Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

While the leading engineers were carrying out the conversion, Dornberger was fighting to save his career. As soon as Kammler received his new powers from Himmler, he opened a campaign to isolate Dornberger and seize control of his staff. The SS general claimed the right to give direct orders to Dornberger’s chief of staff and longtime deputy for liquid-fuel rocketry, Lieutenant Colonel Georg Thom. Dornberger was to be left with only a fraction of his former responsibilities. Kammler doubtless saw him as a rival, and the two had clashed in the spring and summer over the airbursts and other technical troubles holding up A-4 deployment. 12Moreover, Dornberger was a protégé of the jailed and now universally despised Fromm. Still, Kammler could not make a political charge against him stick. Despite Dornberger’s proximity to the July 20 conspirators, there is no evidence that they tried to recruit him, and for good reason. The plotters could not have trusted someone who had so openly declared his enthusiasm for the Third Reich.

As a result of Kammler’s offensive, Dornberger was in despair. He drew up a letter asking for a transfer to other duties and was allegedly talked out of sending it only when Wernher von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff came for a Sunday afternoon visit. They argued that he must not abandon them. Dornberger’s despair must have been increased by the fact that Thom cooperated with Kammler’s attempts to circumvent him; his chief of staff had stabbed him in the back. Relations between the two completely broke down. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous and ruthless Kammler seized control of the operational A-4 batteries at the beginning of September, shut out the LXV Army Corps, and used the SS’s power of intimidation to force the OKW’s acquiescence. Thus the opening of the A-4 campaign—against London and newly liberated Paris on September 7 and 8—occurred under Kammler’s command. Twelve days later the designated tactical commander, Major General Richard Metz, resigned his now meaningless position. 13

The SS general did not succeed, however, in forcing out Dornberger. On Kammler’s order, Thom went to report to Jüttner about the battles over control of the Dornberger staff and the operational rocket batteries. From Thom’s account of the September 14 conversation, it appears that Jüttner was himself angered at the rapaciousness of his SS colleague. He thought it “intolerable” that Kammler had forbidden Dornberger any direct approach to Jüttner himself or to Himmler on pain of being shot! Jüttner, as Fromm’s de facto replacement, refused to let Dornberger drop. Perhaps he saw the usefulness of the rocket general’s technical expertise, or perhaps he saw him only as a counterweight to Kammler. In any case, Kammler was obliged to make a truce with Dornberger. Thom left to become chief of staff of the “Vengeance Division” set up by Kammler to control the missile batteries. Dornberger became the SS general’s representative at home, responsible for the training of new units and A-4 supply and shipment up to the border of Germany. His position as BzbV Heer was thus effectively restored at the end of September. Kammler and Dornberger no doubt continued to detest each other, but they had struck a deal they could live with, particularly as both were committed to trying to save the Reich by firing as many V-2s (as the Propaganda Ministry soon called them) as possible. 14

Kammler, with Himmler’s backing, inevitably tried to seize control of A-4 production as well. Immediately after Kammler’s appointment, Speer shot off a pair of letters addressed to Jüttner but transparently aimed at the Reichsführer-SS. The second dealt specifically with the ballistic missile. Its message—stay off my turf!—was ignored by Kammler, who had his own foothold in production through the SS’s role in the Mittelwerk, through his slave-labor construction empire, and through his position on the Armaments Staff under Karl Otto Saur. That body had superseded the Fighter Staff on August 1 after aircraft production had been totally absorbed by the Armaments Ministry. Speer’s position, meanwhile, was in decline because of SS gains and because of the rise of Saur as a rival power center within the Ministry itself. Thus, whatever the formal arrangements, in the fall of 1944 Kammler felt free to intervene directly in A-4 production by giving orders to his ally, Albin Sawatzki, the real power within Mittelwerk. Further indication of Speer’s declining influence is given by yet another document outlining the division of powers in the A-4 program. Drafted by Dornberger’s staff in consultation with the other parties concerned, it was finally signed by Jüttner on December 31, 1944. Although organizations controlled by the Ministry were included in the negotiations—the Mittelwerk company, Electromechanical Industries, and the Special Committee—a copy was sent to Speer only as an afterthought. 15

In comparison to the Mittelwerk or the A-4 batteries, Peenemünde felt Kammler’s heavy hand much more indirectly. The fortunate coincidence that most of the facility had been incorporated just after July 20 had indeed given von Braun’s development engineers greater institutional protection against an SS takeover. Kammler also knew that he needed Peenemünde’s technical expertise if he was to make his weapon system work. Moreover, the fact that the A-4 finally was put into action relieved some of the intense political pressure on the program that had built up during the long months of technical difficulties in the first half of 1944.

Even so, it is clear that Wernher von Braun, for one, had still not returned to the good graces of the SS. After the opening of the V-2 campaign, Himmler proposed three names to Hitler for a high noncombat decoration, the Knight’s Cross of the War Service Cross: Dornberger, Kunze, and Riedel (Walther Riedel, head of the Peenemünde design bureau). Himmler ignored von Braun, just as he never raised him in SS rank again after the early promotion of June 1943. Only Speer’s insistence and his remaining influence with Hitler got von Braun the Knight’s Cross. In the end, the young engineer and Georg Rickhey (the nominal General Director of Mittelwerk) were added to the list, while Riedel’s name was dropped. 16

Whether Himmler’s distaste for von Braun was reflected in Kammler’s behavior is unknown, but the SS general had earlier attacked the Peenemünde technical director as too young and arrogant for his job. Von Braun quietly returned the contempt. In November Kammler asked for an immediate solution to the extremely difficult problem of determining the impact points on enemy soil of individual V-2s, with the obvious goal of improving accuracy. Von Braun wrote sarcastically in the margin of the document mentioning Kammler’s demand: “Trivial! The day after tomorrow!” 17

Another marginal comment from the same period indicates von Braun’s growing skepticism about the war and about the regime’s promises of a miraculous reversal of its course. On a Wasserfall report that asserted the importance of the anti-aircraft missile for “the overcoming of enemy air supremacy and therefore for the achievement of victory,” he wrote: “Final victory, well, well!” Peenemünde colleagues have also said that he seemed depressed when the A-4 was finally used against people, although his defenders have probably exaggerated his reaction. While there is no solid evidence that slave labor disturbed him much, his arrest and the hopelessness of the war alienated him more and more from the Nazi system as it neared its end. Moreover, von Braun later claimed that his last meeting with Hitler in July 1943 had disillusioned him. The dictator was “suddenly revealed to me as an irreligious man, a man who did not have to answer to a higher power…. He was completely unscrupulous.” In dealing with Kammler and other fanatics, however, von Braun had to be extremely careful to present a loyal face, because the political atmosphere was so paranoid. It is a wonder that he was not more careful in his marginal notations and in his comments to colleagues. Clearly, his indispensability and the protection of Speer and Dornberger gave him a certain latitude, however small. 18