Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

The imaginary threat of American missile attacks from the periphery of Europe may also have influenced Hitler’s decision to order the A-4 into production. In early January 1943 he told Speer that it was “absolutely essential, in view of the rocket development going forward in America, that the most urgent experiments be made to find out if the jamming of the guide beams can provide a defense against such rockets.” The repeated warnings from Ordnance about foreign competition, reinforced by faulty German intelligence reports, had had their effect. The Army rocket program had become an ironic mirror image of the Manhattan Project: While the Germans were racing a virtually nonexistent American missile program, the Americans (with British and Canadian help) were racing a virtually nonexistent German atomic bomb effort. 7

How large a factor that was in the Führer’s change of heart is difficult to determine, although it was clearly quite secondary to “vengeance.” But, whatever the reason, Speer had finally received Hitler’s approval for A-4 production. That good news was immediately conveyed to Dornberger, along with another order from the Führer: massive air-raid-proof bunkers must be built along the Channel coast for firing the missiles at London. 8

That demand sparked a fascinating controversy between the chief of Wa Prüf 11 and his engineers. From his war experience in the heavy artillery and from the unwieldy character of the Paris Gun’s railroad-borne equipment, Dornberger knew that missile batteries needed to be lightly equipped and mobile. In December 1939 he had proposed a train with minimal equipment that could carry and launch eight missiles. By 1942 Dornberger’s group still planned a railroad battery, but the primary deployment mode was to be a motorized regiment, consisting of three batteries of trucks and other road vehicles. Klaus Riedel, the veteran of the Raketenflugplatz, had been given the task of planning the vehicles after he was removed from the leadership of the test stands in 1940. When Hitler demanded bunkers, however, von Braun immediately jumped at the idea. He asserted in a November 27 memo to Dornberger that this launch mode was more suited to a missile still far from being a mass production item. The road-mobile system, he felt, required a more refined rocket and better-trained crews. The heart of the matter was that he and his engineers felt more comfortable with something resembling their test-stand operations. Dornberger disagreed heatedly, but had little choice but to go along with Hitler’s wishes. 9

While the Peenemünders were considering the design of a bunker to be used in conjunction with the mobile regiment (the railroad concept was shelved), Speer was considering how best to push through A-4 production with the maximum possible speed. Hitler still did not want to give missile manufacturing the superpriority rating of “DE,” a grade that was supposed to be reserved for urgent new weapons development, not for production. No later than December 5, the Armaments Minister decided that the best solution was the creation of a “A-4 Special Committee” headed by one of his most energetic subordinates, the “dictator” of locomotive production, Gerhard Degenkolb. 10

Degenkolb was representative of the new breed of corporate managers who had come to the fore under Todt and Speer. On leave from his position as a director in the heavy industry firm of DEMAG, the heavy-set, totally bald Degenkolb was a fanatical Nazi and a ruthless and authoritarian personality. He had made his reputation by shaking up the production of locomotives in 1942, when Germany’s vast continental empire was desperately short of transport. 11

Dornberger probably first met Degenkolb three days before Christmas during a crucial meeting in Speer’s Berlin office. Among others in attendance were Ordnance chief Leeb and Karl Otto Saur, Speer’s forceful, even rude deputy, who was apparently still unconvinced of the A-4’s value. The chief of Wa Prüf 11 lectured on the plans for military deployment and the possible sites for a bunker inland from Calais and Boulogne, France, using a cutaway model and a diorama of a mobile battery, complete with toy vehicles. Speer approved the plans and assigned bunker construction to the Organization Todt, the huge construction organization he had inherited from the former Armaments Minister. A site selection group composed of Stegmaier, guidance chief Steinhoff, and Lieutenant Colonel Georg Thom, Dornberger’s chief of staff for liquid-fuel rocketry, was to leave immediately after Christmas. Most important, Speer formally approved A-4 production “on the order of the Führer.” He may even have brought with him a decree signed by Hitler. At the same time he dismissed the suggestion, probably from Dornberger, that “Cherry Stone” was a threat to the A-4. The Minister felt that it was not far enough along in its development. Indeed, when the Luftwaffe attempted the first launch of the missile from Peenemünde-West two days later, it was a complete failure. 12

In January 1943 Degenkolb began to organize the A-4 Special Committee, which was modeled on the committee system of economic administration that Todt had founded and Speer had extended. Under the supervision of Degenkolb’s Berlin office at “Locomotive House,” the new body would eventually comprise approximately twenty “working committees” of industry, Ministry, and Ordnance representatives (including Peenemünders). The task of the subcommittees was to coordinate the production of the missile and its various components, ancillary equipment, and propellants. Von Braun, for example, became chairman of “Final Acceptance,” responsible for the engine and missile test stands located at each production site for calibration and quality control. (Since the A-4 had no feedback control regulating engine thrust, it was necessary to calibrate and match combustion chambers and turbopumps through systematic testing.) Detmar Stahlknecht, on assignment from Speer since mid-1942 as head of the Production Planning Directorate in Peenemünde, was made chairman of a similarly named subcommittee. That move was an attempt to coordinate the latest organizational innovation with the preceding one, but the boundary lines between the activities of Stahlknecht and Degenkolb initially remained fuzzy. An even earlier attempt to sort out the confusion in the missile production program, Dornberger’s Ordnance A-4 Working Staff, had in the meantime faded into irrelevance because of his attempt to proceed without the Armaments Ministry. 13

Notwithstanding that experience, the chief of Wa Prüf 11 naturally resented the A-4 Special Committee’s intrusion into his bailiwick, particularly when it came in the form of an individual as tactless and overbearing as Degenkolb. In his very first meeting with the locomotives czar, Dornberger had realized with a shock that Degenkolb had been one of Ordnance’s most vituperative critics during the “munitions crisis” of 1940, leading to the suicide of General Becker. Degenkolb embodied the Armament Ministry’s reorganization of the war economy in favor of industry and at the expense of the military. In short order, the relationship between the two became tense. Matters only worsened at the end of February 1943, when Degenkolb tried to arrange for the sale of the Peenemünde Production Plant to the giant electrical firm AEG. He was justifiably unimpressed by the way Dornberger and Schubert had laid out the factory, but he also brought with him a general contempt for military management. In order to stop the AEG initiative, Dornberger proposed the creation of an “Adolf Hitler Ltd.” instead, presumably under Army ownership. Ultimately the power of the senior service was still sufficient to stymie Degenkolb’s blatant power grab; AEG pulled out of the deal in early March. 14