Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

Dornberger’s organizational philosophy thus seems to have resulted in a fairly efficient use of research and development resources, judging by the technological breakthroughs achieved in only five years. But however those resources were managed, it is clear that laying the foundations for the ballistic missile in such a short time demanded a tremendous investment by the Reich, which would have been impossible without a high priority rating from the Army and support from within the Nazi leadership. To understand the political and financial foundations for Peenemünde’s technological achievement, and to set the stage for later conflicts over the rocket program, we must therefore return to 1937–38 and the origins of the wartime battle for priority.

Until the outbreak of the war, the Army rocket program was largely sheltered from political interference. When it was only a small research effort, little support was needed beyond the level of the Chief of Ordnance. As the program grew into a multimillion-mark enterprise, it was necessary to secure the backing of the Army Commander-in-Chief for the creation of Peenemünde in 1936. But that task did not prove difficult. General von Fritsch, like many of his subordinates, retained a great deal of autonomy from Hitler in technical questions, had a blinkered vision of strategy, and came from the artillery, the branch out of which the rocket group had sprung. Ordnance’s rocketry alliance with the politically powerful Luftwaffe further ensured that there would be few priority problems. Of course, Dornberger’s engineers did not receive everything they wanted, but the construction of the wind tunnel, the creation of the guidance and control laboratory, and the tripling of Peenemünde’s staff in less than two years indicate that program was generously funded and staffed even before the attack on Poland.

After Britain and France declared war in September 1939, however, the need to justify this expensive undertaking grew much stronger. Despite the lack of any serious challenge to the ballistic missile’s military effectiveness, the voracious demands of the accelerated A-4 schedule collided with shortages of key resources like steel and skilled labor. Matters were made worse by a badly organized military command structure and war economy that provoked conflicts among the services over a range of issues. The resulting scramble for priority drew Hitler more and more into armaments decisionmaking as time passed. To sustain high-level support, Ordnance and Dornberger were therefore impelled by the pressure of circumstances, as well as by faith in the missile, to assert that the A-4 would be available in numbers sufficient to be militarily decisive—and soon. The problem of mass production thus loomed ever larger in the struggle to maintain the high priority of the rocket program. Central to the entire battle was a missile assembly facility to be built at the Baltic coast center.

Dornberger’s idea for a missile factory was born—or first aired—on the Greifswalder Oie in December 1937. During the weather-plagued, ill-fated A-3 launch expedition, the group was temporarily trapped on the island by a violent storm. With no A-3s available for firing and with the water driven out of the harbor by high winds, there was little for the leaders of the Army rocket group to do but sit around debating the future. Discussions focused on A-4 construction. Arthur Rudolph described in a 1989 interview how the factory idea came up:

And so one day von Braun and Dornberger and I were sitting together… out of the blue sky [Dornberger said], “I want to build a… production plant for the V-2 and the coming big rocket, and you will do that.” I [replied], “Dornberger, for heaven’s sake, I’m a development man, I’m not a production man, and you leave this up to industry, don’t bother us fellows in development with your new ideas.” And von Braun was of course saying the same thing, even harsher than I did….

There was an argument, there was a strong argument. I was so opposed to it.

In another interview Rudolph stated: “We tried desperately to talk him out of this idea. We told him we should concentrate on the development of the A-4 and leave any pilot production, or full production, to industry.” 1

Rudolph and von Braun were right to argue that the factory was premature, especially for a rocket group with no experience in manufacturing. Dornberger wanted to build a full missile assembly facility at Peenemünde, not merely a pilot production plant, yet the A-4 was only a rough concept on paper, and there was not even a vague sketch of the “coming big rocket,” or A-10. Called simply the “100-ton device” before 1940, this larger missile was to have a range of 800 kilometers (500 miles) and would quadruple the A-4’s 1-ton warhead and 25-ton engine thrust. As was the case in the planning of the development shops and test stands of Peenemünde-East, Dornberger wanted the rocket factory sized to accommodate the A-10, since the A-4 was viewed only as an interim weapon. All the objections of von Braun and Rudolph were to no avail. Dornberger warned Rudolph, then the head of the development shops, that he would be put under a project head and compelled to design the plant, if necessary. The chief of Wa Prüf 11 clearly felt that the factory was that urgent. 2

For nearly a year nothing further came of the idea, presumably because of the failure of the A-3s and the need to demonstrate positive results. In the meantime, the program was aided by another stroke of luck. General (later Field Marshal) Walther von Brauchitsch, an artillerist, was promoted to Army Commander-in-Chief in February 1938 as a result of political intrigues by Göring and the SS against General von Fritsch and the War Minister, Field Marshal von Blomberg. Neither general had been enthusiastic about Hitler’s turn toward a more aggressive foreign policy. To achieve greater control over the military, the Führer exploited those plots to force von Fritsch and von Blomberg out of office. He abolished the War Ministry and created an Armed Forces High Command (OKW), with himself as Supreme Commander. He persuaded von Brauchitsch to accept the Army position in part by giving him a large cash payment to facilitate a long-desired but costly divorce. Thereby compromised with the regime, von Brauchitsch further accelerated the Nazification of his service. He nonetheless remained an outsider in the highest echelons of the Third Reich. 3

For the rocket group, however, his appointment was a boon. Von Brauchitsch promoted Becker to Ordnance Chief in March, undoubtedly with the approval of Hitler. In addition, the new Commander-in-Chief, who had been Dornberger’s superior officer in the 1920s, looked upon the younger man’s career with fatherly concern. Those advantages did not, however, result in an immediate go-ahead for Dornberger’s rocket factory. Apparently only after the group successfully launched the first unguided A-5s in October 1938 did the Army Commander-in-Chief order the purchase of land for the “expansion” of Peenemünde-East on November 21. It was, he stated, “particularly urgent for national defense.” 4

Planning began in January 1939, when Dornberger created a new Berlin subsection of Wa Prüf 11 headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant who had built camouflaged munitions factories in World War I. Rudolph became his chief engineer in Peenemünde, although not on a full-time basis until July. Their task was to construct by early 1943 something that had never existed before: a ballistic missile factory. The four-year time scale ordered by von Brauchitsch, no doubt on the advice of Becker and Dornberger, was the expected peacetime development period of either the A-4 or the A-10. In February 1939, however, the Peenemünde engineers gave a more realistic estimate of at least six years before the design of the bigger missile would be finished. 5