Most of the really interesting administrative and political files from the Peenemünde archive are found here in record group RH8 (Army Ordnance) and are cited often in Hölsken, V-Waffen. I consulted only those files not found on FE microfilm at NASM, including the chronicle of the Peenemünde Production Plant, which never went to the United States at all. A small number of documents were later requested from RL3 (Reich Air Ministry).
Deutsches Museum (DM), Munich
The larger, more technical part of the Peenemünde archive was significantly damaged in the 1960s when a curator removed the most interesting files, often disassembling and reorganizing them. Those documents are thus no longer accessible through the five-volume Aberdeen list, which is the only finding aid the Museum possesses for the collection. At present these files are being reorganized, so it is not possible to give proper file numbers. When possible, I have given an FE number in brackets, in the hope that it will be of some use later on. The unaltered part of the collection is still organized by GD (German Document) numbers, which is a clumsy system created in Aberdeen to combine both FE and Archive Report material. A cross-reference list to Aberdeen volumes 1–3, published in a separate Index, gives GD number equivalents to FE and Archive Report numbers.
The Deutsches Museum also has two of the three notebooks of Walter Dornberger. The first covers 1938 to August 1943 but is scarcely more than notes on a few meetings until early 1943. After that point it begins to include draft documents and diarylike entries, but Dornberger’s handwriting is so illegible that I have used the notebooks very sparingly. The second volume is missing, and the third, which most resembles a diary, covers from September 1944 to the end of the war.
Humboldt University Archive, Berlin
The Archive of the former University of Berlin has the 1934 doctoral examination records of Wernher von Braun, plus documents on the professorships of Erich Schumann and Karl Becker.
Imperial War Museum (IWM), London
Most German documents once possessed by the IWM have now been returned to Koblenz and Freiburg, but the Museum apparently retains microfilm copies. Dornberger’s invaluable file on Rudolf Nebel, MI 14/801(V), is also to be returned to Freiburg. One item that will remain is “Papa” Riedel’s memoir, which incorporates many pages of pictures from a 1933 Heylandt report to Ordnance. It is catalogued under German Misc. 148.
National Air and Space Museum (NASM), Washington
The NASM Archives Division has forty-three reels of PGM (Peenemünde Guided Missiles) microfilm of Archive reports and sixty-four reels of FE microfilm. In the latter case I created a finding aid of FE file numbers versus reel numbers. I have not listed reel numbers in the notes, because the film is available only at NASM in any case, where the finding aid may be consulted. A small number of miscellaneous original Peenemünde documents are also to be found in the file “Peenemünde #2,” soon to be reorganized.
In addition, the NASM Department of Space History has transcripts of oral history interviews (OHI’s) done by myself and by others in the Museum. The following transcripts are relevant to Peenemünde and are available to researchers, subject to restrictions imposed by the interviewees:
Interviewee Date Interviewer Werner Dahm 1990 Neufeld Konrad Dannenberg 1989 Neufeld Walter Haeussermann 1990 Neufeld Helmut Hoelzer 1989 Neufeld Karl Heimburg 1989 Neufeld Fritz Mueller 1989 Neufeld Hermann Oberth 1987 Harwit/Winter Herbert Raabe 1993 Neufeld/Winter Wilhelm Raithel 1993 Neufeld Eberhard Rees 1989 Neufeld Gerhard Reisig 1985 DeVorkin/Collins Gerhard Reisig 1989 Neufeld Arthur Rudolph 1989 Neufeld Bernhard Tessmann 1990 Neufeld Georg von Tiesenhausen 1990 Neufeld Walter Wiesman 1990 Neufeld
National Archives (NA), Washington
A small amount of material was drawn from Project Paperclip files in RG 319 and RG 330, as cited. A few of the files were actually housed in Suitland, but all modern military records will be moved to College Park, Maryland, by 1995. The great majority of the useful sources in this archive are to found, however, in microfilm publications of Captured German Records and war crimes trials, which may be read in Washington or purchased from the National Archives and Records Administration. I researched the following microfilm sets:
M-1079
U.S.A. v. Kurt Andrae
et al. (Dora war crimes trial)
T-73
Reich Armaments Ministry (RmfBuM or RmfRuK)
T-77
Armed Forces High Command (OKW)
T-78
Army High Command (OKH)
T-84
Miscellaneous German Records
T-175
Reichsführer-SS and Chief of German Police
T-177
Reich Air Ministry (RLM)
T-178
Reich Research Council
T-321
Luftwaffe High Command (OKL)
T-581
Captured German Documents filmed by the Hoover Institution
T-971
Von Rohden Collection of Luftwaffe Documents
Redstone Scientific Information Center (RSIC), Huntsville, Alabama
The joint library of Redstone Arsenal and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center has a fairly complete paper set of Archive reports, including some missing from the PGM microfilm at NASM Archives.
Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville (SRCH)
The larger portion of the Wernher von Braun papers that reside in Huntsville is the SRCH’s most important collection. Unfortunately, von Braun was able to bring very little with him to the United States, so that material relevant to the German period is rather limited. The other part of the von Braun papers is at the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division. It consists mostly of his public relations correspondence and contains very little that is relevant to the German period, other than copies of his scrapbooks.
U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), Fort Meade, Maryland
Army Project Paperclip files on specific German engineers and scientists may be obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to INSCOM, subject to screening for privacy and security reasons.
BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Albrecht, Ulrich; Andreas Heinemann-Grüder; and Arend Wellmann. Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1992.
Bainbridge, William Sims. The Spaceflight Revolution: A Sociological Study. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976.
Barth, Hans. Hermann Oberth: Leben, Werk und Auswirkung auf die spätere Raumfahrtentwicklung. Feucht: Uni-Verlag, 1985.
Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Baumgarten-Crusius, Artur. Die Rakete als Weltfriedenstaube. Leipzig: Verband der Raketen-Forscher und Förderer, 1931.
Benecke, Theodor, and A. W Quick, eds. History of German Guided Missile Development: AGARD First Guided Missile Seminar, Munich, Germany, April 1956. Braunschweig: E. Appelhaus, 1957.