So he had sent 65,121 alternations to the workmen, and he could foresee another five thousand before the rocket functioned. It was in light of this that one day in 1943 he made in Kolff’s hearing his second reference to America: “It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you’re qualified to make a rocket. Russia has made maybe thirty thousand of them by now. America hasn’t made any. Therefore, men like you and me and the general, we’d be a hundred times more valuable to the Americans than to the Russians.” When he showed no inclination to expatiate on this, Kolff asked no questions, but the comparison lodged in his mind, and not exactly in the way Von Braun intended. Kolff thought: If the Russians are so far advanced, they’d recognize the value of men like the general and me. Good God, that means the Communists will be out to capture [80] us. And he began to watch nervously the progress of the Red Armies along the eastern front, for with every victory over Hitler’s troops, they moved a mile, a league closer to Peenemünde.
“So you are all guilty of sabotaging our war effort,” Funkhauser had said grimly, “and I’m sure you will be shot as soon as I submit my report.”
Obviously, they had not been executed, even though Funkhauser had recommended it. Powerful friends of Von Braun, and he had them everywhere, intervened with Hitler himself, and the Fuehrer spared him. Breutzl and Kolff were sentenced to death, but Von Braun would not allow this. For six days he devoted every minute to their rescue, when it might have been to his advantage to let them be executed on the spurious grounds that they were indeed saboteurs while he was “pure.” But he could not do it, and in the end he carried his campaign to Hitler, convincing him that the A-4 would never fly successfully without the help of these two experts.
Dieter Kolff owed his life to Baron von Braun, as he took pleasure in calling him, since it was reassuring to be working with a baron, and he never forgot it.
So on the night of 27 October 1944 when he thought: Chickens! That’s what will save me ... he was a man with a right to be terrified of what Colonel Funkhauser might do to him once he fell outside Von Braun’s protective shelter.
His strategy was this. Deep in his autonomic system Dieter realized that as long as he could retain control of General Breutzl’s papers, he had a bargaining power with whoever won this war, Germany, Russia or America, because it was easier for Von Braun to conceive fantastic concepts than it was for someone like Breutzl to translate them into practical manufacturing operations. And the combination of Breutzl’s plans and Kolff’s ingenuity might actually surpass what Von Braun was capable of, especially in countries like Russia and America, which had a plethora of imaginative theoreticians but not too many skilled in practical application.
Dieter Kolff knew that he was a valuable human being, one of the most valuable in the world at this moment, but he also knew that with his unimposing appearance and his lack of formal education, he could achieve little [81] without the charismatic leadership of his hero Von Braun. He was welded to this brilliant baron, now and forever, but until he discovered what Von Braun was going to do in the aftermath of war, he must prudently protect himself.
I must act today, he told himself before dawn. Funkhauser and his SS men will start looking into the Breutzl case: “How did the general die? Where are his papers?” Kolff would be interrogated, and he would be wise to have those papers far from Peenemünde in some safe place. He had no minutes to spare.
Waiting until dawn, lest he arouse suspicions, he took a large knapsack, went to where he had hidden the Breutzl papers, and stuffed them inside. Knowing that he would be shot immediately if these papers were found on him, he walked casually to the bomb-damaged kitchen, where he nodded to the helper with whom he had established a system to defraud the regulations-beer to the cook, chickens to Dieter-and in this way got hold of three dressed fowl, which he tossed casually atop the papers.
On his bicycle he pedaled his way to the Peenemünde end of the ferry, where he gave the SS guard one of the chickens, trying his best to appear noncommittal about everything and in no particular hurry: “I’m going to see my girl. She must have been terrified by the bombing.”
“Anyone in your buildings hurt?”
“Killed. Dozens of them.”
“Those bastards. When do we blow up London?”
“Any day now.”
At the far end of the ferry he was warmly greeted by another contingent of SS men, to whom he handed his second chicken.
“What’s in the knapsack?” they asked.
“Chicken for my girl,” he said, displaying no anxiety, no desire to be on his way.
“Are you ...” The SS men made the common gesture indicating sexual intercourse.
“Why do you think I’m taking the chicken?” Dieter asked with a faint smile that made his little face with its inadequate mustache look quite ridiculous.
“I’d better inspect the knapsack,” the SS man said, pulling aside the covering. “Orders, you know.” Dieter strained his throat to keep from gulping, and displayed no nervousness as the guard poked around the naked chicken.
[82] “Good luck!” the other guards said. “And thanks for our chicken.”
Trying desperately to do nothing that might attract attention, even though his heart was thumping, he pedaled down the road toward the summer resort, where he found Liesl working with three other girls at preparing the place for winter. Keeping his left arm over the top of his knapsack, he joked with the girls, then indicated that he wished to be alone with Liesl, and blushed when the girls teased him about his intentions.
When they were alone, in broad daylight but in a part of the establishment where they were hidden from the others, Dieter faced his first life-or-death decision. There had been other moments of importance, like his landing the assignment to Peenemünde, and his sitting in Stettin prison waiting to be shot, but in those affairs he had not had much choice. Now he was making the first in a series of decisions which would determine the remainder of his life, and he took each step with full cognizance of its peril.
“Liesl, we must go to your farm and do something of vital importance.”
“Yes.” Peenemünde had now been bombed several times, first by the British, now by the Americans, and in each raid errant bombs had come close to the Koenig farm, so that death had been imminent. Also, the Russians were moving always closer from the east, the Americans from the west. Decisions of great moment must soon be made by all Germans, and Liesl was ready. She knew no other unmarried man but Dieter and was prepared to follow his lead.
“I think we’d better go now,” he said, so she made excuses to the other girls, who teased her bawdily. When they reached the Koenig farm, he asked her to fetch a shovel, and when she produced one, he said, “We must find a safe spot. I have important papers. If these papers are found, we’ll both be shot. If they aren’t found, they’ll be our passport.”
“To where?”
He had hoped that she would not ask this question, for it was one he had not yet answered in his own mind. What was Von Braun going to do? Join up with the Russians, who were actively engaged in the rocket race? Or with the Americans, who were so far behind? Desperately he wished [83] to know Von Braun’s plans, but even without them he knew the right choice.
“To America. They’ll be needing people like me. Somehow we must get these papers to the Americans. For the present, we must hide them.”
And after the hole was dug, he realized that he was placing his life in her hands. If she was a spy planted by Colonel Funkhauser, he was already dead, but he knew there was no alternative. He handed her his life, and she buried the knapsack.
When the ground was tamped flat she quietly returned the shovel to her father’s barn, then came and stood before him. “Does this mean you will marry me?”
“I’ve thought about that. You’re the one girl I love. You know that. But it would be terribly risky to go before a magistrate now. Too many questions, and the SS might interfere.”
Her body sagged. He represented her only
chance to escape this farm, to escape the Russians, and now he was refusing to marry her. She did not voice her resentment or even think of retaliating against him, for she realized that she was in a perilous position from which she could escape only with his help. “If you’re afraid ...” she began.
“I am,” he said with great force. “Everything’s in chaos. I was damned lucky to get past the guards at the ferry.”
“I know,” she said with a bitterness not entirely masked, but Dieter was too self-occupied to recognize her scorn.
“But I know that you are my life, Liesl, and I think we should be married right now.”
“How? If you’re afraid of the SS.”
“By our own will. Here, under the sky.” She stood there, silent, so finally he asked, “Would you be willing to marry me, right now?”
“Will it be a real marriage?” she asked with peasant caution.
“The minute you touched the knapsack we were married,” Dieter said. “God knows when a minister will be free to confirm it.”
“How shall we do it? Liesl asked, as if she were a little child needing instruction.
Dieter took her left hand in his, but forcefully she changed this, aware that her right hand should do the pledging, and when she was satisfied, she looked at him, [84] a twenty-eight-year-old farm girl placing her life in his care.
“I take you as my wife,” Dieter said, standing near the buried knapsack, which would be their wedding ring and documentation.
“I take you as my husband,” Liesl said, breaking into tears as she visualized the marriage she should have had, with the girls from the resort dressed in white. After an awkward pause, she asked, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” And Dieter did. Then she maneuvered him cleverly toward the barn, where they consummated their unusual marriage.
“You must always be ready to leave at any moment,” he warned her. “And if I send a message to meet me somewhere, you must bring the papers.” When she nodded dutifully, he said, “You know they’re our only passport to a new life.” And she said she knew.
On his way back to the ferry he was assaulted by the sick suspicion that she might indeed be one of Funkhauser’s spies, and he could hear the colonel’s words in the Stettin prison: “Four spies that I inserted into the work force at Peenemünde ...” But even if she were a spy, there was nothing he could do about it now. He must live the next critical months in treble anxiety, for the world was falling apart and he was already dizzy from trying to hold on.
Such speculations were driven from his mind when he reached the ferry and learned that the SS troopers were about to launch a search party for him. “Colonel Funkhauser has been demanding that you report to him ... immediately.”
He pretended surprise and indignation. “When did he arrive? I should have been informed.”
“Flew in unexpectedly to check the damage.” Two guards from the mainland end entered the ferry with him, and when they reached the other side they were joined by two more, who mounted their motorcycles to form a cordon about his bicycle, and in this austere manner he traveled south to the bomb-ravaged dormitories, where he found Funkhauser’s men rummaging among his private possessions.
“What happened to General Breutzl?” the colonel asked. He was an untidy man, thirty pounds overweight, who [85] always wore his SS uniform two sizes too small on the specious grounds that if it was kept tight, it would also be kept neat.
“He was killed. By one of the first bombs.”
“And what did you do about it?” Funkhauser asked in his silky public voice.
“As planned. I tried immediately to save him, but that was hopeless. So I assumed responsibility for his secret papers.”
“And what did you do with them?”
“They were destroyed in the fire. I rescued just a few sheets and ...” He looked toward where his envelope had been planted and saw with satisfaction that Funkhauser’s men had discovered it and turned it over to the colonel.
“I see that you found something,” Funkhauser said, staring at him with his pinched-together eyes. “These charred bits. But I wonder if they’re what you really found?” He changed his manner abruptly and asked, “What were you doing on the mainland?”
Dieter felt trapped. Did Funkhauser mean on the night of the bombing, or now? Did he even know that Dieter had been away from his post on the night when Breutzl was killed? After just a moment’s hesitation he replied, “My girl. I wanted to see if her farm had been hit during the raid.”
“Had it?”
“No, thank God.”
There would have been deeper questioning had not the colonel been interrupted by a disheveled messenger with startling news: “The Fuehrer’s aide telephoned. You’re to fly to Wolf’s Lair immediately ... with Dieter Kolff.”
Funkhauser looked in amazement at the man he had been interrogating. “You? What would Hitler want with you?”
Hurriedly, Kolff picked among his scattered belongings, finding bits of clothing proper for a visit to Hitler’s retreat hidden three hundred miles to the east. “Have I time to shave?” he asked, and Funkhauser grumbled, “On the plane.” So the same convoy of motorcycles rushed the two men back to the north end of the island, where Funkhauser’s plane stood ready.
Once before Dieter Kolff had met his Fuehrer, in the spring of 1944 when Hitler pinned the silver medal on his [86] quivering chest: “For valiant services to the Third Reich.” Dieter’s performance had been of great merit to the Nazi war effort, for when the precious A-4s continued to blow up while aloft, he went almost directly from the prison cell in Stettin to a watch point on the Baltic coast northeast of that city, and there, in the heart of the area on which the defective rockets fell, he stationed himself with binoculars and camera, awaiting the next test shots.
For the first time he saw the mighty machine from the recipient’s point of view: a monstrous silver torpedo, beautifully proportioned, leaping through the sky as if impatient to reach its target, silent at first, then with resounding cracks as it broke through the sound barrier, disappearing as quickly and mysteriously as it had come, for it was traveling at a speed of one mile per second. It was therefore nothing like an airplane, and eyes that were adjusted to planes had little chance of even seeing an A-4.
But it was Dieter’s job to see, and since the rocket slowed perceptibly when it started its erratic dive, bearing in its nose a ton of Trialen, many times more destructive than TNT, it was just possible to watch its performance. And as he did so, he identified the trouble. “What seems to happen,” he told Von Braun, “is that when the engine cuts out, enormous pressures accumulate in the chamber, and the sides blow out.”
“What can be done about that?” the master asked.
“Simple! We wrap a steel band around the rocket at the critical point. Bind it together.”
“Won’t that slow the speed? Aerodynamically?”
“Slightly. Very slightly. But that’s the price you pay for safe delivery.”
When Kolff’s simple device was installed, eighteen out of nineteen trial runs succeeded, and the A-4 was ready to strike at London. Hitler had been overjoyed, because he had foreseen in a dream that this instrument of destruction was going to win the war for him. First London, and when the English were battered to their knees, fifty even more powerful rockets every day into the heart of Moscow, or whatever other city the Russians held.
“And this is the little fellow who won the war for us?” Hitler had said when facing Kolff at the Berlin ceremonies. It had been a stupefying period: one day facing death in a Stettin prison; the next receiving a silver medal from [87] the hands of Hitler himself. Now, engaged in traitorous activity against the day of Germany’s defeat, he could not even guess what might lie in wait at Wolf’s Lair.
The little plane sped eastward, keeping well north of Stettin, then along the very coast which Dieter had guarded, waiting for the next A-4 to explode before his eyes, then south of Danzig, which had once borne the shameful Polish name of Gdańsk but
never again, and out into one of the romantic and secret places of Europe, the vast Masurian Lakes, each with a shoreline of radiant beauty and mystery.
In the heart of this region, not far from the Prussian town of Rastenberg, Adolf Hitler had built the gigantic subterranean center from which he intended to conquer the world. It was called, in German, Wolfschanze and was indeed a lair from which ferocious beasts could prowl, destroying society’s flocks.
Nothing had been done by accident. Near Wolf’s Lair there was no airfield, nor was there any conspicuous railroad. No big roads were allowed, with the result that Allied scout planes had searched for the hiding place a hundred times without ever identifying it. Yet hidden in the woods was a complete city, constructed of gigantic concrete cubes with steel-reinforced ceilings sixteen and seventeen feet thick. Had the enemy scout planes spotted the place, the following bombers would have done little damage, for not even the famous Tallboys of the RAF could have penetrated those ponderous shelters.
Colonel Funkhauser’s plane landed at a well-camouflaged airstrip many miles from the Lair, and in a small car he and Kolff were whisked down country roads hidden by trees. When they reached the center of the establishment, a concealed city of some twenty thousand, Kolff recognized the infamous bunker in which, a few months earlier, the dissident generals had tried to assassinate Hitler. He was familiar with the monstrous structure because after the attempt, Colonel Funkhauser had assembled all the workmen at Peenemünde to warn them: “Now you’re going to see what happens to traitors who try to take action against the Third Reich.”
Funkhauser had screened the newsreels made by Goebbels of the conspirators’ trial: a three-man banc of judges, all Nazi stalwarts without legal training, had screamed [88] at the accused, reviling them and castigating them day after day. In the end, all were found guilty and some were hung from rafters like carcasses of mutton, with jagged hooks piercing their necks and brains. The film showed them struggling as the cattle hooks worked their way in. Others were suspended with piano wire about their necks; when they squirmed, the wire cut their heads off. Kolff had been one of the men who had vomited. Now he was at the center of this madness.