That's not my department, says Werhner von Braun

[khaosworks]

Going through some books, including Michael Neufeld's The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era, for a paper. Interesting tidbit - the A-4 rocket (which became the V-2), killed more people in its production (estimated 19,000+) than it actually killed in combat operations (about 5,000).

Kind of gives you a sour taste in the mouth about the space program, really. The V-2's effect on the war was strategically minimal. If it did have an effect, it was one that helped the Allies because the Reich had invested so much into its development it sucked up their resources. The cost of the V-2 program was not as massive as the Manhattan Project, but proportionately Germany had not as much to spend.

The fanatical devotion to a "secret weapon"-type solution to warfare was a typical Nazi way of thinking and explains the desperation in the summer of 1943, what with the Allied invasion of Italy, the loss of North Africa, and the consequences of the Battle of Kursk, that put rocketry as a top priority. We can only count ourselves lucky that the Reich continued to see ballistic missiles only as glorified artillery shells and that the failure of their nuclear program meant that they did not think of mating one with the other.

This blinkered outlook may also have been due to a general hostility towards scientists (as opposed to engineers) in the early years of the Reich as well as the fragmented nature of scientific and technological research in the interwar years. Far from having the totalitarian state face that it showed to the world, the Reich was a competing swirl of bureaucratic empires with lots of turf fighting. The Versailles Treaty meant that a lot of military research had to be done clandestinely, and therefore in isolation. Rocketry, as an example, was the product of both secret Army Ordnance programs as well as amateur rocket societies (which were suppressed once the Nazis took over). By the time anybody realized that these disparate technologies had to be combined into a single war effort, it was probably too late. This in contrast to Britain and America, or even Japan.

The idea that technological solutions were good in and of themselves also fostered narrow-mindedness - rocketry was seen as a symbol of innovation since the days of Oberth and Valier, Fritz Lang's Frau in Mond and the Weimar Republic - and no proper strategic thinking was applied to whether that technology had any practical application, or whether or not the resources of the country could support an implementation that would make it practical. Since in their eyes, technology = good, they charged ahead, not really thinking it through. Unfortunately for the Nazis, their ideology was the kind that fostered such fanaticism in the face of contrary evidence.

Moral of the story: ideology can guide your actions, but should never blind you to practical considerations. This applies to all kinds of ideological fanaticism, not just fascist ones. Take the neoconservative stance, which promotes the idea of American dominance as being good for the world, which underlies the entire Iraq adventure, and the trouble that's gotten everyone into when they didn't seem to think the situation through and you'll see what I mean. As another analogy, consider the insistence (of which I was also guilty) and publicity given to the idea of the right of same-sex marriages to be called marriages that played such a large role in pushing the vote towards the Republicans.

Late, tired, circadian rhythm all screwed up by Nyquil and cold. Not sure I'm making sense.

Werhner von Braun
by Tom Lehrer

Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Hey, I had the oportunity to speak with Michael Neufeld at the Smithsonian when I was researching "Retro Rockets: Experimetal Rockets 1926-1941" ( http://members.aol.com/SatrnPress/retro.htm ). I was actually discussing pre-war rocketry with him, and in a much more narrow technical view--my books are for model-makers, not historians. Any history I write is to tell modelers what the heck they are making in a few paragraphs.

Actually, I thought the analysis in "The Rocket Team" (by Ordway, as I recall) was pretty interesting. The conclusion was that the V-2 helped Germany principally by accelerating its loss so that the war in Europe was over before Germany could be nuked.

I'm curious what your paper is about.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Oh, nothing spectacular - it's a short 9-page paper for a class, a pretty superficial comparison of Nazi technological development versus Allied technological development during the war. My initial post covers pretty much the core of my argument, which Neufeld notes, that ideological pressures rather than practical ones drove the Nazis to focus on what was obviously an impractical technology given the short time frame for development that was needed.

In contrast, the Allies organized scientists early in the war, shared information among themselves, concentrated on a whole slew of small practical devices developed in response to specific needs (anti-aircraft defense, submarine warfare, etc.) instead of a big super-weapon (the Manhattan Project notwithstanding), were sensitive to conditions in the field and much better integrated military and scientific thinking.

The Germans made a real wrong turn when they settled on the V-2, and to explain why we can look at their basic lack of vision and imagination.