ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

154 The Hunt for Zero Point
the A-4, but the sheer size of the task meant, practically speaking, that
foreign civilian workers—Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and others from the
conquered east—would have to be involved sooner rather than later in
the process. But with foreign workers came the risk of the security leaks
that Hitler had expressly sought to eliminate. It was to this apparently
insoluble conundrum that Himmler claimed he had the answer.
What he offered Hitler, he promised, was watertight: his proposed
workforce would be drawn not from the diminishing manpower resources
of the Reich's civilian labor pool, but from the SS-controlled
concentration camps, from which there was no escape. The same workforce,
Himmler added, could be used to build the underground manufacturing
facilities that would keep the A-4 secure from Allied bombing.
Faced with the logic of this proposal, Hitler agreed, but informed
Himmler that he must cooperate with Speer.
Though the SS controlled the camps, it was the armaments ministry
that had masterminded the revitalization of the German manufacturing
economy, achieving month-on-month growth, in spite of the ferocity of
the Allies' strategic bombing campaign, since Speer's appointment the
previous year. Yet, when he was informed of Himmler's proposal, Speer
couldn't help but object to it, knowing that Himmler, whose dreams
invariably exceeded his abilities, would never be able to deliver what he
had promised. This was undoubtedly the case, but it was not what Hitler
wanted to hear. The following day, Himmler informed Speer that he had
taken charge of the manufacture of the "A-4 instrument" (as it was
known to conceal its identity and purpose to outsiders) and demanded
Speer's full cooperation as a subordinate. This the outmaneuvered
armaments minister was forced to provide.
Thus, within 24 hours, did Himmler not only acquire control of the
V-2 program, but in the process lay the foundations for the SS takeover
of all secret weapons programs within the Third Reich.
For years, the Reichsführer-SS had harbored a grand scheme to turn
the SS, originally established as Hitler's bodyguard, into a self-sustaining
economic entity, capable of funding and running its affairs without
reliance on the everyday financial and administrative mechanisms that
maintained and sustained the Reich. It was via the camps that Himmler
and his leading economic authority, Oswald Pohl, realized that they
could achieve their aims. By 1943, population of the camps had surged—
from around 25,000 on the eve of the war, to well over half a million, a
figure that did not begin to reflect the millions that had already died in
death camps like Auschwitz, Dachau and Mauthausen and the millions