence Team to work with Fleischer at clearing the mine.

  Staver was back the next day having organized the men and 10-ton trucks he would need to remove the large containers. Unaccountably, progress had been slow in his absence; the gallery was still blocked and the British were due to take over administration of the region on 27 May. It then transpired that a small detachment of British officers had arrived at the mine while he was away and had organized an inspection. They had claimed to be looking for weapons that the retreating Germans might have hidden and began a meticulous search. Staver’s team had decided that the best way of dealing with the problem was to pose as geologists and precious time had been wasted while they pretended to look for iron ore samples, which were convincingly graded and packed by a team of miners until the British departed.

  With just three days left in which to clear the pile of rubble blocking the gallery, crate the documents and transport them to Nordhausen, Staver now devoted his energy to hurrying the project along. On the afternoon of 26 May, the 15 tons of documents were finally packed and awaiting transport, but there was no sign of the 10-ton lorries. Enquiries revealed that they were not even in the area. Working well into the night, Staver finally acquired six two-and-a-half ton trucks and early in the morning, with the British arrival just hours away, guided them to the mine. The boxes loaded, the convoy made the return journey back over the Harz Mountains into the new American zone just as the British moved in to claim their new area, which, unknown to them, was now a much less valuable one.

  By the end of May, Staver felt he had made real progress. Arrangements were made for the blueprints to be sent to the USA, to the evaluation centre in Maryland, and Bromley had crated up enough parts to assemble a hundred V-2 rockets, which were on their way to Antwerp for shipping to White Sands, New Mexico. Staver’s prime concern now was to ensure that the team of top German rocket scientists would also reach American soil. On 22 May, anxious that the urgency of the situation would be recognized in Washington, he had drafted a secret cable to Colonel Trichel in the Pentagon:

  Have in custody over 400 top research development personnel of Peenemünde, developed V-2 … The thinking of the scientific directors of this group is 25 years ahead of US … Have begun development of A10 to have thrust about 220,000 pounds. Latest version of this rocket should permit launching from Europe to US … Recommend that 100 of very best men of this research organisation be evacuated to US … Also recommend evacuation of all material drawings and documents belonging to this group to aid work in the US … Immediate action recommended to prevent loss of whole or part of this group to other interested agencies. Urgently request reply as soon as possible.

  So far Staver had had the field to himself, but now the war was over things would not remain that way. He had failed to share anything with British intelligence, despite the fact that they had been so generous with information at the beginning. Once the British and the Soviets realized what was going on, they would surely do everything in their power to acquire the German scientists for themselves. The Soviets had revealed a considerable interest in the V-2 when they had arrived on 26 May for an inspection of Mittelwerk. They had also begun appealing on the radio for a workforce of scientists and technicians, promising generous salaries and housing. They were especially interested in the scientific leaders – they offered von Braun a bonus of 50,000 Reichsmarks – and it was obvious that the Soviets were planning to continue work on ballistic missiles using the German scientists. What especially worried Staver was the fact that, on 1 June, not only Mittelwerk but the majority of German scientists from Peenemünde, including some four thousand experienced technicians, would find themse
lves in the Soviet zone.

  When Staver returned to his office after transporting the blueprints to Nordhausen there was still no reply to his cable to the Pentagon pointing out the need to take a nucleus of top German scientists to America. There was widespread antagonism in both the State and War Departments to the idea of inviting them into the country, and, in the words of one general, ‘treating them as honoured guests’. On 28 May, Robert Patterson, Under-Secretary of War, issued a secret memo regarding the German scientists:

  These men are our enemies and it must be assumed that they are capable of sabotaging our war effort. Bringing them to this country raises delicate questions, including the possible strong resentment of the American public, who might misunderstand the purpose in bringing them here … Taking such a step with out consultation with our allies, including the Soviets, might lead to complications …

  Despite these reservations, Patterson was anxious to exploit any source that could potentially help in the war against Japan. While Washington vacillated, Toftoy compromised, instructing Staver to move as many Germans as possible to an area under US control. Staver discovered he had only three days left in which to find, interview, persuade and transport thousands of Germans and their families before the Soviets arrived to claim their hard-won territory.

  Staver immediately set out on what seemed an impossible task. He started by enlisting the help of colleagues, but not everyone saw Staver’s point of view. ‘I don’t care if the Soviets get all of those Krauts. I say good riddance’ was the answer to one request for help. The greatest problem was asking men to leave their homes when he had no real incentives to offer them. Inviting people to walk out of their lives and step on a train with no kind of hope in front of them except that of being in the American zone seemed a ludicrous demand. It was beginning to look as though little could be achieved. Then he had a stroke of luck, which completely changed the picture.