Space Race

by Deborah Cadbury

  It was with some trepidation the next morning that they found their way to SMERSH headquarters. Chertok was apprehensive, assuming that their treatment of the visiting professors had been noticed and that they were about to be sent back to the Soviet Union. Isayev was more bullish, advocating a policy of attack and admit nothing. They were shown into the office where the headquarters chief and the SMERSH officer from the previous evening were waiting, looking serious. With a sense of relief they found the conversation quickly turned to ways of recovering German technology and had nothing to do with the treatment of the two professors. The SMERSH officer warned that the US Special Forces were carrying out a full-scale operation to capture German specialists in the area. However, they were in competition with SMERSH agents who were themselves in the process of ‘cleaning up’ the capture of German specialists, checking on any Soviets engaged in this field and finding all remaining German rocket technology.

  At this point, Chertok thought it prudent to reveal that they had a very innovative piece of machinery in their care, something they had found, with Shmargun’s help, hidden under blankets in Camp Dora. This was a gyrostabilizer platform that was used in a V-2 rocket, consisting of an assembly of spinning wheels or gyros that would be finely balanced on the top of the rocket. The gyros would sense the movement of the rocket and send signals to the control system to keep it on the proper trajectory. This would be achieved by the use of aerodynamic flaps on the bottom of the rocket’s fins and by graphite vanes that deflected the rocket exhaust gases. The gyroscopic unit that Chertok had acquired had, apparently, been hidden by the Germans and then found by the inmates of Camp Dora who had decided to save it for the Soviets. SMERSH was clearly pleased with this offering and discussions began on joint operations. The organization was able to reassure them that Shmargun was trustworthy and agreed to find accommodation and employment for the German specialists Chertok had so far acquired.

  By August, the Institute Rabe had developed into a considerable enterprise. Laboratories had been set up to study gyro appliances, steering engines, electrical apparatus and radio equipment. Success in attracting German technicians and specialists had swelled the staff, the ‘star’ being Kurt Magnus, a top engineer in the field of gyroscopy. To give the Soviet enterprise a greater chance of success, they still hoped to capture von Braun, but he was closely guarded in the US zone and for the moment unobtainable, legitimately or otherwise.

  For Soviet intelligence the enterprise was soon to take on renewed urgency. On 6 August, the Americans exploded an atomic bomb above Hiroshima in Japan. Stalin had been warned by Soviet intelligence of the development of nuclear weapons, but now the appalling power of the Americans’ new weapon was all too apparent. Exploding with a force equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT, almost the entire city of Hiroshima vanished, its citizens vaporized. Three days later, a second bomb of even greater power was unleashed on Nagasaki. Many thousands were killed, simply dissolved in the mega blast, the imprint of their bodies reduced to mere shadows on the ground. The injured, those who had not been at the centre of the explosion, haunted the city. Gulping in radiation, they soon became horribly disfigured. Their eyes melted and their skin peeled as a slower death consumed them.

  Stalin knew there was no time to lose. The Soviet Union had no protection against such terrorizing weaponry. The Second World War had crushed the country – more than twenty-seven million had lost their lives and countless cities had been destroyed. Industry and agriculture were in ruins. Now there was a new peril for the Soviet people to consider as the full horror of the atomic age was unleashed. Serov’s men had already been trying to track down uranium supplies and any technology related to the atomic weapons as well as rocketry. Now Beria himself was put in charge of a Soviet nuclear programme.

  Meanwhile, high-ranking party officials soon came on a tour of inspection of the Institute Rabe. Major General Lev Gaidukov was farsighted enough to begin to question what might happen if atomic technology and missile technology could be combined. The Americans had both atomic weapons and missile specialists; the Soviet Union had neither. Yet it was not inconceivable that these two technologies, put together, could create a weapon of even more deadly power. The immediate issue was how to advance their attempts at reconstructing a complete V-2. They needed more senior German specialists. In conversation with Chertok, Gaidukov pointed out that the Soviet aviation specialists appeared to know more than the Germans and that Chertok ‘had not got the right Germans’ – the Americans had them.

  Since the NKVD considered it too risky to kidnap von Braun, Chertok decided on his own secret mission, Operation Ost (East), whose purpose it was to get by any means possible the real rocket scientists from Peenemünde. He issued instructions to his colleague Senior Lieutenant Vasily Kharchev to penetrate the US zone with effective agents and get some ‘real’ Germans before it was too late and they were taken to America. Kharchev was suitably supplied with cognac, butter and ‘all sorts of dainties’ including many dozens of wristwatches to serve as bribes. Special papers allowed him to cross the border between the two zones. Between learning English and German and bribing Americans, Kharchev hardly slept. When news came through that von Braun would be leaving in early September for America, it became apparent that action had to be taken immediately.

  Kharchev soon met with success. One of his agents discovered that the wife of a senior German specialist who was in the American zone wanted to talk to the Soviets. A meeting was duly arranged by the border. An agitated, fair-haired young woman and her son soon emerged from bushes at the edge of the country lane. ‘In case of trouble I will explain that we were walking and we got lost,’ she said quickly. The woman was Irmgardt Gröttrup, wife of Helmut Gröttrup, von Braun’s deputy in guidance and control. She wanted to know what the Soviets had to offer.

  According to Chertok, Irmgardt Gröttrup let the Soviets know ‘that it was she who made all the decisions’ for the family. Both she and Helmut secretly detested the Nazi regime and had at one stage been arrested by the Gestapo, who were suspicious about their loyalties. The Americans looked little better to Irmgardt Gröttrup. She found them ‘rude’ with their chewing gum and the way they put their feet on the table. The leading rocket experts – including her husband – had been ‘grabbed’, she said, housed at Witzenhausen and subjected to lengthy interrogation, only to find the contracts offered by the Americans held no appeal. Helmut Gröttrup was required to leave Germany for America alone – without his wife and children. In addition, ‘it was a contract terminable by one signatory only: the US army’.

  In 1945, Germany was a dangerous place. Irmgardt saw herself as the person best equipped to lead her family through the difficult times. They were determined to stay together and suspicious of what both the Americans and the Soviets had to offer, so Irmgardt set out to get the best deal. Putting the pressure on Chertok, she explained that time was running out. The Americans intended to ship the rocket scientists to White Sands in less than two weeks. If they wanted Helmut, they had better make a generous offer.

  Accordingly, a Soviet agent crossed the River Werra into the US zone to open negotiations. Before long, Helmut Gröttrup himself slipped across the river into the Soviet zone under cover of darkness. He was immediately offered a suitable post, that of running ‘Bureau Gröttrup’, responsible for guided missile development. ‘An incredibly risky walk across the green border flanked by Soviet commanders; a villa in Bleicherode, good pay, food from the Red Army. Are we heading for trouble?’ Irmgardt wrote in her diary. Within three days, the Gröttrups and their young family moved into the Soviet zone where they were treated generously. A grand house was requisitioned for them, the unfortunate owner sent packing. A car was provided, servants and, most importantly, extra food rations.

  Chertok decided that ‘he had made the right choice with Gröttrup’, but that Irmgardt was more of a handful. Relishing her elevation to wife of the top man, ‘Frau Gröttrup turned out not to be as shy as we first thought,
’ observed Chertok. She bought two cows for the children, acquired two rather fine horses and a stable and demanded a Soviet chaperone when out riding. Even she may have realized she had gone too far when she checked the provisions in the Soviet canteen and took it upon herself to sack the cook for stealing food. However, she was also learning Russian, Chertok noted with satisfaction, and rode up to the Villa Frank on her motorbike to play Liszt, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky on the piano. Evidently Frau Gröttrup aroused mixed feelings among the Soviets, who nicknamed her the ‘German Amazon’. One officer who was asked to help with the riding was offended. ‘My wife survived in Leningrad’s blockade. She’s very sick now,’ he exploded. ‘And I have to take care of German mares. Go to hell, all of you!!’

  Meanwhile, Kharchev, bolstered by this success, felt confident that the time had come to pursue von Braun himself. It was a last-ditch attempt. Despite the fact that military intelligence advised against such a risky mission, Chertok gave his approval. Kharchev felt that if he was going to come back with von Braun, he needed an impressive consignment of goods with which to buy his way in, and he duly set off to the border suitably equipped with enough wristwatches on his arm to open a shop, various ‘gewgaws’ he deemed would see him through awkward moments with an overzealous ‘Yank’ and the one bottle of genuine Moscow vodka to be found in Germany. The watches found new owners at the first checkpoint and such generosity inspired the American guards to give him a lift in a Jeep. He wanted to go to Witzenhausen, Kharchev said innocently, knowing full well that this was where von Braun was being held. He was duly taken to the American commandant’s office, who in turn directed him to the town major. It was then that Kharchev’s well-thought-out plan began to take an unexpected turn.

  ‘I am taken to a large bedroom,’ he confided later to Chertok and Isayev. ‘On a wide bed, like the one in Villa Frank, lies the town major; also a very beautiful woman and lying in between them was a huge German shepherd dog!’ The US major, not at all taken aback, ‘flung off his bedclothes, shoos off the dog and suggests I get in bed with him, adding: “Anything for a Soviet officer and our neighbour at the border.”’

  Chertok and Isayev pressed Kharchev for more revealing details. ‘Did you get in? Did the girl throw her bedclothes off too?’ but he blushed and the answers were never satisfactorily revealed. He would only say that a great deal of whisky was consumed as he tried to persuade the American major to share the German specialists; after all, the rocket scientists were war trophies. The major, however, was unable to see Kharchev’s position on this in spite of the whisky. He would only explain that von Braun was a criminal and was under heavy guard; and with that he got back into bed, while Kharchev was escorted back to the border.

  When Gröttrup heard the story, he laughed and said von Braun would never come over to the Soviet side. He was a brilliant scientist and something of a genius, but he was also a baron and a member of the Nazi Party. Chertok wanted to know more and was invited to the Gröttrups’ house where, he noted, Irmgardt, true to form, appeared to be one of the few women in Germany serving real coffee with whipped cream. Gröttrup explained that all his life von Braun had been enchanted with the idea of space travel but that ‘life had made him use his talent for warfare’. While at Peenemünde, he and Dornberger had had to watch their every word, guard their every thought. Should the Gestapo have suspected they had any ambition regarding space travel, von Braun would have been considered a traitor. And even though he had a most attractive ability to gather talented people around him and bring them into his charmed circle, no one could have saved him. Although under close guard, while he remained in Germany he was not safe and would not be until he reached America.

  As they gathered more expertise around them, the Soviets were anxious to assemble and test von Braun’s V-2 rocket. Under the command of the Soviet Interdepartmental Technical Commission, the Institute Rabe grew to control several scattered departments and sites. It had a factory for manufacturing electrical equipment about ten miles from Nordhausen and absorbed a factory in Berlin, which developed missile control systems. General Gaidukov organized a framework for production using a new production plant, preferring to avoid the ghoulish Mittelwerk with its long shadowy tunnels and the penetratingly foul smell which was impossible to erase with even the strongest disinfectant. They set the Germans to work at the new plant, organizing all the paperwork on production and assembly of the V-2.

  The Soviets counted themselves fortunate to have Gröttrup, but unless they captured von Braun there was a feeling in the Soviet camp that a real leader who would take them forward was still missing. Gaidukov recognized it was essential to bring their own expertise from the Soviet Union. He needed a man who had the ability to inspire and lead with specialist knowledge of rocket science: someone, in fact, who could match von Braun.

  His enquiries soon revealed that such a man existed, one of the stars of the former Soviet rocket programme, much admired by his former colleagues, but whose name no one dared mention. He had been in the Gulag, condemned as a traitor and an enemy of the state. For those who had the confidence to acknowledge him, even though he was as yet unpardoned, he did have a name, however: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I am not guilty’

  To the Commissar of Internal Affairs:

  Nikolai Yezhov, chm of the NKVD

  29 June 1938

  I was arrested by the NKVD for anti-soviet activity, so I have decided to give you my statement … I was part of an anti-Soviet enemy organization that infiltrated the Scientific Research Institute No. 3 … This enemy activity included wrecking the work of the Institute No. 3. The Institute was involved in important defence work and we were involved in sabotaging this. We engaged in useless tasks for the Institute and created antagonism between the different groups. We set about disrupting and destroying the industrial base of the Institute, its shop floors and laboratories … We were involved in wrecking many projects and expelling specialists and communists from the Institute. I am going to provide you with detailed information about our enemy Trotskyist organization … I feel repentant and am ready to be changed. I will no longer do all the bad things I have done. I am asking for an opportunity to become clean again and be a free citizen of the country

  SERGEI PAVLOVICH KOROLEV

  Sergei Pavlovich Korolev remembered the evening of 27 June 1938, the day of his arrest, with the clarity that only terror can etch upon the mind. He and his young wife, Ksenia, and their three-year-old daughter, Natasha, lived in Moscow, in a sixth-floor apartment at 28 Konyushkovskaya Street. It was nine o’clock at night. Korolev was home first, waiting for Ksenia. Suddenly he heard the sound of her hurrying footsteps outside; she had run up the six flights of stairs and burst in to tell him that there were men downstairs making enquiries, searching for someone. She was terrified for him. Recently his friend and colleague Valentin Petrovich Glushko had been arrested.

  Stalin’s years in power had been characterized by fearsome purges as he ruled through terror. In 1931, he had engineered a law that brought accused ‘enemies of the people’ to trial within ten days of their arrest. If found guilty, their execution was immediate, with no appeal. By the late 1930s, millions had been dealt with in this way, and the reign of terror was unstoppable. As in Germany with the Gestapo, the terrifying knock on the door in the middle of the night would inevitably lead to brutal ways of obtaining a confession. Often there was no trial, although for many of those arrested there was a sentence of death. For the fortunate, those who were not arbitrarily shot, a long stay in the Gulag system, a network of labour camps run by ‘the Chief Directorate for Corrective Labour Camps’, invariably destroyed something spontaneous and vital in those who survived. The regime was so harsh that at least 10 per cent of prisoners died annually in the Gulags spread across the Soviet Union.

  Korolev saw Ksenia’s anxiety and held her close. ‘They must have come for me this time,’ he said quietly. Korolev had recently bought a new
record. He put it on and they sat holding hands, saying nothing, listening to the music as the dusk turned to night.

  When the knock on the door came, three men from the NKVD entered, showing paperwork which authorized them to make a search and appeared to demonstrate that Korolev was an active member of a sabotage organization. Through the long hours of the night they confined Korolev and Ksenia to the sofa while they hunted for incriminating evidence; clothes were flung from the wardrobe, underclothes were examined, papers and books were scrutinized and they even looked through the crockery. The music had stopped long ago and the needle made a rasping noise as the record continued turning on the gramophone. Ksenia saw one of the men pick up her husband’s malachite cuff links and put them in his pocket. She sat in silence, not daring to speak.

  At six in the morning, the door of the study was sealed. Korolev was arrested and instructed to ‘collect his things’. At first, Ksenia did not understand what ‘things’ meant, but then she realized Sergei was going to prison. According to Korolev’s biographer, Yaroslav Golovanov, that was when she ‘became really scared; scared for Sergei, for Natasha and for herself. Scared about her life to come.’ She picked up a toothbrush, soap and underclothes from the floor and packed them into a small suitcase. The bells from the trams could be heard outside in the street. Sergei put on an old leather coat and scarf and embraced her for the last time. He looked at her purposefully and said with a reassuring steadiness that belied their predicament: ‘You do know, don’t you, that I am not guilty?’ Then he was gone. She was not permitted to follow. From the window she watched as her husband was led into a car. With a sense of shock she saw the car pull away.