Five Brothers and a War

Vergeltungswaffe (“Vengeance Weapons”)

Germany was becoming alarmed by the rate at which its cities, and the civilian populations within those cities, were being attacked by Allied bombers. This was not only having a huge impact on the German people due to the actual death rate, but it also had an equal or greater impact in terms of morale. The propaganda that was fed to the populace was that Germany was better than everyone—to the point that the German national anthem was changed to Deutschland Über Alles (“Germany Above Everything”.) This was not only sold as a statement of the superiority of the state over the individual within Germany, but also as a statement that Germany should claim its rightful place as the leader of the world. Remember that the Treaty of Versailles was, correctly, viewed as a means of denigrating the German people, and forcing them into a submission that was completely repugnant to Germans of every stripe. Now, with the bombing of the German homeland, and the total destruction of wholesale cities, the mood in Germany was souring on Nazism as the savior of the nation. Hitler was anxious to find “wonder weapons” that would capture the imagination of the citizenry and simultaneously strike fear in equal or greater measure to the Allies’ civilian population, who he felt were softer than Germany’s. "Terror attacks against English centers of population . . . will paralyze the will of the people to resist”, according to Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations for the German High Command. Hitler was pitched a weapons program to deliver bombs great distances early in the war, but did not approve of it because he felt that it was simply a series of very expensive artillery weapons. However, as the tide of the war had turned against him, he began to approve of it based at least in part on the enthusiasm of the developers of the weapons— not least Dr. Wernher von Braun, who would be the main prize in the post-war race between the United States and the Soviet Union in capturing genius rocket engineers and scientists. This post-war feeding frenzy was conducted so blatantly that any and all rules regarding treatment of Nazi Party members was suspended for these scientists. While entirely out of chronological order for the purposes of this narrative, almost all of the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accomplishments, up to and past the Apollo moon landings, would not have been possible without the technical and administrative skills of Dr. von Braun. His enthusiasm caught the attention of several American Presidents—not just Adolf Hitler. With the carpet bombing of cities, Hitler needed something to level the playing field, and approved of the new class of weapons, now called the Vergeltungswaffe ("Retribution Weapon") program. The initial weapons included the V-1 “buzzbomb”, the V-2 rocket and the V-3 super cannon artillery weapon.

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Five Brothers and a War

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