Pallud, Jean Paul Vergeltungswaffen. The Third Reich Missiles. Then and Now

Whether it's their innovative technical development or the Nazi propaganda touting them as revolutionary wonder weapons, readers interested in the Second World War will find research into "German secret weapons" very interesting. The V-1, a flying bomb that we would now call a cruise missile, was first used in June 1944 and soon dozens of them were hitting England day and night. Churchill was so worried that he issued a memorandum suggesting that poison gas be dropped on German cities. To boost the German people's confidence in the final victory, Nazi propaganda gave this new weapon a name despite the increasingly desperate military situation: V-1 for "Retaliation Weapon 1". The first V-2, a large liquid-propellant rocket, was fired against Paris and London on 8 September. The V-1 and V-2, as well as jet engines, were manufactured by forced labourers in the underground Mittelwerk factory. Prisoners from the nearby Dora concentration camp provided the labour, the usual cruel methods were used and over 20,000 of the forced labourers at Mittelwerk perished. The SS eventually took control not only of the production of the V-weapons, but also of their deployment orders. In the final months of the Second World War, when Germany was on the defensive on all fronts and desperately searching for "wonder weapons", a number of ineffective, albeit innovative, technical developments were made. These included the HDP and the "Rheinbote", the third and fourth V-weapons, which were sent into battle in small numbers. V-weapons were indeed inventive weapon concepts, but one must not forget that Germany did not realise that the true superweapon would come from nuclear technology. The only real superweapon of the Second World War, the atomic bomb, was developed by the USA. The Allied powers had recognised the technical potential of the V-2 and in order to learn the German technique of launching long-range missiles, Operation Backfire was carried out in the summer of 1945, using captured German personnel under the supervision of British technical experts. Three V2 rockets were fired in October. The USA lost no time in recruiting 120 top German scientists for rocket research. The first test of a V-2 on American soil took place on 3 March 1946. The Russians also captured German rocket engineers, who quickly resumed their work in Russia.