Experiencing Germany

Tucked away in the north-western corner of the Baltic Sea island Usedom, Germany’s second-largest island, just where the river Peene flows into the shallow coastal inlets known as the Greifswalder Bodden, lies the village of Peenemünde. This was the place where the A4 missile was developed – with Nazi funding.

Once an idyllic fishing and farming village, Peenemünde today bears a difficult legacy. From 1936 to 1945, the A4 missile was developed here. During World War II it achieved dubious fame as the so-called Vergeltungswaffe V2 [reprisal weapon]; yet it was also the precursor to later civil aerospace carrier rockets.

From idyllic fishing village to military research centre

Along with its neighbours, the famous coastal resorts Ahlbeck, Heringsdorf and Bansin, the small village Peenemünde hoped to establish itself in the late 1930s as a flourishing resort for the many tourists who had discovered Usedom as their holiday destination as early as the 19th century. However, while its secluded location, its small size – its population in 1936 was 400 – and its white beaches did not appeal to the holidaymakers, it was a prime site for a military research centre.

In 1936, construction began on Europe’s then largest and most modern technology centre. Here in Peenemünde, under great secrecy up to 15,000 people worked on the development and testing of new weapons systems. Peenemünde’s test facilities provided the backdrop for the development of the world’s first automatically guided, liquid-fuelled rocket, the A4 missile (A stood for 'aggregate’).

Myth 1: The wonder weapon V2

The first successful launch of an A4 missile took place on 3 October 1942. From a launch pad that was later to become known as the famous ‘Prüfstand VII’, the 13.5 ton, 14 metre steel giant was launched around 90 km into the air, travelling at five times the speed of sound.

The success of the A4 missile was immediately instrumentalised by the Nazi regime for propaganda purposes. The missile became the secret wonder weapon of the Nazis. It was mystified by Joseph Goebbels as the ‘reprisal weapon V2’, with the aim of undermining the morale of the British population, the primary target of the V2, and strengthening the Germans’ belief in the Nazi’s ultimate victory. By March 1945, around 3,000 V2 missiles had been fired at England, Belgium and France. The V2 killed 8,000 people in London alone. However, British morale did not crumble and the war never took the turn that the Nazis had hoped for.

Myth 2: Peenemünde, a place of pure science

The large number of tests conducted at Peenemünde could not remain hidden from the Allies for ever. The secret test site was discovered. After the partial destruction of the village during a British air raid in 1943, the Nazis moved the production operations to a bomb-proof tunnel system in Kohnstein near Nordhausen in Thuringia. Prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp who worked at the production site were moved to the new, purpose-built concentration camp Dora, later to become known as the Mittelbau camp. The inhumane working conditions, the harassment by the SS and the massacres of the last days of the war took the lives of more than 20,000 prisoners.

Today, often only the place names Mittelbau-Dora and Nordhausen elicit a memory of the large number of deaths claimed by the production of the missiles. In consequence, the myth was created that Peenemünde was only ever a place of pure science.

Civil aerospace

Regardless of the destruction created by the A4 missile during the war, its development represented a technological revolution as the birthplace of modern aerospace. The Allies, emerging victorious from World War II, had also recognised the significance of the A4 missile. After the war, most of the German engineers who had worked in Peenemünde emigrated to the United States. The village itself was claimed by the Russians and remained a military no-go zone until 1989. The two super-powers Russia and the USA benefited from the research conducted at Peenemünde. But for the knowledge developed here, the first landing on the moon may have not taken place as early as 1969.

A difficult legacy

Today, the population count of Peenemünde is back to what it was before 1936. The village is still located in the north-western corner of Usedom, surrounded by the unspoiled landscape between the river Peene, the Greifswalder Bodden coastal inlets and the Baltic Sea. Yet since World War II, aside from Peenemünde there have been few places where the conflict between science and ethics is quite this evident.