Then the Führer slowly nodded. “Understood, Herr von Braun. But this… step-rocket, as you call it… you believe it could reach America?”
“Yes, mein Führer, it might be able to do that.” Remembering Dornberger’s earlier admonition, von Braun took care not to mention that the A-9/A-10 was little more than a fantasy concocted by the former VfR members working at Peenemünde. A piloted derivative of the A-4, the A-9 had been conceived for another purpose entirely: sending a manned spacecraft into orbit, as the first step to reaching the Moon. “However, I don’t want to mislead you into believing that it can be built anytime soon. It is only a hypothetical proposal, and our priority should be continuing the development of the A-4.”
“A program that has run into many difficulties.” Goering leaned forward in his chair to pluck through a sheaf of papers on the table before him. “Your team has been at this for… how long now? Six, seven years? Judging from these reports, you’re had far more failures than the successes you’ve just shown us.”
A nervous frown appeared on Dornberger’s face. “This is true, yes… but failures must be expected in an experimental program such as this. We’re building something entirely new…”
“Apparently not. Your little movie”—Goering nodded toward the projector—“just told us that the Americans are already ahead of us in this area. Are you telling me that the scientists of a mongrel nation are superior to German scientists?”
Dornberger became pale. Goering had pounced, and the colonel couldn’t help but notice Hitler’s eyes fastened upon him. Von Braun came to the rescue. “What we’re saying,” he calmly explained, “is that, in order to build weapons superior to America’s, we need to develop rocket technology that will be better than theirs. Already, our A-4 prototype has reached high altitude…”
“Altitude isn’t the question, Herr von Braun,” Keitel said drily. “Range is the issue. It’s not enough to be able to strike Britain. Our planes can do that already. We must also have a rocket capable of striking America in the event that it becomes necessary to do so.”
“And this may be inevitable,” Hitler added, ignoring Goering’s skepticism about the United States declaring war against Germany.
Dornberger was openly sweating by then, his perpetual smile gone. “Field Marshal, with all due respect, what you ask is…”
“Not impossible,” von Braun quickly said, before the colonel could make a fatal blunder. “Just difficult to achieve with our current budget, not to mention our present priority rating.”
“You intend to take a rocket that’s only capable of traveling 270 kilometers and turn it into something that can cross the Atlantic?” Goering’s expression became a cynical smirk. “How will you accomplish this, Herr von Braun?”
Von Braun suddenly realized that he’d trapped himself with his own words. He’d told these men—these very dangerous men—that Wa Pruf 11 must build a missile better than anything the Americans might launch, but then contradicted himself by stating that the A-4 was a short-range vehicle, only able to cross the English Channel from a launch site in France. He silently cursed Dornberger for even mentioning the America Rocket. In his puppyish desire to please Hitler, he’d whetted the Führer’s appetite for a weapon that Peenemünde could not deliver.
“Herr von Braun?” Hitler’s eyes bore into his. “Do you have an answer for the Reich Marshal?”
Knowing that he had to say something—anything, damn it!—von Braun opened his mouth to reply. Before he could speak, though, Goering turned to Hitler. “Mein Führer, if I may? I believe I have a solution.”
Hitler looked at the Reich Marshal. “Yes, Hermann? What do you have in mind?”
“A couple of scientists at the Luftwaffe’s Research Division, Eugen Sanger and Irene Bredt, have recently submitted an interesting proposal. A manned aircraft… or rather, a spacecraft… that they believe is capable of not only reaching the United States, but also delivering a sizable payload.” Hitler looked blank at the unfamiliar term, and Goering substituted for it a word he’d understand. “A bomb, mein Führer. A very large bomb.”
Von Braun closed his eyes. Sanger. He knew all about Eugen Sanger. A talented scientist, yes, perhaps even a visionary, but nonetheless an outsider to the German rocket effort, not even a former VfR member. Von Braun had seen Sanger and Bredt’s proposal, and considered it… well, if not insane, then at least improbable.
“Tell me more,” Hitler said.
There was a sudden gleam in Goering’s eyes, and, for an instant, he glanced at von Braun. Von Braun saw the smug look on his face, and in that moment he realized that the Reich Marshal had artfully led him and Dornberger into a trap. First, allow the Peenemünde men to convince the Führer that America poses a threat that cannot be ignored. Next, question the Army Ordnance’s ability to develop a rocket capable of responding to an American intercontinental rocket. And, finally, present Hitler with an alternative that his Luftwaffe had developed instead.
Goering had always wanted control of the German rocket effort. It appeared that he might have found a way to get it.
Helplessly, von Braun began to listen to what the Reich Marshal had to say.
SILVER AND GOLD
DECEMBER 21, 1941
The first snow of winter had settled upon the Baltic coast when von Braun returned from visiting his family in Berlin. From the cockpit of his Fieseler Storch, he saw that a sparse white blanket had spread itself across Usedom Island, a knuckle-shaped peninsula projecting out into the frigid northern sea. Beneath a slate grey sky, the pine forests were frosted, and the waterfront was coated with a thin skin of ice. From the air, the island looked cold and remote.
Although he knew his presence was urgently needed on the ground, Wa Pruf 11’s technical director took a few moments to fly over Peenemünde. The engine moaned as he banked to the right. What had once been a small fishing village on the swampy northern tip of an island best known as a summer vacation resort had become the center of the Reich’s rocket program. Through the plane’s ice-crusted cockpit, von Braun peered down upon assembly sheds, workshops, laboratories, a liquid-oxygen production plant, office buildings, dormitories, cabins, even a track field… a small town, really, resembling a college campus more than a military base. As well it should; he and Albert Speer had intended Peenemünde to be a model for a modern scientific research center, a place where the two thousand scientists, engineers, and researchers could live in comfort while pushing the edge of a technological frontier.
Von Braun smiled. Peenemünde was a far cry from the Raketenflugplatz, the abandoned factory on the outskirts of Berlin where the VfR had built its first crude rockets from scratch. Those were the days when the Rocket Society—Arthur Rudolph and Walter Riedel among them, now von Braun’s chief assistants—had pursued Hermann Oberth’s dream of sending men to the Moon. But enthusiasm, ingenuity, and a taste for the science fiction novels of Thea von Harbou and Kurd Lasswitz weren’t enough. The VfR was always broke, even when the von Braun family kicked in a few marks, and the presence of Rudolph Nebel, an oily opportunist who’d attempted to fleece the society while pretending to advance its goals, hadn’t helped either.
The VfR had been on the verge of bankruptcy the day a long black car pulled up in front of the Rocket Port and three men in Army uniforms climbed out. On that early-spring morning in 1932, everything changed. Nearly ten years later, von Braun’s plane circled Test Stand 1, the A-4 launchpad at the northernmost tip of the island, its skeletal tower blackened by the exhaust of the rockets that had lifted off from it. How far they’d come in just a decade…