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What Is Peenemünde?
combustion chamber instead of the pressurized system using compressed nitrogen
that was used on the first engines in Kummersdorf.
With the onset of World War II, the scope of the research and development
activity at Peenemünde rapidly expanded. New services were created and a large
number of new specialists needed to be recruited and quickly mobilized to the
center, many being summoned from the army.The schools of higher education in
Darmstadt, Berlin, Dresden, Hannover, and later Vienna and Prague were also
enlisted to support the research activity at Peenemünde and conducted their work
on assignment from there.
From 1937 through 1940, the Germans invested more than 550 million
Reichsmarks into the construction of the Peenemünde center, an enormous sum
for that time. All of Germany’s leading electrical and radio engineering firms
provided the center with special testing equipment and the latest measurement
instruments. Despite our anti-fascist views, we had to credit the directors of the
operations, first and foremost Dornberger and von Braun, for the energy and
confidence with which they acted.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t just the enthusiasm and organizational capabilities
of the Peenemünde directors.They understood perfectly well that the enthusiasm
and brilliant capabilities of lone scientists were far from sufficient. What
was needed was a clear conception of the scale of operations needed to achieve
set objectives, and the determination to create the strongest state-supported
scientific-technical, production, and military-testing infrastructure possible.All of
this was conceived prior to the war, then refined and implemented during the
hostilities under the conditions of Hitler’s totalitarian regime, which spared no
expense to develop the proposed secret weapon of mass destruction.There was
no need to account for the project before parliamentarians. To a significant
degree, this contributed to the success of the new endeavor.
On 22 June 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union.While certain of a rapid
victory on the eastern front, Hitler was troubled by Britain’s tenacity. On 20
August 1941, at his “Wolf’s Den” headquarters in East Prussia, he received Colonel
Doctor Dornberger, Doctor von Braun, and the lead specialist for the development
of missile guidance systems, Doctor Steinhoff. There was no need for the new
missile weaponry for the Blitzkrieg against the East, since the Germans would be
in Leningrad within a month and Moscow no later than October.Why then such
attention to missile specialists? Dornberger and von Braun familiarized Hitler with
the current status of their work on the A-4 missile, which had a range of up to 300
kilometers. They also discussed the potential for new missiles that would have
intercontinental ranges. As a result of this meeting, Hitler gave the programs at
Peenemünde the highest priority.
In autumn 1941, roused by this support from the highest level, the work force
at Peenemünde began to speed up the design process for two-stage and perhaps
even three-stage A-9, A-10, and A-11 systems. But the basis was to have been the
A-4 design.
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