V-Missiles of the Third Reich: The V-1 and V-2 by Dieter Hölsken

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 199 murder little by little. Technology for mass killing had developed separately. Experiments using carbon-monoxide exhaust in gas vans began in 1939 (already documented by Christopher Browning and recapitulated by Pressac). The first victims were Germany’s mentally retarded patients. In the course of 1941 the SS quickly extended gassing to mass executions of political opponents in Eastern Europe. In the dead of winter, gassing began in stationary chambers at Chelmno near Lubin. Here the SS began to murder the European Jews. The search for technical means was not, as is commonly believed, a demonical drive for efficiency. New technology was necessary to overcome the revulsion that SS officers experienced at wanton mur­ der in daily, face-to-face executions. By mid-1942 experiments were under way to replace carbon monoxide with prussic acid, a plentiful chemical used to exterminate vermin. Meanwhile, sometime in late 1941 or early 1942 Heinrich Himmler decided to make Auschwitz a regional center for genocide. Prüfer had already installed his crematoria at the camp, and Pressac specu­ lates that the ovens’ capacity may have influenced Himmler’s decision. In 1942 two technologies converged as engineers began to convert the morgue cellars of the Auschwitz crematoria into gas chambers. Pressac devotes attention to aspects of design at each step and to the motivations of engineers and architects who were behind them. For instance, he pays special attention to ventilation technology. Ausch­ witz was already equipped with blowers to force cool air into its morgues. These had to be reversed to draw poisonous air out so that workers could clear the chambers after the killing was done. New fan blades had to be constructed of wood, because prussic acid is corrosive to metal. It is one of Pressac’s deftest achievements to high­ light the conscious, murderous intent left imprinted in material con­ structions. Michael Allen V-Missiles of the Third Reich: The V-l and V-2. By Dieter Holsken. Stur­ bridge, Mass.: Monogram Aviation Publications, 1994. Pp. 352; il­ lustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $49.95. Wrapped inside the attractive package of this coffee-table book for enthusiasts and modelers is the revision and translation of a pio­ neering dissertation. Dieter Holsken’s Die V-Waffen: Entstehung— Propaganda—Kriegseinsatz (Stuttgart, 1984) was the first work on the German “vengeance weapons” that extensively used and footnoted archival sources. In the process, Holsken opened new vistas on Nazi rocket and missile development. In particular, he often unwittingly demolished the amateurish and partisan history that had dominated writing about the V-2 and Wernher von Braun’s Peenemunde rocket group. 200 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The present work is not identical with the original; most notably, V-Missiles is lavishly illustrated with new or rarely seen photographs, many of them from him footage. The book’s structure is modified as well: added are appendixes and a new chapter on advanced concepts, gone are an informative section on V-weapons propaganda in chapter 2 and a pedantic but useful survey of the V-weapons literature in the original introduction. The latter omission has the unfortunate effect of obscuring one of Holsken’s main points—that the Luftwaffe’s Fi 103 (V-l) cruise missile and the army’s A-4 (V-2) ballistic missile did not come too late to change the course of World War II, as has been repeatedly asserted by popular historians. Rather, they came too early to have any significant effect on it, because the existing electronic and guidance technology could not make them even remotely accurate. He might have added another point: nuclear warheads did not yet exist to make ballistic and cruise missiles revolutionary in their strate­ gic implications. What emerges clearly is Holsken’s emphasis on the way infighting and interservice rivalry, in combination with dilettantish military lead­ ership, led to an often astonishing duplication of effort and to the wastage of valuable resources on weapons with little military effective­ ness. Chapter 1, by far the longest, discusses the development and production of not only the V-l and V-2, but also the projected V-3, a long-range gun for bombarding London...