Not all of the secret weapons were large, costly, or complex; and in many ways they exemplify the various approaches of the different nations to the conduct of the conflict. Anti-tank weapons are a case in point. Early in the war, the British perfected a simple device known as the ‘sticky bomb’. This was a round grenade with a time delay that could be attached to an enemy tank by a solider. In essence, it was a container of nitroglycerin in a case that was covered with industrial adhesive. It did not always work, of course, and sometimes it stuck firmly to the soldier’s uniform. Records suggest that 2,500,000 were made between 1940 and 1943; but only six tanks are on record as having been destroyed by these devices.
The Germans adopted a different approach. They devised an anti-tank explosive weapon known as Goliath (der Leichter Ladungsträger or ‘light explosive carrier’). It was a tiny tracked vehicle, looking like a model tank and controlled by a joystick at the end of a 2,000ft (600m) wire and packed with 220lb (100kg) of high explosive. They had little ground clearance, so often found themselves stuck on a ridge, but 7,500 were constructed starting in 1942 and they were still in use during the D-Day landings in 1944.
Futuristic technology also emerged on all sides, though predominately from the genius of Germany. In today’s world, we know that a new development can cost millions, and take decades of testing and redesign before it reaches the market. Not so during World War II. Throughout those years, and the decade leading up to them, caution was thrown to the wind. Personal whim, charisma, ambition, guesswork, crazy good luck … every motivation you could wish to cite came to the fore. A new idea could become reality within weeks. Revolutionary new concepts of earth-shattering importance could go from the drawing-board to reality in a matter of months. No period of human history has seen such incredible changes, and the results are all around us.
We like to think of the developments of that time as highly organized, well funded, carefully prepared and amazingly productive. The reality is far from the public perception, with private fads and personal rivalry causing crazy changes in policy and priorities. Step one way and you’d rule the world with astonishing new ideas; move in another direction and you could be executed on the spot. A proposal that was unwanted at one moment could become the highest priority in a changed climate of opinion. At the end of it all, many of these astonishing new advances were harnessed by the victors through illegal means — murderous criminals were hailed as heroic innovators if they could bring benefit to their hosts. Even the word of a president could be ignored if it helped promote the cause of progress.
It is sometimes said that the secret weapons of World War II were ridiculous, or expedient, or simply lucky guesswork; in fact, many of them introduced revolutionary concepts from which we benefit to this day. So much of what we now take for granted began as secret science during World War II.
World War I was the birthplace of secret weapons. Small rockets were used in large numbers, and poison gas was used by both sides. That terrible conflict was brutal and disfiguring, and the victors at once laid all the blame on Germany. The Treaty of Versailles was touted as an agreement to end all wars, and the German people were relieved to see the conflict at its end. They initially joined with everyone else in wishing to see the perpetrators of warfare punished for their crimes. Yet Versailles did not bring this about. The treaty failed to identify the roots of the conflict, but instead simply blamed all the German people for the war, and demanded that they repay the victors unimaginable sums of money by way of reparation. Germany was even obliged in future to use her shipyards for the construction of Allied vessels. The Germans felt humiliated, not liberated.
Typical of the aftermath was the Ten Year Rule which the British government adopted in August 1919. Calculations of the budgets for the armed forces would now be made on the assumption that the ‘British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years’. As a victorious nation, Britain felt confident that Germany had been humiliated and could never again pose a problem to any other state, so military expenditure was slashed. We think of Winston Churchill as being instinctively in favour of preparedness for war, but in the years following World War I his attitudes were very different. In 1928 Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it was his powers of eloquence that persuaded the Cabinet to agree that this Rule would remain in force until it was specifically rescinded. By 1931, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald thought that the international situation was becoming dangerous, and that perhaps the Ten Year Rule should be abolished. The First Sea Lord, Sir Frederick Field, warned in the same year that the British Navy was ‘below the standard required for keeping open Britain’s sea communications during wartime’. No port in the entire British Empire, he said, could be adequately defended, but nobody took any notice, and the Ten Year Rule remained a key component of British foreign policy.
Not until 23 March 1932 was the Ten Year Rule abandoned by the Cabinet. Even then it was countered with a cautionary statement: ‘This must not be taken to justify an expanding expenditure by the Defence Services without regard to the very serious financial and economic situation’ which Britain faced.
Matters were quite the reverse in Germany. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles forced the whole German nation to accept complete responsibility for World War I. Henceforth, the German Army (the Reichswehr) would amount to a maximum of just 100,000 persons; there could be no conscription; and the size of the Navy (the Kriegsmarine) was restricted, with absolutely no submarines being permitted. In addition, Germany could hold no poison gas, and have no airships. Instead of being a people freed from the tyranny of their leaders, the whole German population was made to feel personally culpable for the cruelty of the war. With extra money being printed to help pay reparations, the German currency spiralled into hopeless inflation, and then a global stock market crash followed. Germans who had rejoiced at the fall of the Kaiser were seeking a new leader, any leader, who could restore their morale and give them back some dignity. Germany had not even been permitted to join the new League of Nations, and had lost all her overseas territories. The humiliation of the nation — when no foreign troops had ever set foot on German soil throughout the course of the war — left the people vulnerable to any charismatic leader, even a diminutive Austrian painter.
The ramifications of the Treaty of Versailles were not limited to problems in Europe. The United States government refused to ratify the treaty and Kaiser Wilhelm — whom everyone assumed would be put on trial — was exiled to the Netherlands. The British Prime Minister Lloyd George was determined that the Kaiser should hang, but the American President, Woodrow Wilson, refused and argued that there were Allies they would also wish to see executed for their conduct during the war. Attempts to extradite the Kaiser and take him to court failed and, surprising as it seems, the Kaiser survived to see World War II, eventually dying in 1941. The fledgling USSR, still trying to create a new national state out of the ruins of revolution, capitalized on the sense of uncertainty by secretly offering the new German government facilities in the USSR to develop and test new weapons — in exchange for assisting the Soviets in building up their own new Army General Staff. In March 1922 German officers went to Russia to start their illicit training; in April 1922 the Junkers Company started manufacturing aircraft at Fili, near Moscow, and the German Krupp Company was soon established at Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. At Vivupal, near the spa resort of Lipetsk, Russia, German pilots went on training courses for the future German Air Force (the Luftwaffe). By 1926, the German Army was using a Russian tank training school at Kazan and a chemical warfare institute in Samara Oblast. The Soviet Army was given the benefits of the latest German developments in military theory and weapons technology. By 1929, Germany was actively helping Soviet industry to modernize, and tank production at both the Leningrad Bolshevik Factory and the Kharkov Locomotive Company was being streamlined. Russia was not the only country to help out. Britain was also increasing her legitimate trade with Germany during this period, selling many of Britain’s best designs of aircraft engines to the burgeoning German air industry. These were fitted into the existing German aircraft, while Germany’s engineers examined the British engines and set out to improve them so that German manufacturers could equip future generations of warplanes. When Hitler came to power in 1933 this cooperation came to an end, but by then the secret roots of German militarism had been well-established.