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In The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era, Michael J. Neufeld “aims to provide a balanced and readable history of the German Army liquid-fueled rocket program based on archival research. The symbolic center of the book is the rise and fall of the Army rocket facility at Peenemünde as a major research and development institution” (pg. x). Neufeld focuses extensively on the rocket program in an exhaustively-researched monograph with a great deal of attention devoted to the engineering problems of the A-4 and V-2 ballistic missiles.
Neufeld begins with Von Braun’s 1933 program and its objectives. He writes, “The first was development of engines based on aluminum alloys. Raketenflugplatz had begun using aluminum for the obvious purpose of saving weight and thus increasing the performance of launched vehicles” (pg. 33-34). Neufeld continues, “Von Braun’s second objective was the fully automatic operation of ignition and tank pressurization. Proper ignition was a serious problem; if too much fuel or oxidizer reached the engine first and ignition was delayed, an explosion usually resulted” (pg. 34). Finally, “Von Braun’s third objective was the design and construction of the rocket itself” (pg. 35). Neufeld relates the rocket program to the Paris Gun of World War I. He writes, “The most fundamental flaw in their [the army’s] thinking lay in the lack of any well-thought-out strategic concept of how the missile could actually affect the course of a war” (pg. 52). Neufeld continues, “In a fundamental sense the A-4 was another Paris Gun. It was the product of a narrow technological vision that obscured the strategic bankruptcy of the concept” (pg. 52). More to the point, the German military was unprepared for war and had “no plan for the mobilization of science and engineering” in 1939 (pg. 82).
Turning to more advanced rocketry, Neufeld writes, “A possible design for an ‘America rocket’ (in modern terminology, an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM) had emerged during the preceding year in the studies of the center’s Projects Office” (pg. 138). He continues, “The concept was actually far beyond Peenemünde’s technological grasp: The guidance requirements were too extreme, the aerodynamics were unknown, and the materials did not yet exist to prevent the upper stage from burning up during reentry into the atmosphere” (pg. 138). According to Neufeld, “The Germans seem not to have made the connection between atomic weapons and the missile, because their nuclear project never proceeded much beyond preliminary reactor experiments and theoretical studies of a bomb. In any case, by early 1942 the German leadership decided that the gigantic industrial effort required for an atomic weapon was not feasible during the war” (pg. 139). To underscore this, Neufeld writes, “The repeated warnings from Ordnance about foreign competition reinforced by faulty German intelligence reports, had had their effect. The Army rocket program had become an ironic mirror image of the Manhattan Project: While the Germans were racing a virtually nonexistent American missile program, the Americans (with British and Canadian help) were racing a virtually nonexistent German atomic bomb effort” (pg. 170).
Neufeld concludes, “Peenemünde grew and flourished under Hitler because of the very nature of his regime. As a result, the rocket program built an institution and a weapon that made little sense, given the Reich’s limited research resources and industrial capacity – a perfect symbol of the Nazis’ pursuit of irrational goals with rational, technocratic means” (pg. 279). Finally, “The German Army rocket program was thus greatly influenced by – and integrated into – the structures and practices of the Nazi regime, whatever its ideological and technological origins. The ease with which its military and civilian leadership became involved in mass slavery in order to achieve technical and military ends is certainly one of Peenemünde’s most troublesome legacies to the world. But a much more ambiguous legacy was the big rocket itself” (pg. 279). The work at Peenemünde ultimately served to support the arms race of the Cold War. ( )

A rather serious book that focuses more on the politics and organizational challenges than on the technology and day to day operations. He also discusses the forced labor workers who worked not only at Peenemunde but also in the underground factories, worked literally to death in some cases. The book itself is rather dry and the political aspects tend to dominate the narrative. Only recommended to those who wish to study the subject. ( )