V-2: Hitler’s Wunderwaffe - WW2 Documentary Special
Vložit
- čas přidán 26. 02. 2024
- Hitler hopes that the V-2 rocket will turn the tide of the war. It’s cutting edge technology and impossible to intercept. Right now, the first long-range ballistic missile is raining death on London and Antwerp. But is it too little, too late? Find out the backstory to this powerful weapon.
Join us on Patreon: / timeghosthistory
Or join the TimeGhost Army directly at: timeghost.tv/signup/
Check out our TimeGhost History CZcams channel: / timeghost
Between 2 Wars: • Between 2 Wars
Follow WW2 Day by Day on Instagram: @ww2_day_by_day
Follow TimeGhost History on Instagram: @timeghosthistory
Like us on Facebook: / timeghosthistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Ian Sowden
Written by: Markus Linke
Research by: Markus Linke
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
Yad Vashem 7919-2, 7919-12
Llorenzi
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Solarflares - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Progressive Progress - Howard Harper-Barnes
Seasons Of Change - Gavin Luke
Break Free - Fabien Tell
Bring on the Adventure - Raymond Grouse
With Tenacity - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
The Inspector 4 - Johannes Bornlöf
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Wernher von Braun was a member of the SS and visited the notorious Mittelwerk underground factory where slave labourers worked in atrocious conditions to build his rockets. But, after being plucked from Europe by the United States, von Braun will take NASA to the moon. By the end of his career, he’ll have been decorated by both Hitler and US President Gerald Ford.
What a strange career hmm!
Lol the council of walters
Mister Vorldvide
"I vass only a pastry chef in de SS...a very BAD pastry chef!!"
- from Billy Wilder's "One! Two! Three!"
"Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Nazi, Schmazi!" says Wernher von Braun
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun"
-Tom Lehrer
German advances during the war can be summed up with "This is a great idea. Would have been better 5 years ago."
You could say that about quite literally any military invention.
Barbarosa should have been delayed. They thought they were superior to the soviets. Hubris lost the war.
@@YedolfWesler The German generals did indeed wanted Hitler to neutralise the British in the Middle East before launching Barbarossa. The capture of the Suez Canal was high on their lists of priorities.
I think they overlooked that sending the sort of force to North Africa necessary to achieve that required a major amphibious operation which would be very vulnerable. Otherwise persuade Turkey to join the War on the Axis side, or simply invade Turkey, to reach the rest of the Middle East by land. Not an easy undertaking.
Also, although Stalin had his head in the sand re Hitler's intentions, Molotov did not. Molotov distrusted Hitler and the Nazis from Day 1 of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty In 1940 the USSR had embarked on another 5 Year Plan to build up its military, and would have been much more ready by say late 1942-43 than they were in 1941.
@@YedolfWesler Well they where, just not in NUMBERS. And Numbers still win the game.
@@YedolfWesler The Soviets were rapidly becoming stronger, which is why Germany had to go when they did in 1941, ready or not. There was also the fuel issue - Germany already had a massive shortage which resulted in them de-motorizing a large portion of their infantry and logistics units and ultimately caused the operation to fail. If they had delayed it until '42 or '43 the Red Army and RAAF woult have been much better and more able to fight back against the kind of rapid thrust the Wehrmacht specialized in.
Germany: "What are your qualifications?"
Engineer: "My name is Walter."
Are you a pole valter
You can't imagine just how funny I find your comment. My late German grandfather's name was Walter. He was an engineer and worked in the German armaments industry during the war.
Waltuh.
"'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,'
Says Wernher von Braun."
some have harsh words for this man of renown,
but some think our attitude should be one of gratitude,
like the widows and cripples in old london town,
who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun
Call him a naz* he won't even frown
Naz* Schatzie
Says Werhner von Braun
@@pnutz_2You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun!
@@pnutz_2 Another artist even did an updated version: czcams.com/video/NdVCHWCunZY/video.html
‘Widows and cripples in old London Town owe their pensions to Werner von Braun.’
You forgot to mention that the German army was interested in rockets, even before Hitler came to power and scrapped the treaty of Versailles, becasue the treaty of Versailles didn't say anything about the Gernam army not being allowed to use rockets.
They scrapped it because it said nothing about it????
Well, he did say most of that. But it’s unlikely it was the treaty that was the main impetus for this. These were basically a replacement for the very heavy artillery the Germans favored. But it wasn’t thought to be practical, which is why the program had hiccups in support.
@@monza1002000No, he means, the Germans were interested in rocketry before the Nazis denounced the treaty.
No because Hitler scrapped the treaty they no longer had the same incentive to research and produce rockets is what he said. I misread it first too 😅
Versailles didn't mention rockets, at least not like the V2, because at the time they were considered in the realm of science fiction.
So nice to watch uninterrupted WITHOUT the stupid CZcams commercials. Yay for Time Ghost!
Indeed it is! -TimeGhost Ambassador
Adblocker Ultimate. Or use Brave on phone.
Never seen any kind of commercials.
Get an adblocker
@@alsanchez5038They are kind of like short films that advertise products and/or services, you aren't missing much.
von Braun wrote a book after his time with NASA, I think it was called “I aimed at the stars, but hit a hospital in Hackney”.
I saw part of the film about the film. Curt Jurgens portrayed Von Braun.
all else aside, the title is hilarious
"I make the rockets go up, where they come down is none of my concern"
Oof
That was possibly the least bad war crime Werner Von Braun was involved in.
We all know what we want after the WWII series come to end:
The 100 years war - week by week!
I will be more modest than the aim of the 100 year's war, which is in essence the culmination of medieval warfare.
I will settle (but for no less) than the 80 year's war of The Netherlands independence of the Spanish Empire. This is a war that has had many firsts and the birth of one of the first modern Republics of what is now one of the few remaining European monarchies. It featured the invention of modern Marines in naval warfare. The US Marines have the motto of 'Semper Fidelis' which means "Forever Faithfull'. The Dutch Marines have the very practical motto of "Qua Patet Orbis" roughly meaning "Wherever in the World".
The true and complete motto should read: "Qua Patet Orbis, Semper Fidelis.".
Even the use of Commandoes and modern army organization, combined operations, combat engineering and logistics were established during this conflict.
that boring
The 30 years war would probably be much more interesting, but going throu such long wars week by week would be absolutely overkill
im curious to see Indy and the team cover the Human-Cylon War from Battlestar Galactica...
I mean it can be done, not week by week of course 😅 but maybe week by year? is an a year of conflict in one weekly episode. 100 weeks to cover the whole thing.
The V2 rocket has the dubious distinction of being the only weapon that killed more people while being built than when actually used.
1:57 Walter was like: "Hey Walter, shall we join up?" And Walter was like, "Let's ask Walter". And Walter was like, "Walter, why Walter?" and Walter was like: "If Walter's in, I'm in." And so Walter was like, "Walter, are you in?" And Walter was like "I already said, ask Walter." But Walter was like, "No, other Walter." But Walter didn't answer because he still thought he was talking to the other Walter. And so advancement in German rocketry was delayed by several minutes.
Lol
It is somewhat interesting that the V2 rocket and Wasserfall missile would lay the groundwork postwar in the future for things like the cruise missile and the air to air missile, as well as rocketry missions to the Moon. The story of Wernher Von Braun is rather a storied one too, from assisting the Germans with the V2 rocket until later leading America's NASA with the design of the Saturn V to the moon in 1969. Thank you team for this Special episode as always!
Thanks a lot for watching and commenting! -TimeGhost Ambassador
Yup, V1 was the basis for future cruise missiles and V2 was the granddady of the Saturn V and the ICBM. The Wasserfall was the basis for SAMs.
don't forget the rocket launched subs! They led to sub launched Polaris and cruise missiles.
This is Robert Goddard erasure.
Indeed, the first picture of the earth taken from space was taken by a camera on a V2. It was launched at the White Sands Missile Range outside Alamogordo, NM in 1946.
My father was a kid on occupied Holland south of Rotterdam, and he saw a V2 launch pad set up across the river Maas. That soon scared the neighborhood, because of the high rate of failed missiles falling all over the place. He said the missiles often ended in fields or splashed in the river, once almost destroying their bridge.
After Market-Garden (or before) the Germans V2 pad site was abandoned.
FYI: after the war their island kept under unarmed german occupation a long time, due to disease outbreak (he said typhus) and quarantine.
The sabotage that many slave labourers did saved more lives that we can probably calculate.
Slave labour will get you only so far...
I'd have been far more worried about allied planes targeting the launch site. The allies were very watchful of where these V2s were being launched from and if they had an opportunity would target them and take out the whole area.
Indy should have said "point of impact" instead of "target". Making a 14 meter hole somewhere within a 7 kilometer circle does not really count as hitting a target.
If your target was to hit England, it was a success
My Dad was a Radar Guidance Engineer with G.E. Aerospace at Cape Canaveral from '56 thru '76 but before that he was teaching a Radar school at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville for the army when Dr. Von Braun and his German scientists and engineers were there. My Dad would spoke fondly of Dr. von Braun's Friday night gatherings he would host at his house where all things rocketry were discussed.
I’m guessing he knew not to ask any awkward questions about the songs Werner and chums would gather round the piano and sing later in the evening!
@@GorgeDawes Up until the 1990s von Braun was only known for his pioneering work in Nazi Germany and later for his work at NASA. That he was also a decorated SS officer (which is not a war crime) and had a part in, or at least knew of the use of slave labour to manufacture his V2s, (which is a war crime) became public knowledge later. Most certainly the US government knew about this but the US space program was more important than punishing Nazi war criminals.
Any discussion or what-if scenarios around Germany doing better prioritizing a wonder weapon or preserving military capacity on the eastern front or pushing back the allies or whatever. None of them lead to Germany winning world war 2. Instead it means that two nuclear bombs would be dropped on Germany instead of Japan in August 1945. Who was, from the inception, the intended target of the Manhatten project.
Also all of these wonder weapons seem primarily concerned with attacking the civilian population or preventing such attacks. It seems pretty clearly established to me that attacks on the civiliant populations are mostly irrelevant for the outcome of the war. Germany lost a land war and these wonder weapons would not do anything about that.
Well if they really did prioritize such rocket weapons, the planes carrying atomic bombs would be in big danger maybe.
Germany would not have surrendered if it got nuked. Even Japan wouldn't have surrendered in a less desperate military situation.
Rocket research and production was expensive, and as they show in the video, used a fair amount of resources. But really, it pales when compared to that spent on tanks, submarines, airplanes and the rest. But by the time this became viable, Germany was already reeling from their major defeats. Would these made the difference somewhere? No really. With a V2 having an accuracy of 7 kilometers, or more, they would be fairly useless against opposing armies. They would need hundreds of them in a single battle area. The ability to manufacturer that many and fuel them would have been impossible, much less doing it all along both fronts.
@@GRB-tj6ujyet they did…
Wernher Von Braun….we aimed for the stars, but somehow kept hitting London😂
Adolf Galland, General of the Fighter Force, was once asked if an earlier mass production of the Me262 jet fighter (which Galland himself flew in combat), could have changed the outcome of the war. His answer was "No, it would only have prolonged it, thus costing even more lives." I guess the same is true for the V1 and V2, especially as these were not accurate enough for tactical use.
V2 was a quite effective shock weapon due to the total lack of warning before it hit. I might have proven as effective as the atomic bomb if deployed in large enough numbers.
@MrWolfstar8 it would have taken a lot of rockets. It's probably just cheaper to develop atomic weapons.
The Me 262 was overrated as a fighter. Yes, it was extremely fast...but short range, and short engine life. Useful for point defense of vital targets, and that was about all.
@ The 262 had decent range and could use pretty much anything as fuel, it didnt need expensive and scarce high octane avgas.
Regarding engines, WW2 fighters didnt survive too long in combat, and the jets were FAR cheaper and faster to build than a piston engine.
The V1 was far more effective, since it could be intercepted the allies had to divert HUGE resources to try to counter them... and were also DIRT CHEAP.
There was no defense against the V2, so no allied expense, and the whole V2 program was more expensive than the manhattan Project.
Captured A4s were of course the foundation of the US and Soviet and UK rocket programs. During the war an A4 had reached a maximum altitude of over 160 kilometers, which is well into space. There was a British plan to put a man into space using an enlarged and extensively modified version of the A4. Unfortunately the British economy was in desperate shape and the government didn't fund this. If they had, a suborbital flight like Alan Shepard's could have been made ~8 years earlier and a Brit would have been the first person into space.
Please note: suborbital refers to speed, not altitude. It is relatively easy to launch a rocket into space (above 100 km). It's difficult to accelerate it enough to stay there in orbit, circling the Earth with out falling back down.
A less enthusiastic part of the British plan would be that the astronaut would return to earth at the speed of 1500 meters per second, far faster than tea...
@@penultimateh766 Sorry, YT cut off part of your reply. The Megaroc proposal aimed for a 300 km altitude but they could easily have dropped it to 120 km or so. The New Shepard capsule returns from over 100 km with little in the way of a heat shield, and certainly not an ablative one. I've never been able to find anything about what NS has at the base of the capsule, although the abort motor can tolerate being in contact with it.
Did the British have a large community interested in spaceflight? Guess that's not something I'd ever heard of. Of course there was no way their government would fund anything like that when their economy was still crippled from years of war - they were still rationing food well into the 1950's and didn't have their colonies to fall back on for resources anymore.
@@Raskolnikov70 At the time the Brits were very interested in space flight. They even had an official national space flight society that planned a moon landing and had designed a space suit for use on the moon. Needless to say, the Brits had other far more pressing things to do such as develop the British atom bomb after the US had refused to share the technology with them.
I live in Wassenaar, South Holland in the Netherlands. The very first V2 rockets aimed at London were launched within 1km of my home, 8 september 1944. A few more were launched from the nearby forests in the following months. And a bunch were launched from The Hague and Rijswijk. They literally used a small crossroad covered by trees to launch the Rockets. It left burn marks on the trees there when it was launched. There is still a small memorial there.
There are a few websites that go into great detail about the launches, the launch sites, where they landed, the ones that failed during take off etc. Very interesting reads
The V2 was unlikely to win the war by itself.
At the end of the day, it was an artillery piece. Such things can be massively devastating and deadly, as The Great War showed. But they are strategically and tactically of little use unless the side firing them can follow up by putting 'boots on the ground' in the area that was just bombarded. Again, as The Great War showed time and again.
The biggest problem that Nazi Germany had (militarily speaking) is that they never once during all of WW2 demonstrated that they had a reasonable means to put 'boots on the ground' in England or the US. Which they needed to be able to do to win in the way Hitler wanted.
I agree with that. Who knows? By transferring resources to the V2, maybe the loss of resources to the Luftwaffe and Heer would have actually shortened the war.
@@rrice1705 I suspect it wouldn't have made a difference in the length. it should have made a difference, but as we've seen over the past six months, Hitler had been increasingly micromanaging the Wehrmacht. Even to the point of overruling his generals when they come up with good ideas for defending Germany, in favor of a mindless meat grinder defense that Germany cannot possibly keep up. And then, there was that fiasco with the Battle of the Bulge.
Hitler's wasteful management of the Wehrmacht is the main factor in why the war lasted as long as it did. Without the V2, the Wehrmacht would have had more tanks and planes. But they would have been managed just as poorly.
To put 'boots on the ground' in England one only needs little rubber boats now. USA now has on its soil a huge foreign army which had only to walk over the border . . .
@@EllieMaes-Grandad now, that may be true. But back in WW2, it required an operation of the scope of D Day. Complete with specialized landing craft, mulberry harbors, and both air and naval superiority over the English Channel.
DDay happened because by June 6, 1944, the Western Allies had all these things. Nazi Germany never had all these things, and never really had given themselves the chance to get all these things.
Cinema Rex in Antwerp, Belgium would have been a good mention in this video. On Dec 16th (the first day of the Ardenne offensive) a V2 landed on the movie theater. Taking the lives of 567 people, and marking it the deadliest V2 attack ever.
Yes, they did rather heavily focus on London despite more V2's actually being fired at Antwerp.
@@slymandrake focus is on theatrics not serious accademic work history guy is better
Market garden never mentioned but was it to try capture V2 launching sites in holland used to bombard england
It was about getting across the Rhine before winter; anything else would have been a bonus of course. @@Eric-kn4yn
One wonder weapon wouldn't change the outcome of the whole war - except atomic bomb.
That being said I remember reading that V-1 was actually a very good weapon for one reason: it was very cost effective. Yes, it could be spotted and shot down easily, but making sure they would be downed in numbers required a lot of AA guns and resources - much more than the bomb itself did cost.
Same with the launching ramps - yeah, they could be bombed, but the could be defended by AA therefore making their destruction also somehow expensive.
The V-2 was the polar opposite: very technologically advanced, with no possible defense against it, but as Indy mentioned - very, VERY expensive, to the point that it was hardly worth it, actually.
Honestly, sounds like the V-1 is how drones are used in Ukraine now
@@jmjedi923
Yes in many ways the V1 and V2 was the worlds first drones.
The V1 used an auto-pilot and a speed log for steering and range whereas the V2 used inertial navigation instead (the first operational use of inertial navigation).
And it is correct that the V1 was an economical way to put 1000 kg of explosives on a target 200 km distant, and as originally planned by the Luftwaffe the V1 was to have been volley-launched in order to saturate the English air defences as they fully knew that the V1 was not invulnerable.
Unfortunately for the Germans (and fortunately for London) they could not produce enough and was at that time so heavily bombed that they could not reach the planned production targets and synchronisation of launches.
V-2 was a ballistic missile. It means,that ,well,as we say today ,it should be used against high value targets . London fits ,but,only if army HQs and major political and production centers were to be aimed .
V-1 on the other hand ,is not a drone ,but missile with wings ,if used properly, it's even deadlier than v-2. Which ,it was . So...
Yep, that's a good way to put it.
@@bekakharaishvili3978
Great episode, kudos to your entire team!
Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching!
I just realised I live 1 kilometer from a V2-launch site in Rijswijk, the Netherlands
Hm, You and more than a few others. Don't get cocky!
So what , are there any V2 there ?
Nothing to be cocky about but many civilians died because of the bombing of the mobile launcher the Germans hid in residential areas.@@Centurion101B3C
Also worth mentioning is that; Fat Man was 10 times heavier than the pay load delivery of the A4. Even if the Germans would have been able to build a nuclear bomb, it wouldn't have fit on the rocket.
10x heavier fat man yes but in V2 no need for bomb casing so not 10x but not a serious option in 1945 for technical reasons and nazis years away from getting a nuke
Yeah, but advance that technology a bit and here we are. Watching this video was like listening to Zuul in the body of Dana from Ghostbusters. We got to, "Choose the form of your destructor"
Well without a bomb, they had no idea how much the missiles needed to lift.
@@Eric-kn4yn Most of the "shielding" on Fat Man was a "reflector" designed to direct the conventional explosions such that a hollow, and, thus, sub-critical Plutonium sphere could be compressed in to a much smaller solid sphere, causing it to achieve prompt criticality and the resultant nuclear explosion. It was inherent to the design of the detonation sequence.
The Germans had atomic warheads during the war. These were placed on two-stage rockets much larger than the V-2. At the end, the threat of massive Allied retaliation led to a deal with the man heading the German advanced weapons program, SS General Hans Kammler. The Americans were given German atomic bombs and warheads in exchange for allowing General Kammler to avoid prosecution.
I was nearly killed by one of these V2s just after 4 pm on 22nd November 1944 but it missed by about 200 yards
You forgot to mention, that polish Armia Krajowa captured a test V2, which felt into the river of Bug, close to Menżenin village on beginning of 1944. The rocket miraculously did not explode. AK firts hid the rocket in the river, then after the Germans gave up with searching for it, disassembled it, prepared drawings and sent the papers and most important parts to UK. The UK intelligence named this action „MOST III”.
Mostly correct - except the parts were first examined by a polish scientist and hidden in the apartment of a wehrmacht officer!
@@PlayerFalcon4 This is quite interesting. I never heard about engagement of the German Officer in this case. Can you please give more info about it?
@os78The german officer was an unwitting accomplice. If you search youtube for The Secret War, an old BBC documentary, it goes into much greater detail.
@@PlayerFalcon4 Found this doc and exact moment: czcams.com/video/GJCF-Ufapu8/video.html The german officer of course was not engaged, and idea of conducting the examination in his rarly habbited flat was brave and brilliant - why in the world the germans would search for parts of missing V2 among themself? Thanks for pointing out this detail.
@@maciejos78You are most welcome. TBH this little factoid ticks all my boxes - aviation, espionage and technology, and how they overlapped during the 20th century.
Learning about ww2 is always fun, but if this channel was about when i grew up, id probably have became a historian. These dudes are so cool.
This was the video I've been waiting for. Thanks!
"had already figured in the earth's rotation and curvature"
My man, flat earthers will hate that.
Heck, WW1 artillery fire included earth curvature and rotation, with enough range.
@@ZaprozhanWaits for the flat earthers to arrive. 🧁
@@jeremyboughtono2 Flat Earth people usually aren't literate enough to watch this series...
Eh, flat earthers do have one point: a flat earth don’t have time zones.
Technically, a flat Earth could still rotate, like a record with the North Pole as the spindle.
Definitely my favourite special episode so far, WWII history and the space race were both core parts of my childhood (no, not in that sense, I'm not old enough). Also, Hermann Oberth (1:08) is the namesake for the _Oberth_-class starships in Star Trek. :)
Ah, finally a story after my own heart. (I'm one of those people who, when they hear V-2, automatically think A-4.)
Dear Indy and entire TimeGhost team thank you once again for the superb, in depth videos about the war, from which I as a history nerd have learned and am still learning so much!
To chime in on the conversation, as you said Indy, it's still so bloody scary to see how close the nazis actually were with some of their inventions!
An in depth series on von Braun would be most appreciated !
A sobering look at what really was and a terrifying glimpse into what may have been. Fantastic research and wonderful video!
Great stuff as usual
A biographical film about von Braun came out in the early 60s called "I Aim for the Stars." The reviewers replied "and sometimes London!"
If you want to know everything technically about the V2/A4 the CZcams channel Astronomy and Nature TV has an incredibly in depth series.
Thanks Indy!
From about 8:30 to 10:00 Indy just rattling off specs and intricate details with no notes about the V2.
After watching for years, it finally hit me, Indy is the World's Smartest Man, as he can talk about so many subjects from memory without notes. I bet he even knows Ty Cobb's Batting Average.
Hitler:how much money marks do you need?
Von braun: it's not rocket science all of them
An absolutely amazing piece of technology, that pushed rocketry forward in so many dimensions at once. I have always been fascinated by how German scientists were able to synthesize such a complex propellant system, with something as a sophisticated as an automated, electronic, gyroscopic guidance system in the early 1940s. There are few points in history where such rapid technological advances took place over so many fields as in WWII.
“Necessity brings innovations, and nothing can compete necessities as war”
Werner Von Braun aimed for the stars but usually hit London.
Thank you for the lesson.
It was amazing how close Nobel Prize Winner Heisenberg was to developing a functional atomic model. But he wasn't supported by Hitler. After the War, Heisenberg was still disappointed that he hadn't perfected the bomb instead of Oppenheimer. I saw this in a German documentary film.
A model yes but no reactor or ability to produce enriched uranium necessary for a bomb.
Heisenberg didn't believe the Americans had developed a deploy-able atomic bomb when told about it after Hiroshima. His calculations on the amount of fissile material needed was so far off that no plane of WWII would have been able to carry it, let alone any missile the could have been produced by war's end.
There were many German scientists in the German atomic program. Heisenberg and the others were drafted into a high secret military project. They had no say over anything. Scientists like Manfred von Ardenne would develop a superior uranium separation process. They succeeded where the Americans failed.
I went to college (Alabama A&M University) in Huntsville, AL, and I first noticed the city has a convention center named after him *_Von Braun Center_* because of his work at NASA/US Military installation Redstone Arsenal which also has a building named for him on site (which is also located in the area).
In the book Hitler's Scientists, the author John Cornwell wrote an account of what it was like to be on the receiving end of the V-2 strikes; I particularly remember his remark that the rocket would suddenly detonate, without warning, and it was only afterwards that you could hear the "whoosh" as the sound of the rocket's flight caught up to the impact site. It's easy to imagine why they were so demoralizing, despite the fact that there were comparatively few of them given the material shortages and production problems that plagued them throughout their use in the war.
In another book I read on World War II (I think it was Stephen Ambrose's book on D-Day), the historian remarked that the V-2 would have been much more effective if it had been used against harbors that the western Allies were using to transport men, equipment and supplies into France, rather than targeting London, which in spite of its psychological effect was not going to seriously disrupt the Allied war effort (I think he remarked that Hitler authorized targeting London with the V-2 on D-Day itself, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly). Rocket technology would obviously have had a much greater impact if Germany had prioritized it earlier, but although I won't speculate too much, I don't think it would've changed the outcome of the war.
Thank you for clearing that point. I thought you mentioned just because of the rockets
The timing of this special is fitting.
Last week was the 25th anniversary of the biographical movie that was about one of Wernher von Braun's big fans (and his friends) and his journey from growing up in a small coal mining town in WV to beginning his journey toward rocket science and eventually being a part of NASA.
That fan: Homer Hickam
That movie: October Sky
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Homer in the movie.
Could y'all do a video on the Navajo Code talkers?
Fun Fact.Helicopters were first used in combat areas to evacuate wounded soldiers during the burma campaign in 1945.😊
What a great podcast!
I'm currently reading Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, which paints a dark picture of life in Britain under the shadow of the V2 attacks.
Great video, thanks!
“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.” - Thomas Pynchon
Thanks TGA.
While the V2 was an impressive technological achievement as a weapon it proved pretty much useless and has the dubious distinction of killing more German workers then enemy. The Dora slave labor conditions were truly horrendous. Operation Paperclip that sought to round up as many German rocket scientists as possible before the Russians could and sweep the involvement of slave labor under the rug is an oft overlooked aspect of post WWII history. The previous posts about Tom Lehrer's ode to Werner Von Braun is dead on.
Tom Bower's book, "Paperclip Conspiracy", examined selection of those guilty of war crimes but not prosecuted, being deemed useful to the USA.
My Aunt remembered the V-1, or "doodlebug" as she called it. She would count the seconds after the engine stopped, and hear the explosion.
It's weird to hear about the ruins in the woods around my village in a CZcams video
The v2 had about the same chances of winning the war as Steiner's counter attack
I aim for the stars….but sometimes I hit London.
Woo! a V2 episode!
It’s odd that Hitler and Nukes kinda existed in different worlds.
Not true. Hitler was very interested in better, more advanced rockets and developing atomic bombs.
Nice that Indy said "Flak-Rocket", which is how the Germans called them back then.
When friends of mine did that on their german channel there was an uproar form the community :)
I read somewhere that more forced workers were killed in the
production of the V2 then people were killed at the target.
14:35 - honestly, probably.
Wasser fall in particular would have been the death knell to the combined bomber offensive as there isn’t a counter for it with 1940s technology.
And if the V2 had been given the support it needed earlier on, the Germans could have threatened
Soviet industry behind the urals with it, or even bomb ports needed to support D-day later on in souther England, which may have severely crippled the Normandy breakout later on too.
Actually, there were counters. WasserFall was manually guided. Not too useful at night and flares could disrupt the sight. Its radar guided follow-up could be countered by chad and by the already existing US Navy BAT, a radar guided glide bomb that had sunk Japanese shipping at up to 37km away. Change its frequency to match the Germans and you have an anti-radar homing bomb.
The Wasserfall became operational.
Robert h Goddard had worked out the liquid fuel rocket math and had tested many rockets in the 20s and 30s. Goddard had limited funds. the US military had no more vision than Hitler.
Von Broun referenced his work.
The vision was to win the war without spending a lot of money developing rockets of little utility to the war effort. Seems to me it was a better vision than the Germans’, and it worked out fairly well.
US strategic air forces were dominated by people who thought conventional heavy bombers hitting production centers was the way to win the war from the air. They were proven wrong early on but it didn't stop them from using their political influence to keep pouring resources into that method and trying different (and ultimately ineffective) strategies until the development of atomic weapons gave them a real leg to stand on.
@@Raskolnikov70 Okaaay, and you think that is relevant why?
Yes, the Allies’ expectations for the strategic air campaign in Europe were unrealistic, as were the Germans’ expectations for rockets. So?
@@markhamstra1083 It's relevant because the US war planners chose to focus myopically on a method of waging war (strategic bombing via large fleets of heavy aircraft) that proved ineffective, rather than diversifying their efforts and seeing what worked before investing their resources. This philosophy extended into their development of rocket technology - even after atomic weapons were developed they still favored heavy bomber fleets as the primary delivery method, while other more forward-thinking people worked on ICBMs and submarines.
My reason for posting this was to expand on OP's point about the German war effort and how it mirrors US weapons development throughout the mid-20th century. You are free to have your own opinion about whether or not it's relevant.
@@Raskolnikov70 The U.S. was right not to focus on strategic rockets during WW2, and they did not ignore them after the war. If anything, they followed the "visionary" German plan (and many of the same "visionary" Germans) too much after the war. That led to emphasizing things like high specific impulse that were interesting engineering challenges and useful for pushing certain limits of what could be done with rockets, but weren't necessary to constructing ICBMs as soon as possible. It was this emphasis on high-tech rockets as much as anything else that led to the U.S. reliance on strategic bombers even after the Soviets, with their more pragmatic rocketry program focused on shorter-term results, began to deploy useful strategic rockets. It wasn't a lack of vision or too many bombers that slowed the U.S. development of effective ICBMs, but rather the same starry-eyed German vision directed at the future instead of the present that had previously produced the misuse of resources on the development of the V-2.
Great Content. Are you going to do one on Operation Paperclip? I maybe from the future.
Hi Indy
Special about v2 rocket is awesome.
Thanks.
The cruise missile and the ballistic missile. The two versions still used today. These guys were amazing.
One reason the German military was interested in long range rockets before the war is that unlike artillery rockets weren’t proscribed by the Treaty of Versailles. They could be worked on openly without any problems.
Werhner von Braun: The rocket worked perfectly, but it fell on the wrong planet.
Von Braun is an...interesting figure. All science, no conscience, he could have become known as one of the world's archetypal Mad Scientists but for Paperclip salvaging him.
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
This is the first time I actually see a picture of Oberth and holy shit it's the guy from Up.
I live in Huntsville, Alabama, his home in the US. You would assume half the city is named after him. Our hockey stadium, the largest complex on the Army Redstone Arsenal. It is strange, because we accept the dark history of the technology that made out city, and the evil past of those who helped build it, yet we believe there is something beautiful about adapting a technology designed to kill into one that may one day save our planet. History should never and will never forgive Von Braun for the evils he KNOWINGLY oversaw, but I believe Huntsville, and its position as the centerpoint of rocketry R&D in the US, stands as a testement to the value of second chances and the belief in even bad people's ability to do good when you help them along the path
Second chance? Von Braun just did what he had always done. Build rockets. It's not like the man became a "good guy" suddenly. There's no reason to think that he wouldn't have used slave labor if given the chance later in his life, nor that he wouldn't settle for ICBM's if he hadn't been given the saturn program. He was an opportunist, with very few scrupules.
One reason why Allied Intelligence killed any plans to bump off Hitler, was that his *genius* was actually aiding the Allied war effort.
Heinrich Lübcke who was President of West Germany from 1959 to 1969 was one of the leading scientists in Peenemünde where the V2s were constructed and built by concentration camp prisoners. His career is one example of many of German scientists who had no social conscience, used their opportunities mercilessly and after the war even got rewarded.
Tom Bower's book, "Blind Eye to Murder" is about post-war cover-up of widespread, generalised atrocities in Europe, done mostly by Nazis.
The most essential part was the turbo pump. Even today, this pump is heart of every liquid rocket.
Some say rockets are turbopumps, with nozzels and a tank
Due to both the Americans and Russians utilizing post war rocket technology and personnel from Germany; it was a standard joke that when an U.S. & USSR satellites would cross paths in orbit; they would greet each other in German. 14:57
They even invented synthetic oil. The first assault rifle. The 9mm. The jet engine. The freeway. Methadone.
According to a biography of von Braun, at one point they were having troubles with the rocket coming apart on descent. They wanted to see this in person so the engineers stood exactly at the target site thinking “we’re not that accurate “. Unfortunately for them that day they were pretty accurate and the rocket fell within a 100 yards of them almost killing them.
I always thought that story was funny.
The Germans should have put more ressources in the development of the "Fritz X" radio guided bomb. That thing was already working pretty well.
Another interesting place connected to V2 is "La Coupole" - a giant silo/underground base in northern France that was being built in order to launch dozens of missiles a day ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Coupole)
It was bombed and rendered inoperable.
With attacking London with the V1 and V2, he made the same mistake he made during the Battle of Britain.
Although Londoners suffered, he let the military off the hook.
If he'd gone after the Channel Ports, he would have caused headaches for the invasion (My opinion)
A side happening, Raymond Baxter (TV presenter, Farnborough Air Show and Tomorrow's World) was a wartime pilot.
He told of the time he engaged a V2 taking off with his Meteor jet.
When he got back to base, he realised how lucky he was to have failed
They shot many missiles toward Antwerp in fact the sent more missiles at Antwerp than any other target except London. It did not stop supplies going through the port.
Three technical corrections re the V2 (A4):
1) The fuels going through the turbopump were liquids, rather than gases: Liquefied oxygen (A-Stoff) and a mixture of alcohol and water (B-Stoff)
2) The turbopump was powered by steam generated through decomposition of highly-concentrated hydrogen peroxide (T-Stoff). Sodium permanganate served as a catalyst for peroxide decomposition - these two materials were not a "mixture", as such a mixture would instantly decompose.
3) the Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile was not designed "to find the target and detonate on its own"- it was guided by a human operator ("Command to Line Of Sight"- CLOS), and the detonation command was also issued from the ground, as the Germans did not have a proximity fuse that could do the job.
That is accurate but in the case of the Wasserfall, a similar method was used with the air-launched missile the Allies called Fritz-X.
The thing is: had they priorizied certain things earlier, or waited with the start of the war until certain things were ready, the allies would have noticed and had more time themselves.
Of course a working V2 in high numbers would be quite manacing for the allies as they were, but such a big program would have been picked up easily, and therefore the allies with their vast resources would have been prepared, too...
Crazy how close they were!
The V2 was a useless terror weapon, but guided flak rockets could gave made a huge strategic impact if mass produced by ‘43.
The Natter, a vertical launch rocket with a pilot and a salvo of small rockets in the nose, was essentially a guided missile with a human guidance system. After firing the salvo of rockets the pilot would bail out and the Natter would also have a parachute for recovery. The Natter would land kind of hard and wreck the cheap outer body but the rocket engine and various parts were used over again. If this had been mass produced, it would have made the four-engine heavy bomber offensive impossible. The Natter was one of the few true "wonder weapons" that might have made a difference.
Get the book by Brett Gooden, Natter - Manned Missile of the Third Reich. I have seen an unpublished photo of a number of Natters in a field with their camouflage covering removed.
thanks man!@@user-cy5li2zp9z
I love the attention to detail in your set dressing -- it really sets the scene for what is to follow very effectively.
I see you have mentioned von Braun's SS membership, and his subsequent achievements for the United States. Funny how that becomes something of a recurring theme as the US recruits former Gestapo and SS intelligence operatives when we hastily stood up the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) after WWII.
I actually met Dr. von Braun once a long time ago, before I knew of his involvement with the SS. He seemed a very driven man, one whose mind was firmly fixed on the present goals of the US "manned space program" as they called it back then. but he had an affable manner (when not arguing for one or another technological solution - on that score he was relentlessly uncompromising). He seemed like a regular guy, y'know?
Contrast that with what happened at the Mittelwerk. Of course, von Braun did not have direct involvement with day-to-day management of the slave labor pool, but he KNEW, and decisions he made influenced the treatment of those slaves. I find myself deeply conflicted regarding the man I met so many years ago. As a junior high school student, I almost worshiped the man for his contributions to the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, only to have his image tarnished by his involvement with the SS. I won't defend the man - he did what he did, but his was a brilliant mind and a fierce heart in the pursuit of excellence in rocketry. He cared little for what Germany was doing with his rockets, and that is his real shame -- _that he failed to consider the horrific outcomes his rockets would have for England and elsewhere._
I have to admit that a V2 carrying submarine sounds scary as hell.
That's what the submarine sailors said.
"Like a phoenix burning bright/ In the skyyyyyyyyy,/ I'll show there's another side to me,/ You can't denyyyyyyy!/ I may not know what the future holds,/ But hear me when I saaaaaaaay/ That my past does not define me!/ 'Cause my past is not todaaaaaaay!"
Yes, I use Sunset Shimmer's redemption song as an anthem for von Braun.
Thank you.
And thank you.
- "I aim for the moon. Only sometimes I hit London..."
W. Von Braun
It would be great to see an episode devoted to the yet-even-wilder German ideas, like the Eugen Sanger spaceplane bomber.
The Saenger space plane was adapted in the U.S., reappearing as the X-20 Dyna-Soar.
So Interesting, thank you very much.
Thanks to you for watching! -TimeGhost Ambassador
good video
Appreciate it, thanks for watching.
In my personal opinion, the V2 marks a huge advance in rocket technology, and the ideas of how to further employ rockets are very smart.
However, to say it'd have won them the war? Maybe if they used them on military targets exclusively, but besides that I can't imagine it having made a difference seeing as Spartacus has frequently pointed out the ineffectiveness of bombing civilian targets on morale in the War Against Humanity series
The idea that some gee-whiz gizmo is going to save a war after squandering the lives of probably about a million of your own troops with bonehead orders not to retreat is ridiculous. By 1944, their armies were stretched so thin and were so misallocated (Courland, Norway, Yugoslavia) that the downfall was already inescapable.