Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

For the development engineers at Peenemünde, almost all efforts now centered on the A-4 and related activities, such as A-5 launches and the design of the long-range winged A-4 (soon dubbed the A-9). The “100-ton device” (A-10) remained on the books too, but it was a mere paper concept as long as the smaller missile was unfinished. On the production side, Dornberger applied pressure to finish the final plans for the factory in a hurry. Its completion was still about four years away, in all probability because of manpower shortages in Schubert’s group and at the job site. Now an enormous acceleration of the schedule was required, although as Schubert himself noted on November 16, “in the current stage of the [A-4’s] development… too little is fixed even now.” 21As events would show, two more years of fundamental breakthroughs and basic testing would be required to complete even an untested configuration of the missile. Schubert’s comment demonstrates again the fundamentally political character of the deadlines that had been imposed on the program by von Brauchitsch, Becker, and Dornberger.

Only days later, Hitler’s intervention began to undermine Ordnance’s overly optimistic planning. The speedup in the construction of the Production Plant greatly expanded its demand for steel. In order to satisfy that demand, von Brauchitsch had added 4,000 metric tons a month from his own quota to the 2,000 allotted by the Ordnance Development and Testing Division. At a time when this commodity was rationed and in ever shorter supply, General Keitel, the OKW Chief of Staff, felt it necessary to obtain the Führer’s acquiescence to this decision. According to a later Dornberger memorandum, Keitel made an “error” regarding the character of the weapons being developed at Peenemünde, causing Hitler to see the project as “not so urgent.” (Keitel’s “error,” if there was one, was in not conveying with sufficient enthusiasm the Army’s belief in the rocket.) Subsequently, on November 20, Becker asked for and received permission from the Führer to give a presentation on the missile program. It did not do much good. Hitler decided “that development and expansion must proceed as originally planned, but he could not give his permission for an accelerated expansion.” 22

The content of this decision needs to be analyzed carefully, especially in view of the later assertions of Dornberger and others that Hitler delayed the A-4’s military deployment by up to two years. The Führer clearly indicated that the prewar schedule should apply, at least as far as the steel quotas were concerned. He in no way “dropped Peenemünde from the priority list,” nor did he give the program “just enough money to continue on a very small scale,” to cite only two particularly inaccurate postwar statements by Dornberger. 23There was no meaningful priority list at that time; all that existed was Göring’s ineffective construction order, which was not reversed by Hitler, plus rationing of key resources such as steel and coal. The Führer did support development of the missile, although not on the new urgent schedule. As events would prove, however, that did not prevent the Army from continuing to push the program as fast as it could. Immersed in the Third Reich’s Hitler cult, Dornberger and his contemporaries consistently exaggerated the Führer’s ability to control events, especially in the early years of the war, when he was often indecisive or uninterested as far as the details of the war economy were concerned.

Hitler’s decision on Peenemünde’s steel quotas was probably influenced by concerns beyond his lukewarm opinion of the rocket program. The Supreme Commander was on very bad terms with the Army leadership after the Polish campaign, because the generals considered his demands for an immediate offensive against France reckless and passively resisted them. Without the Führer’s knowledge, a military opposition movement had sprung up after the Blomberg–Fritsch affair. During the tense months of October-December 1939, indecisive coup plots flourished again in the highest circles of the Army. Chief of the Army General Staff Franz Halder went to meetings with Hitler with a pistol in his pocket, but he did nothing. 24

Hitler’s Polish gamble had led to a major war far sooner than the military planning date of 1942–44. That contributed to a severe ammunition shortage after the Polish campaign. The shortage, plus the Army High Command’s desire for further troop training to eliminate operational shortcomings seen in September, were the main reasons for the generals’ resistance to a fall western offensive. By November a full-fledged “munitions crisis” broke out in the leadership of the Third Reich. Hitler fixed upon Army Ordnance, which produced most of the munitions for all three services, as the main scapegoat. Cutting back Peenemünde’s quota was Hitler’s way of telling Ordnance to concentrate its scarce steel resources on more pressing construction projects—a perfectly valid decision. 25

Hitler’s intervention nonetheless shocked Dornberger, because it undercut his assumption that the Production Plant would be ready by the time A-4 development was scheduled to be finished, that is, by May 1941. The chief of the rocket program unleashed a campaign in December to reverse the decision, especially after he realized that Peenemünde would receive only 2,000 tons of steel a month beginning in January. The net effect, he indicated, would be to cut back and delay the factory greatly. Based on studies by Schubert’s group, two of the three huge assembly buildings, each with dimensions of 120 by 240 meters (400 by 800 feet), would have to be canceled. By eliminating or postponing many other buildings and by cutting down construction costs, it would be theoretically possible to salvage a manufacturing date of September 1941, but only at the cost of very low production figures and a slow buildup even in a two-shift operation. Dornberger gave a schedule of eighteen A-4s a month at the outset, growing to ninety in July 1942. Full capacity would therefore be only 1,080 missiles annually. 26

Dornberger’s figures and dates were completely hypothetical and assumed that development would be finished on time. Structuring the plan that way did, however, protect the early deadline for missile deployment at the cost of very low initial output. But Dornberger naturally held out higher figures at earlier dates if the full steel quota were to be restored. It was all to no avail. On December 19 Becker met with von Brauchitsch. The Army Commander-in-Chief confirmed that he could not alter Hitler’s steel cutback but ordered that development continue on the accelerated schedule. 27

About the same time, a new, more serious threat emerged. Severe steel shortages and the “munitions crisis” led to an ineffective campaign to cancel construction projects not classed as “important for the war.” By early January 1940, however, Becker was able to reassure the rocket group that Peenemünde would not lose its status; von Brauchitsch’s decision remained in effect. The turn of the year 1939–40 was thus a nerve-racking time for the rocket enthusiasts, even though the actual impact of the priority crisis on the Army’s missile research—as opposed to the production facility—was minimal. 28

Although Dornberger was appalled at the cutbacks to his Production Plant, his defense of the program had not been without effect. One of his key arguments was the claim that Germany was in an international missile race that it could ill afford to lose. In a December 14, 1939, memorandum, he stated:

It also must be remembered that intensive development in the area of the long-range rocket has been carried out with the support of the relevant armed services in all larger states, e.g., France, England, the United States of America, and Russia. Germany has an unquestioned lead of a few years in the long-range rocket field, which will be lost if the Peenemünde Production Plant is stopped. Because enemy states will accelerate the development of this perhaps decisive weapon even more in the current war, we must expect its deployment by the enemy side starting in early 1942 at the latest. 29