Five Brothers and a War

V-2 Rocket

The vision of the program leaders was to manufacture and fire up to 350 rockets per week, and up to 100 on any given day. The rockets were built at the Mittelwerk (“Central Works”) factory in Kohnstein. This was a factory built underground to avoid destruction by Allied bombers. Importantly, it used vast numbers of highly-skilled forced laborers (slaves) and Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp prisoners, and one of the most infamous parts of this weapons system is that the development and production of the rockets caused more deaths than their delivery on target cities. It has been estimated that about 3,000 rockets were fired, though as many were produced for testing. In all, about 9,000 people died as a result of V-2 attacks and 12,000 concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers died in the production process. Thus, an average of four people died making each rocket that was fired, and an average of three victims died each time one impacted on a target. Unlike the V-1 program, which was run by the Luftwaffe , the V-2 program was run by the SS. Under the command of SS General Hans Kammler, (the officer responsible for the construction of several concentration camps, including Auschwitz) and with the expertise of some of the best German scientists, the Third Reich began a campaign of terror against Antwerpen, Belgium and London, England. Because guidance systems were very crude, there was almost nothing that could be done to pinpoint where the rockets would land. As a result, they were simply launched against large cities, with the hope they would land within the city and therefore terrorize the population. The intent against Antwerpen was to destroy the harbor, which was critical in the Allies logistical support of their invasion of Europe following the D-Day landings. The intent against London was to torment the British, to frighten them, and to break the morale of the population. This was a flagrant violation of the League of Nations prohibition, adopted unanimously on September 30, 1938, which specifically forbade the targeting of civilians in war. Of course, the early highly-targeted German attack on Rotterdam on May 14, 1940, the relatively random German rocket attacks on Antwerpen in 1944-45, the massive destruction of the English city of Coventry, the Allies’ carpet bombing of German cities, such as Leipzig on December 4, 1943, Dresden in February 1945, and the American nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, were also flagrant violations of this “law” of warfare. In the final analysis, the Allies were not unhappy with Germany’s commitment to the V-2 program. Even with the use of slave labor in their construction, the cost per unit was enormous—about $5 million in today’s dollars. With more than 6,000 built, and about half launched at the Allies (many were used in testing and development, and there was a stockpile left at Nazi capitulation), the total program cost was about $30 billion. The propellant used large quantities of fuel alcohol, with each launch needing 30 tons of potatoes for the distillation. This significantly impacted food supplies and did create great hardship for the populations of both Germany and occupied nations. The Dutch had no potatoes to eat, but the V-2s did. Upwards of one-third of Germany’s fuel alcohol production was needed to power the rockets, which did little damage militarily. Had the money and resources been spent on developing and deploying the Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighter, the outcome of the war might have been different, and an Allied victory almost certainly would have been far more costly in casualties, time, and money.

nazi germany

Five Brothers and a War

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