The historian Robert N Proctor, author of The Nazi War on Cancer, has regularly argued that, despite their more egregious errors, the Nazis were in fact capable of performing very good scientific work. And on several occasions he has cited the example of the V2 rocket.
The problem with the "science vs. fascism" thesis is that it fails to take into account the eagerness with which many scientists and physicians embraced the Reich, and the many scientific disciplines which actually flourished under the Nazis. Anyone who has ever examined a V-2 engine will have few doubts about this, and there are numerous other examples. (ADL.org)
In his 2008 editorial in Tobacco Control,
On Playing The Nazi Card,, inveighing against the tobacco industry, Proctor again returns to the V2 rocket.
The industry's reduction ad Hitlerum is superficial, and ahistorical. The Nazis excelled at rocketry - does this mean that the Apollo mission was ballistic fascism? Many Nazis urged fitness and health through exercise: is jogging therefore athletic fascism? The fact that healthful or progressive policies were occasionally endorsed by the Nazis does not mean they are inherently fascist or oppressive.The industry and its allies push the Nazi analogy, but they never probe it very far.
Superficially, it would indeed seem that the V2 rocket was indeed an example of the Nazis excelling at science. After all, the Nazi state had succeeded in developing and manufacturing and finally bombarding their enemies with some 5,000 of these V2 rockets towards the end of WWII.
But perhaps we might take Proctor's own advice,and probe a little further, and ask just how 'Nazi' the V2 rocket programme really was.
In the years before the Nazis came to power, the idea of interplanetary space travel was a new and exciting idea. In America, Robert Goddard was designing simple rockets. And in Germany, the young Wernher von Braun was one of a number of keen amateur rocket enthusiasts, joining the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt or VfR, the "Spaceflight Society", and assisting Hermann Oberth in liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in 1930.
in 1932 the society [the VfR] invited support from the German army who, after a trial demonstration, were impressed to the extent of inviting von Braun to prepare his doctoral thesis at Kummersdorf, not far from Berlin. (The Rocket. David Baker)
On 1 November 1932, von Braun signed a contract with the Reichswehr to conduct research into rockets as military weapons, working under Captain Walter Dornberger. At this date, the Nazi party had yet to take power in Germany. The same year, under an Army grant, von Braun enrolled at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universitat
to study physics.
In 1931, the German military established a rocket research facility at Kummersdorf Weapons Range, near Berlin. The first civilian employee at this facility was Wernher von Braun. In 1937 the German rocket facility was moved to Peenemunde on the Baltic Coast. Starting with about 80 researchers in 1936, the facility comprised nearly 5000 personnel by late 1942. globalsecurity.org
So what happened when the Nazis took power in 1933? The VfR was closed down.
There were no German rocket societies after the collapse of the VFR, and civilian rocket tests were forbidden by the new Nazi regime. (Wikipedia)
But for the support of the regular German army, the Reichswehr, development of rocket technology would not have continued.
...the VfR had an international interest at variance with the policies of the Nazi party and pressure was brought to bear from suspicion that the notorious Gestapo would step in and create difficulties at a personal level. Moreover the local police had been disturbed by the successful rocket flights so close to Berlin and the VfR were forced to vacate their test site at the end of 1933 when the Army took over and restored it to its original function. Without the resources of the Army, there is little doubt that practical rocket developments would have ended in Germany at this time, the VfR had to disband and theoretical pursuit of rocketry and space travel would have been very difficult in the climate of political domination. (The Rocket by David Baker p.28)
But Hitler had little belief in such rocket technology.
Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2; he pointed out that it was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost.(Wikepedia)
In 1939 he even removed it from his to-do list of urgent undertakings. Interviewed after the war, Albert Speer said:
...in the late fall of 1939 Hitler crossed the rocket project off his list of urgent undertakings and thus automatically cut off its labour and materials. By tacit agreement with the Army Ordnance Office, I continued to build the Peenemunde installations without its approval - a liberty that probably no one but myself could have taken. (Spartacus.schoolnet )
It wasn't until October 1942 that Hitler changed his mind.
When Wernher von Braun showed Hitler the perfect launch of the V-2 on a color film, it is reported that Hitler jumped from his seat and in a somewhat uncharacteristic display of emotion pumped Braun's hand with the greatest excitement. "This is the decisive weapon of the war. Humanity will never be able to endure it," he said, and added "If I had had this weapon in 1939 we would not be at war now." (Greyfalcon)
Hitler was later, most uncharacteristically, to personally apologise to Walter Dornberger:
Dornberger: The following incident was interesting: When I saw the Fuhrer the last time, which was in May 1943 [sic. in fact July 9, 1944?], after I'd shown him a film about us, he was quite taken aback. Formerly the Fuhrer had always turned the V-2 business down 100%. He said: "If only I' d believed in it! If it really comes to anything, Europe is too small for the war", and all kind of things like that. Then he said: "There are two people in my life whose pardon I must ask. One is Generalfeldmarschall v Brauchitsch, who said at the end of each report he made to me: "My Fuhrer, think of Peenemunde!", and the other is you, general, for not having believed in you." ( CSDIC )
So there we have it. German rocket science advanced
despite the Nazis, rather than because of them. The programme was kept alive by the original amateur enthusiasts under the patronage of the German Army (which was not a Nazi organisation), and later by Albert Speer in contravention of Hitler's wishes. It was only when the war was well under way, and Hitler saw the successful tests of the V2 rockets, that the Nazi regime began to take an intense interest in what they saw as a "revenge weapon", and Heinrich Himmler moved to incorporate the Peenemunde research base into his SS empire. If the Nazis had not scorned the rocket enthusiasts, and Hitler had not dismissed the V2 rocket as an expensive artillery shell, and had listened to Brauchitsch and Dornberger, the Nazi state might well have had a working V2 by 1939, and rained down hundreds of thousands of them upon their enemies.
So much for the Nazis "excelling in rocketry." It is Robert Proctor who is being ahistorical. He should have taken his own good advice, and probed a little deeper.
The real distinction that should be made in respect of Nazi Germany is between on the one hand the rational, sceptical, open-minded science at which the Germans had excelled for many years before the Nazi regime, and on the other hand the prejudiced, irrational, ideological pseudo science which the Nazis brought with them. Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger and the V2 research exemplified the former, rational kind of science. The Nazi eugenic obsession with cleansing German society of Jews, Gypsies, and other undesirables exemplified the latter sort of irrational pseudo science.
Robert Proctor clearly wishes to associate Nazi antismoking research with the former kind of respectable science. But into which category does it really fall? Adolf Hitler ignored and scorned the V2 rocket for an entire decade, but he put 100,000 Reichsmarks of his own money into The Scientific Institute for the Research into the Hazards of Tobacco, an institute whose very name indicates clearly its prejudicial intent, as did the telegram from Hitler it received at its
inauguration: "I send my best wishes for your work which will liberate mankind from one of its most dangerous poisons". The Nazi assault on tobacco was part and parcel of its programme to rid German society of such 'poisons', of which the Jews were one, and tobacco was another.
But who better is there to say it than Robert Proctor?
"The Nazi campaign against tobacco and the 'whole grain bread operation' are, in some sense, as fascist as the yellow stars and the death camps,"
(quoted from
The Nazi War on Cancer)
