1. Help build the spaceship!; 2. At Peenemunde, they have created a paradise; 3. It was a fantastic life!; 4. Production by convicts: no objections; 5. At the limits of existence; 6. We still had a fatherland to fight for; 7. Engineering consent at Peenemunde.
A scholarly investigation of the culture underpinning missile development at Germany's secret missile base at Peenemünde.
Michael Petersen received his Ph.D. in German history from the University of Maryland in 2005. He is currently a historian under contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC, where he is writing a book on the history of the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Cold War. He has also worked for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) at the National Archives and Records Administration, and has contributed to a collection of essays on Japanese war crimes records held by the National Archives. He is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Review of the hardback: 'Michael Petersen offers a new and
disturbing account of the German missile community under the Nazis
at the clandestine Peenemünde facility that developed the V-2
rocket. These were not apolitical engineers blithely lost in
mathematical equations and dreams of space travel, but astute
professionals dedicated to destroying Germany's enemies while
serving their own careers. Worse, the missile team's privileged
status, comfortable living conditions, cloak of secrecy, and sense
of national mission fostered knowing complicity in the crimes of
the regime they served - crimes with which they and their work
shall always be associated. An essential look at the perilous
relationship between science and dictatorship.' Norman J. W. Goda,
author of Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War,
Cambridge University Press, 2006
Review of the hardback: 'Michael Petersen's Missiles for the
Fatherland is an important study of the co-optation and seduction
of engineers and scientists by the Nazi regime. He demolishes
once-and-for-all the myth that the Peenemünde rocket engineers were
apolitical technocrats more interested in going into space than
building weapons. He demonstrates the intimate connection between
their technical work, carried out in deepest secrecy, and the
murderous exploitation of concentration-camp workers in the V-2
production program.' Michael J. Neufeld, National Air and Space
Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Review of the hardback: 'This book examines an important and fairly
well studied subject from a different perspective by providing an
anthropological and sociological study of the German rocket
engineers. The social context and environment of the German rocket
R & D effort in Peenemünde and elsewhere had a decisive influence
on the rocket engineers and scientists and encouraged them to work
on new weapons in what became a Faustian Pact with Hitler's regime.
There was not that much difference between the production engineers
supplied by the Armaments Ministry and the SS and the staff at
Peenemünde when it came to slave labor and other issues. The
Peenemünders' obsession with secrecy dovetailed with the goals and
methods of the SS, and their conviction that the survival of the
German nation depended on the rockets they were building diminished
their concern for other groups (like POWs and concentration camp
prisoners).' Mark Walker, Union College
'Peterson's sophisticated analysis is well written and belongs in
every World War II library.' Central European History
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