Hitler’s Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance

Hitler’s Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance Richard Overy Roy Irons Did Hitler’s use of unproven exotic weapons cost him the war? Were they worth the price? What effect did the V weapons have on Allied plans, morale and supplies? Roy Irons also investigates Hitler’s thirst for revenge following 1918 and his dread when Russian victories and Allied bombing began to shadow the Third Reich.Roy Irons' fascinating book investigates whether Hitler's campaign would have been a greater success if he had put fewer resources into experimental weapons of revenge such as the V-2 rocket and the V-1 Doodle-bug. Enormous resources were poured into these experimental projects, often inspired by Hitler's thirst for revenge after the collapse of Germany in 1918 and his dread of a recurrence when Russian victories and allied bombing began to cast grim and ever-growing shadows over the Third Reich. He considers such questions as what effect the bombardment really had on London's morale and on Allied supplies through the port of Antwerp? Were these weapons really worth the price? With a foreword by Professor Richard Overy and fascinating images from the Imperial War Museum and Public Record Office, this is a unique account of this key element of the Second World War. Hitler’s Terror Weapons The Price of Vengeance Roy Irons Dedication (#ulink_483e741a-25c3-50cd-a6c9-49fec28ca305) This book is dedicated toErica Roe IronsandRebecca Ann Irons Contents Cover (#u61c5b31f-355e-503b-a2b5-2b49d0fc70e1) Title Page (#u4a714cc9-cc64-5ee6-b7cb-a5574d5385a7) Dedication (#ulink_6f997d99-36b8-5303-ba4b-68c27bed3550) Foreword by Richard Overy (#ulink_588461b9-1256-5a5d-959f-4c99d8edf7d3) Preface (#ulink_21a0cd27-2d38-542b-920e-5ae2a9f44231) Part I. Development and Dreams (#ulink_78e678f1-5a7a-50f1-831f-a26c9c78202f) 1. The Seeds of Vengeance (#ulink_fc48ad55-d469-58f6-aeb0-20cdc3a28043) 2. The Weapons of Vengeance (#ulink_16cf1edd-6b06-594d-8606-1cf76275ca2e) Part II. Raids and Revenge (#ulink_32817a5c-f39d-5e8a-a00b-21917b37cf54) 3. The Renewal of War (#ulink_1079d230-170c-5f94-b416-72dcfcf2ee9f) 4. Promise from Peenmuende (#ulink_fd3fdb3c-296a-5afa-bb3e-ac9ff012633c) Part III. Fear and Intelligence (#litres_trial_promo) 5. The Doom of London (#litres_trial_promo) 6. Terror, Strategy and a Poison Cloud (#litres_trial_promo) Part IV. Impact and Reality (#litres_trial_promo) 7. Countdown (#litres_trial_promo) 8. The Robot Bombardment (#litres_trial_promo) 9. Attack from Airless Space – The final Preparations (#litres_trial_promo) 10. The Rocket’s Red Glare (#litres_trial_promo) 11. Terror and Morale (#litres_trial_promo) 12. Belgium the Brave (#litres_trial_promo) 13. Shooting the Rocket Down (#litres_trial_promo) Part V. Evaluation and Hindsight (#litres_trial_promo) 14. Hitler’s War and the Terror Weapons (#litres_trial_promo) 15. Germany’s War and the Terror Weapons (#litres_trial_promo) 16. Conclusion (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue: ‘… but a whimper’ (#litres_trial_promo) Appendices (#litres_trial_promo) 1. The Paths of Vengeance (#litres_trial_promo) 2. ‘The Hubertus Train, the live whip of the German Armament Industry’ (#litres_trial_promo) 3. Statistics (#litres_trial_promo) 4. Four Allied Analyses of the flying Bomb (#litres_trial_promo) Selected Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo) Index (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Foreword (#ulink_ef0ee6b1-d86c-5738-b02b-01ee87aced87) On June 16 1944 Joseph Goebbel’s Propaganda Ministry sent out a directive to the German press announcing that the first attacks on London with weapons ‘of a new sort’ would take place that night. It was to be the ‘event of the day’ for the following morning’s front pages. Eight days later the press was told that the weapon would be called the ‘V 1’, the ‘V standing for Vergeltung or vengeance. Thus did the German public learn of what soon became the V-weapons campaign. Ever since the onset of heavy bombing on German cities in 1942 Adolf Hitler had sought some form of terrible retaliation that would force the British and Americans to stop. In the winter of 1943–4 the German Air Force launched the so-called ‘Baby Blitz’ on London, but there were too few bomber aircraft to achieve anything of significance against well-organised air and passive defences. Instead Hitler threw his dictatorial weight behind the development of long-range missiles, first the V-1 flying bomb, then the V-2 rocket. Plans were developed to produce them in vast numbers using simple work methods and slave labour supplied by Heinrich Himmler’s concentration camps. Some evidence suggests that Himmler was planning to fill the warheads with radioactive waste, but this came to nothing. Instead each missile became an expensive way of transporting modest quantities of conventional high explosives. The story of the German V-weapons has two sides to it. The British were aware that German scientists were pioneering weapons at the cutting edge of modern military technology. They imagined the worst, and prepared for a new apocalypse, just as they had done in the 1930s in anticipation of German conventional bombing. Until now little has been written about just what the British did to understand, anticipate and combat the new weapons. The account that follows explores not only the warped mindset that drove Hitler to gamble a large proportion of Germany’s overstretched war effort on untested technology, but it presents in fascinating detail the twists and turns of British policy in the full glare of the missile threat. Roy Irons gives us the first round in what became the principal feature of post-war superpower confrontation – missile threat and anti-missile defence. It is tempting to suggest on the basis of this candid account – exaggerated fears on the one side and expectations on the other – that later missile wars might have been different from the terrifying scenarios of nuclear destruction that fuelled the arms race of the 1950s and 1960s. Without the German experiments of the wartime years the post-war missile race would have taken longer anyway. Poor though the strategic gains were for Germany from the V-weapons, the long-run technical gains for the wartime Allies were substantial. It is a peculiar irony that German scientists and engineers working for Hitler ended up supplying the West with the technical means to defend democracy against Communism. Vengeance, as Roy Irons makes clear, was Hitler’s stock-in-trade. The thirst for vengeance in 1919 after German defeat was savagely assuaged in the extermination camps of the Second World War and the search for wonder-weapons of awesome destructive power. What follows is the history of two very different systems fighting very different wars. The V-weapons are in some sense an emblem of Hitler’s dictatorship; the British response was the product of a democratic system at war – long discussions in committee, many muddled arguments, but enough sensible judgement to get through. In Roy Irons’ sympathetic and original account the V-weapons campaign becomes not simply a test of technical ingenuity, but a revealing window on the way two very different adversaries made war. Richard Overy King’s College London Preface (#ulink_6dc6e5ee-5c7c-553b-8738-06e93280fbe2) My first acknowledgements of debt in writing this book are to my Mother and my Grandmother. The former woke my twin brother and me in the middle of the night to hear the newsflash “Hitler is dead”, and took us to see the ‘V weapons arrayed in Trafalgar Square in 1946. The latter, when a ‘doodlebug’ seemed to stop exactly overhead (as they always seemed to do) would quietly and contemptuously smile at Hitler’s foolish attempt to steal victory from her beloved England. What child could fail to be impressed by this calm assurance amid the giant clash of little understood arms over London, or by hearing ‘live’ news of the death of the dreaded tyrant, and seeing the captured weapons themselves, still sinister and impressive amid the triumph of their victims? I have to thank my good friend Geoff Johnson, a keen and perceptive reader of history, for reading the manuscript; many ‘reader friendly’ amendments have been made as a result of his observant gaze, including the addition of a diary of events. The mathematics of bombardment are formidable, and I could only appreciate the work of Dr. Brownowski of the wartime Ministry of Home Security ‘through a glass, darkly’. I am in debt, therefore, to John White, who not only spent much time in familiarising himself with the subject, but undertook the heavier task of explaining the implications of it to me, as well as checking the validity of my conclusions from some of the formulas relating to the Battle of the Atlantic; and to David Robinson, of the Royal School of Artillery at Larkhill. It was my good fortune to begin, on my 55 birthday, a degree in War Studies and History at King’s College London. I was able to attend lectures by Andrew Lambert on naval affairs, Brian Holden Reed on the American Civil War, Michael Dockrill on Modern Warfare and Richard Overy on Germany 1914 to 1945. If the discerning reader should observe that I fall below the standard of these gifted academic authors, he or she will more correctly attribute this to my deficiency in absorbing, than to theirs in imparting, knowledge. I must acknowledge a vast debt to Richard Overy in the writing of this book. Professor Overy has not only read the manuscript through, offering invaluable guidance and comments, and written the foreword, but had previously offered advice for researching the V2, which formed the dissertation for my degree. The patience and kindness of Julie Ash and of all of the staff of the Public Record Office at Kew have added to the pleasure of research. To read the files is to be transported back to a brave and anxious age of war, whose uncertain issue was hanging on great events that were always, at the time of writing, in the future. To be able to descend on this age from your world of the future, and to attempt to analyze it, is to me, as exciting as if I had really travelled in a time machine; and the walk to Kew Gardens station afterwards, beneath the low thunder of computerised jet aircraft, is to be transported back to the present; to muse, perhaps as they did, on the uncertain future, when the fears and actions of our own age will be analyzed, with the value of hindsight, from the twenty second century and beyond. I must also acknowledge the patience, kindness and expertise of the staff of the reading room and the photographic archive at the Imperial War Museum, from whom nearly all the photographs in this book have been obtained. The Museum has the most complete copy of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey outside the United States, and was the only place where I was able to locate a copy of Hoelsken’s excellent ‘V Missiles of the Third Reich’. This work, together with Michael Neufeld’s ‘The Rocket and the Reich’, Benjamin King and Timothy Kutta’s ‘Impact’, Richard Overy’s ‘The Air War’ and ‘Why The Allies Won’, John Toland’s ‘Hitler’, Ralph Manheim’s translation of ‘Mein Kampf’ and Herbert Molloy Mason’s ‘The Rise of the Luftwaffe’ (which contains a brief but gripping narrative of the events of 1918/19) all of which are detailed in the bibliography, were the most influential of the published sources. At Harper Collins, I first put the idea of the book to Ian Drury, who took the crucial decision to proceed with publication (who could be more deserving of the thanks of a new author!) and gave useful advice thereafter; on Ian’s departure to Cassell I have to thank Ian Tandy and, most especially, the tireless and charming Samantha Ward, for their help and advice. My sister Denna relieved me of my main worry by offering to retype the whole manuscript if the computer crashed. I have also to thank Victoria Mantell, Sophie Seymour and the late Ian Templeton for their encouragement. Victoria’s knowledge of philosophy (and sense of humour!) was of great assistance in discussing some of my ideas. Lastly, thanks are due to my daughter Becky for her assistance and her knowledge of the publishing world; and to Erica, for being my wife. PART I Development and Dreams (#ulink_f2898859-fd06-5ca0-bce1-5e27e10305cb) ‘… A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of revenge, the powerless will Still baffled, and yet burning still! …’ From Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Pains of Sleep CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_9b1153f1-ae2b-573c-9693-e4a2792ada3a) The Seeds of Vengeance (#ulink_9b1153f1-ae2b-573c-9693-e4a2792ada3a) Between August 1914 and November 1918, ranged in two vast and opposing groups, the greatest nations and empires of Europe, Asia and America, aided by all that science could devise or hatred could inspire, had sought to destroy and demoralise each other in the bloodiest war that mankind had yet seen. The central theme of the battle had been the virtual siege of Germany. The frontline soldiers were sustained amid their hardship and terror by close comradeship and a patriotic and disciplined pride. Ringed by hostile armies in France, Italy and Russia, together with her much weaker allies Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, the great German army – disciplined, brave, patriotic, skilful, well led – had defied the world. By the spring of 1918 that magnificent army had defeated Russia and crippled Italy, but its leaders had also added the United States to her long list of enemies. Her people, blockaded by the British fleet, were on the verge of starvation. Her industry was failing. War weariness had revealed itself in strikes and unrest at home. Risking all on a gambler’s throw of the dice, the German leaders sought, by a giant hammer blow in the west, to secure victory before the vast military potential of America could be brought to bear. The attacks were led by special-forces, the stormtroopers: (#litres_trial_promo) ‘small bodies of shock troops, specially trained in the offensive and distinguished from the mass of the infantry by youth, physical fitness, skill in close combat, brutality and ruthlessness. These shock troops considered themselves a thing apart and looked with contempt upon the common soldiers, especially those of the rearward services; their loyalty was to their commander rather than to the Kaiser; the tides of their units and their badges were novel departures from the existing system. These characteristics were indeed those of the later Freikorps [who will be encountered and viewed shortly], to which they contributed many recruits.’ The offensives were preceded by a short, but hurricane artillery bombardment; taking advantage of early mists, the stormtroopers punched huge holes in the allied lines. But although they gained tactical successes, and although they inflicted heavy casualties, the German assaults expended too much in both blood and morale. The German army lost 348,000 men. The quantity of goods and food looted from the allied lines contrasted starkly with the poverty of their own supplies, and laid bare the mendacity of their own propaganda. General (later Marshal) Foch, the newly created allied generalissimo, now presided over a series of well timed, limited attacks, each broken off when they lost momentum. On August 8th, 1918, Australian and Canadian troops, aided by 456 tanks, stormed the German lines south of the Somme. The German Chief of Staff and effective commander, General Ludendorff, wrote ‘August 8 was the black day in the history of the German army in this war … It put the decline of our fighting troops beyond all doubt … the war must be ended.’ (#litres_trial_promo) On September 15 Franco-British-Serbian forces attacked the Bulgarians on the Salonika front, and after a series of defeats, Bulgaria crumbled, being granted an armistice on 29 September. Clearly, German forces were needed from the reserves. But on September 26 a further series of attacks began in the west, orchestrated by the allied generalissimo. Ludendorff, convinced that victory was no longer possible, arranged a meeting with Germany’s political leaders. On September 29 came an attack on the Hindenburg line by the British army. Ludendorff fell on to the floor in a fit, and afterwards, his nerve temporarily broken, took the decision to appeal for an armistice at once. On October 1 this was conveyed to Germany’s political leaders. On October 3rd an appeal was made to President Wilson. But by October 17th, Ludendorff, reflecting in a calmer mood, became convinced that it was possible to resist. (#litres_trial_promo) But now it was too late! The country, its will broken, was in the throes of revolution. Ludendorff was forced to resign by October 26th. Germany’s allies, utterly reliant on the staggering giant, collapsed, and revolution gripped Germany itself. The Kaiser fled, never to return. On November 9 a republic was proclaimed – but even this was a confused affair, the Spartacist Karl Liebneckt and the Socialist Philip Scheidemann making separate and hostile proclamations. (#litres_trial_promo) The fleet, fearful of being ordered to wrest the command of the sea from the giant dreadnoughts of Great Britain and the United States, mutinied. Soldiers and sailors, led by revolutionary socialists, formed councils. The home front, and the army and navy at home, were falling apart. The new German socialist government asked for an armistice, which was secured by the surrender of 2500 heavy and 2500 field guns, 25,000 machine guns, 3000 trench mortars, 1700 aircraft and by the establishment of an allied bridgehead over the Rhine. All allied prisoners were to be released. (#litres_trial_promo) This meant that they would be powerless to renew the war, whatever the peace terms they might be offered. But both Foch and General Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary force, felt that the German army could have fought on. ‘Germany is not broken in a military sense’, said Haig; ‘During the last weeks her armies have withdrawn fighting very bravely and in excellent order …’ Foch thought that ‘the Germans could undoubtedly take up a new position, and we could not prevent it.’ Many among the allies felt the same. (#litres_trial_promo) But on November 11 the armistice came into effect. The German frontline soldiers marched home to recriminations, bitterness, revolution and civil war. However some, at least, of the German soldiers at the front were still of high morale; it was recounted by the South African Brigade that, after a battle which raged for all of November 10 and up to just before the armistice, a German machine gunner ‘fired the longest burst anyone had ever heard, lasting two minutes, and ending dead at 11am. A German soldier then stood up, removed his helmet, bowed to his audience, and walked slowly away.’ (#litres_trial_promo) Hermann Goering, the commander of the Richthofen squadron, ordered his pilots into the sky and threatened to strafe members of a soldier’s council who had looted his comrade’s medals. They were returned. (#litres_trial_promo) Goering gave the following valedictory address to his men: ‘Never forget that the glorious German flying Corps was not defeated in the air; it was stabbed in the back by Pacifists, Communists and Jews. But don’t abandon hope. There will come a day when we shall be in a position to avenge all the treachery and humiliation we are now suffering.’ (#litres_trial_promo) Later, an embittered soldier who had endured throughout the war, wrote: ‘And so it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; in vain the hunger and thirst of months which were often endless; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; and in vain the death of two millions … Would not the graves of all the hundreds of thousands open … and send the silent mud- and blood-covered heroes back as spirits of vengeance to the homeland which had cheated them … Did all this happen so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the fatherland … ?’ The resolve of this soldier was of more sinister import for the world than the opening of graves and release of vengeful spirits. ‘I, for my part’, he wrote, ‘decided to go into politics’. His name was Adolf Hitler. (#litres_trial_promo) The Prussian war ministry declared (echoing the socialist chancellor Ebert) that ‘our field grey heroes return to the Heimat (homeland) undefeated.’… ‘But’, wrote Richard Bessel, ‘if the soldiers had returned home undefeated, then who was to blame for the tribulations of the post war years?’ (#litres_trial_promo) An answer was conveniently to hand, and the cult of vengeance entered German politics. Among the former soldiers of that once formidable army, and among their descendants, arose a belief in their betrayal, ‘stabbed in the back’ by the ‘November criminals’. This would have dire consequences for the future. By strange and tortuous paths it would contribute to a huge advance in the technology and science of space research and travel; and it would lead to a likeable and gifted young girl being escorted to her death from the Amsterdam flat where she had sought refuge from her tormentors. (#litres_trial_promo) These seemingly disparate events were paralleled by a renewed and more dreadful global war. War has often been compared to chess. But the great and fundamental difference is, that in war the pieces are independent of the player and of each other – they think and have a life of their own; they have different wishes and aspirations; some might move unasked, or might refuse to move, or might simply run away or surrender. The only connection the pieces have to each other on the board of war is that they are playing their commander’s game. The commander has to infuse each piece with discipline, and with his spirit and his will. Hitler believed that at the core of the German defeat had been the failure of morale and will. He attributed this failure to propaganda – effective propaganda by the allies, who sought to divide the Prussians from the Bavarians, blaming the militarism of the former for the war – and defective by the German government, who allowed Jews and Marxists to spread revolutionary doctrines unopposed. On being invalided to a military hospital in 1916, Hitler had noted that ‘shirkers’ abounded, who decried the war and derided those who fought in it. Indeed, by 1918 ‘over a million wounded, disabled and discontented soldiers … choked the hospitals and lines of communication spreading alarm and despondency in the rear.’ (#litres_trial_promo) However during the 1918 revolution ‘neurotic patients suddenly shed their symptoms and became revolutionary leaders.’ (#litres_trial_promo) ‘There was general agreement among the doctors that four years of war had produced “mass hysteria”, which found an outlet in social upheaval. The shock of the episode left most German psychiatrists aligned with the political right long before Hitler came to power. Most importantly of all, however, German doctors vowed to pursue a much tougher and purely military policy towards war neurotics in any future war.’ (#litres_trial_promo) According to the German psychiatrists, when the German republic became unable to pay pensions to psychoneurotic war victims in 1926, ‘all the “Kriegzitterer” abruptly lost their symptoms and could function again’ (#litres_trial_promo). Between 1914 and 1918 the German military authorities shot 71 soldiers for military offences; between 1939 and 1945 the number would be 15,000 – a whole division – for Hitler became obsessively determined that the collapse would not be repeated. A new Germany would consider the maintenance of will and morale by a pervasive and fanaticising propaganda to be a basic pillar of the state. The defeat of 1918 would be explained simply and boldly, the villains would be marked, and the lessons continually hammered home: ‘In general the art of all truly great natural leaders at all times consists among other things primarily in not dividing the attention of a people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe. The more unified the application of a people’s will to fight, the greater will be the magnetic attraction of a movement and the mightier will be the impetus of the thrust. It belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category, because in weak and uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right. Once the wavering mass sees itself in a struggle against too many enemies, objectivity will put in an appearance, throwing open the question whether all others are really wrong and only their own people or their own movement are in the right. And this brings about the first paralysis of their own power. Hence a multiplicity of different adversaries must always be combined so that in the eyes of the masses of one’s own supporters the struggle is directed against only one enemy. This strengthens their faith in their own right and enhances their bitterness against those who attack it.’ (#litres_trial_promo) Morale, will and unity had failed in this war; in the next, it would not be Germany who cracked. The Jews would make a wonderfully convenient focus for the enhancement of bitterness, would easily become the ‘one enemy’ that even the ‘wavering masses’ could identify; that 12,000 Jews died for their country – Germany – between 1914 and 1918; that the German-Jewish community contained an intellectual elite that would be a source of strength to any nation, or that it would be a gift of great value to Germany’s enemies, Hitler ignored – the Jews would be the central enemy, the common thread which would run through his propaganda. They were too unifying a target to resist. Hitler’s hatred for the Jews was probably sincere, and this no doubt aided the process of demonisation. The soldiers returned to starvation (the British blockade did not end until peace was signed) and intermittent civil war – although some German prisoners of war continued to trickle back until as late as May 1920. (#litres_trial_promo) Discipline, especially behind the lines, had now broken down. Army property – horses and vehicles – was ‘sold for a few Marks, a loaf of bread, or some cigarettes’… and 1,895,092 rifles, 8452 machine guns and 400 mortars were held illegally in 1920, according to a German government calculation. (#litres_trial_promo) These would be found by vengeful hands. Friedrich Ebert, the new leader and eventual president, with the disintegration and chaos of Russia before his eyes, formed an agreement with General Wilhelm Groener, the new army commander, to suppress the spate of revolts. In that purpose they were assisted by the Freikorps, unofficial groups of ex-soldiers and students: (#litres_trial_promo) ‘There were plenty of ex-officers and ex-regular NCOs eager to continue the fight in a different form, who gladly accepted responsibility and immediately undertook the creation of volunteer units of all kinds and strengths. The government provided inducements such as special rates of pay and rations. Most of these units took the names of their founders and leaders. In other cases a regiment, while retaining its number, was simply called “a regiment of volunteers”. Still other regiments were left on a mobile footing to defend the frontiers in the east and were then, or later, turned into volunteer formations. It was not long before they became fighting bodies worthy of respect.’ (#litres_trial_promo) Together, the army and the Freikorps repressed the spartacist revolt in Berlin, the Freikorps shooting the leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, out of hand. In March 1920 the Freikorps suppressed the ‘Red Ruhr Army’ (after having supported a failed right wing putsch in Berlin a month before – the Kapp Putsch) and in May 1921 they fought a successful, but unofficial, battle with Poland over Silesia. (#litres_trial_promo) The Freikorps were employed by the army as a militia to supplement their own inadequate professional force on the borders of the Reich, as well as to imprint the army’s view on internal politics. An illustration of the loyalties of the Freikorps may be found in the history of No. 19, Trench Mortar Company; reinforced by some men from the No. 2 Naval Brigade (the Erhardt brigade), it was inaugurated on August 3rd 1921 as an ‘iron organisation’ to serve the Nazi party. They were known as the stormtroopers, the sturmabteilung, or S.A., after the crack troops who had led the 1918 offensives. When, as a result of allied pressure, the Freikorps were disbanded, their members nursed a bitter hatred of the Republic, which, they felt, had betrayed them. They did not all disband. On some large estates they were employed as labour organisations by day, while the hours of darkness saw them training and gun-running. The corps of Rossbach, one among many filled with similar bitterness, may serve as another example of the nature of these troops; the following brief history was compiled by British military intelligence: ‘Early in 1919 this Freikorps was absorbed into the provincial Reichswehr, but on (the) signing of the Treaty (of Versailles) in June, Rossbach tore off his badges, designed a new flag for his Corps and had his men swear allegiance away from the Reich to himself. Ignoring the orders of the government and von Seekt, the Corps marched to Riga to join the “iron division” fighting to retain the Baltic provinces. It was however forced to withdraw in conformity with the remainder of the troops there, and Rossbach with his fifteen hundred men returned to Germany where he was charged with desertion … But Rossbach refused to submit to disbandment and instead offered his services by press advertisement to any individual that would use it for “a national interest”. Soon after, the corps was subsidised by the promoters of the Kapp Putsch in which it took part, and after its failure it, like all the others involved, was for a second time ordered to disband, but it again refused, and, assisted by the Pommersche Landbund (League of Pomeranian Landowners) it set up as a “Worker’s Community”. Its arms which had been left behind after the Kapp Putsch were forwarded to it, consigned as “component parts”. Reinforced to four thousand men of all arms, the Rossbach corps mobilised in 48 hours and joined other insurgents to fight the Polish insurgents in Upper Silesia during the disturbances which had just broken out there in the spring of 1921. But on the signing of an armistice, the corps was ordered to hand over its arms to the Allied Disarmament Commission in the Plebiscite area and to demobilise. Instead it escaped back to Pomerania and resumed its role as “Worker’s Community”; its arms, which had been hidden in farms and houses in Upper Silesia, followed. Shortly after all such workers’ organisations were prohibited in Prussia by virtue of the Treaty, and a decree was also published once more ordering the dissolution of the “Illegal Freikorps” throughout the Reich. Rossbach now blossomed out as a “Mutual Savings Association”, with his men “on leave” and dispersed in formed bodies on estates, but with a central office in Berlin. When this organisation was in turn forbidden, Rossbach changed his command into an “Agricultural Workers Union”, only to be declared illegal a week later. However he boasted that he could found organisations more quickly than the authorities could suppress them. A little later Rossbach entered the Nazi Party and became its delegate in Mecklenburg where he organised semi – military physical training societies. Arrested a second time, he was nevertheless able to get to Munich and take part in the Putsch of 9 November 1923. After its failure he sought refuge in Vienna, and many of his Corps became party members.’ (#litres_trial_promo) During the disorders in Berlin, Ebert’s government had been forced to quit the city for Weimar, some 150 miles away, and the German republic of 1918–1933 has ever after been known to history as the ‘Weimar Republic’. This republic, powerless since the armistice, had now to bear the burden of the Treaty of Versailles which the victorious allies imposed upon it. The American President Wilson’s idealistic 14 points, which the hapless Germans had presumed would form the basis of the treaty, were brushed aside as far as Germany was concerned, and the disarmed republic had now to accept the cup of humiliation and defeat. There were no negotiations. Alsace Lorraine was returned to France, and German minorities in the East were to be ruled by the newly independent Czechs, Poles and Lithuanians. The fleet was lost, the army reduced to 100,000 men. The Rhineland was ‘demilitarised’, heavy artillery and military aeroplanes were forbidden. Of her arable land 15% and of her iron ore deposits 75%, were gone, her steel capacity was reduced by 38%, pig iron by 44%, coal by 18%. She was branded with the guilt of the war. As reparation, she was forced to pay to the victorious allies 132 billion gold marks, equivalent in 1918 rates to some 33 billion dollars. In addition, the war had cost the Germans some 150 billion reichsmarks, nearly all of it borrowed. (#litres_trial_promo) All this added to the bitterness, not only towards the allies, but more importantly, of German for German. Disorder, faction, the occupation of the Ruhr by the French, a catastrophic inflation, a Soviet Republic in Bavaria and, between 1919 and 1922, 376 political murders, (356 by rightist extremists) told of the ruin of Germany. Ten years earlier, in 1912, Rupert Brooke, writing in Berlin, had parodied the orderliness of the German people (#litres_trial_promo); now chaos and paramilitary hooliganism stalked the streets. The philosophical legacy of war for defeated Germany was thus essentially different from that in the west, particularly in Britain. Among the victors it had become ‘the war to end war.’ The generals were regarded as incompetent butchers, blundering fools, who were careless of the lives of their soldiers and indifferent to their suffering. Flag-waving patriotism seemed to have been sullied by the conflict. The Roman poet’s contention, that it was fitting and proper to die for your country, was now called ‘the old lie.’ Socialist ideas gained ground, in which the true nature of man was held to be good and noble, but was everywhere sullied by a system of oppression and exploitation, by greed, militarism, elitism, jingoistic nationalism and racialism – remove the restraints, take men and women into the daylight, and they would rise to new heights. In Germany it was the misfortune of these ideas almost to triumph before the end of the war, and therefore to be seen in some circles as not the solution to war, but the cause of the defeat and humiliation. This made the considerable gulf between left and right unbridgeable, particularly as the extreme right began to regard the leadership and focus of the left as being intrinsically different, inveterate, sub-human and degenerate. ‘If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world,’ wrote Hitler, ‘his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity.’ (#litres_trial_promo) These, however, had supposedly been Hitler’s thoughts before the war, although here expressed as a rallying call to the Nazi party some six years afterwards. Jewish thinkers had indeed been at the forefront of left wing activism and philosophy, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels through to the soviet revolutions in Russia, Hungary and the Soviet Republic of Bavaria. That Jewish people were also at the forefront of the very capitalism that the revolutionaries sought to destroy was not seen by Hitler as the proof of individualism and disunity, or as evidence that personal considerations were paramount over ‘national’ with most human activity, but as further evidence of a concerted and world wide Jewish plot, in which the ‘lesser’ races, such as the Slavs were, in a cosmopolitan equality, manipulated in order to corrupt the purity of the ‘German blood.’ This, however, remained for years the extreme doctrine of an embittered fanatic, head of a party which, nationally, could attract no more than some 6% of the electorate in 1924, after defeat, inflation, revolution, French invasion and civil bloodshed had heated political feelings to fever pitch. Understandably, both victors and vanquished felt reverentially towards the ‘fallen’, those who had died in the service of their country. In the highest circles of church and state, it was held that they had done so as a sacrifice – their lives had been ‘given’ to their native land – and the easy presumption, which perhaps assuaged the grief or guilt of the survivors, became adapted to the prevailing spirit of the times. In the west, the belief that it had been ‘the war to end war’ introduced the idea that the fallen had given their lives for peace. Ten million separate and individual reasons for death in battle were easily and understandably collated by horror, grief, religion and politics into a common sacrifice. In Germany, the power which had almost single handedly defied the other great powers for four years, which had, indeed, come close to defeating them, whose brave, well led and disciplined armies and fleets had won the respect, even admiration, of their foes, the soldiers could hardly be said to have sacrificed themselves for peace. They had only just been baulked of outright victory. The surviving front soldiers must have had great difficulty coming to terms with their apparently useless suffering, and the loss of their comrades. The honoured dead and their devotion to Germany were a constant source of anger and recrimination among the large and menacing organisations of the right wing. Perhaps guilt, or fear, now gripped those soldiers who had deserted, or formed soldiers councils, or who had called their more devoted comrades ‘blacklegs’ for continuing the war. What could be more natural than to join in the accusations, particularly when the Jews and the Communists could be blamed as the ultimate villains. Indeed, the S.A. members themselves, ‘desperadoes in search of a pension’, were often recruited wholesale from the left wing parties. There was a profound sense of destiny abroad in Germany, a feeling that history had reached one of its great climacterics, in which the future of races and nations would be decided, as in the great ‘wandering of the peoples’ that had followed the collapse of the Roman empire in the west, when the Wagnerian gods and heroes so beloved of Hitler had hammered out the destinies of Europe. Now the west was felt to be in a similar state of collapse, and heading towards an abyss, from which the German people, united, regenerated in a new kind of disciplined, authoritarian state, would advance to the leadership of a new European order. The conflict of capitalism and Marxism, the effete doctrines of democracy, internationalism and liberalism, would be swept away by a new corporate German Reich united in the Volksgemeinschaft, the peoples’ community. The German race, the leaders of the great aryan ‘people’ (#litres_trial_promo), purified and ennobled for the continuous Darwinian struggle for existence, would stand at the portals of a new age. These ideas, although not in such an extreme form, had been common in Europe at the turn of the century. The northern Europeans, amazed at their own advances in the arts and sciences, in politics and in war, in industry and in medicine had, not surprisingly, attributed this in part to their innate superiority. Leading figures in England and America had descried the future greatness of their own nations in the forests of Germany, whence the Anglo Saxon people had emerged to colonise England and, eventually, to rule the globe either directly or by the example of their free institutions. This Anglo-Saxonism (#litres_trial_promo), to which the Scottish, Irish and Welsh peoples were by a necessary generosity admitted, was expanded to embrace the ‘English speaking peoples’, since a too narrow interpretation would have excluded the majority of the people of the United States, into which a vast immigration was pouring. The Anglo-Saxons eventually sank back into the dark-age history from which that mysterious and perhaps dubious group had been so imperfectly raised. They left an important legacy of Anglo-American rapprochement and common feeling. Not so the ancestral Germans; the bitterness of defeat seemed to bathe the ancient German tribes in a new light; they appeared as heroes whose purity had been lately corrupted by the admixture of inferior breeds, foremost amongst whom were the Slavs and the Jews. The solution to this ‘problem’ appeared to be simple; a leader, a Fuehrer, was needed to act upon it. The next thousand years of history would justify his ruthless actions. But this could not be achieved, it was thought, until Weimar, tainted with defeat, cosmopolitanism, modernism, democracy and humanity, was swept away. A war of vengeance had long been contemplated and planned in the highest circles of the German army. Its leaders saw that the Great War had been a war of whole peoples. The collapse of the home front had been caused or aided by a catastrophic failure of agriculture, which had led to famine and bitterness. Industry had been unprepared for a long war, and had been imperfectly mobilised for mass production. The solution to this was found in a Wehrwirtshaft, the defence based economy, a strategy of total economic mobilisation for war, prepared in peace. Links began to be established with industry, which became more open after 1926, when the allied control commission left Germany. (#litres_trial_promo) The philosophy of an historical climacteric, when the future of whole races and peoples would be decided in a total war in which vengeance would be wreaked, was thus well established in official circles in Germany before Adolf Hitler came to power. The seeds of vengeance had been sown in a rich soil. CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_2838efbc-b71a-588d-bf63-ab306ec11c58) The Weapons of Vengeance (#ulink_2838efbc-b71a-588d-bf63-ab306ec11c58) To the many disadvantages with which the Weimar republic was burdened must be added divisive trends that had begun even before the Great War. Americanisation and modernisation resulted in the continued rationalisation of industry, together with the new ‘time and motion’ analysis and the use of new labour saving machines and methods. Paradoxically, alongside the ghosts from the German past, the ‘mystique of youth’ was more pervasive in Weimar than in other contemporary societies; the model for the young of both sexes was America. (#litres_trial_promo) Youth became more free of parental values; ‘Earning money and enjoying themselves are the twin poles of their existence … primitive sexuality and jazz on the one hand … modern … concern for … sensible personal hygiene on the other … it is not socialism, but Americanism that will be the end of everything as we have known it’, proclaimed a cleric (#litres_trial_promo) – a curiously modern ring! Weimar was burdened with a generation gap. The new internationalism, the new youth, had been enthralled by the culture of science and modernity; and what was more modern than the idea of space travel? In 1923 Hermann Oberth, a 28 year old Transylvanian German, published a 92 page book entitled ‘Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen’ (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Oberth, in his childhood an avid reader of Jules Verne, advocated manned space flight, and suggested a method – a multi stage vehicle powered by a motor burning a mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen. In 1924 Max Valier joined Oberth, proving himself of value in publicising and popularising Oberth’s ideas. Valier later joined the VfR – the Society for Space Travel – in Breslau. He secured the interest of the liquid oxygen equipment manufacturer Paul Heylandt in a rocket-powered car, for which Valier had himself designed the engine. In 1929 Fritz Lang directed the hit film Frau in Mond (Woman in the Moon), with Oberth as scientific adviser. As a consequence of the film, the Raketenflugplatz Berlin (Rocketport Berlin), a spaceflight society run by rocket enthusiasts, was founded in 1930. The futuristic romance of spaceflight became popular in Germany, more so than in any other western country. Oberth received queries from the public concerning the use of poison gas in liquid fuelled rockets, and discussed the question in his book Wege zur Raumschiffart (Ways to Spaceflight) in 1929, concluding that the accuracy required was ‘decades away’. In 1930 Max Valier was killed in a liquid fuel rocket experiment, and a bill (which subsequently failed) was introduced into the Reichstag to ban rocket experiments altogether. But they continued, although Paul Heylandt, a manufacturer of liquid oxygen, decided to end his research into liquid fuelled rockets. The same year the Raketenflugplatz built a 7Kg thrust petrol-liquid oxygen engine, (partly through a grant from the army). Its membership included Klaus Riedel (1903-1944) and Baron Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), son of an ex Weimar civil servant sacked for a too right wing stance during the Kapp Putsch of 1920. The army now took an interest in rocketry in the shape of Lt.Colonel (Dr.) Karl Emil Becker (1879-1940), who headed Section 1 (ballistics and munitions) of the army ordnance testing division. Becker, disturbed by the bias of the old officer corps against the technocrats and the appalling mess into which heavy artillery (indeed all) procurement had sunk during the late war, had begun a programme of technical training for army officers. This programme attracted, amongst others, Walther Dornberger (1895-1980), an artilleryman whose ardent enthusiasm for long range bombardment had been lit by the ‘Paris Gun’, which consisted of a 15 inch barrel into which a much longer 8.26 inch tube had been inserted, and which was supported half way along its length. (#litres_trial_promo) On 23rd March, 1918 commencing at 7.20 am, a battery of these gigantic guns, secure behind the German lines, had startled the citizens of Paris, some 78 miles away, with a bombardment of 25 huge shells which lasted until 2.45 pm, and which killed 16 people and wounded 29. Altogether, 303 shells were fired at the French capital, of which 183 landed in the city, killing 256 and wounding 620. The 228 lb projectile (#litres_trial_promo) left the gun at a speed of 5260 feet per second, and in 90 seconds had attained a height of 24 miles. The total flight time was 176 seconds. The energy generated was some 8 million ft pounds. So great was the range, that a correction had to be made for the rotation of the Earth. The distance which the shell had travelled was calculated by reading a pressure gauge. The immense force of the explosion of the 195kg charge so scoured and enlarged the chamber of the gun that each successive shell, of a slightly different size and numbered for the purpose, had to be inserted further into the barrel. The Paris gun had therefore been an impressive piece of ordnance indeed. Superlatives abounded. But it had some drawbacks. The huge barrels had to be renewed after firing 60 rounds (the French 6 inch gun could fire 3500). One, indeed, had exploded. It was not accurate, its pattern of shot being some 9.4 mils (#litres_trial_promo) in range and 2.5 in bearing, and the explosive carried in the shell was only some 25lbs in mass. The sheer size of the guns hampered their mobility, and rendered them vulnerable to counter fire, or to aeroplane bombs. Dornberger was therefore drawn to the use of rockets as a means of overcoming these drawbacks, and perhaps of increasing the weight of attack. Much genius would be expended in this investigation, but none seems to have been directed towards the utility and expense of bombarding a city. Gigantism seems to have been self-justifying in Germany, even before the advent of National Socialism. Rockets had a long history of use in warfare. “The rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air …” over Baltimore in September 1814, with which the British had failed to subdue Fort McHenry despite the use of some 1800 projectiles, were to be immortalised in ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, which became America’s national anthem in March 1931. (#litres_trial_promo) But the rocket had never become a serious rival to the big gun. It even ceased to impress savages upon a closer acquaintance. (#litres_trial_promo) At a meeting on 17 December 1930 Becker reported that ‘There has been a quantity of irresponsible talk and literature about space travel, and we must approach the rocket question with some misgiving. Our task is to investigate how far the rocket is capable of supplementing our weakness in artillery equipment.’ Becker reported that the increased accuracy of the rifled gun had made the rocket obsolescent, but that a Swede, Lt Col. Unge, had patented an ‘air torpedo’, which had been tested by Rheinmetall and the great armament firm of Krupp in 1909–10. This rocket had secured more accuracy by a means of rotation and a primitive sight. It nevertheless had a higher dispersal than a comparable howitzer. (#litres_trial_promo) Becker reported on the status of rocket research in Germany, listing Oberth’s Raketenflugplatz, Ing. Sander (line carrying rockets for sea rescue), Prof. Wiegand (meteorological), Nebel (who had worked with Oberth and who the army did not trust), Tiling (a winged target rocket), Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (stratospheric research up to 24.8 miles.) and Prof. Goddard in America, who had published ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes’ in 1919–1920. (#litres_trial_promo) It was decided to pursue rocket research with all vigour, flak (anti-aircraft), smoke and long-range ground to ground rockets being planned. The main object of research was into the propulsion method, looking into black powder (used by Sander and Unge), other solids, then gases and liquids. The stability of the rocket would also form a major investigation, with ‘firework’ rods, wings and ailerons, rotation, wireless control and gyroscopes all being considered. A civilian research into fuels and jets had been instituted, and Siemens (who had devised wartime wire guided rockets to attack British ships) would be approached about controls. The army was also to set up its own research facility at Kummersdorf, near Berlin. A sum of 200,000 reichsmarks was allotted for the first year’s research, in which Lt.Col Karlewski considered ‘revolutionary discoveries may one day be made, [Karlewski also mentioned ultra violet and infra red rays, and remote control], discoveries of the kind for which Germany is longing’ in order to ‘achieve rapid liberation.’ ‘We must keep in touch with rockets, so as to be as far ahead of the other powers as possible’, reported Karlewski; ‘the rocket offers great possibilities for area shoot with gas or HE [high explosive].’ Becker commented that the rocket was intended first as a gas weapon. Karlewski asked that the whole question be kept strictly secret, both at home and abroad. (#litres_trial_promo) A follow up meeting of the Heereswaffenamt (the Army Ordnance Directorate) on January 30 1932 heard that Unge’s son had made such ‘vast’ financial demands that it was decided to proceed with their own black powder rocket. Paul Heylandt’s liquid fuel rocket was described as taking 75 times the weight of propellant as black powder for the same performance, and Heylandt had therefore been commissioned to try to improve its performance. Gyro stabilised, remote control rockets had to be ‘left in abeyance for want of an economical propulsion unit with adequate burning time.’ Nevertheless, the grant was renewed, the enthusiastic Karlewski envisaging hundreds of rockets being launched simultaneously by electricity. Karlewski saw the rocket as ‘a good supplementary [my italics] weapon to air bombardment.’ A good working basis for further development having been established, ‘we must therefore make rocket development our main effort,’ he concluded. Dornberger hoped to utilise the results of the liquid fuel rocket research already carried out at the Raketenflugplatz, but he was unable to secure any chart or log of performance and consumption. He did, however, secure the services of the most talented members of that organisation and the Heylandt company, Wernher Von Braun, Klaus Riedel and Arthur Rudolph. Liquid fuel development had not advanced a great deal, but on August 1 1932 Dornberger, the enthusiast for this method of propulsion, was put in charge of research at the new testing ground at Kummersdorf, some 17 miles west of Berlin, assisted by Von Braun, Riedel and Rudolph, with the help of five mechanics. Dornberger’s work on powder rockets continued in Berlin. But the Weimar republic, which had survived the immediate aftermath of the Great War and which, for all its bitter divisions, was entering the modern world in seemingly growing prosperity, was doomed. The great crash of 1929, and the slide into economic ruin which followed, inflicted mortal wounds. Borrowed American money, on which the growing prosperity had been based, was withdrawn. Extremist, radical parties, which appeared to offer a complete solution to the utter woe of the people, prospered. By 1932 the Nazis, amazingly, were the largest single party in the Reichstag, the German parliament, having cleverly secured the support of Germany’s devastated agriculture, as well as of a fair proportion of industry. The communists also made large gains. The German conservatives, again fearing the extreme left, invited Hitler to the chancellorship, despite the beginnings of a decline in his electoral support, believing him to be a usable ‘solution to the government crisis’. (#litres_trial_promo) It was like a fly seeking the co-operation of the spider to secure its release. Within months they were entangled irrecoverably, and the left consumed. Now came a change! Giant hatreds and resentments became cold policy. Rearmament for vengeance was begun, although it was a little circumspect at first, since even the antiquated Polish army appeared to threaten a preventive war. But a Polish – German non-aggression treaty quieted the Poles, and as Hitler became more certain that the victorious western powers would not intervene, rearmament became more open, and its pace quickened. There followed ‘the most rigorous rejection of cultural modernism that the century has witnessed.’ (#litres_trial_promo) But rocket research continued and expanded. In 1934, following the machtergreifung, the Nazi seizure of power, all rocket research work was conducted by the army itself in the utmost secrecy. All discussion was banned. The Racketenflugplatz and other rocket groups were shut down, and the most brilliant of its members were now employed by the army. The rocket would be an instrument of war, not of Weimar modernism and space travel. Strange paradox, that the weapon which would be most associated with Nazi revenge had its origin in the Weimar modernism which they hated. Curiously, Fritz Lang, the director of ‘Frau im Mond’ and also of the futuristic ‘Metropolis’, was invited by Dr Goebbels, the national socialist propaganda chief, to co-operate in the presentation of national socialism to the nation and to the world. Lang, an honourably wounded ex-soldier in the Austrian army, fled to America the next day. He was half Jewish. Research continued apace under the army’s auspices. But the problems of liquid fuel rocketry were great. Liquid oxygen itself boils at – 183 degrees centigrade, and therefore problems occur with freezing pipes and valves. It explodes on contact with organic chemicals, including grease. But when in combustion, it melts metal. A liquid fuel rocket cannot be rotated for accuracy like a shell, because of the centrifugal forces on the fuel tanks and pipes. (#litres_trial_promo) These problems were gradually solved; ‘regenerative cooling’ exchanged the heat of combustion with the cold of the liquid fuel; the temperature of combustion was controlled by the use of alcohol (with which water can be mixed) as the oxidiser and a film of alcohol fuel on the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle (#litres_trial_promo); fuel feed problems were solved by the use of an immensely powerful turbopump powered by steam generated by hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst, calcium permanganate. In December 1934 the first two A2 rockets, with 300Kg thrust engines, were successfully launched. A political alliance with the powerful new national socialist Luftwaffe, headed by Reichsfuhrer Hermann Goering, was instituted in 1935. The Luftwaffe were interested mainly in rocket assisted take off for conventional aircraft, a pulse jet ‘cruise missile’ and a rocket aeroplane at the time. Resulting from the pulse jet cruise missile experiments was the FZG 76 (V1) flyingbomb, and from the rocket plane idea the Messerschmitt ME163B ‘Komet’, powered by a mixture of hydrogen peroxide with hydrazine-hydrate in methanol. These different weapons and fuels were later to complicate the intelligence picture in Britain. Walter Dornberger and the rocket team felt that a new experimental site was needed; ‘we wanted to build, and to build on a grand scale’, he wrote. (#litres_trial_promo) In order to extract extra funds from his superiors, he invited them to a demonstration of his wares. In a world used to biplanes and steam engines, the vast power, the noise, the spectacular flaming rocket motors would subvert the hardest and most practical of men. In March 1936 General Baron Wernher Von Fritsch (1880-1939), the Commander in Chief of the German Army, was persuaded to visit Kummersdorf. There he was subjected to a treatment to which many high ranking Germans would succumb. He was introduced to rocketry by lectures illustrated with coloured drawings and diagrams, and then exposed, successively, to test bed demonstrations of 650lbs, 2200lbs and 3500lbs thrust engines. To the 56 year old ex-staff officer, whose early years had not seen powered flight, it was an experience of impressive and seductive grandeur. ‘Hardly had the echo of the motors died away in the pine woods, than the General assured us of his full support’, wrote Dornberger. (#litres_trial_promo) But there was a proviso – the rocket had to become a specific, defined weapon. Fritsch asked them how much they wanted. They asked for, and obtained, a complete armament programme and, in conjunction with the Luftwaffe, a dedicated site. They found this at Peenemunde, on the Baltic coast. The site was immediately purchased for 750,000 marks. Dornberger met with Riedel and Von Braun to discuss the weapon that they needed in order to justify this princely sum. Becker had already felt, during the war, that rockets – even the crude devices available at the time – would be a better means of delivering poison gas than the projectors then in use. But they should now use long-range, precision rockets, designed in the first place for gas bombardment, and to provide a long-range alternative to bombing with high explosive. (#litres_trial_promo) Both Von Braun and Riedel considered that a really big rocket was required. Dornberger agreed, with a proviso concerning ease of transportation. It was therefore decided that the rocket should be capable of being carried on existing roads and railways, and launched using simple and mobile equipment. Within these limits, a range of 160 miles (twice that of the Paris Gun) and an explosive (or chemical) warhead weight of one ton (100 times greater than the gun) seemed attainable. The thrust required for this would be 25 tons. The accuracy of the new weapon was to be from 2 to 3 mils, that is, for every 1000 metres travelled it would be only 2 or 3 metres off target, both in range and line. At the extreme range of 160 miles it would fall in a circle of around 650 metres radius. By first World War standards, therefore, the proposed weapon was formidable indeed – but it was also hugely expensive. In the Great War it would have enabled Germany to reach out to hit enemy Headquarters, ammunition dumps, supply depots, railway yards and junctions with sudden, unstoppable and devastating effect. The firing crews would be too far behind the lines to be hit by counter battery fire, but it could not be used as prodigally as artillery shells; in the last two weeks of August 1918, the much smaller British army expended some 6 million shells. It had rarely used less than a million shells a week since 1917. (#litres_trial_promo) Heavy artillery, however, was always closely connected with air power. The gunners could not see their target – did not even know if a target was there. Aerial photography and spotting were essentials of the ‘deep battle’, (#litres_trial_promo) and the rocket without air power would be useful only to attack immovably fixed targets, i.e. cities, if it were to be used against an enemy who possessed command of the air. Perhaps another limitation of the artillery rocket was that, if you devastated a rear area in the course and for the purpose of an offensive, you had to reach it fairly quickly during your advance in order to take full advantage of the damage, disorganisation and effect on enemy morale. But rapid advances of 50 to 150 miles were not usual on the western front in the first World War. This meant that its effect would, in those circumstances, be more attritional or strategic than tactical; and although it was always gratifying to kick your enemy without his being able to reply, it would have been an expensive method of achieving it, akin to the ‘breaking windows with guineas’ by which British operations in the early part of the Napoleonic war were characterised. How many such rockets would be necessary to achieve general ‘devastation’, or to be certain of hitting a target? Bombardment to destroy a whole area is expensive in shells, due to the phenomenon of ‘overhitting’, i.e. from the first shell onwards, you become more and more likely to hit an area already hit; by the time, for example, 50% of the area is damaged, half of all your shells will be ‘wasted’ in this way. In 1944 scientists calculated that to achieve a 50% devastation of an area of one square mile, with a 600 yard aiming error, 250 tons of bombs would be required. But to achieve an increase of 30% to an 80% devastation, would require 600 tons, nearly two and a half times as much. (#litres_trial_promo) It so happens that the planned accuracy of the rocket at 160 miles, and the 1 ton warhead, means that ‘tons’ may be read as rockets. This was thus an expensive way to devastate a target. If the aiming error were to increase to 2000 yards, then to 50% devastate the area would require 1250 rockets, and to 80% devastate, 2900. A War Office investigation was carried out in order to ascertain how many shells would be needed to be almost certain to destroy a particular target, and a paper (#litres_trial_promo) on the mathematics of bombardment was published some time later. In the paper, six terrorists are presumed to be in a forest of an area of 4 square miles, the question being, how many shells are required to place one shell within 10 yards of one terrorist? The paper concluded that a 1 in 20 chance requires 340 shells, a one in 10 chance needs 690, an even chance requires 5560 and a 95% chance 74,000 shells. Artillery bombardment is an expensive business, and it may be thought that, even with the accuracy specified, a 46 foot, 13 ton rocket, needing 9 tons of fuel to blast it into the stratosphere, was not a very economic alternative to a gun, even presuming that very large, long-range guns were useful or economic weapons themselves. So would the weapon envisaged by Dornberger, Riedel and Von Braun, and paid for so copiously by the German army and people, have been worth the expense? Formidable though its capabilities would have been, there seems to be no real evidence that the rocketeers had planned definite tactics for the rocket, or had envisaged its precise role in a future battle, although Dornberger and Becker were both artillerymen. Were they themselves as carried away as General Von Fritsch had been by the ear splitting thunder of the rocket motor that they forgot its purpose? In Dornberger’s book there is much made of the superiority of the V2 over both the bomber and conventional artillery, much of the scientific advances and much of space travel, but there is no thoroughly worked out tactical plan for the rocket, such as would be expected from the German army. There is no definite scheme by which the rocket was to be integrated into the existing weaponry. Dornberger, in defence of the rocket, states that ‘the dispersal of the V2 in relation to its range was always less than that of bombs and big guns’. (#litres_trial_promo) But a shell that misses its target is useless, no matter how marvellous the technology that despatched it over so many miles; and to multiply the shots to make up for the inaccuracy of a projectile, whatever the reason for its inaccuracy or the distance it has travelled in order to miss the target, is vastly expensive. Without air power, which meant that you could place an aeroplane safely above the target to observe your fall of shot, and to correct your aim, it was scarcely practicable at all. It was only useful if it was an adjunct to air power, rather than an alternative. A British analysis of the V2 which resulted from interrogations of the German rocketeers just after the war, concluded that the V2 specification ‘was conceived not for the carrying out of any deeply laid strategic plan for the bombardment of England or any other country, or indeed with any clearly defined application in view. It was merely conceived as a “super gun”, which would impress those in the highest places …’ (#litres_trial_promo) Dornberger, when in 1952 he came to write in order to ‘end the confusion and correct mistaken ideas’, perhaps felt a need to explain the apparent folly to his countrymen (the book appeared in German two years before the English edition). But if it also made him appear a high-minded spaceflight enthusiast, then that was also to the good. In 1945, however, the rope was waiting for those whose service to the Fuehrer was suspected of being too morally indiscriminate, and to be certain to survive, the captured artillery Major General had to relate his tale with some caution. Perhaps it is fair to say that it was not folly to develop the rocket, or at least the science of liquid fuel rocketry, in 1936, since it gave a vague promise of becoming a useful weapon. There was also a fear that others, particularly the Americans, might also be developing rockets for war. And no one expected, in 1936, that war would only be 3 years away, that France would fall, and that the rocket would thereby become capable of reaching London. In 1936 the army and Luftwaffe met to agree the layout of the vast new research centre at Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. The army occupied the western half, the Luftwaffe the eastern. It cost 11 million marks in 1936, with a further 6 million in 1937. Becker’s annual operating budget was 3.5 million marks. These figures represented a large amount for what was, after all, speculative research; but the total German military expenditure in 1935/6,2.772 thousand million reichsmarks, rose to 5.821 the next year. (#litres_trial_promo) The rocketeers owed much of their success in achieving these resources to the ‘entirely new, fantastic, unbureaucratic, fast moving, decisive’ character of the Luftwaffe administration. (#litres_trial_promo) Perhaps the greatest irony of the rocket was in its secrecy; rumour and dread might have been of some effect as a deterrent in 1938 or 1939; as it was, when news of the rocket began to leak out in 1943 it provoked serious alarm, as will be seen in a later chapter. Hitler is quoted as saying, when he had observed a film of a successful launch, that “if we had had these rockets in 1939 we should never have had this war.” (#litres_trial_promo) But by 1943 it was too late; Britain was too committed to the war, had powerful allies, and the future seemed too bright for the rocket to have anything but a nuisance effect. The thrust of the rocket was designed to be 55,000lbs (25 tons). Its eventual range was around 200 miles, reaching a height of 60 miles on its journey. It would weigh 2.87 tons empty, and contain a launch weight of 4.9 tons of liquid oxygen and 3.8 tons of alcohol. It was maintained in position during ascent by gyroscopes, and was controlled during the initial firing only, following a ballistic path thereafter. Power was cut off after a predetermined time by a gyro functioning as an integrating accelerometer, although some 10% of missiles were produced with the originally planned radio controlled cutoff system, which the Germans believed would be subject to allied electronic interference. These devices operated servomotors which controlled tabs on each of the rocket’s four large fins, together with four graphite tabs in the jet nozzle. (#litres_trial_promo) The missile was not ‘radio controlled’ in the sense that it followed a guide beam for its whole journey, although some 20% were guided for the first few moments of flight in this way (#litres_trial_promo). It was launched from a small concrete platform by mobile teams, although vast bunkers to store, protect and launch the missile and its fuel were also built (chiefly at Hitler’s insistence). Another idea for long-range bombardment, which has a surprisingly long history, was that of the pilot-less aeroplane. Victor de Karavodine patented a pulse jet engine, that is, an engine which works by a rapid series of gas explosions inside a combustion chamber, in Paris in 1907. In the same year Rene Lorin proposed the use of a pilot-less aircraft, stabilised by gyros and with an altitude control using the pressure of the atmosphere, for long-range bombardment. His proposed machine was to be powered by either ram jet or a pulse jet. By 1909 Georges Marconnet had designed an improved pulse-jet. (#litres_trial_promo) In Germany Fritz Gosslau, who had designed radio controlled target drones in the Great War, gained a degree in aeronautical engineering, and in 1926 began work in the aero engine department at Siemens, transferring to the Argus Engine Company in 1936. Here he designed a radio controlled target drone, the Argus AS292, of which the Luftwaffe promptly ordered a hundred. In 1939 Dr Ernst Steinhoff, of the Luftwaffe Research Centre at Peenemunde, called for a pilot-less aircraft for use against enemy targets, and Argus took up the challenge. However, their design, powered by a piston engine, had a speed of only 280 miles per hour, which would have made it hopelessly vulnerable to fighter attack. The flying bomb would wait for war, for a perfected pulse jet engine, and the need to arrest the declining political fortunes of the Luftwaffe, before its full development. The reversal of the Versailles treaty, the occupation of the Rhineland, the absorbtion of Austria, the destruction of Czechoslovakia by treaty and then by seizure, a cold pact with the Soviet Union and the renewal of tension on the frontiers of Poland were all to hasten those fateful events. In the meantime science in the Third Reich, although well funded, lost some of its best brains. Between 1901 and 1932, German Jews won more Nobel prizes for science than the whole of the United States, gaining a quarter of all those awarded to Germans. (#litres_trial_promo) This collection of intellect in so small a circle – some two million souls – seems as notable, and as inexplicable, as the intellectual greatness of Periclean Athens, itself set in the glories of Greece, as the Jews were set amid the formidable talents of their German Christian compatriots. Perhaps the acquisition of two languages in the formative years assists in abstract thought, at which they excelled. They excelled in the theatre, in literature, in music. They excelled in business and finance. Although Germans first – some 12,000 died in the war – they were part of an international community of Jewry; but in a similar manner, scientists and scholars were themselves part of an international community, although losing none of their patriotism for that reason. But the European Jews had also excelled in revolution. In Hungary, in Russia, in Germany itself, Jews were at the forefront of the revolutionaries. The regime in Hungary, led by the Jewish Bela Kun, had 25 of 32 of its commissars Jewish; in Germany, Rosa Luxemberg, Eisner, Toller, Levine were Jewish: five of the seven leaders of the Bavarian revolution were Jewish; in Russia Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Litvinov were Jews, and Lenin had some Jewish ancestry. The great and unforgivable fault of the Jews, their Achilles heel, was that they seemed to excel in everything, for good or ill, in revolution or stable government, in extortion or religion, as criminals or lawyers, as well as mathematicians and scientists. They could thus be accused of being at the heart of virtually anything you wished. For this dangerous excellence German Jewish scholars were expelled from their posts in the German academic world. With this extraordinary measure the popular dictator gained his revenge, satisfied his constituents, and imperilled his nation. The nature of Nazism was unveiled to the wide world, the implacable antagonism of a gifted group was aroused, and the powers of the west were stirred from their dreams of peace and security. A historian in the fourth millennium, pursuing his dusty and obscure researches into the long vanished world of the second world war, might, amid the crimes which will undoubtedly stain the third, be less surprised by those of the second millennium; but his incredulity will surely be aroused by the deliberate rejection or exile of a scientific community, which constituted Germany’s strength in peace and war, by a leader who was very well aware of the value of technically superior weapons (#litres_trial_promo). A more ruthless and cynical man might have dissembled his hatred, and attracted as many scientists or technologists as he could – what could a more stupid man have done? Thus the growing scientific community at Peenemuende continued their clandestine researches while the potential of the wider scientific base around them, although still large, was contracted. Abstract science, from which new technologies grow, was scorned; national socialist science and technology, under the pressure of war and defeat, would gradually turn to an enchanted world of heroic self sacrifice and gigantism, where salvation seemed to lie in child warriors who would pilot flying bombs or powered gliders against modern bombers, or in tanks weighing 120 tons, or in wooden jet fighters or rocket aeroplanes which would glide back to earth after each mission. As this lurid glow gradually penetrated the gloom of defeat which fell over the Third Reich as the second world war progressed, the liquid fuelled rocket would seem more and more promising, not as a battlefield weapon, but as a bringer of retributive terror. PART II Raids and Revenge (#ulink_80d5f751-e1d9-5f83-b055-c450e9a9fa5e) ‘I will have such revenges on you both That all the world shall, – I will do such things, – What they are yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth.’ From William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 2, Scene IV CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_fd0ea747-df61-5b0e-9573-0d05160b526a) The Renewal of War (#ulink_fd0ea747-df61-5b0e-9573-0d05160b526a) On September 1 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war, but could do little else to help the Poles. German armoured forces penetrated rapidly and deeply behind the lines of the brave, but antiquated, Polish army. The Polish air force was annihilated in days. German aircraft ranged over Poland at will, hitting cities and troops with demoralising impunity. On September 17th, the Soviet army, in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi – Soviet pact the preceding month, re – occupied eastern Poland, which the Poles had wrested from them in the war of 1920. Poland was crushed. Hurrying behind the German forces came seven ‘Einsatzgruppen’, Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler’s death squads, who sought out the Polish aristocrats, priests and intelligentsia, as well as the hapless Jews, for slaughter. There was no treaty. Poland was simply absorbed by her conquerors, and Polish troops were to continue fighting in western armies until the end of the war, while at home the Polish underground began a long struggle, conducted with unbelievable gallantry. They would play a notable part in the defeat of the ‘V’ weapons. On April 9 1940 Germany began her attack on Norway; however despite British and French naval and military assistance, it was conquered by June. Denmark was attacked at the same time, the Danish government ordering a ceasefire less than two hours later. These conquests were a preliminary to the most dramatic military debacle of the twentieth century. Bad weather had caused a German attack on France to be postponed several times. In January 1940 a German officer mistakenly landed in Belgium, where he was interned. He had with him documents detailing German plans for the offensive, and it was not known whether he had managed to destroy them (#litres_trial_promo). The plans were therefore altered. The new plans were more daring. France, Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg were invaded on May 10th. Parachutists landed on the roof of the great Belgian fortress of Eban Emael, which was neutralised, and captured by advancing forces later. German panzer divisions, composed of tanks, self propelled guns and motorized infantry, using a strategy propounded by Sir Basil Liddell Hart, burst through the French front in the Ardennes mountains, which were thought to be impassable to tanks. They were the steel tip of a wedge of some fifty divisions. (#litres_trial_promo) Penetrating deeply to the rear of the British and French armies, which had, as the Germans had expected, swung into Belgium to meet the German advance there, they rapidly reached the Channel coast, to the consternation of both the allies and the German high command itself, which was fearful of a counterstroke. Columns of refugees streamed westwards along the French roads, hampering military movement. Both refugees and soldiers were harassed by swarms of dive-bombers, the famous Stukas, which were fitted with sirens, and their bombs with screaming whistles, to add to the terror. All around was confusion. No sooner did the position of the German forces seem to have been established than the information became outdated. Rumour and chaos led to panic, and panic led to demoralisation. It was a game of chess, with the allies blindfolded by German air superiority and their own panic and confusion, in which the Germans, fighting a new, faster, more mechanised war, seemed to have three moves to the allied one. When the Germans reached the channel coast, their commanders wanted to hurl their forces at the British, who were attempting to establish a defence perimeter around the port of Dunkirk in order to facilitate their withdrawal to their home islands. But General (later field Marshal) Gerd von Rundstedt (1875-1953) was concerned about the wear on his armoured forces, which might have to respond to a French attack from the Aisne. Goering had promised Hitler that the Luftwaffe could finish off the British army, which was strung out on the open beaches; furthermore, the high command, remembering the Great War, were wary of their armoured forces being bogged down in the marshes of Flanders. Hitler accordingly stopped his tanks just short of Dunkirk, in one of the most fateful decisions of the war. Whether this decision owed anything to his admiration for the British, his desire for an alliance with them, and his wish not to humiliate them, is one of history’s deepest mysteries. The British army owed much to the gallantry of the French defence at Lille, which occupied German troops and attention; to the Belgians, whose bravery won the admiration of the Germans; to the Royal Air Force, which fought at odds in the sky over the beaches; and to the Royal Navy, to whose courage and organisation the survivors owed their return home. The French army was finished off by the now unstoppable German war machine. ‘The great battle of France is over; it lasted 26 years,’ wrote a young German engineer officer, (#litres_trial_promo) linking the bloodshed of 1914–1918, the great collapse, the simmering fury of Freikorps and Nazis, the French occupation of the Ruhr and Hitler’s gigantic rearmament programmes with the fall of France into one great war. This view will no doubt be taken by Historians a thousand years hence. It was certainly taken by Hitler. But the Historian of the far future will make one small alteration; he will discover the end of the great battle of France in the ruined heart of Germany, after a conflict of 31 years. The French, now under the government of the aged hero of the first World War, Marshal Petain, sought an armistice. It was signed, at Hitler’s insistence, in the very same railway carriage in which the German delegation had signed the 1918 armistice, which was towed to Compiegne just for that purpose, and then blown up. This was vengeance indeed. Alsace – Lorraine, taken from France in 1871 and forcibly returned in 1919, was again to be part of the German Reich. French prisoners of war were not to be returned, and northern and western France were to be occupied, while Germany remained at war with Britain. The French government retired to Vichy. The British, frightened that the great French fleet would fall into German hands, insisted that the French sail it to a French Caribbean or a United States port, or that it join the British, or scuttle, or otherwise demilitarize. Acting quickly, without allowing time for full discussions, the British attacked the French fleet at Mers el Kebir, and seized or demilitarized French ships elsewhere. France, tormented by defeat, had now to suffer humiliation by her allies. But Hitler’s policy towards France was rooted in the events of 1918, and the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. He had considered France to be ‘the inexorable mortal enemy of the German people,’ and thought, ‘on soberest coldest reflection’ that Britain and Italy were Germany’s only possible allies.’ (#litres_trial_promo) But the theatrical scene enacted in the railway carriage at Compiegne was not born of the ‘soberest and coldest reflection.’ It was vengeance; delightful, narrow and expensive. He could not exploit the anti-British bitterness of the French caused by the evacuation at Dunkirk and the bloodshed at Mers el Kebir. Hitler might have made a lasting peace with France by leaving her with Alsace Lorraine and her full territory, and returning her prisoners, asking only for a free hand in the east. What could Britain have done, faced in 1940 with an exclusion from a united Europe, as in 1962? What would have been Britain’s justification to the people of the United States for maintaining a war in the face of such determined goodwill? Would she still have been offered lend – lease by the Americans? Could she have blockaded France to prevent her supplying goods from the world market to Germany? Could she afford to continue the war? But Hitler thought that Britain would make peace anyway, now that France was down. Whatever his policy options, Hitler was master of western Europe. He had achieved this by two main instruments. firstly, the German army, the best in the world, drilled and trained with iron Prussian discipline, brave, enthusiastic, skilful, well led, well armed, victorious and battle hardened. Secondly, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, armed with modern aircraft, superior to its enemies in both numbers and training, which had proved itself an essential element in battlefield victory. German Europe would be secured from invasion from the west while the German air force remained superior. When, in 1943, plans were laid to invade northern France from Britain, Lt. General Morgan (acting Chief of Staff to the supreme commander, allied expeditionary force) wrote ‘A definite and highly effective local superiority over the German fighter force will be an essential prerequisite of any attempt to return to the continent, since it is only through freedom of action of our own air forces that we can offset the many and great disabilities inherent in the situation confronting the attacking surface forces.’ Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery wrote after the war that: ‘It is not possible to conduct successful offensive operations on land against an enemy with a superior air force, other things being equal. The enemy’s air force must be subdued before the land offensive is launched. The moral effect of air action is very great and is out of proportion to the material damage inflicted. In the reverse direction, sight and sound of our own air forces against the enemy have an equally satisfactory effect on our own troops. A combination of the two has a profound influence on the most important single factor in war – morale.’ (#litres_trial_promo) Thus vengeance on France seemed to Hitler to be a luxury that he could afford, for the west could not be invaded unless his air force was defeated, and even then, the incomparable German army would have to be overcome in battle. When, to Hitler’s irritation, the British, now under the redoubtable Winston Churchill (who was supported by one of the noblest of her kings, George VI), refused to heed the peace feelers that he put out, he decided, after a fatal (#litres_trial_promo) delay, that the Luftwaffe could clear the skies over Britain for an invasion fleet to cross the narrow sea. The story of the Battle of Britain is well known. A few fighter pilots, from many nations as well as Britain, denied air superiority to the Luftwaffe, inflicting disproportionate losses on the attackers. When German aircrew bombed London in error, Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin in retaliation. This infuriated Hitler, and struck a deep chord in his furious soul: ‘When the British air force drops two or three thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150, 230 or 400,000 kilograms! When they declare that they will increase the attacks on our cities, then we will raze theirs to the ground!’ (#litres_trial_promo) The Germans now transferred their attacks from airfields and radar stations to London, at the extreme range of their main fighter aeroplane, the Messershmitt Bfl09. As bomber losses mounted, the attacks on British cities were switched to the hours of darkness. All in all, during the Battle of Britain (July 10 to October 30 1940), the Germans lost 1733 aircraft; the British lost 915. (#litres_trial_promo) But production figures were also significant – even more so, if the German estimates of British losses and production are taken into account. The Germans estimated that British losses in fighters were twice their own. (#litres_trial_promo) They also grossly underestimated British production. Between July 1940 and April 1941 they thought that their battered enemy had produced 6825 aircraft, (#litres_trial_promo) while in reality they had made 14,761. (#litres_trial_promo) This was not all; during this period, 3555 aircraft were delivered from North America (of which 1279 were delivered direct to overseas commands and Dominion governments). (#litres_trial_promo) Britain acquired 18,316 aircraft, not 6825! This was a very serious miscalculation, for it led to a fatal complacency; aircraft production requires planning well in advance, as does pilot training. This was simply not done in time. Germany produced only 10,826 aircraft in 1940 and 11,776 in 1941. But the consequences of the Battle of Britain were not only complacency born of an underestimate of British production, and overestimate of British losses. The defeat of the German air force led their High Command to discount the value of strategic bombing, and to continue with an air force mainly limited to army co-operation. Britain, however, drew the opposite conclusion, seeing the battle as confirmation of the necessity of vigorously pursuing a general air policy, that is, an air force designed for strategic bombing, air defence, and naval and army support. (#litres_trial_promo) There were other flaws that ran deeply hidden under the surface of the German position. Firstly, the British had identified and ‘turned’ all the German secret agents in Britain, and thereafter, throughout the rest of the war, all subsequent agents entering the country were either noted or greeted by British intelligence. Secondly, as a corollary to this coup, the British had in their hands the secret of the German ‘enigma’ coding machines, which were used by the German armed forces as well as the railways. These devices were capable of encoding information in an incredibly complex manner, and there were millions of possible combinations. The machine itself had been on the open market from 1923 until its adoption by the German army and navy (who used different versions) in 1929. (#litres_trial_promo) Although the Germans had modified the enigma machine considerably from its original design, the Poles had obtained one and had communicated a method of cracking the code to the French. This information was brought to Britain from France, and was studied assiduously by mathematicians and codebreakers of genius. These were established at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire where, because of the time needed to calculate the correct settings before the daily, and sometimes thrice daily German changes, the world’s first programmable electronic computer was devised and built. By 1944 these brilliant men and women were routinely passing on German naval, air and military information from the highest level, including instructions from Hitler himself, often reading it before the intended recipients! The intelligence gained was used to advantage, although always with a cover story that would conceal the source of the information and allay German suspicions, or perhaps arouse them in an inappropriate area. The advantage of surprise in warfare is incalculable; the German commanders, generally of the highest skill and professionalism, were to be deprived of this advantage for themselves, yet had it used against them in all the most considerable actions in the West. In any area of human antagonism, be it in law, in business, in sport or in war, the knowledge of your opponents innermost plans is a pearl of great price. This secret was known to the British as ‘ultra’. Another weakness was soon revealed to all. Hitler’s ally, Italy, consisted of some 40 million vigorous, brave and industrious individuals, with an army of over 70 divisions and a modern battlefleet, apparently united under Mussolini and the Fascist party. But from the first shots Mussolini’s Italy was revealed as corrupt, her army antiquated, her industry inadequate, her treasury drained and her leaders bombastic and incompetent. The union of the disparate Italian regions was imperfect, and her citizens were more dedicated to province than to nation, and more to family than province. Her natural friendship with Britain and the United States (which harboured so many millions from her shores, who maintained a regular correspondence with their families in the homeland) was a further source of weakness. Her armies, soon deprived of the air cover of a few ancient biplanes, were swept aside, and her soldiers abandoned the one sided and unpopular struggle in droves, although many units fought with great courage and skill, especially the crews of torpedo boats and midget submarines. The fact that morale crumbles in the bravest of armies when they lack modern equipment, particularly tanks and aircraft, was demonstrated by the Poles in 1939, the French in 1940, the British and Americans in the Far East in 1942, and by the Germans themselves in 1945, (when what equipment they possessed was immobilised by lack of fuel). Italian units soon needed to be stiffened by Germans; and Italy sank rapidly into satellite status. A further weakness in the German position was the utter determination of the British government to see the whole thing through until Nazism was finally extinguished in Germany. She could not be brought to terms by bombardment, however ferocious. Hitler presumed that British hostility was sustained by a powerful clique of Jews, for he could not appreciate, nor could any of his great officers of state, the absolute odium in which he was held, both in Britain and the United States. The Nazi elite sneered at ‘decency’, persecuted minorities, despised democracy, lauded war and murdered their opponents, yet seemed unable to fathom the disgust this attitude inspired in the great majority of the free people of the West. For this reason Britain had embarked on a course which appeared to throw self-interest to the winds. She borrowed heavily from the United States, and the level of her gold and currency reserves was determined by that power, for although America would support democracy, she would not sustain a rival in trade. Britain was prepared to accept American industrial and financial aid on terms which meant the sale of all her remaining American assets, and which would inevitably lead to her post war dependence on the United States, and to American hegemony in the West. The future of her empire would be in the hands of the nation whose birth and whose very soul was anti-imperialistic. The uncertain future was mortgaged for the fight against Hitler. But with huge American and Canadian subsidies, the progressive imperial decline in finance and industry was temporarily reversed, and Britain’s main weakness disappeared. British factories could produce armaments to their full, and considerable, capacity, and the products of American industry began to flood in. These industries would now begin to supply an army which would ultimately consist of some 47 divisions, 11 of them armoured, and although these were also required in the Far and Middle East, they represented a force which Germany had continually to guard against, for they might raid anywhere from Stavanger to Bordeaux. “He that commands the sea”, wrote Bacon, “is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little warre as he will.” (#litres_trial_promo) For the army in 1940, the ‘warre’ taken was necessarily little. Although the imperial army could recruit from many warlike peoples in India, and would receive valuable additions from the brave ‘Free French’ forces of Charles de Gaulle, from the Poles, the Czechs, the Dutch, the Belgians and others who had escaped to Britain, and above all, from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, it simply could not match the German army in numbers, equipment, morale or efficiency. The navy commanded the sea, but could not end the war on its own. It might deny the seas to Germany for all but the most hazardous and clandestine of trade, but it was itself vulnerable to shore based aircraft and to submarines. Battleships, once the lords of the oceans, were in deadly peril unless they were protected from the torpedo and the bomb, as were all other vessels. Land based aeroplanes made any approach to a coast without air cover hazardous. The navy, like the army, could scarcely operate at all without protection from aerial attack. But the air force was different. It could directly attack enemy territory. Like the light cavalry of the Huns and the Magyars, it could send out raiding parties to burn and destroy deep within enemy territory. It could not be stopped by city walls, garrisons or armies. It could single out for destruction industries, transport, military installations and ships. It was the only armed force possessed by Britain that could strike directly at Germany. Some thought it might eventually win the war on its own by a massive bombardment that would destroy cities, industries and morale alike. The Royal Air Force itself, jealous of its independence from the other armed services, had readily embraced the strategic bombing theory; it found a ready ear among those who dreaded trench warfare, and among those who perceived that the expense of heavy bombers seemed considerably less than that of capital ships and huge armies. The bombing of cities had been dreaded before the war, and its destructiveness overrated. Guernica had been destroyed by bombers in the Spanish civil war. But Guernica was small and had been undefended. When bombers were opposed by intense anti-aircraft gunfire, they had to fly high, or be decimated. When opposed without a large fighter escort by enemy fighter planes, they were forced to fly at night (bitter British and American experience was to prove that no defensive armament could reasonably protect unescorted day bombers against the ravages of enemy fighters). At high altitude, and at night, navigation was difficult and accuracy of aim almost impossible. There would be no more Guernicas until the arrival of better navigational aids, bombing accuracy and air superiority – unless the target was so huge that it could not be missed. Nevertheless, the British persisted in their bombing campaign, because they could do little else. Between July 1940 and the end of May 1941, some 18,000 tons of bombs were dropped, nearly 4000 tons being on industrial towns. (#litres_trial_promo) Although extremely irritating to the German High Command and the Nazi elite, these attacks were costly to Britain in men and materials, and inaccurate. By the end of 1940 the Germans had dropped nearly 35,000 tons on Britain. They had dropped over 22,000 tons during 1941, (#litres_trial_promo) but most of this was in the early part of the year. Hitler was turning his attention eastwards. For various reasons the Soviet Union had always been at the centre of Nazi plans, and Nazi philosophy. It was, first of all, a great danger militarily; it was heavily armed, and still arming; it was the largest state in the world, and its potential, which was still in the process of being realised, was enormous. The Soviet Union had also begun advancing westwards, after a twenty-year lull. Since the Nazi – Soviet pact, she had absorbed eastern Poland, occupied the Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – had seized Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia from Rumania, and after a short, inglorious war, had annexed Finnish territory in order to secure strategic bases and to push the Finnish frontier further from Leningrad (St. Petersburg). (#litres_trial_promo) The Soviet Union had crept too close to vital German interests in Scandinavia and the Ploesti oilfields in Rumania for Germany’s comfort. But whatever the cold validity of these reasons for attacking the Soviet Union, ambition, prejudice and hatred seem to have always directed Hitler’s glare eastward. Adolf Hitler felt himself to be a genius, guided by fate, an avenger of the two million German soldiers who fell in the Great War. It was from the east that the poison of Bolshevism had spread, and it was in the east that the Jews still sat in triumph. The fall of France would be nothing in revenge compared to the destruction of the November criminals in their own nest, and the supplanting of the inferior Slavs by the Germans. Germany would then be unassailable by America, and Britain would be overwhelmed. If he did not accomplish these things before he grew too old, no one would. (#litres_trial_promo) But first Mussolini, his great ally, was in trouble. Driven helter skelter across north Africa by the British, and thrown ignominiously out of Greece and back into Albania by the Greeks, he had made the Greeks an ally of Britain, who might soon bomb the Ploesti oilfields from Greek bases. During April 1941 arrangements were made for German forces to pass through Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria and to conquer Greece. The satellites (including Italy) received their instructions. At the last moment Serb officers toppled King Peter of Yugoslavia, who had been a reluctant satellite anyway, and severed the country’s connection with the Axis powers, as Germany, her satellites and Japan termed themselves. Hitler decreed that they should be suppressed with ‘merciless harshness’ for this insult to himself and the Third Reich. Yugoslavia, her Serb, Croat and Slovene population deeply divided, was occupied in 10 days; Greece followed rapidly. The British were bundled out of Greece. An airborne invasion of Crete followed, which was successful, but suffered heavy losses in very severe fighting. Hitler was appalled by the casualties, and drew the lesson that airborne assaults were too expensive. But it was not the method of their arrival on the battlefield that was at fault; due to the ‘Ultra’ codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the paratroopers had been expected by the British; and they had landed on New Zealand troops, always formidable in battle. Hitler’s plans to tear the Soviet Union apart had been delayed from May to June 1941; they were now set for June 22nd. The Soviet forces were to be prevented from retreating into the vast depths of Russia by encirclement on the borders; they would be seized by the pincers of his armoured divisions, and devoured by the following infantry. The Soviet army, which the German High Command believed had been emasculated by Stalin’s purges of its officers, would be ruined; they had shown, by their initial defeat in Finland in 1940, that they were surely no match for the German war machine, the Wehrmacht. Yet the Finnish operation had merely shown that Stalin had not prepared properly; when, after the initial failure, the assault was renewed, the finns, despite fighting bravely and skilfully, were hopelessly defeated. Hitler might have noted an operation on the other side of the vast Soviet Union, in 1939. There, a border clash between satellites had drawn in Russian and Japanese forces and had escalated into a full scale battle, in which the elite Japanese Kwantung army had been heavily defeated. But the Japanese army, before its sweeping victories over western forces in 1941 and 1942, had been much underrated. The Soviet commander in that affair had been Georgi Zhukov (1896-1974), later deputy supreme commander of the Soviet forces under Stalin. On June 22nd German forces drove headlong into Russia. After a campaign that appeared to have largely gone according to plan, Hitler announced, on October 2nd, that Russia had been defeated. Vast encirclements had been made, netting some 2.5 million prisoners. The Soviet air force had been smashed, with some 14,500 aeroplanes lost, and 18,000 tanks and 22,000 guns had been destroyed or captured. Moscow, indeed, was in a panic. (#litres_trial_promo) Hitler was in a state of euphoria. (#litres_trial_promo) Who could now fail to see the hand of fate in his existence? His politics had been formed in the slums of Vienna; during the Great War, fear and fervour, the exhilaration of patriotism and danger had created an almost religious rapture, and the 1918 offensive had made the ‘most tremendous impression’ of his life, (#litres_trial_promo) which October and November 1918, and his own gassing and temporary blindness, had blackened into a frenzy of hatred and revenge. He had been re-born, to lead a party and a nation. He had re-occupied the Rhineland, had seized the Sudetenland, had ‘reunited’ Austria with the Reich, had absorbed Czechoslovakia, smashed Poland, humiliated France, chased Britain from Europe, and reversed Versailles. Now he had Russia under his heel, and the Jews and communists who ruled the sub-human Slavs were in his power. He was the greatest German of all time, feared from the British Isles to the Pacific Ocean. He had all Europe in his power. He numbered Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Finland, Spain and the mighty and warlike military empire of Japan as his allies. The shiftless artist, who had read of Caesar in his dingy Viennese lodgings, had now become greater than Caesar. Surely some destiny had appointed him? He was finally justified in his world outlook by his tremendous success, and the adulation of millions. The Fuehrer, never noted for his openness to suggestion and argument, was now beyond all earthly advice. Now, in the East, terrible events unfolded. The motive was neither a simple brutality nor a greed for profit, but a mixture of pseudo-science and all embracing revenge. The Russian steppes were lit ‘by the lights of perverted science’; (#litres_trial_promo) millions of men and women were massacred; some were simply butchered or shot, while others were killed in a less ‘brutalising’ manner. (#litres_trial_promo) The commissar was shot for what he had become; the Slav because his village resisted, or out of sheer disgust at his being a Slav. But the Jew and Jewess, (the descendant perhaps of the converted Khazars), was shot because his or her whole race was proscribed. Neither beauty nor age, nor past deeds, neither a blameless or a shameful life, neither tallness nor shortness, yellow or black hair, blue or dark eyes, could save a Jew. They had been doomed in 1918; now, after 23 years, came vengeance. But in the dark fabric of Hitler’s and Himmler’s dreams, a tiny rent appeared, and grew in size and importance with each passing day; the Russians were still fighting. Despite huge casualties, they fought on in a bitter and savage war. They supported the communist regime which had appeared, only months before, to be a cruel slavery. They might have supported a liberator. They might have risen in revolt if the Ukraine had been promised liberty. But all were involved in the slaughter or oppression, being either communists or Jews or Slavs. All were antagonised; they were now enemies, dedicated to revenge upon vengeance. And winter approached. Had Hitler now sought to uncover a human purpose in natural events, he might have been struck with fear. The Russian winter of 1941–2, which he had not expected his troops to have to endure, and for which they were therefore ill prepared, was at times the worst for 250 years. Not only did tanks have to have fires lit under them for two hours before they would start, but the firing pins of rifles shattered. From the beginning of December came an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit of frost. (#litres_trial_promo) Having stalled within sight of the Kremlin, Hitler’s armies were now forced on to the defensive by Russian counter attacks with fresh troops from the east, where they had successfully daunted the warlords of Japan. The Germans were ordered by Hitler to stand fast and fight rather than retreat, a decision which is approved by most military experts – a defeat would certainly have become a rout. Forming ‘hedgehogs’ around fortified centres, often supplied by air, they held firm and anxiously awaited the arrival of spring. When spring finally came, the Germans had suffered over eleven hundred thousand casualties, most in the savage, hard fought battles of the summer and autumn. (#litres_trial_promo) The Russians had suffered far more heavily; some three million had been captured in the great encirclement battles of 1941 – a million more had been killed. (#litres_trial_promo) A winter offensive had moved the Germans back from Moscow. But Russia, west of a line drawn from near Leningrad in the North, through Briansk to Kharkhov and Tagranog in the Ukraine, was occupied by Germany and her Italian, Hungarian and Rumanian allies. The agricultural and industrial heart of Russia was gone. How could Stalin feed and arm his remaining soldiers? The answer was that whole factories had been uprooted and moved to the east in front of the German onrush, and the gigantic output of American industry and agriculture, supplemented by supplies from hard pressed Britain, had filled the gap. This had been made possible by the most vital of all the advantages possessed by Britain – sea power. But Hitler was not aware of the full extent of this vast movement of goods and resources, or of the survival of Russian industry. One more campaign must surely suffice to bring him victory; one more summer, and Germany would strike down the Slavs forever. Great events had unfolded further east. On December 7th, the Japanese surprised the American fleet at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii with an attack by carrier borne aircraft, crippling the battleships which, unprepared, lay at anchor on that Sunday morning. The Japanese aimed to establish a wide defensive perimeter around the home islands which the United States, after suffering heavy losses, would eventually tire of attacking and concede to Japan. But they failed to destroy the installations at Pearl Harbour and the carriers, which had been absent, escaped. And the surprise attack ensured that the American people would be utterly determined to use their vast strength to bring Japan to utter ruin, at whatever cost. The Japanese made vast strides across the Pacific; ill armed and demoralised British and Indian units were brushed aside, and Singapore was surrendered to inferior forces who were about to retreat for want of supplies. If the surrender had been partly intended to save the lives of Singapore’s civilians, it was ineffective, for it was followed by a precautionary massacre of 5000 Chinese. (#litres_trial_promo) The Americans were driven from the Philippines by March 1942, after hard fighting at Bataan and Corregidor. But the Japanese had the same hidden weakness as the Germans – the allies had cracked their codes. At Midway, in June 1942, this intelligence coup was put to good use. A Japanese fleet was located, and four aircraft carriers destroyed, in a desperate air battle with the always formidable navy of the United States. Japan had shot her bolt. Her industry, soon to be assailed by American bombers and starved by American submarines, could not make good the losses in ships or highly trained pilots. She would eventually be encircled and ruined by fleets that included over a hundred aircraft carriers, and devastated by a rain of fire from giant American bombers. But all this was in the future when, on December 11 1941, Germany declared war on the United States. She did not need to do so. The Tripartite Pact, signed on September 27 1940, required Germany, Japan and Italy to ‘assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of the contracting powers is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European War or in the Chinese – Japanese conflict…’ (#litres_trial_promo) Japan had clearly been the aggressor, as had Germany in Russia, and the Japanese had not felt obliged to join in on that occasion. Nevertheless, Hitler thought that the United States and Germany were effectively at war anyway. By this act of folly he solved what might have resulted in a serious dilemma for President Roosevelt; with the American public fired to anger about the Japanese attack, might it not have been harder to spare both forces and production for the British war against Germany? And a German declaration of war against the United States could have been used as a bargaining counter for a Japanese attack on Russia. Hitler could now expect a build up of activity in the west. The German economy, already flat out (#litres_trial_promo), would need to have its priorities right. Yet Hitler’s war situation in April 1942 did not, despite the active intervention of the United States, appear to him to be alarming. He expected to defeat the Soviet Union in one more summer campaign that would penetrate to Baku and capture the huge oilfield there. He already had the resources of all Europe at his disposal. The British were under attack from German submarines, the U Boats, aided by Focke Wulf Condor aircraft and mines. He was sinking more merchant ships each month than were being built (#litres_trial_promo). By April 1942 the British had lost 2915 ships in the war, of which 1282 had been sunk by submarines; (509 had been sunk by Condors and 362 by mines to the end of 1941). (#litres_trial_promo) The U Boat fleet, starting the war with a total of 59 boats, now had 130 operational. (#litres_trial_promo) German cryptographers had broken the Admiralty’s codes in 1941, and were reading the planned routes of convoys. The British lost the ability to read the German Navy code shortly afterwards. (#litres_trial_promo) The German surface fleet had not fared so well; a pocket battleship (Graf Spee) and a battleship (Bismark) had been sunk while attempting commerce raiding, while the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been deterred from attacking convoys by escorting battleships. (#litres_trial_promo) In the air, the situation certainly should have given the Germans much cause for concern. Total Luftwaffe strength had fallen from 3692 in March 1940 to 3582 in March 1941 and 2872 in March 1942. (#litres_trial_promo) In 1941 Germany had made only 11,776 aircraft; British production was 20,094 with 2135 received from North America. (#litres_trial_promo) The Soviet Union made 15,735. But here again German intelligence was faulty, estimating Russian production at 5000 per annum in 1939 and 1940, when in fact it was over twice as much (#litres_trial_promo); and calculating it to be 1150 per month (13,800 per annum) in March 1942, when in 1942 the Soviet Union produced over 25,000 aeroplanes. (#litres_trial_promo) The German air ministry had aquired a new technical director, field Marshal Erhard Milch (1892-1972) in November 1941, and he desperately sought to increase production; however, between January and the end of April 1942 only 4645 aircraft were produced, of which 1460 were fighters. These were being destroyed at a high rate in Russia, the Mediterranean and in the west; and in these four months Britain produced 8118 aeroplanes, and in addition received 671 from North America. (#litres_trial_promo) Of ominous import for Germany’s cities and industries, 390 of these were the new four-engined heavy bombers, the Stirling, the Halifax and the Lancaster. The desperate situation of Russia had, together with the introduction of new navigational aids, prompted a renewal of Bomber Command’s offensive against Germany. Something – everything – had to be done to keep Russia in the war. Britain, however, was in no position to invade the continent and open a ‘second front’. Only in the air could she do anything to relieve Russia’s agony. On February 14 1942 a new directive, to bomb the ‘industrial areas’ of Essen, Duisburg, Dusseldorf and Cologne, was issued to the command by the air staff. (#litres_trial_promo) The attempt at ‘precision’ bombing was abandoned. This was the commencement of ‘area’ or ‘carpet’ bombing, in which hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were made homeless, blasted and incinerated, and the industrial infrastructure of Germany was dislocated. Nine days later, Arthur Harris took over as Commander in Chief. He began to plan a raid on a German city by a thousand bombers. In the meantime, the Billancourt Renault factory, which it was estimated produced 18,000 lorries per annum for the German army, was bombed on March 2nd/3rd by 235 aircraft; some 300 bombs hit the factory, causing an estimated loss of production of nearly 2300 lorries. In a series of attacks on industrial areas, Kiel (5 times), Wilhelmshaven, Essen (8 times), Cologne (4 times), Lubeck, Hanau, Lohr, Hamburg (twice), Dortmund (twice), Emden, Augsberg and Rostock (4 times) were attacked by the end of April. Lubeck and Rostock were both utterly devastated by fire, Goebbels reporting that community life in Rostock had ended. The word ‘Terrorangriff’ was used for the first time. (#litres_trial_promo) Altogether, between February 14 and the end of April, RAF Bomber Command conducted some 86 operations in seventy-five nights, including mine-laying, shipping attacks and major industrial raids, losing over 230 aircraft – considerably less than production. An Empire air training scheme meant that trained aircrew would be available to man the bombers which the factories were beginning to pour out; by the end of the war, Britain would have trained nearly 300,000 aircrew, of which some 120,000 were pilots, after commencing the war with an output of only some 5800 pilots per year. (#litres_trial_promo) Although, of course, the British training and production figures were unknown to the Germans, they knew the rate of British losses over Germany, and they knew that the attacks were on an increasing scale of weight and accuracy. And they knew that the United States was making preparations to enter the war in the air over the Reich. Clearly, they needed to do something. But it was the German army that was most obviously in need of the iron fruits of production. Despite the armoured force that had terrorised the west, the vast majority of the army consisted of infantry, marching on foot with horse drawn guns. The losses in Russia had ‘demodernised’ the army further, and it would fight the rest of the war in the east with insufficient tanks and guns. Tank production was 5290 in 1941, but none were as good as the soviet T34 or heavy KV tanks, of which 6243 were made in 1941. (#litres_trial_promo) Hitler would not be aware of this until the great clash at Stalingrad later in the year. Thus by April 1942 Germany had entered into a war of grinding attrition; of submarines, aircraft, tanks, guns, lorries, bombs, shells, explosives, cartridges, bullets and boots; of picks, shovels, gauges, instruments, radio and radar equipment, and optical lenses; of maintenance fitters, skilled and unskilled factory workers, of gunners, sailors, pilots, tank crew and infantrymen; and of housing, bedding, cooking utensils and even crockery. All were being consumed on a huge scale. Her war production was flat out, but inefficient; there were many faults in organisation and leadership, with the armed services competing with each other for capacity. By April 1942 prioritised, efficient production had become a life and death problem for Nazi Germany. CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_141d6d66-f7ca-5760-8d73-ceca74bc64d1) Promise from Peenemuende (#ulink_141d6d66-f7ca-5760-8d73-ceca74bc64d1) In that April of 1942, and amid these stringencies, came a proposal by Oberst Walter Dornberger, chief of weapons testing unit 11 (Wa Pruef 11), and in charge of German rocket development, which he hoped would gain his project top priority in production and development. Dornberger’s booklet, entitled ‘Proposals for the Operational Employment of the A4 Rocket’, was distributed to ‘the highest authorities civilian and military’. (#litres_trial_promo) It called for 5000 rockets a year to be launched from northern France against industrial and supply areas and communications in ‘southern England’. Dornberger provided details of the firing organisation, the basic unit of which was to be the ‘abteilung’. Each abteilung was to be divided into 3 batteries, each of which was to possess a mobile firing platform. One abteilung could sustain a fire 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. (#litres_trial_promo) 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. (#litres_trial_promo) 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. (#litres_trial_promo) By October 9 1939 General Becker was asking for a completion date of May 31 1941, which would demand some 9000 construction workers (it already had 5000); by the 11 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 20 November, to Dornberger’s horror, Hitler cut back the steel quota from 6000 to 2000 tons. (#litres_trial_promo) 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. (#litres_trial_promo) 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 Peenemunde (#litres_trial_promo). 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.” (#litres_trial_promo) 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.’ (#litres_trial_promo) 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.’ (#litres_trial_promo) 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.’ (#litres_trial_promo) All these bodies had been ill served by those within German industry itself who, expecting a consumer boom, sabotaged the controls imposed on them. (#litres_trial_promo) 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’. (#litres_trial_promo) The paths of glory in Nazi Germany were therefore plain; gain the ear of the Fuehrer, say (as obsequiously as possible) what he wants to hear, be loyal to your own power base and seek to augment its position, and remember the political shibboleths – remember 1918! Hitler, unlike Stalin, was not a good manager, and did not follow up his own decisions, which, sometimes impossible to obey or contradictory, were quietly and fearfully ignored. (#litres_trial_promo) He seemed unable to delegate responsibility. He nevertheless browbeat and insulted his generals. The following extracts from the notes of field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel (1882-1946), Hitler’s chief military advisor and head of the OKW, will serve as an illustration: Fuehrer’s general H.Q., 8 October, 1941. Keitel to Hitler: “Mein Fuehrer! I have already submitted, through General Jodl, the results of my investigations concerning the employment of shells based on the ‘hollow charge’ principle. However, in this respect I report personally as follows. The idea of the ‘hollow charge’ principle came to my attention purely by chance during the spring of this year. I did not, however, expect it to have any practical application during the campaign in the east or for the remainder of this year. When you, my Fuehrer, first drew my attention to the importance of this invention (the work of an SA man) the idea of an early or premature application of this idea never came to my mind. Nor do I recall having received instructions from you, my Fuehrer, to take precautionary steps to prevent the premature use of the invention. I realise, however, that there is no excuse or evasion of responsibility possible for me in this respect and that it was my duty to keep myself informed at all times about future developments in this case. If I had done so, I should have been aware that the use of this invention dates back to May of this year. I am fully aware of the consequences that might arise from the discovery and use of the weapon by the enemy and of their influence on the prosecution of the war. I believe from your statements and attitude in this matter that your confidence in me has been severely shaken, and I therefore beg you to receive me and to let me know your decision. Heil mein Fuehrer, signed Keitel, Generalfeldmarschall” Pencilled note by Keitel: “The Fuehrer granted me an audience, immediately, on the 8 October. After a long dissertation about the worst of all mistakes being to employ new weapons before our own defence against these weapons had been developed (this was a criminal neglect of the German high command in the last war), the Fuehrer condemned the present high command in the strongest fashion and claimed that it was guilty of equally criminal actions and even was guilty of stealing the invention itself. He stated that he was personally separated by an abyss from this institution of incompetence, including the high command’s general staff, which has selected the worst of all personnel for the top positions. To my suggestion that he should accept my resignation he answered that obviously he could not replace the general staff because nothing better was available. As regards myself personally, the Fuehrer insisted that I did not obey his order to prevent the use of the ‘hollow charge’ invention. After several questions about his confidence in me, which the Fuehrer consistently sidestepped, I finally put to him the direct question as to whether he wanted to work with me or not? Finally the Fuehrer shook my hand and gave an affirmative answer.” (#litres_trial_promo) In September 1940 the rocket had been reduced in priority to lb, which by a strange shorthand placed it third, ‘S’ (for Sealion, the planned invasion of Britain) being top, and la second. By October, Dornberger had managed to wrestle this up to la, after finding that nothing could be accomplished on lb. But the steel restrictions stayed. (#litres_trial_promo) Dornberger now tried another ploy, suggesting in a memorandum that the enemy, particularly the United States, might take the lead in the development of this decisive weapon. (#litres_trial_promo) By March 1941 the development of the rocket was again at top priority, with production second. But Dornberger, finding difficulty getting machine tools on second priority had, in a memorandum for a meeting between von Brauchitsch and von Leeb, alluded to the accuracy of his terror weapon, against which no defence could avail. (#litres_trial_promo) However, Fritz Todt, the armaments minister, in a letter to Fromm (Commander in Chief of the Reserve Army and Chief of Armament) had noted the lavish scale of the social, as well as research, amenities at Peenemunde. He cut 8.5 million reichsmarks from the budget. (#litres_trial_promo) Dornberger, in a memorandum to Hitler, now mentioned the damage to morale that the rocket could inflict, even if air superiority had been lost. (#litres_trial_promo) Hitler, the old soldier, had seen and felt the effects of a ruined morale in November 1918, and he was always alert to a mention of attacking the enemy’s will. With his air legions now deeply deployed in Russia, the dictator must have been considerably influenced by Dornberger’s timely comment, for he met him and von Braun on 29 August, and now apparently believing the rocket to have revolutionised warfare, demanded ‘hundreds of thousands’. (#litres_trial_promo) But he declined to order mass production until the missile had been properly developed – it must be remembered that, at this stage, not one had left the lauch pad. Hitler’s demand for hundreds of thousands was mistaken, but is perhaps not so ludicrous as it might appear. Certainly, this quantity could not be produced – at their eventual projected price of 50,000 reichsmarks each, just 200,000 rockets would cost 10 billion (10,000,000,000) reichsmarks, which, considering that the total military expenditure of the Reich in 1941 was 68.4 Bn RM, (#litres_trial_promo) was plainly out of the question. If financial limitation, in a totalitarian state which could direct labour where needed, is felt to be an unreliable guide to industrial capacity, then another calculation could have been made: if it took 60 man months to make each rocket (#litres_trial_promo), then 200,000 would require the labour of 12 million man months, or one million man years. The total labour force available to the Third Reich, including prisoners, was some 36 million. (#litres_trial_promo) In the insulting homily so assiduously recorded by field Marshal Keitel, it will be remembered that Hitler had stressed the folly of a too early introduction of a new weapon, which an enemy might copy and use before full advantage had been gained. Dornberger had already stressed the possibility of enemy development in his attempts to gain priority. Hitler’s request, therefore, was not one which should have surprised anybody; once its impossibility had been pointed out to him, a better appraisal of the possibilities of rocket warfare would have been available to the German leader. But it was not pointed out. Like the mice in the ancient story, the sober military leaders who were present at that meeting may all have felt it sensible to place a bell on the cat, but considerations of a more personal strategy made each disinclined to carry out the task himself. It was not what the Fuehrer desired to hear. But when the German Fuehrer was next found talking A4 rocket quantities, in early March 1942, it was a request for Speer to investigate the raw materials requirements for a quantity of 3000 per month. (#litres_trial_promo) But in April 1942 came Dornberger’s suggestion for 5000 rockets per annum which, it will be remembered, would require all of Germany’s alcohol production and more than all of her current production of liquid oxygen. What effect did that have on Hitler? He had seen the rocket supply scaled down since August 1941 from ‘hundreds of thousands’ to 5000. How many rockets did he think were necessary to have a decisive effect? From one point of view, it really was necessary to deploy hundreds of thousands of rockets. London was the ideal ‘terror’ target. It was the capital of the people who had themselves launched terror raids on Germany, and the need for vengeance would be satisfied. The free people of the capital might decide to pressure their government if the bombardment became unbearable, for the democratic government could surely not ignore the suffering of the population. But the whole London conurbation occupied some 700 square miles; 57,000 tons of bombs (equating to 57,000 rockets) had already been expended on the British, mostly on London, without significant military effect. Had not Hitler promised, when Berlin was first raided, that he would ‘in one night drop 150, 230 or 400,000 kilograms?’ It has been seen in chapter one, that it was estimated by British scientists that 1250 tons of bombs per square mile were necessary to achieve a 50 per cent devastation. London’s 700 square miles, by this calculation, would need 875,000 rockets; to achieve 80% destruction would need 2900 tons per square mile, or 2,030,000 rockets. This would be, of course, if the aiming error were exactly as planned by Dornberger, ie 2 to 3 mils. (If a destruction of 80% of an area is thought excessive, this was just the fate eventually suffered by the 300 square miles of the Ruhr, as will be seen later). German mathematicians were presumably equally capable of making this calculation. Yet when Dornberger’s memorandum arrived in April 1942, with its call for 5000 rockets, i.e. 5000 tons of explosive, to be launched each year against ‘southern England’, there seems to have been no outburst from the Fuehrer, who was supposed to carry weapon specifications in his head (to the great discomfort of his generals). At Dornberger’s rate of fire, London would have been 80% destroyed by the twenty fourth century of the Christian era, presuming that rebuilding work were to cease for the interval. Could Hitler, whose whole mindset in war pivoted around morale, Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/richard-overy/hitler-s-terror-weapons-the-price-of-vengeance/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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