Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

In addition to having primary responsibility for developing the 25-ton engine, the propulsion group had to develop related devices in conjunction with Walter Riedel’s design bureau. Problems with the jet vanes were largely solved in mid-1938, when a new draftsman at Kummersdorf suggested that graphite replace the expensive and unsatisfactory tungsten-molybdenum alloys employed in the A-3 vanes. Thiel’s group also inherited the development of the turbopumps that would be needed to move the large volumes of propellants. Von Braun had initiated that project in mid-1935 at the southwest German firm of Klein, Schanzlin & Becker. Apparently the company had experience with large firefighting water pumps, but extreme temperatures, difficulties lubricating the liquid-oxygen side, and the need for lightness and compactness posed fundamental problems that would require years to overcome. The demands of liquid-fuel rocket engineering pushed turbopump development to the absolute limits of the technology. 12

The Kummersdorf engineers also had to find a way to drive the pump’s central turbine that would provide the energy to suck liquid oxygen and alcohol from the tanks. Ordnance patented various schemes in the spring of 1936, including drawing hot gases from the combustion chamber to push the turbine blades. But the eventual solution actually derived from collaboration with Hellmuth Walter’s hydrogen peroxide rocket work. In March 1936 von Braun asked Walter to design what would soon be called the “steam generator.” When peroxide was mixed with a catalyst, it produced superheated steam that could be used to drive a turbine. The first design, based on a torpedo system, did not work well but promised a more practical solution than employing the fiery exhaust gases of the rocket engine. After 1937 the smaller turbopump/steam-generator system for the rocket aircraft projects provided further development experience (and funds from the Luftwaffe) to help solve the problem. The first turbopump-fed Ordnance rocket engines were actually the ones developed for the second version of the He 112 flown in 1939–40. By 1941 Thiel’s propulsion group, aided by Riedel’s design bureau, had the basic configuration of the A-4 turbopumps and steam generator in hand, but numerous development and manufacturing problems continued. 13

Only in the case of these auxiliary devices did corporations play an important role in propulsion design and development. Otherwise the civil service engineers at Kummersdorf and Peenemünde dominated the process. After the war began, Army Ordnance began to draw the universities into rocket research as a third force. Although dissertation work had been important in propulsion before 1937, it took the war to force the partial lifting of the secrecy restrictions. The catalyzing event was the Army Commander-in-Chief’s acceleration of the A-4 project immediately after the outbreak of the war. In order to solve the missile’s perplexing technical problems in time for its projected military deployment in September 1941, Army Ordnance decided to bring academic research institutions into the program on a large scale. General Becker, chief of Ordnance since March 1938, probably suggested and certainly approved this action. 14

In addition to accelerating the A-4 schedule, Becker had a second motivation for bringing Peenemünde and the universities together: securing the Army’s place in wartime academic research. In the intervening years he had become one of the leading science policymakers of the Third Reich. As Dean of the Faculty of Military Technology at the Technical University of Berlin, Becker had played an important role in the increasing militarization and state domination of German scientific institutions. Although his faculty never came into effective operation, and Becker delegated most of his duties to the Associate Dean, his academic position helped to further his national prominence and his relations with the Nazi elite. In 1937 Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust named him President of a newly created Reich Research Council. Like so many leaders in the National Socialist regime, Becker acquired at least the illusion of power by accumulating many different hats. The Research Council turned out, however, to be stillborn. Rivalry among the various ministries and armed services made a coherent science policy impossible to achieve, especially because Rust was a nonentity in the ruthless behind-the-scenes struggle that was the Third Reich. 15

When a general war rather unexpectedly erupted in 1939, chaos reigned in German education and science policy. No plan for the mobilization of science and engineering existed, and massive callups drained the research institutes of students and younger scholars. There was even talk of closing the universities for the duration of the war. For both patriotic and selfish reasons, leaders of academic institutions eagerly sought military projects that would provide funding and draft exemptions. Self-interest also compelled the armed services to grab what institutes they could: Not only did they need more research capacity because of the demands of war, but they also wished to prevent other services or bodies from taking over institutes they wanted. By its very nature, the Third Reich was a collection of competing bureaucratic empires. Hitler had further exacerbated interservice rivalry in the late 1930s by failing to provide effective tri-service coordination or clear priorities for rearmament. In September 1939 Becker thus had to move quickly to secure the Army’s role in academia, which could scarcely be accomplished through the Reich Research Council. The fact that the Ordnance chief himself had little use for that body, although he headed it, is shown by Ordnance’s seizure of the nuclear project from the council in that same month. Erich Schumann’s research division was given supervision over this small effort to investigate the feasibility of atomic bombs and reactors, which had arisen from the discovery of uranium fission by German physicists at the end of 1938. 16

With the encouragement of Becker, Dornberger’s rocket section (Wa Prüf 11) immediately began to establish direct contacts with academic institutes, mostly at the technical (engineering) universities. The first known meeting took place on September 14 at the Technical University of Dresden. Precisely two weeks later, Dornberger, Thiel, and Walter Riedel headed a conference at Kummersdorf on propulsion research attended by representatives of four universities. Around that time or shortly thereafter, three dozen professors visited Peenemünde. That occasion soon acquired the ironic nickname “The Day of Wisdom”—the day on which so many great minds were at the center. It went into Peenemünde mythology as the day on which the connection between the rocket program and the universities was born, but the academics would never have been admitted to the ultrasecret center unless they had already agreed to cooperate. Only the details as to which institutes would take which projects remained to be settled. 17

In forging the alliance with academia, Dornberger followed Becker’s lead and ignored the Research Council completely. Even the Education Ministry was treated dismissively. On September 19 the chief of Wa Prüf 11 merely asked Schumann, as the liaison person, to notify Rust’s Ministry that certain institutes would be working for the Army and more were expected to do so. The leader of the rocket section gave this revealing excuse for violating channels: “The accelerated execution of agreements was necessary because, insofar as the relevant persons had not already been drafted, they were going to be [contractually] obligated to the RLM [Air Ministry].” 18Notwithstanding the close Luftwaffe connections that still prevailed in some aspects of Army rocket development, interservice relations continued to erode. That situation did not bode well for the German war effort. Nor, for that matter, was the commitment of so many resources to the militarily dubious A-4 project a particularly good sign.