The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  Son of a pharmacist from the southwest German city of Giessen and a veteran of heavy artillery units on the Western Front, Dornberger would become a masterful salesman, administrator and political infighter for the rocket program. A space flight enthusiast, he read a very early rocket genius Hermann Oberth’s Wege around the time of its appearance in 1929.He began work in Becker’s section in 1930, purportedly with the assignment of looking into liquid-fuel rocketry, but until 1936, his main area of concentration was small battlefield solid-fuel rockets.

  In the Spring of 1930, Dornberger graduated after five years with an MS degree in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg in Berlin. In 1935, Dornberger received an honorary doctorate, which Col. Karl Emil Becker arranged as Dean of the new Faculty of Military Technology at the TH Berlin.

  Rocket development

  The most famous German rocket scientist was, of course, Wernher von Braun. The very first “dreamers/scientists” regarding the German rockets were Oberth and Rudolph Nebel. Oberth had been involved with the best early sci-fi movie call Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon) and the props for the movie and its ideas gradually developed into an actual scientific endeavor.

  A famous picture taken on July 23, 1930 included Wernher von Braun and ushered the young rocket genius onto the stage of rocket design, never again to leave until man walked on the moon thanks to his contributions. Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, also became best friends and collaborators for most of the remainder of their lives.

  Wernher von Braun was prized by the rocket group from the beginning because of his title as a Baron and his aristocratic background and bearing. One could compare this “halo effect” to that of the Red Baron (von Richthoffen). Nothing in Germany could quite equal the status of the landed Prussian aristocracy and von Braun was valued for this at least as much as the technical abilities which he also possessed in abundance.

  In April 1930, Dornberger was appointed to the Ballistics Council of the German Army (Reichswehr) Weapons Department as Assistant Examiner to secretly develop military liquid-fuel rockets suitable for mass-production that would surpass the range of artillery.

  As early as 1932, Walter Dornberger and his friend Wernher von Braun tried to launch as successful rocket but the motor exploded after von Braun tried to light it using a long pole. This was somewhere in the location of a Rocket Test Field.

  Dornberger was in his last military command in 1934 which was a rocket training battery. He had begun working for the Army Weapons Department on rocketry in 1933.

  In 1934 the interim rocket facility in Germany, the VfR, folded. In 1934, Joseph Goebbels banned all discussion of rocketry that suggested uses of the missile as a weapon. Part of this attitude was due to problems between the Army and the Nazis. Then in 1934, Rudolph Nebel, who had been trying to move forward with rockets, was imprisoned by the Gestapo. In 1934, Dornberger told a now-famous rocket expert named Arthur Rudolph that they must work together. (Rudolph went on to supervise the Saturn 5 U.S. moon-rocket program).

  During this time, the main line of rocket development was that advocated and run by the ideas of Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was always adamant about the use of liquid oxygen in the missile as opposed to nitric acid, which was much more dangerous to work with.

  In March of 1935, Hitler renounced the Versailles Treaty and began to re-arm Germany. “23 year old Wernher von Braun wrote a position paper that must be regarded as Peenemunde’s birth certificate,” according to Neufeld, page 6. Peenemunde was to be established on a remote island on the coast of the Baltic Sea in the far north of Germany. The base was to be shared with the Luftwaffe for their weapons development.

  There was incredibly fast scientific research and progress at Peenemunde and Neufeld attributes this to lavish funding. Dornberger was constantly battling for government control of the rocket production as opposed to using private industry to build and operate the facilities. This was a philosophy which dominated, even when the Germans moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and began producing missiles for the United States. Hence, Cape Canaveral was in public, not private, hands. This came, in part, from the Prussian tradition of the military officer corps.

  Dornberger was transferred to the sprawling, newly built Peenemunde Test Facility in May, 1937.

  As vividly described by Michael J. Neufeld in Rocket and the Reich at page 118:

  On a rainy day in March, 1939, von Brauchich brought Hitler to Kummersdorf [a proving grounds] which was a short distance from Berlin. (The Supreme Commander never set foot in Peenemunde). The two were accompanied by Becker and were met by Dornberger, Thiel and von Braun. The Fuhrer watched firings of the 300 and 1000-kg-thrust motors … but his expression scarcely changed. When von Braun explained the workings of the liquid-fuel rocket using a cutaway A-3 [precursor of the V-2], Hitler listened closely, but then walked away.… Hitler gave the group only a backhanded compliment: “Well, it was grand!”

  On August 20, 1941, Dornberger and von Braun met the Fuhrer at his Wolfsschanza (“wolf’s lair”) headquarters in East Prussia. Dornberger began by showing a V-2 propaganda movie.

  “Finally, on October 3, at two minutes before four in the afternoon, the …V-2 lifted off and arced out over the Baltic on a perfect Fall day. The rocket, which carried on its side a Woman in the Moon logo, continued straight on its course until all that was visible was a glowing dot … on the roof of the guidance division’s Measurement House, Dornberger and Zanssen wept and hugged each other with joy.”

  That night, at the gala celebration in the Officer’s Club, Dornberger delivered a moving speech in which he stated that “the space ship is born.” There is little doubt about of his enthusiasm for Hitler and the system.…In the wings, the power brokers were gathering … but a sample of twenty-eight prominent Peenemunde engineers and scientists shows that thirteen or fourteen became Party members and four, including von Braun, were in the SS, according to Neufeld at p. 179. A few, like Arthur Rudolph (a member since mid-1931) were ideologically committed Nazis, but the survey confirms the impression that von Braun was fairly typical.

  Von Braun was known to have worn his SS uniform only once, and that was when Himmler ordered him to do so.

  In March and April of that year [1943], the thirty-one-year-old Technical Director [von Braun] also used his rank, as he needed to, when applying to the SS Race and Settlement Office for permission to marry. (For unknown reasons, the marriage to a Berlin physical education teacher never took place).

  Because the Commander of Peenemunde, Colonel Leo Zanssen [a close ally of Dornberger] was a Catholic and was [therefore] politically suspect, the local SS [thought he was part of a conspiracy involving some local Catholic priests]. According to a report …Zanssen was an old-fashioned officer out of touch with the common man and National Socialism. Zanssen was not outspoken religiously; his wife and children were in fact Protestant.

  When the Nazis came to power, he [Zanssen] even made his children stand up at the dinner table and sing the Party anthem, the “Horst Wessel Song.”

  In short order Dornberger discovered who was behind the accusations [against his friend Zanssen]: Stegmaier [with help from a sadistic private enterprise interloper named Gerhard Degenkolb’s cronies]. Dornberger was angry with Stegmaier.

  On July 7, 1943 Dornberger and von Braun were suddenly called to East Prussia to meet the Fuhrer… [on June 3, 1943]… Dornberger received a promotion to Brigadier General.

  For the first time Hitler saw the impressive images of a V-2 launch. Von Braun narrated the film; Dornberger lectured and showed models of the deployment systems to the visibly fascinated Fuhrer…In any case, Hitler emerged from the meeting intoxicated by the missile and told Speer [the overall armaments minister] to push its production as fast as possible. Hitler also granted the minister’s request (originating from Dornberger) that Wernher von Braun receive the prestigious title of Professor. The Fuhrer was amazed at von Braun’s youth and so impressed by his
talent that he made a point of signing the document himself.

  Dornberger was given roles in the management of both the V-1 and v-2 programs in 1942. It took three launches of the V-2 to get the first success. Dornberger and von Braun were flown to Hitler’s “Wolfsschanze” with a film meant to impress Hitler. According to a speech made by Dornberger at Peenemunde, the era of space travel actually began with that launch which ushered in a new era.

  In Blowback: The First Full Account of America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Disastrous Effect on The cold war, Our Domestic and Foreign Policy, by Christopher Simpson, Simpson presents at page 28, a slightly different and intriguing story of the events in question:

  And in March 1943, a terrible blow fell: Adolph Hitler had a dream in which Dornberger’s pet project, the giant liquid fueled V-2 rocket, failed to cross the English Channel. (Hitler then put the V-2 at a low priority). But General Dornberger was nothing if not determined. He requested and got a private audience with Hitler during July, 1943 … Dornberger personally convinced Hitler to authorize the construction of a giant underground factory near Nordhausen…

  At least 20,000 prisoners – many of them talented engineers who had been singled out for missile production because of their education were killed through starvation, disease or execution during the course of this project.

  Adolph Hitler said to Dornberger “I have had to apologize only to two men in my whole life. The first was Field Marshal von Brauchitsch. I did not listen to him when he told me again and again how important your research was. The second man is yourself. I never believed that your work would be successful.

  Later in the War, in January, 1944, Dornberger began working on anti-aircraft rockets both as an artillery commander as well as with authority to develop anti-aircraft rockets.

  Because the missile base at Peenemunde had been exposed to serious Allied air strikes which had crippled it badly, a new missile factory was built in the German mountains, underground, in an abandoned gypsum mine. The facility had been largely staffed by slave labor and is called Nordhausen-Mittelwork-Dora in various descriptions. Apparently thousands of slave laborers were worked to death and when Allied troops liberated this place, there were corpses piled high and very emaciated bodies were being burned four at a time in a camp crematory.

  Following the defeat of the German Army at Stalingrad, every officer in the German Army realized that this was the beginning of the end and the war was going to be lost. Hence, the rocket scientists began to develop a strategy of preparing to essentially auction off their services to the highest bidder between Britain, the Soviet Union, the U.S. Military and even, incredibly, General Electric!

  On 12 January 1945 on Dornberger’s proposal, Albert Speer replaced the Long-Range Weapons Commission with “Working Staff Dornberger.” Then the scientists began their travels to the remote areas of the German Alps where they arranged to meet with the Allied military recruiters

  In her book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Annie Jacobsen, states:

  “Von Braun was willing to concede…the war… He needed a bargaining chip to use against the Americans after his was captured. Von Braun told Tessman and Huzel [two fellow compatriots that] Dornberger would also be part of this team. On April 1 [1945] Dornberger received an order [from SS General Kammler] demanding that Dornberger evacuate his staff from Mittelwerk … and Dornberger and his staff drove themselves…[the news came] Our Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler…fell for Germany this afternoon…But Hitler’s death spurred von Braun to action. Von Braun approached General Dornberger [to deal with the Americans]. I agree with you, Wernher, Dornberger was overheard saying that’s right. It’s our obligation to put our baby into the right hands.

  This is essentially the most significant line in the entire effort the author has made to present the personality and history of Walter Dornberger. But more important is the sheer irony that these two somewhat eccentric scientists saw themselves as (presumably) both the father and the mother of arguably the most important military invention in world history, surely at that time. Keep in mind, the Soviet Union was quickly able to imitate U.S. technology to create the atomic and hydrogen bombs. The Soviets were never able, however, to create a satisfactory, secure ICBM delivery system, despite the best efforts of such a genius as Sergei Korolev, the top Soviet missile engineer.

  It is obvious to the author, that the experience of these two (partially evil) geniuses at this time and in this situation, gave them the very pinnacle of power perhaps for the whole planet. After this, everything else, even the launching of men to the moon under their supervision, was possibly an anti-climax. (And for this reason, the psychology of this will be examined in light of the events in Dallas on November 22, 1963). As stated above, there was no other way to get the missile technology than through the efforts of the Nazi scientists. And this technology was absolutely essential to avoid the possible annihilation of our entire country. So it is easy to see that the leverage possessed by these scientists would, in stark terms, trump any considerations about the possible murder of a political leader, should it ever come to that.

  Beginning in February, 1945, Dornberger and his staff migrated from Schwerdt on the Oder River in Germany to a place called Bad Sachsa (still in Germany), and thence in April, 1945 to Bavaria which was being occupied by American troops, safely away from the advancing Russians. They were fleeing the slave labor camp at Mittelwerk-Nordhausen, site of the slave labor atrocities. Dornberger had hidden technical papers near Bad Sachsa to use as bargaining chips.

  In The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists, Tom Bower describes the scene as follows:

  Commander Henry Schade of the American Naval Technical Mission arrived at Oberammergau on May 1, 1945. He was looking for Dr. Herbert Wagner, designer of the Hs293 [German] guided missile bomb. Richard Porter, an employee of General Electric on contract to Army Ordnance arrived with CIOS [military intelligence] soon after. Wernher von Braun claimed he withheld information to get an offer. As part of their bargaining tactics, Wernher von Braun and Dornberger decided to maintain military style control over the team. That did not pass unnoticed by American intelligence officers. Dornberger and von Braun were in a position to bargain … to exercise pressure and attempt to blackmail. “Security clearance of the group as such was an obvious absurdity” [which was the conclusion of Colonel Holger Toftoy, Chief of Army Ordnance who was there to fulfill a quota of 100 scientists to be recruited for the Army].

  At the eleventh hour, … right before boarding the train, General Dornberger confessed to having hidden his own stash of papers, an ace in the hole had Dornberger been double-crossed by Wernher von Braun … General Dornberger told Staver that he had buried five large boxes in a field near the spa town of Bad Sachsa…in a last-ditch effort to find Dornberger’s stash, Staver and Porter [a representative of General Electric] sent out on a find mission…finally they located Dornberger’s metal-lines cases, which contained 250 lbs of drawings and documents.

  At the Haus Ingeburg ski resort, Wernher von Braun and General Dornberger had selected a small team, including Herbert Axter, Hans Lindenberg, Dieter Huzel and Bernhard Tessman.

  A small group around Dornberger ended up in a mountain resort hotel high up on the former Austrian-German border. Von Braun joined them later in April with [Dieter] Huzel and [Bernhard] Tessman who had buried Peenemunde’s archive in a mine northwest of Mittelwerk.

  [U.S.] Ordnance’s Special Mission V-2 also managed to ferret out the location of the Peenemunde archive.… A Soviet team including Sergei Korolev [the man who turned out to be the “von Braun” of the Soviet space program] was sent to investigate Peenemunde.

  See Tom Bower, Jacobsen p. 67 and Neufeld, p. 265 regarding the quoted information.

  Near the the time when Germany surrendered, and Hitler committed suicide in Berlin, on May 2, 1945, both von Braun and Dornberger met up with American troops near the Austrian village of Sc
hattwald and were thence taken to the German town of Reutte. (Some reports say they were actually captured by General Patton’s forces in Czechoslovakia)

  As detailed by Annie Jacobsen in Operation Paperclip beginning at page 66, she writes:

  Von Braun and Dornberger were not captured.… So confident were they as to their future use by the U.S. Army that they turned themselves in…

  Wernher von Braun and Dornberger sent Magnus von Braun [the English-speaking younger brother of Wernher] down to the U.S. base to make a deal. The CIOS [part of U.S. Intelligence had a] Black List for rockets research [which] included one thousand names of scientists and engineers … and Wernher von Braun was at the top of that list.

  Some in the U.S. Division of CIC [an intelligence team] found von Braun’s hubris appalling…so confident were von Braun and Dornberger about their value to the U.S. Army, they demanded to see…Ike.

  On July 6, 1945 JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff, American] finally approved [without telling President Truman] of the Nazi scientist program. It was 1) for use against Japan, 2) no war criminals were allowed, and 3) the exploitation of the scientists was to be temporary.

  Because the rocket scientists were so valuable, if not absolutely necessary to the future defense of the United States, hardly any of these scientists were prosecuted at Nuremberg and, in fact, up to perhaps thousands, if you include medical, chemical and other scientists were brought to the United States, as well as some to Britain and the Soviet Union. The program in the U.S. was first called Operation Overcast and later, Operation Paperclip.

  Per Neufeld, p. 269: