The figure of 5,000 missiles a year therefore remained the operative one. Although this was at least within the bounds of feasibility, it was about triple the 1939 target for the Peenemünde factory and ten times the goal set after the cutbacks of 1940. The new urgency of the program also seemed to demand a faster transition to production. Beginning in late October, Dornberger launched an Army Ordnance “Working Staff” to plan the process; it was most noteworthy for ignoring the Armaments Ministry altogether. After the confrontation with Todt, that is not surprising, but the decision also reflected the continuing divisions in the war economy. The Minister had power over Army munitions and armored vehicles, but Ordnance fought to exclude him from further gains. Throughout the budget conflict it had been Todt’s power as construction czar in the Four-Year Plan that had counted, not his title of Minister. Dornberger’s Working Committee therefore included only Development and Testing personnel (including Peenemünders), plus representatives of other Ordnance divisions.15
In order to speed up production of both the planned test series and regular manufacturing, further factory capacity was needed. The Production Plant could assemble more missiles only by manufacturing less in-house. The rocket group therefore moved quickly in the fall of 1941 to find new subcontractors in private industry for the steam generator, the fuel tanks, and large sections of the fuselage.16
The most important new subcontractor was Zeppelin Airship Construction Ltd. At Stegmaier’s instigation, he, von Braun, design bureau chief “Papa” Riedel, and Eberhard Rees, von Braun’s deputy for the development shops, had traveled down to Friedrichshafen in early September to see the firm’s management, headed by Dr. Hugo Eckener. Eckener was the spiritual heir of Count Zeppelin and the world-famous captain of the airship voyages of the 1920s and early 1930s. Because Eckener’s company had appropriate experience with lightweight aluminum manufacturing and its capacity was underutilized by the Air Ministry, it had been only too happy to accept contracts for propellant tanks and various fuselage sections. During the visit, the Peenemünders had also raised the idea of using empty Zeppelin hangars to assemble A-4s. In early December the rocket group revived that idea, because the Peenemünde plant did not have the capacity to assemble all 5,000 missiles a year. The Friedrichshafen company was designated as the second missile factory at the end of 1941.17
As the winter set in, however, it became clear that the troubles of Peenemünde were far from over. There was a crisis situation in the war economy. In many categories production was falling below the already unsatisfactory levels of the summer because of to shortages, military callups of workers, and inefficiency. The failure of Operation Barbarossa to knock the Soviet Union out of the war became apparent in November as well. A new sense of desperation gripped the German leadership; as if to confirm the urgency of the situation, the Soviet counteroffensive before Moscow and Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States occurred within days of each other in the first half of December. Confronted with a terrible situation on the Russian front, Hitler dismissed von Brauchitsch on the nineteenth and appointed himself Army Commander-in-Chief. The public excuse was heart trouble, but in reality the field marshal was the scapegoat for the disastrous effects of the Führer’s own megalomania. Von Brauchitsch nonetheless deserves no sympathy, because he and the Army were deeply implicated in Hitler’s race war of mass extermination in the East.18
The departure of Peenemünde’s most powerful advocate was obviously a worrisome portent for the leaders of the rocket program, but there were more immediate threats. Notwithstanding a top priority rating and the August Führer order, in early December the Pilot Production Plant was forced to accept large cuts in its steel and gasoline quotas because of severe shortages of those commodities. In early January the center also lost its status as a “special enterprise” for a few weeks, until notices began to pile up from contractors that they could not hold to their schedules. Moreover, unlike the more open-minded Dornberger, Schubert was appalled by Todt’s new plans for the rationalization of the war economy, since they seemed to undermine further his original vision of the factory.19
The Armaments Minister was in fact the big winner in the latest crisis. Despite his unwelcome warnings to Hitler that the eastern war was a national calamity, the Führer saw no way ahead other than Todt’s plans for rationalization. The only alternative would have been to give in to Göring’s campaign for a dictatorial role over all armaments production, but the Reich Marshal’s star was already on the wane for the failures of both the Luftwaffe and the Four-Year Plan. In a series of decrees from December to early February, Hitler extended and strengthened the Armament Ministry’s system of committees, which were organized on the principle of the “self-responsibility of industry”—that is, industrial enterprises were to coordinate and reorganize production among themselves with reduced intervention from the bureaucracy.20
Suddenly, at the height of his influence, Todt was killed. On the morning of February 8, 1942, following a tumultuous meeting with Hitler over new decrees for the economy, the Minister’s plane blew up in the air after taking off from the airfield near the Wolfsschanze. Rumors immediately circulated that Hitler had eliminated him, but there appears to be no reason why the Führer would reorganize the economy in Todt’s favor and then get rid of him. It is possible that Göring or the SS was behind it, but in all likelihood the plane’s self-destruct mechanism was accidentally triggered after takeoff, because the pilot was making a desperate attempt to return to the runway at the time of the explosion.21
By midday the Führer had already settled on a surprising choice as Todt’s replacement: Albert Speer, age thirty-six. The architect had coincidentally been passing through headquarters and had planned to be on the same plane as Todt but had delayed his departure because Hitler had kept him up until three in the morning. As a result, Speer’s appointment has often been described as fortuitous—a case of being in the right place at the right time—but he really was the logical candidate to carry forward Todt’s work. To have given Göring the post would have been to reopen many of the battles so recently fought; Speer had in any case accumulated much relevant experience in armaments construction. As it turned out, he also had a more ruthless drive for power than Todt: Within a year he had absorbed most of Thomas’s OKW Economics Office, driven the general into retirement, and secured the acquiescence of the Army and Navy to his system. Only the aircraft industry was kept beyond his reach, but Speer coordinated his activities with Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Göring’s number-two man in the Air Ministry. In short order, the productivity of German industry began to increase dramatically.22
For the rocket program, Speer’s appointment was another stroke of luck; in fact, it more than compensated for the forced retirement of von Brauchitsch. The ambitious Minister was, by his own later admission, an uncritical enthusiast of the program, at least until the end of the war, when he all too suddenly realized its lack of military sense. Speer also possessed immediate access to Hitler and was determined to make the war economy more responsive to the Führer’s wishes.23