The failure of the plot was a further devastating setback for the Army, even though the senior service was predominantly loyal to the Nazi regime. As a wave of arrests swept across Germany, hundreds of officers, often of impeccable Prussian aristocratic background, were caught up in the Gestapo’s net. Many were subjected to grotesque show trials and gruesome executions. Among those arrested was the early rocket veteran General Erich Schneider, head of Ordnance Development and Testing since mid-1943. He was fortunate to be released after a month because of Speer’s intervention and, one can presume, because of a lack of any evidence to implicate him in the conspiracy.2
The arrests were only part of the Army’s troubles. Hitler’s appointment of the Reichsführer-SS to a leading command position was “a calculated act of humiliation for the officer corps” that also signaled the ascendancy of the SS and the virtual dissolution of the Army leadership as a coherent body. Himmler soon detailed his new duties to Obergruppenführer (Lieutenant General) Hans Jüttner, the head of the SS Leadership Main Office, which acted as a sort of general staff for the Waffen-SS. But Himmler’s latest title allowed him to achieve at least one long-cherished objective. He gave Kammler full powers on August 6 to accelerate the deployment of the A-4. It was all Kammler needed to consolidate ultimate authority over that program.3
Adjusting to the SS’s new power over them was, however, only one of two transitions the rocket engineers had to make in August 1944 as a result of the Army’s fall from grace. On the first day of the month the Armaments Ministry also gained further influence when von Braun’s development group became a government-owned, civilian corporation, “Electromechanical Industries, Karlshagen, Pomerania.” Once again, the balance of power in the program had shifted dramatically: The SS was now strongest and the Army weakest, with Speer’s Ministry in a still powerful but eroding position.
THE ROCKET PROGRAM IS REORGANIZED—AGAIN
Peenemünde’s conversion so soon after July 20 suggests a sudden improvisation to keep the facility out of the hands of the SS. In fact, the move had been planned since at least late May, although it was indeed a response to the threat posed by Himmler and Kammler. The wonder is that the conversion was accomplished with so little fuss. Not much more than a year previously, a heated confrontation over proposals to privatize the facility had erupted between Dornberger and Ordnance on one side and Degenkolb and associated industrialists on the other. By contrast, there is no evidence of a fight in 1944 over the conversion, or even much evidence of the discussions that must have preceded it. Dornberger’s memoirs only mention laconically that incorporation was “tolerated because the measure would prevent the seizure of Peenemünde by any military or semimilitary organization,” by which he apparently meant the SS.4
Since Electromechanical Industries would in effect be owned by the Armaments Ministry, the tension between the Ministry and Ordnance clearly must have eased enough since 1943 to allow a fairly painless transition. There were two explanations for this. First, Degenkolb had delegated virtually all his authority to his deputy in the A-4 Special Committee, Heinz Kunze, after the staff was evacuated to Thuringia in early 1944. Thus the locomotive czar’s abrasive personality and blatant ambition were no longer a factor. (Degenkolb disappeared altogether in the autumn after making insulting comments about various Nazi leaders. Because of his connections, he ended up in a mental clinic instead of in the hands of the Gestapo. He resurfaced in April 1945 as a Ministry liaison to Kammler.) A more important reason for the Ordnance-Armaments Ministry rapprochement was the common threat of the SS, which drove the two closer together. Of course, without the Army’s loss of power even before July 20, that service would never have conceded ownership of the heart of its missile development capability.5
Besides the decline of the Army and the rise of the SS, one more factor shaped the third major reorganization of the rocket program in a year and a half: Dornberger’s battle to salvage what was left of his declining influence. His appointment as a special commissioner under Fromm had marginalized him even within his own service instead of making him the “Führer” of the A-4 program. The commander of LXV Army Corps had succeeded in removing him from tactical control of the rocket batteries. Moreover, Dornberger began to clash with Ordnance, to which he had devoted fifteen years of his life. He was no longer in the chain of command for Peenemünde, yet he continued to exert influence through Zanssen, von Braun, and others. That caused discomfort for Ordnance, which pushed its own candidate, General Rossmann, who came to head the liquid-fuel rocket section, Wa Prüf 10. To add insult to injury, when Speer returned from his convalescence in early May, he issued an order spelling out the division of powers in the A-4 program. The document’s primary purpose was to circumscribe the role of the SS, but Speer omitted any mention of Dornberger, either because he had forgotten that the general was independent of Army Ordnance or because he had heard that the continued existence of Dornberger’s position (BzbV Heer) was in doubt. On May 31 Dornberger issued an ultimatum to Fromm that was both an indirect response to Speer and an expression of frustration at losing his grip on his life’s work.6
Dornberger once again demanded that the organizational confusion in the A-4 program be overcome by making him its leader and military commander. This time, however, he ended by claiming that he would go over Fromm’s head and appeal directly to Hitler if necessary. “Fromm summoned me. I was reprimanded, threatened with punishment, my honor was impugned by a charge of unsoldierly conduct and cowardly dereliction of duty, all with the objective of inducing me to modify my demands.” In the end Fromm did nothing, and Dornberger’s threat proved to be empty. Dornberger’s memoirs further claim that in July, before the assassination attempt, Himmler pressed OKW chief Keitel to appoint Kammler the leader of the program, but the status quo once again held. But not for long: After July 20 Kammler rapidly acquired the position Dornberger had so long sought.7
In the midst of those battles, the corporate conversion of Peenemünde was finalized between Ordnance and the Armaments Ministry. Dornberger’s May 31 document mentioned in passing “Director Storch as head of HAP 11 [Peenemünde-East].” Paul Storch, one of the top managers of the giant Siemens electrical engineering firm, indeed became the head of Electromechanical Industries when it came into being on August 1. One may conclude, therefore, that some such move had been under consideration in the late spring. Storch had headed the electrical and guidance equipment subcommittee of the A-4 Special Committee and was thus by no means “practically a stranger to our work,” as Dornberger later asserted. On June 28 an unsigned Peenemünde document, “The Tasks of Electromechanical Industries, Ltd.,” discussed the objectives of the proposed company. A week later von Braun’s deputy for in-house manufacturing, Eberhard Rees, wrote to Storch about the budget. The company’s monthly expenditures, including personnel, were projected to be 13 million marks, a sizable sum. In July 89 percent of the materials and procurement costs would be spent on the A-4 and only 11 percent on Wasserfall. Even in December the ballistic missile’s continuing development needs were going to eat up half the procurement and personnel budget, a fact that Rees thought Storch might find “strange.”8