The Führer’s comments were an interesting mixture of perceptiveness and absurdity. In the long run the ballistic missile was a revolutionary weapon, just as its advocates had been saying since the early 1930s, but not in the limited, conventionally armed form of the A-4. 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. (The bombs later produced by the Manhattan Project weighed more than 4 metric tons—too heavy for an A-4.) Although Hitler never understood the concept of nuclear weapons, he appears to have correctly perceived, on August 20 at least, the minimal strategic impact of small numbers of A-4s, so he asked for hundreds of thousands. But the raw materials and manufacturing capacity needed to fulfill that demand made it absurd. Despite Hitler’s often masterful command of the details of weaponry, he had once again demonstrated his inability to comprehend the liquid-fuel missile. He saw it as merely a big artillery shell, bearing out Speer’s observation that the Führer was comfortable only with World War I technology.9
Notwithstanding Hitler’s faulty understanding of the missile and his refusal to issue a mass production order, von Brauchitsch’s carefully planned effort to bypass Todt and outflank Göring was clearly a big success for the Army. Keitel approved the promotion of the production facility to first priority (“SS”), the same as development. The whole center was provided with the further protection of being included among the “special enterprises,” a category invented in 1941 to introduce more gradation into a poorly differentiated priority system. To cement the factory’s new status, Ordnance merged it into one center with what was now officially called the “Development Works.” The acting Commander, Major Gerhard Stegmaier, assumed the same title over the whole center, while remaining the military head of the development side. (Peenemünde’s Commander, Colonel Leo Zanssen, was absent from mid-1941 until April 1942, leading a solid-fuel rocket battery on the Eastern Front.) Schubert’s factory was renamed the “Pilot Production Plant,” with the task of pioneering large-scale manufacturing for later transfer to industry.10
Hitler’s backing allowed von Brauchitsch to alleviate many of Peenemünde’s manpower problems. The Commander-in-Chief ordered the founding of a unit with active duty status that could pull engineers and craftsmen from the regular Army. When the formation of the “Northern Experimental Command” was completed in November, it had 641 officers and men, plus fifteen others for administrative supervision. Because rank was ignored and the men were placed in jobs and paid civilian salaries according to their training, if they wished, some rather unusual situations arose. Privates could be supervising captains in the laboratory. Helmut Hoelzer, head of the guide beam division, solved this problem by ordering everyone to wear white lab coats buttoned up to the neck. The placement of the soldiers in line with their civilian accomplishments worked very well. The only problems arose from the narrow-mindedness of the unit’s commander and the NCOs, who found the situation discomforting. In later years the Command expanded considerably and rescued not a few talented engineers and skilled workers from bullets and frostbite on the Eastern Front. The fact that they had been there at all indicates both the shortsightedness of the Reich’s original draft policy and the increasingly desperate manpower shortages faced by the Germans.11
The formation of the Northern Experimental Command and the top priority rating for the whole facility clearly were important gains from the Peenemünders’ audience with the Führer. But even while that was going on, Todt was still fighting with Ordnance for a cut in the center’s construction budget. In a September 13 letter to Dornberger, he threatened to recommend a complete construction stoppage to Hitler if Ordnance did not accept his budget figure of 20 million marks. Leeb was amazed; Todt did not even appear to know about the Führer’s order! In fact, the Minister did refer in passing to that order, but his lack of knowledge about it speaks volumes about the disorganized and competitive character of the war economy before 1942 and about the ability of the Army, however much its power was in decline, to exploit the situation. Dornberger, backed by the OKW priority order issued on September 15, wrote to Todt discussing the visit to Wolfsschanze. In his letter, the chief of Wa Prüf 11 indicated his belief in the “decisive importance of this weapon for the war” and his fear of “the progressive development of this same area by the USA. We must maintain our lead if we want to beat the Americans.” (He had made a similar comment to Keitel on August 20.) There is no record of the Minister’s reaction to those assertions, but the two sides soon worked out a compromise budget of 25 million marks. The Army also managed to rebuff Todt’s attempt to take over Peenemünde construction by emphasizing that this was Speer’s responsibility. Speer had indicated his opposition too but had otherwise kept a low profile throughout the conflict.12
The net effect of all maneuvering was to give the rocket program new impetus while at the same time forcing construction shortcuts on the production facility. The problem now confronting Peenemünde was to prepare for the mass production of the A-4, contingent upon Hitler’s order. In the first rush of enthusiasm after August 20, numbers in the range of 50,000 to 150,000 a year were bandied about, and the Peenemünde factory received its Pilot Production Plant label. The idea of building an A-4 “test series” or “zero series” to ease the transition to mass production was not new. Dornberger had mentioned it as early as August 1940 but had mostly invoked it as an excuse to keep the factory going. For a few weeks in the fall of 1941 the facility’s new name actually corresponded with its intended purpose. But in short order feverish studies at Peenemünde and in the OKW Economics Office showed the absurdity of manufacturing 150,000 missiles annually. For one thing, the entire aircraft manufacturing capacity of Germany would have to be taken over! The Führer’s huge numbers had to be given as inconspicuous a burial as possible, and the Production Plant returned to its original purpose as the main assembly facility, notwithstanding a test series of 585 missiles it was to construct first (the development shops were to build fifteen). Based on the limited supply of liquid oxygen, Dornberger set an annual production goal of 5,000—without anyone telling Hitler.13
Only on the margins did the idea of producing tens of thousands of missiles live on. For nearly a year in 1941–42, Dornberger’s preferred solution was the A-8, a simplified, longer-range or heavier-payload A-4 with a 30-ton-thrust engine powered by nitric acid and diesel oil. The propulsion chief, Thiel, had begun investigating this propellant combination in the spring of 1941 and favored it as a way of getting rid of the problems of handling and manufacturing liquid oxygen. In 1942, however, the A-8 fell out of favor because of questions about its aerodynamic stability at higher cutoff velocities, the pressing need to concentrate on the A-4, and Hitler’s lack of interest in the concept. The Führer’s reasons are unknown, but it is possible that Germany’s oil supply problems were a factor.14