|
|
The Propagander ™
Wunderwaffen (2 of 2)
June 6, 1944 D-Day: The Allied Invasion of Hitler's Europe begins.
June 12, 1944: London is attacked for the first time with a V-1 Flying Bomb. Note: 10,500 V-1s will be launched, but only 20% will succeed in reaching British targets. All told, V-1s will destroy 1.1 million homes and kill 10,000 souls in England. (Lee, Eisenhower II)
From Ike & Monty, Generals at War by Norman Gelb: But the main impact of those rockets was to instill terror. They arrived day and night, heralded a few seconds before impact by a low-pitched buzz that threatened instantaneous death and destruction. From the first appearance of the German rockets, nerves were frayed in England, tempers were short, and expectations were of worse to come. ...
Eisenhower himself reluctantly took to spending his nights in an air raid shelter. Churchill pressed him to give high priority to dealing with the German rockets, and the Supreme Commander felt obliged to divert bombers from tactical operations to attack the launch sites. This had limited effect, which focused attention even more sharply on the failure of Montgomery to live up to his rapid-advance forecasts and seize the area from which the buzz bombs were being launched. Eisenhower at first declined to press the British commander to make better progress. Butcher observed, "[A]pparently Monty wanted to tidy up his administrative tail and get plenty of supplies on hand before he makes a general attack."
From Speer's SBS interview: One [side] believed that the V-weapons would have a decisive effect on London. Only London could be the target anyway, because the hits were so widely separated that any other city could not be attacked effectively. The deviation for the London distances was about 5 km for the V-1 and 2-3 km for the V-2. One could never compare the effects of V-1 and V-2 to a British attack on a center of a large city because of the heavy effects of the British attacks —the large tonnage dropped in a short time on a small target, the resulting fires—all of which cause much more damage. While in the case of V-2, even with occasional hits far apart, even with the same amount of explosives, the same effect would never have been reached. ....
Its purpose was to counter the British night attacks with something similar, without the expensive bombers and practically without losses. The main reason was therefore a psychological one for the benefit of the German people. The effect of the V-weapons on London was also overestimated. We expected it to make the British population tired of war, for now and then we received reports that their morale wasn't as high as before. We expected more of a political reaction to the weapon. .... You bombed the cement emplacements which permitted the launching anyway. These cement sites were prepared to launch the entire production. V-2s were to be produced at the rate of 20-30 units daily, 600-900 monthly, and we planned to fire about 80-100 V-2s daily. You also attacked the installations for V-2s.
: Hitler was still so convinced that the Normandy landing was a trick that he had not taken resolute action against this bridgehead, and by refusing to give his field commanders a free hand he had deprived them of thier last chance to seize the initiative. The battle was already lost. By now it was obvious that the Allies had won complete air supremacy over France, and Hitler turned to Goering, whom he had praised a few days earlier. He sarcastically asked whether it was true that his vaunted Luftwaffe had taken out a 'knock-for-knock' insurance policy with the West.From Adolf Hitler by John Toland
From Speer's SBS Interview: V-2 cost approximately 20 times as much as V-1. The cost is very difficult to figure out for new production processes because there isn't a real mass production and the value factor cannot be calculated as yet. One V-2 used to cost one million marks in the beginning. I believe it then went down to 250,000–300,000 marks, but I don't want to quote any figures that I do not know exactly...About 70,000 to 80,000 people worked on V-2, that is very much in proportion to the figures of 600 projectiles produced per month. ....
It was difficult to procure the necessary amount of oxygen for industrial purposes. I found reasons against the expansion of this program. The bottleneck here was the electro-industry on one side, and oxygen on the other. .... I had refused to produce more than 600 a month. Originally 900 were planned. I had also refused to carry out an initial expansion of the anti-aircraft rocket. I said that when the anti-aircraft rocket comes, V-2 will have to step back and its capacity used for the anti-aircraft rocket, because it was too great a luxury for me. I could have made about 5 to 6 Fighters with the same manpower as the V-2 took, which would have been better from my point of view. It is a technical experience to see such a rocket, piloted by a ray from below. That is technically the most advanced thing one can imagine. ....
There was the danger that the projectile would not take off straight. Then one could observe the steering, how the projectile was always brought back into the right direction again...As far as I know, a projectile came back (straight down) 10 or 12 times. But then there is none left in the neighborhood, except the command tank with the two people who guide the projectile. It happened that the fusing of the explosive charge did not immediately take effect, but only a few moments later, so that this last service crew could also get away. The worst thing was when the projectile could not be brought into the right direction, coming down approximately 30 kilometers from the launching site...
June 18, 1944: The Germans launch another mass attack of V-1s against London, with explosions every five minutes at the peak. Just a few blocks from 10 Downing Street, the Guards Chapel at Wellington is hit, as well as Buckingham Place and Parliament, killing 80 officers and family members and wounding 120. Churchill hurries back from Checquers to supervise the evacuation of Parliament to Church House and coordinate anti-V-1 measures. (Eisenhower II)
June 18, 1944 Goebbels Diary:
From Marching Orders by Bruce Lee: In the summer of 1944, when word reached London that the Germans might be developing a new rocket weapon, the V-2, to replace the V-1, (OBE research scientist Standish) Masterman went to Poland, via Tehran and Moscow, to study a rocket-firing installation abandoned by the Germans while retreating from a Russian attack.
At the time, skeptics did not believe that Germans could launch a long-range rocket, even though portions of such a missile had been recovered in Sweden and Poland after misfires. The team of experts-British, American and Russian-assigned to the case were baffled when they first arrived at the captured launch site. The records of V-2 firings were missing. These would have provided the amounts of fuel, range and payload. A careful search of the site finally turned up the crucial missing documents. But these had "already been used as lavatory paper by German troops who had found themselves in short supply of that commodity in their precipitate retreat in the face of the Russian offensive. Nevertheless the task of decipherment had to be faced, and a painstaking but necessarily grisly restoration process finally confirmed that the rocket could reach London."
Unexpectedly, the Russians proved to be the most squeamish participants in this dirty work of reconstruction. The British members of the delegation took a wry "the things we do for England" view of the unsavory but vital job.
June 27, 1944: As one million women and children are being evacuated from London, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison reports to the War Cabinet that 200,000 homes have so far been damaged in V-1 attacks, and that shattered sewage systems could bring serious epidemics if not repaired before winter. (Eisenhower II)
June 30, 1944: Reich Minister of Armaments Speer writes to Hitler: "But in September of this year the quantities required to cover the most urgent needs of the Wehrmacht cannot possibly be supplied any longer, which means that from that time on there will be a deficiency which cannot be made good and which must lead to tragic consequences." (Speer)
June 1944: V-1 attacks kill 1,935 and injure 5,906.
From Speer's SBS Interview: For one thing the dispersal (of V-2 hits) was so great that no real effect could be obtained. I considered the nerves of the Englishmen to be so good that they would stick it out anyway. And your victories came first. A victorious nation could not be impressed by that. I believe however, that the development of the V-2 will definitely be the most important factor for war in later times. At the present time it did not come to full effectiveness. It can be launched from a ship, from every street. They do not need a previously prepared launch site and in the course of time their striking accuracy will be just as great as with bombing. ....
It happened that the development of the V-2 had been sponsored for so long by the Army that it was a matter of honor with the Army to bring it to conclusion. The V-2 was therefore protected with particular love by the Army Armament Office (Heereswaffenamt), and it was in contrast to all other items that the Army got a special quota in order that nothing could happen to it. One could almost have gotten the impression that we did not have any other special interest. The V-1 was begun in competition with the Luftwaffe. I was surprised at the propaganda effect which the V-1 called forth and that there was such a stir about it. I was really the vanquished, for I had always said that it would have no effect at all on the enemy, and then there came rather excited reports.
Further details must be learned from Field Marshal Milch, who promoted this with the overall aircraft people (Ueberalluftreugmeister). The V-2 was supported by the former Lt. General Fromm and General Leeb. The interest of the Fuehrer was first awakened several months previously by a lecture at Headquarters. Until then he did not expect so much from it. He was instructed about the V-2 by Braun and Dornberger. The developer of the V-1 was named Lusser.
July 6, 1944: From Prime Minister Churchill's "Poison Gas" Memo:
July 17, 1944: From a report by Duncan Sandys (above) to the British War Cabinet:
From Eisenhower At War 1943–1945 by David Eisenhower: The distinctive buzz emitted by the pilotless aircraft shortly before dropping on random targets at any time of day or night had injected a new element in the war of nerves. In his diary Butcher wrote that "most of the people I know are semi-dazed from loss of sleep and have the jitters, which they show when a door bangs or the sound of motors from motorcycles or aircraft are heard." Widewing and Telegraph Cottage attracted more than a fair share of alerts. On one night alone, Butcher counted twenty-five V-1 explosions between 7 PM and 1 AM. Routinely, Eisenhower, Summersby, Butcher, Gault, McKeogh and Hunt retired to the stark white-walled shelter to spend the night in sleeping bags or cots. ....
Fighters and anti-aircraft together would down 46 percent of all V-1s fired. Of the 10,500 V-1s launched at England, an estimated 25% flew off course because of malfunction. Roughly 20 percent penetrated British defenses and hit targets, claiming 10,000 lives and1.1 million homes, including parts of the Royal Lodge, Windsor Castle and the Hampton Court Palace. These figures, while grave, did not justify prolonged diversion of strategic bombers. SHAEF stood by its conclusion that the V-1 was neither an effective 'city destruction' weapon, nor very useful militarily. ....
Crossbow peaked on the nights of July 4-5 and 7-8 in two intensive raids on launching sites and storage depots at Calais. On the fifth, 227 Lancasters dropped six "earthquake" bombs, but the sites escaped damage. V-1 attacks resumed, and Crossbow was quietly downgraded, with Churchill's tacit consent. At a press conference Eisenhower put the best light on this decision. He expressed sympathy for the plight of the British population. He conceded that the flying bombs, if equipped with infra-red type guidance systems, might have great military possibilities some day. For now, though, he said he did "not like them and everyone with whom I talk shares this feeling." The flying bomb was "a nuisance" and the military had resolved to "get on with its work and pay no attention to it."
Meanwhile, the War Cabinet resolved to push the British flying bomb program. "What will be their application in our hands?" Air Chief Marshal Bottomley asked Tedder that week. "In their present form they are a toy," Tedder replied, "but their development will profoundly affect both war and peace."
From Speer's SBS Interview: Dr. Goebbels had written an article about the wonder weapon and discredited me very much with it, since everybody looked to me for speedy delivery of this wonder weapon. Then in a speech I told the propaganda leaders that I expected no military effect from these weapons. Only a moral effect of the wonder weapons was taken to the troops through the grapevines. That was personally unpleasant to me, because nothing new could happen and anyway I considered it false because it was my opinion that the fighting power of the troops was not strengthened by it, but weakened instead.
From Winston Churchill and his Inner Circle by John Colville: In 1944 the Prof (Professor F. A. Lindemann) went to war with Duncan Sandys, then at the Ministry of Supply, about the size of the warheads to be expected on the German V-weapons and the damage they would be likely to cause. He was right in some of his assertions, wrong in others. Feelings ran high, and Duncan Sandys, in spite of being Churchill's son-in-law, was placed firmly in the Prof's blacklist. ....
It may be that...the importance of the intelligence services has been overstated, except in such vital scientific areas as the detection of the wireless directional beam and the V-bombs. There were exceptions, by no means least the system organized by J. C. Masterman for the detection and subsequent utilization of enemy agents in the Allied cause. There were also ingenious deception plans devised to mislead the Germans. However, as far as British espionage itself went, it is permissible to doubt whether the results justified the effort.
From Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny: The Soviets had launched their offensive on June 10 with more than a million men on four fronts, and in one week captured four strong points Hitler had designated as areas "to hold at all cost." By August 1, they recaptured Vilnius, Lublin and Brest Litovsk, as well as all of Estonia and Latvia, and, having cleared the whole of Russian territory of the invader, they arrived within four hundred miles of Berlin.
The long delayed launching of the first flying bombs (V-1s) on June 12 was a dud, and even when they became operational were disappointing in their minimal effect on British morale. The V-2s, finally ready in September after long delays, would cause more damage but again would not succeed in breaking the spirit of London's hardy inhabitants, including, from the first day of the war to the last, Britain's royal family.
Speer, when talking to me, said time and again that there was a pathologically self-destructive element in Hitler's insistence on issuing orders the only resultant "glory" of which could be death. Almost the same thing could be said about Speer himself, who, however reunited with Hitler, was by this time not only aware that the war was lost, but also of the penalties likely to be imposed by the Allies on individual Germans who had committed war crimes.
August 25, 1944: The Joint CROSSBOW Target Priorities Committee (established July 21) prepares the Plan for Attack on the German Rocket Organization when Rocket Attacks Commence—in addition to the bombing of storage, liquid-oxygen, and launch sites, the plan includes aerial reconnaissance operations. (Gruen)
August 27, 1944: This day's Magic summary contains a dispatch from Baron Oshima in Berlin, informing his home office of recent information received from Reich Under Secretary von Steengracht, who says that the Germans are considering a withdrawal to the east-central part of France.
August 31, 1944: Speer tells a group of colleagues that "I do not intend to succumb to the psychosis of attaching too much importance to the new weapons. Nor am I responsible for the extremely prominent place they are being given in our propaganda." (Speer)
August 1944: Fatalities from all V-1 attacks total only 190 for the entire month. (Gruen)From Triumph and Tragedy by Winston Churchill: Our Intelligence had played a vital part (in defeating the Flying Bombs). The size and performance of the weapon, and the intended scale of attack, were known to us in excellent time. This enabled our fighters to be made ready. The launching sites and the storage caverns were found, enabling our bombers to delay the attack and mitigate its violence. Every known means of getting information was employed, and it was pieced together with great skill. To all our sources, many of whom worked amid deadly danger, and some of whom will be forever unknown to us, I pay my tribute. But good Intelligence alone would have been useless. Fighters, bombers, guns, balloons, scientists, Civil Defense, and all organizations that lay behind them, had each played their parts to the full. It was a great and concerted defense, made absolute by the victory of our armies in France.
September 8, 1944–March 27, 1945: Goebbels renames the A-4 the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V-2) and Hitler orders its deployment as a weapon of terror against Belgium, Southern England and Northern France. (Piszkiewicz)
September 8, 1944: At 6:43 PM, a V-2 rocket strikes Chiswick, west London. Seconds later, a second V-2 strikes Epping. Upon hearing the news, von Braun reportedly remarks: "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet." Note: All told, around 3,200 V-2s will claim the lives of 2,724 victims, with an additional 6,000 injured. Ironically, many more people will die as slave laborers in the building of the V-2 rockets than will ever be killed by it as a weapon. (Lee)
From Speers' IMT testimony: In this phase of the war Hitler deceived all of us. From the summer of 1944 on he circulated, through Ambassador Hewel of the Foreign Office, definite statements to the effect that conversation with foreign powers had been started. Generaloberst Jodl has confirmed this to me here in Court. In this way, for instance, the fact that several visits were paid to Hitler by the Japanese Ambassador was interpreted to mean that through Japan we were carrying on conversations with Moscow; or else Minister Neubacher, who was here as a witness, was reported to have initiated conversations in the Balkans with the United States; or else the former Soviet Ambassador in Berlin was alleged to have been in Stockholm for the purpose of initiating conversations. In this way he raised hopes that, like Japan, we would start negotiations in this hopeless situation, so that the people would be saved from the worst consequences.
To do this, however, it was necessary to stiffen resistance as much as possible. He deceived all of us by holding out to the military leaders false hopes in the success of diplomatic steps and by promising the political leaders fresh victories through the use of new troops and new weapons and by systematically spreading rumors to encourage the people to believe in the appearance of a miracle weapon - all for the purpose of keeping up resistance. I can prove that during this period I made continual reference in my speeches and in my letters, which I wrote to Hitler and Goebbels, as to how dishonest and disastrous I considered this policy of deceiving the people by promising them a miracle weapon.
September 1944: The Red Army overruns a V-2 research unit at Dembidze, Poland. (Menaul)
October 19, 1944: Stalin appoints Chelomei (Vladimir Chelomey) chief designer of a reverse-engineered V-1 rocket program. (Harford)
Duncan Sandys: The advent of the long-range, radio-controlled, jet-propelled projectile has opened up vast new possibilities in the conduct of military operations. In future the possession of superiority in long-distance rocket artillery may well count for as much as superiority in naval or air power. High-grade scientific and engineering staff, together with extensive research facilities, will have to be maintained as a permanent part of our peacetime military organization.
March 1945: A team of Soviet rocket specialists in Poland attempt to send an Li-2 aircraft loaded with salvaged V-2 components to Moscow. The plane crash lands near Kiev and only a portion of the shipment ever makes it to the Soviet capital. (Menaul)
April 10, 1945: The medics of the US 3rd Armored Division report that they have discovered Nordhausen Death Camp on the way to Camp Dora. In the two adjacent camps they discover 5,000 corpses. 1,200 patients are soon evacuated, with 15 dying on their way to the hospital area and another 300 subsequently dying of malnutrition. (Sellier)
April 12, 1945: The US destroyer Mannert L. Abele is sunk by a rocket-powered Ohka kamikaze rocket plane.
April 12, 1945: President Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes President. The Allies liberate Buchenwald and Belsen concentration camps.
April 22, 1945: From Benito Mussolini's Political Testament (From Edgar Meyer and Thomas Mehner's Hitler und die Bombe: Welchen Stand erreichte die deutsche Atomforschung und Geheimwaffenentwicklung wirklich.):
May 2, 1945: On the same day Berlin falls to the Soviet Army, von Braun and over 100 of his team flee to the relative safety of the American front. His brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, spotting an American private from the US 44th Infantry Division, addresses the soldier in broken English: "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender." (Braun)
From The Day the War Ended by Martin Gilbert: On May 2, at Oberammergau, in southern Germany, American troops were approached by three German civilians, who gave themselves up. The first to reach them, and to explain who he was, was Dr Herbert Wagner, one of Germany's leading guided missile designers. With him were two senior members of the Peenemünde rocket research staff, Wernher von Braun and General Walter Dornberger. These were the men whose technical expertise had created the rocket bombs that had recently fallen on London and Antwerp, killing thousands of civilians.
The three men were hurried to Paris, and then to the United States. "We were interested in continuing our work," von Braun later wrote, "not just being squeezed like a lemon and then discarded." They may have been squeezed, but they were not discarded. A direct line of cause, effect and personnel was to run between the encounter at Oberammergau and the American Apollo...project which landed the first human beings on the moon twenty-four years later.
May 5, 1945: Soviet troops enter Peenemuende to find that all the leading German rocket scientists have evacuated with the Americans. (Menaul)
May 7–8, 1945 VE Day: The Allies formally accept the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
May 9, 1945: Stalin to Truman:
June 1, 1945: A Soviet trophy brigade arrives at Peenemünde. They discover an extraordinary variety of weapons systems that the Americans had left behind, including ten partially assembled V-2s, and a few Wasserfall, Rheinbote, Rheintochter, and Taifun missiles. (Menaul)
June 5, 1945: The Allies divide up Germany and Berlin and take over the government.
June 20, 1945: US Secretary of State Cordell Hull approves the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America, but it will not be announced to the public until the first of October.
June 1945: General Eisenhower sanctions a series of V2 test launches in Europe. Among those witnessing the flights is the future chief Soviet spacecraft designer, Sergei Korolev. (Harford)
October 15, 1945: The USSR sends six Soviet representatives to witness a demonstration launch of a V-2 conducted by the British near the town of Cuxhaven. Unfortunately, the British have only invited three representatives, not six, so half the delegation watches the launch from outside the facility. (Menaul)
February 1946: Wernher von Braun's entire Peenemuende team is reunited at White Sands, in New Mexico. (Braun)
March 5, 1946: Winston Churchill introduces the phrase Iron Curtain into the English language (the term was originally coined by Josef Goebbels) during his famous Cold War speech at Fulton, Missouri.
March 15, 1946: A V-2 is static-fired at White Sands.From the National Historic Landmark summary listing of the US National Park Service: This site is closely associated with U.S. testing of the German V-2 rocket, the origins of the American rocket program, and the leadership of Dr. Werner von Braun (1912-1977). The V-2 Gantry Crane and Army Blockhouse here represent the first generation of rocket testing facilities that would lead to US exploration of space.
April 16, 1946: For the first time in the United States (at White Sands), a captured German V-2 rocket undergoes a test flight. (Braun)
May 1946: 330 German specialists are now working for the Soviet rocket program. (Menaul)
May 10, 1946: A captured German V-2 rocket achieves high-altitude space flight at White Sands Proving Ground, reaching an altitude of 70 miles. (Braun)
May 13, 1946: A secret Soviet decree creates a varied series of new research institutes devoted to missile development. (Menaul)
May 22, 1946: A Wac Corporal, the first post-war American-designed rocket, makes its first flight, reaching an altitude of 50 miles.
From Living America by Norman C. Lumian: The moves which the Soviets made at the end of the war gave some indication of how difficult it would be to deal with the Russians in a peacetime situation. Basically, Russia wished to retain the economic and political domination of those nations in her power, while causing great confusion in others. The Russians had indicated that they wished to strip Germany and her allies of their industrial equipment at the Potsdam Conference of July 1945. This would render the Axis powers less able to make war again. Germany and the others would be turned into agricultural nations.
Russia carried out her desires with a vengeance in East Germany. The United States, England, and France—the controlling nations of West Germany—soon saw the folly of this plan which would leave the Germans with very little to support themselves. By the end of May 1946, the United States had given up the policy of dismantling German industry, and in September started to rebuild her enemies' shattered nation.
February 20, 1947: Fruit flies become the first living things in space as a V-2 rocket containing a jar of them (I wonder if there were air-holes punched in the bottle cap?), is launched from the White Sands Proving Ground, reaching an altitude of 60 miles. (Burrows)
February 1947: The Soviets complete the transfer of all rocket technology from East Germany into secret locations in the USSR. (Menaul)
July, 19, 1951: From the FBI Files of Wernher Von Braun: 1952: Von Braun publishes Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, the first of a series of articles detailing his concept of a manned space station in Collier's Weekly magazine. From Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network by Leonard Mosley: The U-2 (high-altitude spy-plane) had cost a fortune to develop, but its pioneer, Richard Bissell, saw well ahead of time that it would soon become outmoded and the next stage of extraterrestrial surveillance would have to be developed. He went to Allen (Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence) and said: "I am very worried that the Russians are getting ahead of us in rocketry and space. In your capacity as head of psychological warfare, you ought to persuade the administration to do something about it. Because if, in two or three years, the Russians have a space rocket and we have nothing, that could have a shattering effect across the world." From a 11/17/71 interview of Dr. Wernher von Braun conducted by Roger Bilstein and John Beltz: There is probably less competition in the Soviet launch vehicle program than in this country. The relationship between the space people, the space program people, and the Soviet Union, and the rocket people, is probably best compared with the relationship we have between these two groups in this country during the Gemini program where, as you will remember, NASA built spacecraft but went to the Air Force to request Titan II launch services for Gemini spacecraft. From The Modern Age, edited (1968) by Sir Julian Huxley: The Soviet Union ushered in the Space Age with the launching of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957. On January 31, 1958, the United States made it a Space Race with the successful launching of Explorer I. At long last, after countless centuries of wishful imaginings, man's dream of traveling to the moon—and beyond—seemed on the verge of fulfillment. From The Memoirs of Richard Nixon: For me the most exciting event in the first year of my presidency came in July 1969 when an American became the first man to walk on the moon. The moon landing was the culmination of a program begun a dozen years earlier after the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first man-made orbiting satellite. American public opinion was jolted at the thought of the Soviets in charge of outer space, but Eisenhower and most of his advisors were not so disturbed. The same could be said for the American JEEP. When the first advance units of the Americans and Soviets met on conquered German ground and popped open a bottle of bubbly by the Elbe, the Red Army representatives offered three toasts to the Americans. 1—to Josef Stalin. 2—to US President Roosevelt. 3—to the American JEEP. The Soviet soldiers loved them. No other forces anywhere had such a sturdy and reliable machine filling that crucial niche. The German version was, after all, a re-engineered VW bug, and its performance was pitiful in comparison. March 13, 1946: From the Interrogation of the Chief Engineer of the Berlin Firm Topf and Sohne, Fritz Sander:
... von Braun and his wife have applied for their first citizenship papers and he stated they were looking forward to becoming American citizens. As previously stated, he has purchased a home in Huntsville, and mentioned that his plans at the present time are to reside in Huntsville, Alabama. (HAL)
1952: Von Braun publishes The Mars Project, his plan for a manned Mars mission which will use his proposed space station as a staging point. This ambitious plan calls for a fleet of ten spacecraft each carrying in addition to cargo one 200-ton winged lander, with nine crew vehicles transporting a total of 70 astronauts.
November 20, 1952: From the FBI Files of Wernher Von Braun:
... von Braun also stated he had never received the Daily Worker Communist newspaper, never read a copy of the newspaper, and had never received any literature which he felt was Communistic in any way. (HAL)
1952: 64 V-2s have been launched at White Sands by this time. One V-2 is used as the first stage of a two-stage missile named Bumper. The top half is a US WAC Corporal rocket.
November 22, 1953: The last member of the group of shanghaied scientists is repatriated to Germany.
1955: Von Braun becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States. (Braun)
March 9, 1955: The TV show Man in Space, produced by Disney studios, credits Von Braun as a technical director.
April 18, 1956: Nikita Khrushchev accompanies Soviet leader Bulganin on a state visit to Great Britain. Khrushchev:
Macmillan, Lloyd, and some influential Conservative politicians joined us for supper. Eden's wife was the hostess...During dinner, Mrs. Eden asked us, "Tell me, what sort of missiles do you have? Will they fly a long way?" "Yes," I said, "they have a very long range. They could easily reach your island and quite a bit farther." She bite her tongue. It was a little bit rude of me to have answered her as I had. Perhaps she took it as some sort of threat. We certainly didn't mean to threaten anyone. We were simply trying to remind other countries that we were powerful and deserved respect, and that we wouldn't tolerate being talked to in the language of ultimatums. (Crankshaw II)
April 19, 1956: Nikita Khrushchev, in his memoirs, characterized remarks he made this day to a meeting with the Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty thus:
Gentlemen, here you are, the representatives of Great Britain, and the whole world knows there was a time when Britannia ruled the waves. But all that era is now past, and we must look at things realistically. Everything has changed. Your specialists have told me how much they admire the battle cruiser which brought us here. Well, I'll tell you something. We will be happy to sell you this cruiser if you really want it because it's obsolete. Its weapons have been outdated by new weapons. Besides, cruisers like ours no longer play a decisive role. Nor do bombers. Now it's submarines that rule the sea, and missiles that rule the air—missiles that can strike their targets from long distances. (Crankshaw II)
May 15, 1957: The first testing of a new missile codenamed 8K71, soon renamed the R-7 Semyorka, takes place. Though based on German technology and built with the help of German scientists, the rocket boasts several important Soviet innovations. (Menaul)
This was several months before the Soviet Union put Sputnik into space in October 1957, and though there were rumors and hints from CIA sources that t was coming, no one had yet responded to it. Allen suggested that Bissell go over and talk to the air force, who sent him on to Charles Wilson, the Secretary of Defense. The feeling around was that such things as space programs were "the kind of foolishness Democrats indulge in, and we Republicans cut down on." So once more, Allen agreed to fund money for a space satellite out of CIA secret funds, and went to see the President about it.
In February 1958, he called in Richard Bissell to see him. Edwin Land was already there. Allen said that the President had approved the development and operation of a reconnaissance satellite, and that Bissell would be in charge for the Agency and would have an Air Force officer as his co-director...Bissell knew less about space rockets than he had about U-2's, and he and his aides learned the hard way.
August 21, 1957: The USSR launches the worlds first true ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), the R-7 Semyorka. (Menaul)
October 4, 1957: A modified version of the R-7 Semyorka launch vehicle propels Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, into orbit. The big ball weighs 183 pounds and circles the earth at an altitude of 560 miles and a speed of 18,000 MPH. The reaction of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson: "We have got to admit frankly that the Soviets have beaten us at our own game—daring, scientific advances in the atomic age." (Fleming)
October 5, 1957: From Spandau Diary by Albert Speer:
Huge headlines in today's newspaper that the first satellite is circling the Earth. For a minute I lay on the bed with pounding heart. Some events really hit me hard. During the first forty years of my life I admired technology. When Wernher von Braun told me about his future projects, such as a flight to the moon, I was fascinated. But Hitler, with his technologically based dictatorship and his assembly-line extermination of the Jews, shocked me so deeply that I can never again be naive about technology. Every advance nowadays only frightens me. News like this account of the first satellite makes me think of new potentialities for annihilation, and arouses fear. If they fly to the moon tomorrow, my fear will be all the greater. (Speer II)
November 3, 1957: The Soviets launch Sputnik II, the world's second artificial satellite and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika. With a payload exceeding 1,120 pounds, it becomes obvious to the world that the Soviets have achieved the capability to let ICBM warheads fall substantially wherever they wished.
November 5, 1957: US General Omar Bradley speaks at the St Albans School Convocation in Washington:
Our plight is critical and with each effort we have made to relieve it by further scientific advance, we have succeeded only in aggravating our peril. As a result, we are now speeding inexorably toward a day when even the ingenuity of our scientists may be unable to save us from the consequences of a single rash act or a long reckless hand upon the switch of an un-interceptable missile. For twelve years now we've sought to stave off this ultimate threat of disaster by devising arms which would be both ultimate and disastrous. This irony can probably be compounded a few more years, or perhaps even a few decades. Missiles will bring anti-missiles, and anti-missiles will bring anti-anti-missiles. But inevitably, this whole electronic house of cards will reach a point where it can be constructed no higher...We can't sit about waiting for some felicitous accident of history that may somehow make the world all right. Time is running against us, and it is running against us with the speed of a Sputnik. (Fleming)
December 6, 1957: The US Navy's first attempt at launching a Vanguard satellite suffers a spectacular televised failure.
January 16, 1958: With the Soviets far ahead in space capability, US Secretary of State Dulles proposes that any activity in space be controlled by an international commission. (Fleming)
January 31, 1958: In response to the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1—but officially as part of the United States program for the International Geophysical Year—the US Army launches America's first satellite at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: Explorer 1. German rocket scientists are predominantly responsible for its development. Note: The total weight of the satellite is just shy of 31 paltry pounds.
October 5, 1958: From the New York Times:
A year ago yesterday Moscow electrified the world by launching Sputnik I and thus taking the first giant step into space. The Soviet achievement—a scientific, technical and military demonstration of growing Russian power—shook American complacency and led in Washington to a re-evaluation, reorganization and speed-up of our space and missile programs. The excitement of a year ago, almost frenetic in its quality, has been succeeded by somewhat calmer judgments; some critics of Administration leadership say complacency has returned.
In the past twelve months the United States has developed new agencies for space exploration and has speeded up some of its military rocket development programs, although the military missile organization—upon which now depends much of our space development program—remains virtually unchanged. The great question confronting Washington is whether or not our present efforts are adequate—not so much to meet the challenge of today, but the increasing Soviet potential of tomorrow. Those who fear we may lag in the space and missile race are particularly concerned about what they feel is the limited imagination and limited budget of our space program—a program which has barely started—and about the dichotomy between civilian (scientific) and military projects.
December 4, 1959: From an Address by Allen W. Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence:
A decade ago Moscow was speaking to us in threatening terms because we were giving aid overseas to meet the danger of economic breakdown and communist takeover in large parts of Europe. Now they propose to compete with us on a worldwide basis in the field of overseas aid and trade, hoping to win over the uncommitted nations of the world. Then, though they had no atomic bombs, the Soviet were using the threat of their great conventional forces to help undermine Greece and Turkey and then later to menace the Free World in Berlin and Korea. Now, while they preach coexistence and economic and industrial competition with the West, they also, on occasions, this week in fact, rattle the threat of ballistic missiles...
April 1, 1960: The first successful weather satellite, Tiros 1, is launched by the US.
From the memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, as translated by Edward Crankshaw: I think I was right to concentrate on military spending, even at the expense of all but the most essential investments in other areas. If I hadn't put such a high priority on our military needs, we couldn't have survived. I devoted all my strength to the rearmament of the Soviet Union. It was a challenging and important stage of our lives. Now that I'm living with my memories and little else, I think back often to that period when in a creative surge forward we rearmed our Soviet Army. I'm proud that the honor of supervising the transition to the most up-to-date weaponry fell on me as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and the First Secretary of the Central Committee.
Our potential enemy—our princip[al], our most powerful, our most dangerous enemy—was so far away from us that we couldn't have reached him with our air force. Only by building up a nuclear missile force could we keep the enemy from unleashing war against us. As life has already confirmed, if we had given the west a chance, war would have been declared while Dulles was alive. But we were first to launch rockets into space; we exploded the most powerful nuclear devices; we accomplished those feats first, ahead of the United States, England, and France. Our accomplishments and our obvious might had a sobering effect on the aggressive forces in the United States, England, France, and, of course, inside the Bonn government. They knew that they had lost their chance to strike at us with impunity.
May 15, 1960: While Nikita Khrushchev and Dwight D. Eisenhower confer at a summit meeting, the Soviets launch their first satellite capable of housing human beings and designed to be recoverable. Khrushchev's triumph soon becomes an embarrassment, however. While the launch goes well, the recovery system fails and, instead of re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, the Sputnik is bounced into a higher orbit and is lost.
The launching itself of Gemini spacecraft was done largely by blue-suiters. And it was only in the Apollo program that we brought a launch vehicle into the process that had no military history at all. Remember, even the Mercury used Atlas launch vehicles, and the Redstone rocket preceded Atlas very early—Alan Shepard's and Gus Grissom's flights had a military history. The Saturn V was really the first launch rocket that was a baby of NASA and not the military—a military child.
Now the entire family of Soviet launch vehicles up to this point was really developed under military auspices. They have the so-called Strategic Rocket Command in the Soviet Union, comparable to our Strategic Air Command, and they are really the sole owners of rocketry, you might say. And the space people go to them for booster service, just like NASA went to the Air Force for Atlas' and Gemini’s.
The industrial complex—if that's what you want to call it—state-controlled economy undoubtedly doesn't have as many facets as the American aerospace industry. In other words, they don't have their Boeing’s, and North American Rockwell’s, and Douglas’s, and so forth, to build competing systems. But it was, and I believe still is, a more monolithic operation. With that I am not saying there's no competition at all. I think there's every indication that within that monolithic industrial structure there are some competing teams. You see that in their aviation industry...
Nevertheless, I think it is far more monolithic—and that also means that, shall we say, there are less checks and balances in this. In NASA, you could always tell the Boeing people, "Look, the Douglas people brought something in here which, in our opinion, greatly enhanced the liability of something," and vice versa. So the government was in the fortunate position that it could effectively cross-feed ideas that came out of these various pots.
When you have a very monolithic organization, that is one, shall we say, like a military establishment, you have less and less of that. There is, at the end, one man responsible for all these things. You know, the Russians always mysteriously refer to "the chief constructor," or "the chief engineer," whoever that man is... We have never run the Saturn V program like that in NASA. I think we considered ourselves far more like a stock exchange of good ideas where we felt we picked the best things out of all these things and cross-fed them for maximum benefit of the whole.
July 28, 1960: Another attempt is made by the Soviets to launch a satellite capable of housing humans, with two dogs, Chayka and Lisicha, on board. This time the recovery system functions perfectly and the dogs are safely recovered.
January 17, 1961: From Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity...
May 25, 1961: JFK, before a special address to a joint session of Congress:
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.
August 6, 1961: Cosmonaut Gherman Titov spends an entire day orbiting the Earth in Vostok 2.
September 12, 1962: President John F. Kennedy, at Rice University:
Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.
I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. There is no strife, no prejudice, and no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
1965: Wernher Von Braun, by Tom Lehrer, is released:
Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Ha, Nazi schmazi," says Wernher von Braun
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun
You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German oder English I know how to count down
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun
The Soviets began their space efforts with extremely powerful rockets capable of launching heavy spacecraft into orbit. In contrast, the United States space program began with relatively small, lightweight spacecraft requiring no such powerful boosters. But during the next ten years, the United States closed this technical gap with the Soviet Union and, in fact, leaped ahead by a large margin in many areas of space exploration. Although the Soviet Union scored many 'firsts' in the early days of space flight, the United States holds almost every major record and an even more imposing number of firsts.
To a great degree, space flight owes its success and rapid progress to the Germans. Large-scale rocket research began after World War II with captured V-2 rockets. These rockets had a horizontal range of nearly 200 miles and a vertical range of about 100 miles. At lift-off they weighed almost 13 tons. After the war, some of the German missile scientists went to the Soviet Union to carry on further research. Others went to the United States to continue their work. One of the most famous is Dr. Wernher von Braun, who heads the George C. Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Although the Soviet Union succeeded in putting cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961, the United States soon managed to send two astronauts on suborbital flights in the same year. On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn flew three times around the world in his Mercury spacecraft, Friendship 7. Three other Mercury flights were also undertaken. In the years which followed, the United States managed to build up an impressive record of success with projects Gemini and Apollo. .... In a spectacular operation, American astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders, in Apollo 8, orbited the moon 10 times, less than 70 miles from its surface. .... Space history had been made and the landing of the first man on the moon was in sight.
May 1968: From a letter to R. W. Reid by Wernher von Braun:
With the tight press censorship imposed by Hitler, the abuses of his regime were not nearly as visible to the average German as they were to an outsider who had free access to the international news media. For this reason, I must say, more by way of a statement than as an apology, that I never realized the depth of the abyss of Hitler's régime until very late and particularly after the war, when all these terrible abuses were first published.
I guess until about a year before the war's end I shared the feelings of most Germans that while Hitler was unquestionably an aggressor and a conqueror, that this put him more in a class with Napoleon than with the devil incarnate. While right from the beginning I deeply deplored the war and the misery and suffering it spread all over the world, I found myself caught in a maelstrom in which I simply felt that, like it or not, it was my duty to work for my country at war.
July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 land on the Earth's moon, while astronaut Michael Collins orbits above. This and five subsequent Apollo missions will land, all told, 12 astronauts on the Moon, the last one in December 1972. This is a triumph of scientific exploration and, arguably, the greatest technological achievement in human history.
Sherman Adams, for example, told a predominantly Republican audience that the so-called satellite race was just "an outer space basketball game." I believe that this flippant remark was wrong in substance and disastrous in terms of public opinion. The next night I told an audience in San Francisco, "We could make no greater mistake than to brush off this event as a scientific stunt of more significance to the man on the moon than on men on Earth."
In cabinet and NSC meetings during this time I strongly advocated a sharp increase in our missile and space programs. Eisenhower finally came around to this view and approved a proposal; for manned space vehicles. While he justified this decision on military grounds, I felt that something far more basic was involved. I believe that when a great nation drops out of the race to explore the unknown, that nation ceases to be great. The manned space program was already well under way when President Kennedy captured the national imagination in 1961 by setting the goal of a moon landing by the end of the decade. President Johnson was an enthusiastic supporter of NASA, and under his administration the Apollo program made great strides. ....
On Sunday night, July 20, Apollo VIII astronaut Frank Borman, Bob Haldeman, and I stood around the TV set in the private office and watched Neal Armstrong step onto the moon. Then I went into the Oval Office next door where TV cameras had been set up for my split-screen phone call to the moon. Armstrong's voice came through loud and clear. I said: Because of what you have done the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquillity to Earth.
A few thoughts concerning this time-line:
The Cold War:
During the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, the Soviet Union attempted to blame the Germans for one of their own war crimes; the Massacre at Katyn. It was a sensible—if cynical—strategy. After all, with all the other horrible, unthinkable crimes the Germans had committed, who would doubt their responsibility for this dirty deed as well?
If a low-life is arrested and charged with rape, it makes sense to peruse the unsolved rape cases to determine whether or not the suspect was involved in other sex crimes. That's just good police work. An over-zealous—or just plain lazy—law-enforcement type will sometimes attempt to clear out some of his old unsolved case files by attributing a measure of them to whoever happens to be within the reach of their radar at a given moment. Detectives like to solve cases, or at least to appear to have done so. Historians often seem particularly susceptible to this unfortunate tendency, as well. A lazy, over-zealous, or just plain partisan author can easily be tempted to perpetrate a similar error of generic attribution when dealing with highly controversial historical events involving iconic figures. This results in bad police work—and unreliable history.
Adolf Hitler is one such iconic figure, and the controversial events linked to the German Fuehrer are among the most important events of the last century: WW2, The Holocaust, the founding of Israel, and the Cold War. These highly-charged, historically significant events are all, to one degree or another, attributed directly to the actions and policies of Hitler. But are all these things "really" Hitler's 'fault?'
WW2 and The Holocaust are directly the responsibility of Adolf Hitler, without question. Were I a World Court Prosecutor, these would be the first two counts of my Indictment against Adolf Hitler. As a Prosecutor, you could not ask for a better case. Easy money. However, Hitler's "responsibility" for the creation of the State of Israel—which was and is not a crime, by the way—is tenuous, at best, and, were the full facts to be aired (Hitler had been dead quite a while before the act), it is doubtful a conviction on this point would be forthcoming from an impartial jury. (Who would have good reason to "blame" Hitler for the creation of Israel? Only unscrupulous—and wrong-headed—Hitler apologists, Deniers and anti-Semites.) As a responsible Prosecutor, I would not waste the Courts time with it.
Likewise, I contend that the Cold War was not Hitler's responsibility in any way. The Encarta World English Dictionary defines cold war as a "state of enmity without hostilities: a relationship between two people or groups that is unfriendly or hostile but does not involve actual fighting or military combat." By this definition, the Cold War between the USSR and the western democracies—represented mainly by Great Britain and the United States—began decades before the official start date.
US Federal Law states that the Cold War ran from September 2, 1945—the date the Japanese formally surrendered—to December 26, 1991—the date of the formal collapse of the Soviet Union. However, declarations embedded in US Federal Law are hardly superior to the normal debate and revision of historians and scholars intent on historical accuracy. D. F. Fleming, the author of the invaluable—and in some respects, definitive—two volume study The Cold War and its Origins, dates the beginning of the Cold War with the initial intervention of Western Forces in December, 1918. (Fleming's interpretation is obviously of more value than history defined by politicians.)
Hitler was serving on the Western Front at the time the Cold War began; he would not gain power—or any degree of international influence—for another 26 years. The Cold War began in the hearts and policies of Western Leaders much earlier. From the beginning of the consolidation of the Russian Revolution, the Western powers were disinclined to acquiesce in the power shift. They felt—with some justification—that this was a radical revolution along the lines of the French Revolution, and thus a grave danger to the status quo. The emphasis from "down with kings" to "down with capitalists" induced panic around the world, and immediate steps were taken in an attempt to contain the outbreak. Though there wasn't much that could be done against the Bolsheviks while the war still raged, the Western Powers—and Japan—occupied selected areas of Russia post-war in support of the counter-revolutionary White Russians. Most forces had evacuated by 1920, though the Japanese stayed until 1922, but trade and diplomatic opposition to the new regime continued unabated. Recognition of the USSR was hardly forthcoming, though it did eventually occur, piecemeal.
Hitler was NOT "responsible" for the Cold War, regardless of the start date. The most that can be said is that Hitler's policies and actions kept the Soviet regime in power for many decades longer than what was historically necessary. The system would most probably have disintegrated under its own internal contradictions upon the death of Stalin. The unwilling hostages trapped in the Satellite States of Eastern Europe allowed the Soviets to hang on long past their time. Hitler is responsible for that.
Ironically, Hitler was responsible for the only period of the Cold War to experience any meaningful thaw in relations. The USSR was still, to most intents and purposes, a pariah state in most Western minds when Hitler, in one stroke, legitimized the Soviet Union with that infamous Pact. Ironically, when Hitler later turned on Stalin, even Cold Warriors like Churchill were compelled by stark necessity to embrace the USSR as an Ally. Only a greater threat—Hitler—could have caused such an odd reversal. When asked how he could sanction such a turn of heart, Churchill replied to the effect that if Hitler were to invade Hell, he'd find some way to compliment Satan. Hardly a ringing endorsement of "Uncle Joe."
Hitler did, of course, affect the Cold War with his disingenuous policies; his ill-considered invasion of Russia caused the Western Powers to hold their noses and accept Stalin as an equal. This would NEVER have happened without Hitler's intervention. Once the East and West were united against him, Hitler tried every trick to cause the Alliance to crumble, to little actual effect. The end result of Barbarossa, and the later delay of the advance of the Normandy invasion forces by Hitler's so-called "Battle of the Bulge," was to put the two sides on a nearly equal footing as regards post-war geopolitics, conquered territory, and forward military deployment.
Setting the stage for the second half of the Cold War hardly equals "responsibility" for the entire event.
Nazi Technology:
Occasionally, one of these so-called "Nazis," or one of their willing—or, perhaps, unwitting—compatriots, circling around the civilized settlements, spouts some silly nonsense propagating the myth of a supposed innate Nazi technological superiority, as demonstrated by Tiger Tanks, V-2 rockets, etc. "Where would we be without the advances pioneered by Hitler's scientists?," they ask.
Now, I am not suggesting that Nazi rocket technology had no effect on either post-war international politics or the evolution of technology. It was, in fact, the second most important technological battleground of the Cold War, second only to that of nuclear technology. The two would eventually merge to become the potential life-on-earth ending MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) that is, in actuality, still with us (though no one talks about it much anymore). Rocket technology was a big deal, but nuclear technology was decisive, in the event; a war-ending weapon, that one. The Germans were not even close.
What the mutual-but-separate capture of Nazi rocket science did, in effect, was to establish a shared base line between the East and the West; a common point of departure. Each power started with basically the same technology, captured from defeated Germany. And each super-power developed and advanced that technology in roughly similar time frames; the first US jet fighter and the first MIG were very much the same aircraft. The Soviets would be ahead for awhile (Sputnik, etc.), the US would catch up (Independently Targeted LRICBM's, for example) and surpass for a bit, but their advances were chronologically pretty close, for the most part.
Before WW2, Allied scientists were certainly simultaneously working to develop an expertise in rocketry. The Soviets had an early success in deploying an early rocket-based weapons system on the battlefield; the Stalin Organs. And it's not as though the Nazis were the only ones to go with the idea of a ballistic missile; Goddard and others were advancing, but not at such a rate or with the short-term success that the brilliant (and well-funded) Germans were achieving (while stealing all of Goddard's copyrights in the process).
Had the Germans never built a single rocket or jet-engine, the technology would have emerged eventually regardless. The time-line would be different, of course. What drove the birth of the space-faring technology our age will ultimately be remembered for (though perhaps those few left to remember will have another perspective, depending on how it goes) was not so much that the Germans were ahead in that area in the early days, but due to the fact that the competition of the Cold War drove the super-powers to compete and excel.
In the immediate post-war world, Nuclear technology was an American/UK monopoly for about 4-plus years (now there's a WMD that should, in a perfect world, never have been). Then the Russkies caught up and you know the rest. One can estimate from this representative example that, had one side or the other gained exclusive capture of Nazi rocket technology, the other side would have been urgently compelled to achieve the same level as quickly as possible, through any means necessary. Again, only the time-frame would be effected, not the ultimate development of the technology itself. So we land on the moon in 1975-or-so instead of cynically utilizing the tainted skills of men implicated in Crimes Against Humanity to get there in 1969; so what? We still make a few footprints and invent Teflon and the like along the way. Just a matter of time, really.
The utilization of war criminals such as von Braun, etc., to score points and gain prestige during the Cold War is merely one of a long and painful string of unfortunate acts perpetrated by my own government; unlawful acts of cynicism with which I take strong exception. Von Braun should have been convicted, not treated like a celebrity.
The products actually produced by Hitler's scientists were militarily insignificant in relation to the immediate need of the German forces desperately engaged in a fight for their Volkish goals. None of Hitler's wonder weapons, in the face of their aesthetic superiority—and despite their possible potential—proved at all useful to the average soldier or sailor. Hitler, the World War One "common soldier," in the end tragically let down his own soldiers in a way that history will never forget, and thinking, feeling Germans should never forgive.
The V-1 and V-2 were morally indefensible and militarily insignificant. The only effect they ever had on an actual battle was that the Allied command temporarily shifted focus, to an extent, toward taking the weapons' cross-Channel launch areas from the Germans shortly after D-Day. The steel and other strategic materials misused in constructing Hitler's vengeance weapons would have been of far greater use as U-boats (another of the few areas where the Nazis were more advanced) or armor or night fighters (ask the survivors of Berlin or Dresden which they'd have preferred) or long-range bombers, etc. The V-weapons were ultimately just another of Hitler's spectacular blunders, despite the technological pride inherent in advanced—but impractical—weapons systems.
The weapons delivered by Nazi scientists, almost without exception, were far less useful militarily than those advances the Allies created; advances which actually impacted positively the war effort of Hitler's opponents. Allied superiority in signet (ULTRA, MAGIC), electronic warfare (SONAR, RADAR, etc.), even something as simple and decisive as Mulberry harbors, were much more useful in the field than systems of marginal practical use such as Tiger tanks, vengeance weapons, and other cutting-edge wastes of time. The Soviet T-34 tank, while not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the developing Nazi armor, nevertheless won the battles.
Many on the extreme right often claim that Nazi technology was superior to that of the rest of the world. They imagine that it was more advanced and "visionary," and that that fact confirms some aspect or another of this whole racialist Aryan garbage they go on about. Without Nazi technology, they demand, where would the world be? Well, the world would have been nowhere near as capable of engineering impregnable bunkers or easily concealed cyanide capsules, that is plain. Fortunately, some creative 'inventions' of the Nazis never made it past the planning stage. The following document excerpt illustrates this point well:
I decided to design and build a crematorium with a higher capacity. I completed this project for a new crematorium in November 1942—a crematorium for mass incineration—and I submitted this project to a State Patent Commission in Berlin. This crematorium was to be built on the conveyor belt principle, that is to say, the corpses would be brought to the incineration furnaces continuously. When the corpses were pushed into the furnaces, they would fall into a grate, then slide into the furnace to be incinerated. The corpses would serve at the same time as fuel for heating the furnaces. This patent could not then be approved by the Main Patent Office in Berlin because of its secrecy classification. The project file is registered in the Patent Office but the invention could not be patented in wartime.
IMO, "advances" such as these should only be found in bad comic books and macabre fiction, not a patent office, where such blueprints were, indeed, subsequently located.
Where would we REALLY be without Nazi technology and innovation?
We'd be better off, clearly.
Copyright © 2008–2009 Wally O'Lepp
