Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

The first and most difficult phase of the priority battle had thus come to an end. The year and a half since Hitler’s steel cutbacks had truly been Peenemünde’s time of troubles, in large part because it was also the era, as Speer later said, of “incompetence, arrogance, and egotism” in the war economy. Weak leadership, competing bureaucracies, interservice rivalries, and shortages of key resources had produced paralysis and inefficiency. In the process, Peenemünde’s priority was changed numerous times, or at least had to be upheld in numerous battles. Those battles no doubt wasted Dornberger’s time and certainly delayed the ill-conceived and extravagantly planned Production Plant, thereby shaping the rocket chief’s perception of the pace of the whole A-4 program. Yet there were ways in which the existing political division and irresponsibility helped the program too. The remnants of the Army’s autonomy and power, in conjunction with Ordnance’s alliance-building with Nazi leaders like Speer, allowed the senior service to sustain the Peenemünde project while avoiding any systematic examination of the missile’s military effectiveness. 47

While the Production Plant was hard hit by the priority crises of 1939–40, ballistic missile development was much less affected. The uncertain situations in July and October 1940 undoubtedly did cause some lost time on contracts for important equipment, especially critical components like gyroscopes and transmitters. It is also possible that the reduction to second priority for six months in the winter of 1940–41 had an impact on contract deliveries. Under the rules, however, contractors were not supposed to lose any workers to first-priority projects. 48

Further delays in the delivery of guidance, radio, and turbopump components were caused by a lack of available industrial capacity even when rocket development was in first priority, which was most of the time. Siemens’s aircraft instruments division, for example, was none too cooperative, because it had so many pressing commitments to the Luftwaffe for mass-produced items. The national superpriority that Dornberger and Leeb had requested in June 1940, however illusory and selfish, might indeed have helped to speed matters up a bit in such cases. But, contrary to to Dornberger’s view, delays caused by a lack of capacity had nothing to do with Hitler’s downgrading of Peenemünde’s priority. The Führer’s most important decision—to cut back steel quotas—affected factory construction only. If he had been more supportive of the project, of course, it would have helped, but the Army managed to circumvent his occasional attempts to curb accelerated development. 49

On the other side of the ledger are the stunning breakthroughs in key technologies achieved between 1939 and 1941, especially in guidance and control. Those impressive accomplishments are grounds for skepticism about critical delays in missile research and development in that period. Further evidence on that point comes from Ernst Steinhoff. In his annual report for 1940, the single worst year for priority difficulties, the guidance and control chief wrote that “the desired goals could almost everywhere be reached.” Difficulties in finding specialists had moderated in the course of the year. Only in the area of skilled craftsmen did Steinhoff see a significant continuing problem. Thus, when Dornberger claimed in October 1940 that development had already slipped three-quarters of a year to the end of 1941, it really represented the evaporation of the Utopian deadline of May 1941. 50As a result of the first phase of the priority battle, missile development lagged by only a few months, and capacity problems may have added another couple of months.

In the minds of Dornberger and his associates, the impact was much worse. But, inspired by an enthusiastic belief in the technology and backed by the Army leadership, they naturally fought on with all available means to advance their project. As the summer of 1941 approached, they were confronted with three principal challenges: winning Hitler’s favor, launching new cooperative projects with the Luftwaffe, and bringing the first A-4s to the test stand.

The sixteen months from June 1941 to October 1942 were a transitional period for the Army rocket group and for the Third Reich. Hitler’s gigantic, long-desired assault on the Soviet Union, “Operation Barbarossa,” was launched on June 22. Months of spectacular victories (and unimaginable brutality) followed, leading the German populace to expect a triumphal peace within a year or two. At the end of 1941, in a shocking turnabout, the offensive ground to halt in the Russian winter, and the United States entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The altered situation forced the Nazi leadership into a major reorganization of a war economy already mired in serious difficulties. Not only would the Reich have to match the industrial output of three great powers, instead of only one (Britain), it also had to satisfy the Eastern Front’s insatiable appetite for more and more soldiers. The resulting manpower crisis, in combination with Hitler’s vicious racial ideology, led directly to the exploitation of forced and slave labor on a huge scale.

The shifting winds of the war inevitably had an impact on the rocket program. The priority battle continued, but in an altered form; the changes in the direction of the war economy distracted Dornberger and Ordnance, but Hitler embraced the project more enthusiastically, with a corresponding increase in the materials and manpower devoted to it. Because of the changing strategic situation, Army–Luftwaffe relations in rocketry changed as well, to a pattern reminiscent of the late 1930s: more intense cooperation combined with greater interservice competition. This time, however, the cooperation focused on anti-aircraft defense, while the rivalry was less hidden. In the spring of 1942 the air service initiated a competing project to build a cruise missile later called the V-1. Von Braun’s development group also had to struggle through a difficult transition between June 1941 and October 1942: from building and launching the A-5 to constructing and firing its much larger, more complicated successor. Bringing the A-4 to the launch pad, getting it to fly, and making it suitable for large-scale production proved to be much more difficult than expected. A successful launch became essential to the high priority of the project. Peenemünde could not go on indefinitely consuming huge quantities of resources; the promises made for the ballistic missile were beginning to wear thin.

After a relatively quiet interlude, the second phase of the A-4 priority battle began with yet another “Führer order” for the “redirection of armaments production.” This time Hitler ordered the reorientation toward an air force and fleet aimed at Britain in the days before Barbarossa was launched—so arrogant was his belief in quick victory over the Soviet Union. As in the preceding summer, the result was confusion and infighting, but Armaments Minister Fritz Todt did make some marginal progress toward a rationalization of the war economy. Although Göring and OKW Economics chief Thomas had managed to stymie Todt’s efforts to carry out a reform since May 1940, the Armaments Minister did obtain from the Führer the right to control all armed forces construction under the new “redirection” order. Todt set out to cut back Army construction in order to shift resources to the Luftwaffe and Navy. 1

The Minister’s decrees immediately threw into doubt Peenemünde’s 50-million-mark construction budget for the next fiscal year. Since 90 percent of that money was earmarked for the Production Plant, and the facility was still bogged down in manpower shortages and contract delays due to its second priority (“S”) status, Todt’s campaign threatened to set the factory even farther back. Greatly disturbed by this prospect, Army Ordnance chief Leeb quickly secured a meeting with Field Marshal von Brauchitsch on June 28. He carried with him a memorandum originally drafted by Dornberger. 2