to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

What Is Peenemünde?
much of the information needed to answer that question during our first months
of postwar work in Germany. Our sources were the facilities that we inspected, the
onsite study of examples of rocket technology, the accounts of German specialists,
and the historical reports that they drew up at our tasking.
The history of German rocket technology does not start with Peenemünde.
Practical work to implement pioneering theories about interplanetary travel began
with the development of primitive rocket engines as early as 1929.The evolution
of amateurish research by lone enthusiasts into large-scale activity to develop
rocket-powered flying vehicles began after military agencies had assessed the
outlook for missile weaponry.
According to the Treaty of Versailles, Germany had been forbidden to develop
and produce new types of aircraft, artillery, and other weapons technology that had
been known during World War I as offensive systems. Missile weaponry had not
been included on the list of banned weapons. The authors of the Treaty of
Versailles had not even considered the possibility of using missiles as offensive
weapons. The top army leaders in Germany, however, believed that the work
started by the romantics of interplanetary travel could have real applications in
warfare. One of the first German generals to render real support to the amateur
work of rocket enthusiasts was Karl Emil Becker, author of the widely known textbook
Lehrbuch der Ballistik (Ballistics Textbook) and head of the directorate for
infantry artillery weaponry. Becker formed a special subdivision for rocket technology,
which in 1934 was headed by Walter Dornberger, a thirty-nine-year-old
artillery captain. One of Dornberger’s first subordinates was the twenty-two-yearold
engineer Wernher von Braun, who was well known for his scientific study
Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beitraege zu dem Problem der Fluessigkeitsrakete
(Constructive,Theoretical, and Experimental Contributions to the Problem
of the Liquid Rocket), published in 1931. 3 Dornberger and von Braun’s focused
work to develop long-range, liquid-propellant ballistic missiles began at an artillery
range in Kummersdorf near Berlin. The first experimental missiles were assigned
the ordinal designations, A-1 and A-2.
In 1933, with Hitler’s rise to power, all restrictions placed on the armaments of
Germany by the Treaty of Versailles were discarded. The Nazis openly encouraged
industry to work energetically to restore Germany’s military might. In 1935, von
Braun and Dornberger approached the Directorate of Armaments with a design
for a liquid-propellant missile capable of achieving a firing range of 50 kilometers.
To optimize the guidance system, the Germans developed an experimental missile
under the designation A-3. A launch pad for the missile was set up on the small
island of Greifswalder-Oie in the Baltic Sea.
3. Wernher von Braun, Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beitraege zu dem Problem der Fluessigkeitsrakete.
Ph. D. dissertation, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universitaet of Berlin, 16 April 1934, subsequently reprinted in
Raketentechnik und Raumfahrtforschung, Sonderheft 1. Frankfurt: Umschau Verlag, n.d.
243