Rees’s estimates were based on a total employment of six thousand, but the company actually turned out to be smaller because of the way the facilities were divided with the Army. As of August 19 Electromechanical Industries had 4,863 German employees, plus 379 East European forced laborers and prisoners of war. (There were no concentration camp prisoners, but the Luftwaffe still had an SS camp for Peenemünde-West.) Of the Germans, 3,580 were civilians (618 of them women) and 1,283 (all male) were in the military, including 559 in the Northern Experimental Command and 411 in the Flak Experimental Center. The German staff included 264 graduate engineers and scientists and 590 engineers with lesser training, but well over half the staff were blue-collar workers; Peenemünde thus retained a significant in-house development capability in spite of the slow erosion of its “everything-under-one-roof” approach. Finally, 601 employees were assigned to Production Supervision, the Mittelwerk company, or elsewhere, leaving 4,262 at Karlshagen, a category that included dispersed facilities spread over the island and mainland. Those numbers indicate that roughly a thousand people in Peenemünde must have remained in the direct employ of the Army.9
This arrangement, probably the result of a compromise during the negotiations, did not promote the highest efficiency. Electromechanical Industries was only a tenant in Army-owned buildings, the motor pool and aircraft were to be shared between the two, and each retained its own launch equipment, all of which caused friction between the company and the Army. Base administration was left in the hands of the former Commander’s office, which became the Karlshagen Test Range, headed by a colonel. The senior officer on base was General Rossmann, whose Wa Prüf 10 also shared the facilities. General Zanssen was sent off to command a solid-rocket brigade on the Western front, because Kammler had refused to work with him, and Ordnance no longer wished to fight that battle.10
There were one or two advantages to corporate conversion: Electromechanical Industries could rid itself of some civil service red tape and pay salaries competitive with the private sector. Indeed, von Braun and his chief subordinates received large pay raises as of August 1, although it did not do them much good; virtually everything was rationed anyway. The reorganization also made von Braun Storch’s deputy, but the manufacturing shops and the test stands no longer reported to the young rocket engineer directly. Still, not much changed in the way the place operated, since von Braun continued to be the real leader of the group. Storch, for all his familiarity with the guidance and production dimensions of the A-4 program, was a product of a corporate culture very different from that of Peenemünde. His quiet, authoritarian style clashed with the outspoken group fostered by von Braun and Dornberger. Nonetheless, the arrangement worked reasonably well, in part because von Braun applied his usual tact and energy to keeping rocket development going no matter what the difficulties—or costs.11
While the leading engineers were carrying out the conversion, Dornberger was fighting to save his career. As soon as Kammler received his new powers from Himmler, he opened a campaign to isolate Dornberger and seize control of his staff. The SS general claimed the right to give direct orders to Dornberger’s chief of staff and longtime deputy for liquid-fuel rocketry, Lieutenant Colonel Georg Thom. Dornberger was to be left with only a fraction of his former responsibilities. Kammler doubtless saw him as a rival, and the two had clashed in the spring and summer over the airbursts and other technical troubles holding up A-4 deployment.12 Moreover, Dornberger was a protégé of the jailed and now universally despised Fromm. Still, Kammler could not make a political charge against him stick. Despite Dornberger’s proximity to the July 20 conspirators, there is no evidence that they tried to recruit him, and for good reason. The plotters could not have trusted someone who had so openly declared his enthusiasm for the Third Reich.
As a result of Kammler’s offensive, Dornberger was in despair. He drew up a letter asking for a transfer to other duties and was allegedly talked out of sending it only when Wernher von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff came for a Sunday afternoon visit. They argued that he must not abandon them. Dornberger’s despair must have been increased by the fact that Thom cooperated with Kammler’s attempts to circumvent him; his chief of staff had stabbed him in the back. Relations between the two completely broke down. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous and ruthless Kammler seized control of the operational A-4 batteries at the beginning of September, shut out the LXV Army Corps, and used the SS’s power of intimidation to force the OKW’s acquiescence. Thus the opening of the A-4 campaign—against London and newly liberated Paris on September 7 and 8—occurred under Kammler’s command. Twelve days later the designated tactical commander, Major General Richard Metz, resigned his now meaningless position.13
The SS general did not succeed, however, in forcing out Dornberger. On Kammler’s order, Thom went to report to Jüttner about the battles over control of the Dornberger staff and the operational rocket batteries. From Thom’s account of the September 14 conversation, it appears that Jüttner was himself angered at the rapaciousness of his SS colleague. He thought it “intolerable” that Kammler had forbidden Dornberger any direct approach to Jüttner himself or to Himmler on pain of being shot! Jüttner, as Fromm’s de facto replacement, refused to let Dornberger drop. Perhaps he saw the usefulness of the rocket general’s technical expertise, or perhaps he saw him only as a counterweight to Kammler. In any case, Kammler was obliged to make a truce with Dornberger. Thom left to become chief of staff of the “Vengeance Division” set up by Kammler to control the missile batteries. Dornberger became the SS general’s representative at home, responsible for the training of new units and A-4 supply and shipment up to the border of Germany. His position as BzbV Heer was thus effectively restored at the end of September. Kammler and Dornberger no doubt continued to detest each other, but they had struck a deal they could live with, particularly as both were committed to trying to save the Reich by firing as many V-2s (as the Propaganda Ministry soon called them) as possible.14
Kammler, with Himmler’s backing, inevitably tried to seize control of A-4 production as well. Immediately after Kammler’s appointment, Speer shot off a pair of letters addressed to Jüttner but transparently aimed at the Reichsführer-SS. The second dealt specifically with the ballistic missile. Its message—stay off my turf!—was ignored by Kammler, who had his own foothold in production through the SS’s role in the Mittelwerk, through his slave-labor construction empire, and through his position on the Armaments Staff under Karl Otto Saur. That body had superseded the Fighter Staff on August 1 after aircraft production had been totally absorbed by the Armaments Ministry. Speer’s position, meanwhile, was in decline because of SS gains and because of the rise of Saur as a rival power center within the Ministry itself. Thus, whatever the formal arrangements, in the fall of 1944 Kammler felt free to intervene directly in A-4 production by giving orders to his ally, Albin Sawatzki, the real power within Mittelwerk. Further indication of Speer’s declining influence is given by yet another document outlining the division of powers in the A-4 program. Drafted by Dornberger’s staff in consultation with the other parties concerned, it was finally signed by Jüttner on December 31, 1944. Although organizations controlled by the Ministry were included in the negotiations—the Mittelwerk company, Electromechanical Industries, and the Special Committee—a copy was sent to Speer only as an afterthought.15