Читать книгу Hitler’s Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance - Richard Overy - Страница 9
ОглавлениеTo the many disadvantages with which the Weimar republic was burdened must be added divisive trends that had begun even before the Great War. Americanisation and modernisation resulted in the continued rationalisation of industry, together with the new ‘time and motion’ analysis and the use of new labour saving machines and methods. Paradoxically, alongside the ghosts from the German past, the ‘mystique of youth’ was more pervasive in Weimar than in other contemporary societies; the model for the young of both sexes was America.1 Youth became more free of parental values; ‘Earning money and enjoying themselves are the twin poles of their existence … primitive sexuality and jazz on the one hand … modern … concern for … sensible personal hygiene on the other … it is not socialism, but Americanism that will be the end of everything as we have known it’, proclaimed a cleric2 – a curiously modern ring! Weimar was burdened with a generation gap.
The new internationalism, the new youth, had been enthralled by the culture of science and modernity; and what was more modern than the idea of space travel? In 1923 Hermann Oberth, a 28 year old Transylvanian German, published a 92 page book entitled ‘Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen’ (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). Oberth, in his childhood an avid reader of Jules Verne, advocated manned space flight, and suggested a method – a multi stage vehicle powered by a motor burning a mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen. In 1924 Max Valier joined Oberth, proving himself of value in publicising and popularising Oberth’s ideas. Valier later joined the VfR – the Society for Space Travel – in Breslau. He secured the interest of the liquid oxygen equipment manufacturer Paul Heylandt in a rocket-powered car, for which Valier had himself designed the engine.
In 1929 Fritz Lang directed the hit film Frau in Mond (Woman in the Moon), with Oberth as scientific adviser. As a consequence of the film, the Raketenflugplatz Berlin (Rocketport Berlin), a spaceflight society run by rocket enthusiasts, was founded in 1930. The futuristic romance of spaceflight became popular in Germany, more so than in any other western country. Oberth received queries from the public concerning the use of poison gas in liquid fuelled rockets, and discussed the question in his book Wege zur Raumschiffart (Ways to Spaceflight) in 1929, concluding that the accuracy required was ‘decades away’.
In 1930 Max Valier was killed in a liquid fuel rocket experiment, and a bill (which subsequently failed) was introduced into the Reichstag to ban rocket experiments altogether. But they continued, although Paul Heylandt, a manufacturer of liquid oxygen, decided to end his research into liquid fuelled rockets. The same year the Raketenflugplatz built a 7Kg thrust petrol-liquid oxygen engine, (partly through a grant from the army). Its membership included Klaus Riedel (1903-1944) and Baron Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), son of an ex Weimar civil servant sacked for a too right wing stance during the Kapp Putsch of 1920.
The army now took an interest in rocketry in the shape of Lt.Colonel (Dr.) Karl Emil Becker (1879-1940), who headed Section 1 (ballistics and munitions) of the army ordnance testing division. Becker, disturbed by the bias of the old officer corps against the technocrats and the appalling mess into which heavy artillery (indeed all) procurement had sunk during the late war, had begun a programme of technical training for army officers. This programme attracted, amongst others, Walther Dornberger (1895-1980), an artilleryman whose ardent enthusiasm for long range bombardment had been lit by the ‘Paris Gun’, which consisted of a 15 inch barrel into which a much longer 8.26 inch tube had been inserted, and which was supported half way along its length.3 On 23rd March, 1918 commencing at 7.20 am, a battery of these gigantic guns, secure behind the German lines, had startled the citizens of Paris, some 78 miles away, with a bombardment of 25 huge shells which lasted until 2.45 pm, and which killed 16 people and wounded 29. Altogether, 303 shells were fired at the French capital, of which 183 landed in the city, killing 256 and wounding 620. The 228 lb projectile4 left the gun at a speed of 5260 feet per second, and in 90 seconds had attained a height of 24 miles. The total flight time was 176 seconds. The energy generated was some 8 million ft pounds. So great was the range, that a correction had to be made for the rotation of the Earth. The distance which the shell had travelled was calculated by reading a pressure gauge. The immense force of the explosion of the 195kg charge so scoured and enlarged the chamber of the gun that each successive shell, of a slightly different size and numbered for the purpose, had to be inserted further into the barrel.
The Paris gun had therefore been an impressive piece of ordnance indeed. Superlatives abounded. But it had some drawbacks. The huge barrels had to be renewed after firing 60 rounds (the French 6 inch gun could fire 3500). One, indeed, had exploded. It was not accurate, its pattern of shot being some 9.4 mils5 in range and 2.5 in bearing, and the explosive carried in the shell was only some 25lbs in mass. The sheer size of the guns hampered their mobility, and rendered them vulnerable to counter fire, or to aeroplane bombs. Dornberger was therefore drawn to the use of rockets as a means of overcoming these drawbacks, and perhaps of increasing the weight of attack. Much genius would be expended in this investigation, but none seems to have been directed towards the utility and expense of bombarding a city. Gigantism seems to have been self-justifying in Germany, even before the advent of National Socialism.
Rockets had a long history of use in warfare. “The rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air …” over Baltimore in September 1814, with which the British had failed to subdue Fort McHenry despite the use of some 1800 projectiles, were to be immortalised in ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, which became America’s national anthem in March 1931.6 But the rocket had never become a serious rival to the big gun. It even ceased to impress savages upon a closer acquaintance.7
At a meeting on 17th December 1930 Becker reported that ‘There has been a quantity of irresponsible talk and literature about space travel, and we must approach the rocket question with some misgiving. Our task is to investigate how far the rocket is capable of supplementing our weakness in artillery equipment.’ Becker reported that the increased accuracy of the rifled gun had made the rocket obsolescent, but that a Swede, Lt Col. Unge, had patented an ‘air torpedo’, which had been tested by Rheinmetall and the great armament firm of Krupp in 1909–10. This rocket had secured more accuracy by a means of rotation and a primitive sight. It nevertheless had a higher dispersal than a comparable howitzer.8
Becker reported on the status of rocket research in Germany, listing Oberth’s Raketenflugplatz, Ing. Sander (line carrying rockets for sea rescue), Prof. Wiegand (meteorological), Nebel (who had worked with Oberth and who the army did not trust), Tiling (a winged target rocket), Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (stratospheric research up to 24.8 miles.) and Prof. Goddard in America, who had published ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes’ in 1919–1920.9
It was decided to pursue rocket research with all vigour, flak (anti-aircraft), smoke and long-range ground to ground rockets being planned. The main object of research was into the propulsion method, looking into black powder (used by Sander and Unge), other solids, then gases and liquids. The stability of the rocket would also form a major investigation, with ‘firework’ rods, wings and ailerons, rotation, wireless control and gyroscopes all being considered. A civilian research into fuels and jets had been instituted, and Siemens (who had devised wartime wire guided rockets to attack British ships) would be approached about controls. The army was also to set up its own research facility at Kummersdorf, near Berlin. A sum of 200,000 reichsmarks was allotted for the first year’s research, in which Lt.Col Karlewski considered ‘revolutionary discoveries may one day be made, [Karlewski also mentioned ultra violet and infra red rays, and remote control], discoveries of the kind for which Germany is longing’ in order to ‘achieve rapid liberation.’ ‘We must keep in touch with rockets, so as to be as far ahead of the other powers as possible’, reported Karlewski; ‘the rocket offers great possibilities for area shoot with gas or HE [high explosive].’
Becker commented that the rocket was intended first as a gas weapon. Karlewski asked that the whole question be kept strictly secret, both at home and abroad.10
A follow up meeting of the Heereswaffenamt (the Army Ordnance Directorate) on January 30th 1932 heard that Unge’s son had made such ‘vast’ financial demands that it was decided to proceed with their own black powder rocket. Paul Heylandt’s liquid fuel rocket was described as taking 75 times the weight of propellant as black powder for the same performance, and Heylandt had therefore been commissioned to try to improve its performance. Gyro stabilised, remote control rockets had to be ‘left in abeyance for want of an economical propulsion unit with adequate burning time.’
Nevertheless, the grant was renewed, the enthusiastic Karlewski envisaging hundreds of rockets being launched simultaneously by electricity. Karlewski saw the rocket as ‘a good supplementary [my italics] weapon to air bombardment.’ A good working basis for further development having been established, ‘we must therefore make rocket development our main effort,’ he concluded.
Dornberger hoped to utilise the results of the liquid fuel rocket research already carried out at the Raketenflugplatz, but he was unable to secure any chart or log of performance and consumption. He did, however, secure the services of the most talented members of that organisation and the Heylandt company, Wernher Von Braun, Klaus Riedel and Arthur Rudolph. Liquid fuel development had not advanced a great deal, but on August 1st 1932 Dornberger, the enthusiast for this method of propulsion, was put in charge of research at the new testing ground at Kummersdorf, some 17 miles west of Berlin, assisted by Von Braun, Riedel and Rudolph, with the help of five mechanics. Dornberger’s work on powder rockets continued in Berlin.
But the Weimar republic, which had survived the immediate aftermath of the Great War and which, for all its bitter divisions, was entering the modern world in seemingly growing prosperity, was doomed. The great crash of 1929, and the slide into economic ruin which followed, inflicted mortal wounds. Borrowed American money, on which the growing prosperity had been based, was withdrawn. Extremist, radical parties, which appeared to offer a complete solution to the utter woe of the people, prospered. By 1932 the Nazis, amazingly, were the largest single party in the Reichstag, the German parliament, having cleverly secured the support of Germany’s devastated agriculture, as well as of a fair proportion of industry. The communists also made large gains. The German conservatives, again fearing the extreme left, invited Hitler to the chancellorship, despite the beginnings of a decline in his electoral support, believing him to be a usable ‘solution to the government crisis’.11 It was like a fly seeking the co-operation of the spider to secure its release. Within months they were entangled irrecoverably, and the left consumed.
Now came a change! Giant hatreds and resentments became cold policy. Rearmament for vengeance was begun, although it was a little circumspect at first, since even the antiquated Polish army appeared to threaten a preventive war. But a Polish – German non-aggression treaty quieted the Poles, and as Hitler became more certain that the victorious western powers would not intervene, rearmament became more open, and its pace quickened. There followed ‘the most rigorous rejection of cultural modernism that the century has witnessed.’12
But rocket research continued and expanded. In 1934, following the machtergreifung, the Nazi seizure of power, all rocket research work was conducted by the army itself in the utmost secrecy. All discussion was banned. The Racketenflugplatz and other rocket groups were shut down, and the most brilliant of its members were now employed by the army. The rocket would be an instrument of war, not of Weimar modernism and space travel. Strange paradox, that the weapon which would be most associated with Nazi revenge had its origin in the Weimar modernism which they hated.
Curiously, Fritz Lang, the director of ‘Frau im Mond’ and also of the futuristic ‘Metropolis’, was invited by Dr Goebbels, the national socialist propaganda chief, to co-operate in the presentation of national socialism to the nation and to the world. Lang, an honourably wounded ex-soldier in the Austrian army, fled to America the next day. He was half Jewish.
Research continued apace under the army’s auspices. But the problems of liquid fuel rocketry were great. Liquid oxygen itself boils at – 183 degrees centigrade, and therefore problems occur with freezing pipes and valves. It explodes on contact with organic chemicals, including grease. But when in combustion, it melts metal. A liquid fuel rocket cannot be rotated for accuracy like a shell, because of the centrifugal forces on the fuel tanks and pipes.13 These problems were gradually solved; ‘regenerative cooling’ exchanged the heat of combustion with the cold of the liquid fuel; the temperature of combustion was controlled by the use of alcohol (with which water can be mixed) as the oxidiser and a film of alcohol fuel on the walls of the combustion chamber and nozzle14; fuel feed problems were solved by the use of an immensely powerful turbopump powered by steam generated by hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst, calcium permanganate.
In December 1934 the first two A2 rockets, with 300Kg thrust engines, were successfully launched. A political alliance with the powerful new national socialist Luftwaffe, headed by Reichsfuhrer Hermann Goering, was instituted in 1935. The Luftwaffe were interested mainly in rocket assisted take off for conventional aircraft, a pulse jet ‘cruise missile’ and a rocket aeroplane at the time. Resulting from the pulse jet cruise missile experiments was the FZG 76 (V1) flyingbomb, and from the rocket plane idea the Messerschmitt ME163B ‘Komet’, powered by a mixture of hydrogen peroxide with hydrazine-hydrate in methanol. These different weapons and fuels were later to complicate the intelligence picture in Britain.
Walter Dornberger and the rocket team felt that a new experimental site was needed; ‘we wanted to build, and to build on a grand scale’, he wrote.l5 In order to extract extra funds from his superiors, he invited them to a demonstration of his wares. In a world used to biplanes and steam engines, the vast power, the noise, the spectacular flaming rocket motors would subvert the hardest and most practical of men.
In March 1936 General Baron Wernher Von Fritsch (1880-1939), the Commander in Chief of the German Army, was persuaded to visit Kummersdorf. There he was subjected to a treatment to which many high ranking Germans would succumb. He was introduced to rocketry by lectures illustrated with coloured drawings and diagrams, and then exposed, successively, to test bed demonstrations of 650lbs, 2200lbs and 3500lbs thrust engines. To the 56 year old ex-staff officer, whose early years had not seen powered flight, it was an experience of impressive and seductive grandeur. ‘Hardly had the echo of the motors died away in the pine woods, than the General assured us of his full support’, wrote Dornberger.16 But there was a proviso – the rocket had to become a specific, defined weapon. Fritsch asked them how much they wanted. They asked for, and obtained, a complete armament programme and, in conjunction with the Luftwaffe, a dedicated site.
They found this at Peenemunde, on the Baltic coast. The site was immediately purchased for 750,000 marks. Dornberger met with Riedel and Von Braun to discuss the weapon that they needed in order to justify this princely sum. Becker had already felt, during the war, that rockets – even the crude devices available at the time – would be a better means of delivering poison gas than the projectors then in use. But they should now use long-range, precision rockets, designed in the first place for gas bombardment, and to provide a long-range alternative to bombing with high explosive.17
Both Von Braun and Riedel considered that a really big rocket was required. Dornberger agreed, with a proviso concerning ease of transportation. It was therefore decided that the rocket should be capable of being carried on existing roads and railways, and launched using simple and mobile equipment. Within these limits, a range of 160 miles (twice that of the Paris Gun) and an explosive (or chemical) warhead weight of one ton (100 times greater than the gun) seemed attainable. The thrust required for this would be 25 tons.
The accuracy of the new weapon was to be from 2 to 3 mils, that is, for every 1000 metres travelled it would be only 2 or 3 metres off target, both in range and line. At the extreme range of 160 miles it would fall in a circle of around 650 metres radius.
By first World War standards, therefore, the proposed weapon was formidable indeed – but it was also hugely expensive. In the Great War it would have enabled Germany to reach out to hit enemy Headquarters, ammunition dumps, supply depots, railway yards and junctions with sudden, unstoppable and devastating effect. The firing crews would be too far behind the lines to be hit by counter battery fire, but it could not be used as prodigally as artillery shells; in the last two weeks of August 1918, the much smaller British army expended some 6 million shells. It had rarely used less than a million shells a week since 1917.18
Heavy artillery, however, was always closely connected with air power. The gunners could not see their target – did not even know if a target was there. Aerial photography and spotting were essentials of the ‘deep battle’,19 and the rocket without air power would be useful only to attack immovably fixed targets, i.e. cities, if it were to be used against an enemy who possessed command of the air.
Perhaps another limitation of the artillery rocket was that, if you devastated a rear area in the course and for the purpose of an offensive, you had to reach it fairly quickly during your advance in order to take full advantage of the damage, disorganisation and effect on enemy morale. But rapid advances of 50 to 150 miles were not usual on the western front in the first World War. This meant that its effect would, in those circumstances, be more attritional or strategic than tactical; and although it was always gratifying to kick your enemy without his being able to reply, it would have been an expensive method of achieving it, akin to the ‘breaking windows with guineas’ by which British operations in the early part of the Napoleonic war were characterised.
How many such rockets would be necessary to achieve general ‘devastation’, or to be certain of hitting a target? Bombardment to destroy a whole area is expensive in shells, due to the phenomenon of ‘overhitting’, i.e. from the first shell onwards, you become more and more likely to hit an area already hit; by the time, for example, 50% of the area is damaged, half of all your shells will be ‘wasted’ in this way. In 1944 scientists calculated that to achieve a 50% devastation of an area of one square mile, with a 600 yard aiming error, 250 tons of bombs would be required. But to achieve an increase of 30% to an 80% devastation, would require 600 tons, nearly two and a half times as much.20 It so happens that the planned accuracy of the rocket at 160 miles, and the 1 ton warhead, means that ‘tons’ may be read as rockets. This was thus an expensive way to devastate a target. If the aiming error were to increase to 2000 yards, then to 50% devastate the area would require 1250 rockets, and to 80% devastate, 2900.
A War Office investigation was carried out in order to ascertain how many shells would be needed to be almost certain to destroy a particular target, and a paper21 on the mathematics of bombardment was published some time later. In the paper, six terrorists are presumed to be in a forest of an area of 4 square miles, the question being, how many shells are required to place one shell within 10 yards of one terrorist? The paper concluded that a 1 in 20 chance requires 340 shells, a one in 10 chance needs 690, an even chance requires 5560 and a 95% chance 74,000 shells. Artillery bombardment is an expensive business, and it may be thought that, even with the accuracy specified, a 46 foot, 13 ton rocket, needing 9 tons of fuel to blast it into the stratosphere, was not a very economic alternative to a gun, even presuming that very large, long-range guns were useful or economic weapons themselves.
So would the weapon envisaged by Dornberger, Riedel and Von Braun, and paid for so copiously by the German army and people, have been worth the expense? Formidable though its capabilities would have been, there seems to be no real evidence that the rocketeers had planned definite tactics for the rocket, or had envisaged its precise role in a future battle, although Dornberger and Becker were both artillerymen. Were they themselves as carried away as General Von Fritsch had been by the ear splitting thunder of the rocket motor that they forgot its purpose? In Dornberger’s book there is much made of the superiority of the V2 over both the bomber and conventional artillery, much of the scientific advances and much of space travel, but there is no thoroughly worked out tactical plan for the rocket, such as would be expected from the German army. There is no definite scheme by which the rocket was to be integrated into the existing weaponry. Dornberger, in defence of the rocket, states that ‘the dispersal of the V2 in relation to its range was always less than that of bombs and big guns’.22 But a shell that misses its target is useless, no matter how marvellous the technology that despatched it over so many miles; and to multiply the shots to make up for the inaccuracy of a projectile, whatever the reason for its inaccuracy or the distance it has travelled in order to miss the target, is vastly expensive. Without air power, which meant that you could place an aeroplane safely above the target to observe your fall of shot, and to correct your aim, it was scarcely practicable at all. It was only useful if it was an adjunct to air power, rather than an alternative.
A British analysis of the V2 which resulted from interrogations of the German rocketeers just after the war, concluded that the V2 specification ‘was conceived not for the carrying out of any deeply laid strategic plan for the bombardment of England or any other country, or indeed with any clearly defined application in view. It was merely conceived as a “super gun”, which would impress those in the highest places …’23 Dornberger, when in 1952 he came to write in order to ‘end the confusion and correct mistaken ideas’, perhaps felt a need to explain the apparent folly to his countrymen (the book appeared in German two years before the English edition). But if it also made him appear a high-minded spaceflight enthusiast, then that was also to the good. In 1945, however, the rope was waiting for those whose service to the Fuehrer was suspected of being too morally indiscriminate, and to be certain to survive, the captured artillery Major General had to relate his tale with some caution.
Perhaps it is fair to say that it was not folly to develop the rocket, or at least the science of liquid fuel rocketry, in 1936, since it gave a vague promise of becoming a useful weapon. There was also a fear that others, particularly the Americans, might also be developing rockets for war. And no one expected, in 1936, that war would only be 3 years away, that France would fall, and that the rocket would thereby become capable of reaching London.
In 1936 the army and Luftwaffe met to agree the layout of the vast new research centre at Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. The army occupied the western half, the Luftwaffe the eastern. It cost 11 million marks in 1936, with a further 6 million in 1937. Becker’s annual operating budget was 3.5 million marks. These figures represented a large amount for what was, after all, speculative research; but the total German military expenditure in 1935/6,2.772 thousand million reichsmarks, rose to 5.821 the next year.24 The rocketeers owed much of their success in achieving these resources to the ‘entirely new, fantastic, unbureaucratic, fast moving, decisive’ character of the Luftwaffe administration.25
Perhaps the greatest irony of the rocket was in its secrecy; rumour and dread might have been of some effect as a deterrent in 1938 or 1939; as it was, when news of the rocket began to leak out in 1943 it provoked serious alarm, as will be seen in a later chapter. Hitler is quoted as saying, when he had observed a film of a successful launch, that “if we had had these rockets in 1939 we should never have had this war.”26 But by 1943 it was too late; Britain was too committed to the war, had powerful allies, and the future seemed too bright for the rocket to have anything but a nuisance effect.
The thrust of the rocket was designed to be 55,000lbs (25 tons). Its eventual range was around 200 miles, reaching a height of 60 miles on its journey. It would weigh 2.87 tons empty, and contain a launch weight of 4.9 tons of liquid oxygen and 3.8 tons of alcohol. It was maintained in position during ascent by gyroscopes, and was controlled during the initial firing only, following a ballistic path thereafter. Power was cut off after a predetermined time by a gyro functioning as an integrating accelerometer, although some 10% of missiles were produced with the originally planned radio controlled cutoff system, which the Germans believed would be subject to allied electronic interference. These devices operated servomotors which controlled tabs on each of the rocket’s four large fins, together with four graphite tabs in the jet nozzle.27 The missile was not ‘radio controlled’ in the sense that it followed a guide beam for its whole journey, although some 20% were guided for the first few moments of flight in this way28. It was launched from a small concrete platform by mobile teams, although vast bunkers to store, protect and launch the missile and its fuel were also built (chiefly at Hitler’s insistence).
Another idea for long-range bombardment, which has a surprisingly long history, was that of the pilot-less aeroplane. Victor de Karavodine patented a pulse jet engine, that is, an engine which works by a rapid series of gas explosions inside a combustion chamber, in Paris in 1907. In the same year Rene Lorin proposed the use of a pilot-less aircraft, stabilised by gyros and with an altitude control using the pressure of the atmosphere, for long-range bombardment. His proposed machine was to be powered by either ram jet or a pulse jet. By 1909 Georges Marconnet had designed an improved pulse-jet.29
In Germany Fritz Gosslau, who had designed radio controlled target drones in the Great War, gained a degree in aeronautical engineering, and in 1926 began work in the aero engine department at Siemens, transferring to the Argus Engine Company in 1936. Here he designed a radio controlled target drone, the Argus AS292, of which the Luftwaffe promptly ordered a hundred.
In 1939 Dr Ernst Steinhoff, of the Luftwaffe Research Centre at Peenemunde, called for a pilot-less aircraft for use against enemy targets, and Argus took up the challenge. However, their design, powered by a piston engine, had a speed of only 280 miles per hour, which would have made it hopelessly vulnerable to fighter attack. The flying bomb would wait for war, for a perfected pulse jet engine, and the need to arrest the declining political fortunes of the Luftwaffe, before its full development. The reversal of the Versailles treaty, the occupation of the Rhineland, the absorbtion of Austria, the destruction of Czechoslovakia by treaty and then by seizure, a cold pact with the Soviet Union and the renewal of tension on the frontiers of Poland were all to hasten those fateful events.
In the meantime science in the Third Reich, although well funded, lost some of its best brains. Between 1901 and 1932, German Jews won more Nobel prizes for science than the whole of the United States, gaining a quarter of all those awarded to Germans.30 This collection of intellect in so small a circle – some two million souls – seems as notable, and as inexplicable, as the intellectual greatness of Periclean Athens, itself set in the glories of Greece, as the Jews were set amid the formidable talents of their German Christian compatriots. Perhaps the acquisition of two languages in the formative years assists in abstract thought, at which they excelled. They excelled in the theatre, in literature, in music. They excelled in business and finance. Although Germans first – some 12,000 died in the war – they were part of an international community of Jewry; but in a similar manner, scientists and scholars were themselves part of an international community, although losing none of their patriotism for that reason.
But the European Jews had also excelled in revolution. In Hungary, in Russia, in Germany itself, Jews were at the forefront of the revolutionaries. The regime in Hungary, led by the Jewish Bela Kun, had 25 of 32 of its commissars Jewish; in Germany, Rosa Luxemberg, Eisner, Toller, Levine were Jewish: five of the seven leaders of the Bavarian revolution were Jewish; in Russia Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Litvinov were Jews, and Lenin had some Jewish ancestry. The great and unforgivable fault of the Jews, their Achilles heel, was that they seemed to excel in everything, for good or ill, in revolution or stable government, in extortion or religion, as criminals or lawyers, as well as mathematicians and scientists. They could thus be accused of being at the heart of virtually anything you wished. For this dangerous excellence German Jewish scholars were expelled from their posts in the German academic world.
With this extraordinary measure the popular dictator gained his revenge, satisfied his constituents, and imperilled his nation. The nature of Nazism was unveiled to the wide world, the implacable antagonism of a gifted group was aroused, and the powers of the west were stirred from their dreams of peace and security. A historian in the fourth millennium, pursuing his dusty and obscure researches into the long vanished world of the second world war, might, amid the crimes which will undoubtedly stain the third, be less surprised by those of the second millennium; but his incredulity will surely be aroused by the deliberate rejection or exile of a scientific community, which constituted Germany’s strength in peace and war, by a leader who was very well aware of the value of technically superior weapons31. A more ruthless and cynical man might have dissembled his hatred, and attracted as many scientists or technologists as he could – what could a more stupid man have done?
Thus the growing scientific community at Peenemuende continued their clandestine researches while the potential of the wider scientific base around them, although still large, was contracted. Abstract science, from which new technologies grow, was scorned; national socialist science and technology, under the pressure of war and defeat, would gradually turn to an enchanted world of heroic self sacrifice and gigantism, where salvation seemed to lie in child warriors who would pilot flying bombs or powered gliders against modern bombers, or in tanks weighing 120 tons, or in wooden jet fighters or rocket aeroplanes which would glide back to earth after each mission. As this lurid glow gradually penetrated the gloom of defeat which fell over the Third Reich as the second world war progressed, the liquid fuelled rocket would seem more and more promising, not as a battlefield weapon, but as a bringer of retributive terror.
