Hitler’s Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance. Richard Overy
of 27 rockets per day; three abteilungen, grouped as a regiment, could fire 100 rockets in an eight hour period, although problems of supply would limit this barrage to only once in every twenty-four hours.
An abteilung would consist of some 750 men. These troops were to be fully motorised, which meant an establishment of 560 vehicles per abteilung. They would require 70,000 tons of liquid oxygen per annum – at the time only some 26,000 tons were available. The alcohol to be used was ethanol, which was manufactured by the fermentation of potatoes. Thus the stratospheric rocket would be dependent upon the potato crop, a curious mixture of the new age with the old. Here the requirement was 30,000 tons of alcohol per annum.2
It may be wondered how the rocket project had survived the first three years of a war which was so demanding of national resources. In February 1940 Goering had closed down all projects that would not be finished in 1940/1, which had stopped work on the Jumo 004 jet engine, the Messerschmitt Me262 jet fighter and ground to air missiles.3 Yet the rocket survived the battles of France and Britain, the carnage of men and equipment in Russia, and the night bombing offensive, due mainly to the protection afforded by the politically powerful army and the artful zeal of Dornberger.
On September 5th, 1939, von Brauchitsch, the commander in chief of the army, decreed that the rocket project at Peenemunde was to be expedited as being ‘particularly urgent for national defence’. But its projected completion had now to be brought forward by Dornberger from September 1943 to September 1941.4 By October 9th 1939 General Becker was asking for a completion date of May 31st 1941, which would demand some 9000 construction workers (it already had 5000); by the 11th October, it gained first priority from General Georg Thomas (head of the Defence Economics and Armaments Directorate), together with the U boat and Ju88 programmes; but on 20th November, to Dornberger’s horror, Hitler cut back the steel quota from 6000 to 2000 tons.5
Hitler had visited Kummersdorf in March 1939, and to Dornberger’s amazement, the Fuehrer had not been moved.
‘In all the years I had been working on rocket development this was the first time that anyone had witnessed the massive output of gas at enormous speed, in luminous colours, from a rocket exhaust, and heard the thunderous rumble of power thus released, without being either enraptured, thrilled, or carried away by the spectacle’, he wrote.6 That irascible dictator can seldom have been criticised for an over calm and objective appraisal of a situation; but four years of ruinous war would later dull the German dictator’s critical faculties, and a dim hope of salvation and a thirst for vengeance would by then aid the wiles of the crafty military salesman.
Neither the tense uncertainties of war nor the brimming euphoria of victory were able to unseat the army’s pet project at Peenemunde. When Hitler had withdrawn the rocket from the priority list in the spring of 1940, the army commander in chief, and Dornberger’s old battalion commander, von Brauchitsch had, displaying ‘wise foresight’ and ‘a high sense of responsibility and imagination’, and without Hitler’s knowledge, withdrawn 4000 technically qualified men from the fighting troops for work at Peenemunde7.
In April 1940 General Becker, hounded over a munitions crisis by Georg Thomas, Goering and Hitler, committed suicide. “I only hope”, he had said to Dornberger two days before the melancholy event, “that I have not been mistaken in my estimate of you and your work.”8 Perhaps, when Becker’s great leader followed him into voluntary extinction almost exactly five years later, his mind may also have dwelt for a time on wonder weapons and Dornberger’s promises.
Before tracing the paths towards mass production of the rocket and the flying bomb, it may be useful to dwell for a little while on the nature of German war production under Nazi rule, to understand by what means or influence policy decisions were made.
There were four general bodies concerned with production. firstly, Reichsmarshal Herman Goering headed a four-year plan organisation (begun in 1936) that dealt with the orientation of the economy to war. Goering wanted to prepare for a total war, which would be lengthy and for which ‘all energies must be directed’; it would require ‘a complete transformation of the economic structure.’9 Goering also created the ‘Reichswerke Hermann Goering’ from German and European industry, a state owned and run integral part of the Nazi economy. But Goering, was inefficient, vain, corrupt and impatient of self-discipline. ‘His subordinates had no other course than to by-pass him in order to get anything done.’10
A Ministry of Economics existed, under Funk, to allocate raw materials, with a Ministry of Weapons and Ammunition under Fritz Todt (replaced on his death by Albert Speer). finally, there was the economics and armaments branch of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, under General Georg Thomas, which was supposed to sort out the conflicting contracts and raw materials demands of the three services. Thomas had a staff of over 1000, and the Army Ordnance Directorate (the Heereswaffenamt) had 2–3000, all regarded by Speer as inexperienced and inefficient. ‘Development was haphazard, research uncontrolled and lack of coordination between the competing requirements resulted in hopeless confusion.’11 All these bodies had been ill served by those within German industry itself who, expecting a consumer boom, sabotaged the controls imposed on them.12
When Speer was appointed as Minister of Weapons and Ammunition by Hitler in February 1942, he began to transfer responsibility to industrial experts, strengthening the system of industrial rings, each with a responsibility for a particular product, begun by Todt. ‘Best practice’ in the manufacture of a product was imposed on the rest, the differences between best and worst often being quite ludicrously large. Industry was made to produce more efficiently, production being concentrated in fewer and larger centres, and stocks being reduced. Production runs became less subject to stoppage for minor modifications. Equipment was standardised where possible. An economic ‘miracle’ in production resulted, but this was partially reversed by the effects of allied bombing, which forced firms to accumulate stocks again (due to the destruction of the delivery systems) and forced industry to disperse.
All this was not achieved by sweet reasoning or the offer of inducements alone. In Appendix 2 is a report on the methods of Karl-Otto Saur, Speer’s deputy, a party member of long standing, and a rationalisation expert.
The Nazi state was chaotic and divided. All power derived from Adolf Hitler; thus Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer SS, who controlled whole divisions of resolute armed men as well as the Gestapo, would have been deposed at a word from the Fuehrer, as would Bormann, Goering, Goebbels and the rest. Bormann, with no divisions at his command, was Himmler’s equal in power, not because he was Reichsleiter of the Nazi party, but because he had Hitler’s ear. All below Hitler was disunion, with power blocs jockeying for position – the army, Reichsmarschall Goering’s Luftwaffe and the four year plan, Himmler and the SS, Goebbels the head of propaganda, the Nazi party, the Gauleiters or Nazi district governors, and big business. But Hitler himself, the font of all power, whose personality charmed, mesmerised or intimidated all his subordinates, was deliberately secretive.
Perhaps Hitler’s deepest belief in war was the power of the will. Germany, he felt, had given in at five minutes to midnight in 1918; it would not happen again. Analysis was presumed to be weakness, and talk of strategic withdrawal treason, but optimism showed strength. Argument with a Fuehrer order was at best a waste of time, and might lead at worst to being thrown to the other jackals who prowled around him. Yet Hitler, at times, ‘edged along hesitantly, almost fearfully’.13
The paths of glory in Nazi Germany were therefore plain; gain the ear