Heinz Hilten (April 29, 1909 – March 3, 2013) was a German-American architect and member of the " von Braun rocket team." He was a later Operation Paperclip hire and was involved in the design of numerous buildings in Space Age -era Huntsville, Alabama , both for NASA and for general use.
80-645: Hilten was born in Berlin on April 29, 1909. Towards the beginning of World War II, he was drafted into the German Army, which eventually assigned him to the Peenemünde Army Research Center . Hilten worked there from June 1944 to April 1945 as part of Wernher von Braun 's team, designing buildings for the V-2 rocket program. After the end of World War II, Hilten did not immediately move to
160-656: A candidate for Central Committee membership. In July 1960 Apel became one of approximately 112 members of the powerful Party Central Committee . Under the Leninist constitutional structure in place, the Central Committee exercised a far tighter degree of control than government ministers or the National Parliament ( Volkskammer ) . It was therefore by most reckoning a promotion when on 6 February 1958 Apel resigned his ministerial position and accepted
240-563: A chance to highlight a failure to meet planned objectives or to criticise Apel's actions and utterances. Pressure also increased from Moscow where Nikita Khrushchev fell from power in October 1964. Leonid Brezhnev , the new party secretary in Moscow, condemned his predecessor's "failures of economic leadership". There were a number of rapid practical changes. Soviet wheat deliveries to East Germany planned for 1966 were cut back to 400,000 tonnes,
320-550: A fully functioning socialist state. For that he needed technical experts and talented administrators. Apel was both. An important political ally and sponsor was Fritz Selbmann . After his six years in the Soviet Union, Apel (like Selbmann), was a convinced proponent of a " Planned economy ". The choice was one between "Rationalty" ( Vernunft ) and "Chaos". It was already apparent that in West Germany free market capitalism
400-518: A little distant. Not so proletarian, and always a bit 'the boss'" ( ""Er war gesellig, aber auch ein bisschen distanziert. Nicht so proletenhaft, immer auch ein bisschen 'Der Chef'" ). There was no attempt to integrate the Germans into the Soviet research teams. Stalin never intended that they should remain permanently. The idea was to "milk" their knowledge until their Soviet counterparts had absorbed all
480-512: A meeting with Hans Kammler , Dornberger, Gerhard Degenkolb, and Karl Otto Saur to negotiate the move of A-4 main production to an underground factory in the Harz mountains. In early September, Peenemünde machinery and personnel for production (including Alban Sawatzki , Arthur Rudolph , and about ten engineers) were moved to the Mittelwerk , which also received machinery and personnel from
560-445: A plan. If it was a dream, it was a dream in which many comrades evidently believed. In July 1961 Apel was promoted to candidate membership of the politburo and secretaryship of the Central Committee. There were other appointments which combined to stress his importance in the wider government project. In 1960 he received a doctorate in return for a dissertation on the so-called East German Chemistry Programme. The "Chemistry Programme"
640-974: A position as head of the newly created Economic Commission of the Central Committee's Politburo. In 1958 he also became a member of the Volkskammer , in which capacity he chaired the Parliamentary Economic Committee. The economic challenges facing East Germany were already formidable by 1960. The mandate Walter Ulbricht gave to the new Economic Commission was summed up in the mantra which the leader liked to repeat. East Germany should "overtake without catching up" ( "überholen ohne einzuholen" ). East Germans must be able to eat more butter and meat than West Germans. One day they must be able to travel in faster cars and live in better apartments. This must be accomplished without having to copy "capitalist production methods". Apel must make it happen, not "someday ... never", but by creating and following
720-696: A rocket engineer at the Peenemünde Army Research Center in Nazi Germany . After his return from the Soviet Union , where he had forcibly worked for rocketry development under the Operation Osoaviakhim until 1952, he became an East German party official. During the later 1950s, he was increasingly involved in economic policy, serving from 1958 as head of the German Democratic Republic's Economics Commission in
800-622: A subsection of Wa Pruf 11 for planning the Peenemünde Production Plant project, headed by G. Schubert, a senior Army civil servant. By midsummer 1943, the first trial runs of the assembly-line in the Production Works at Werke Süd were made, but after the end of July 1943 when the enormous hangar Fertigungshalle 1 (F-1, "Mass Production Plant No. 1") was just about to go into operation, Operation Hydra bombed Peenemünde. On August 26, 1943, Albert Speer called
880-681: A third of the annual quantity in existing plans. Within the East German leadership Apel had always been able to count on backing for his reforms from Walter Ulbricht, but the changes in Moscow meant that Ulbricht's driving priority was now to secure his own position. Back in January 1963 Ulbricht had stunned colleagues, under the influence of Apel, announcing a 180-degree reversal on economic policy. "We need economics to trump politics" ( "Wir brauchen ein Primat der Ökonomie über die Politik!" ). There
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#1732776727260960-667: The Army High Command Weapons Agency . He was now employed directly as chief engineer and assistant to the technical director at LHW. By the end of 1944 the war was coming home to Germany . LHW now outsourced V-2 rocket production to a firm called "Peterbau GmbH" in Kleinbodungen near Nordhausen . With the assembly contract they sent Apel, who with effect from January 1945 became technical director of Peterbau GmbH. Apel's resolute determination to avoid politics now seemed to catch up with him, since
1040-564: The Council of Ministers . At the time there were some who saw Stoph as Walter Ulbricht's heir apparent. A level of rivalry within the Party Central Committee was normal, but between Apel and Stoph there quickly emerged a particularly intense mutual antagonism. To the extent that both men were responsible for delivering a better future for the people there was an inherent overlap between their public profiles. Stoph never missed
1120-528: The Saturn V dynamic test stand . "I always said that I was not a space scientist that designed the rockets, but that I designed the space those scientists worked with," Hilten is quoted on this era of his career. He continued to work at the MSFC until his retirement in 1978. Outside of Hilten's aerospace architecture, he also designed or was involved in the design of many buildings and projects, public and private, in
1200-753: The Soviet Union , and the partnership with the Soviets, even at the height of the Cold War , was far less fraternal than would have been assumed at the time in the west. Recently discovered documents indicate that even in 1959 Moscow agreed to deliver to the German Democratic Republic only around half the raw materials which the East German economic plan for 1960-62 called for. One solution was to try and select trading partners according to commercial criteria and not purely according to political dogma. The economic blockade dividing East Germany from
1280-577: The Tatra Mountains , the Arlberg range, and the area of the Ortler mountain. Other evacuation locations included: For people being relocated from Peenemünde, the new organization was to be designated Entwicklungsgemeinschaft Mittelbau (English: Mittelbau Development Company ) and Kammler's order to relocate to Thuringia arrived by teleprinter on January 31, 1945. On February 3, 1945, at
1360-640: The University of Aachen , the number of technical staff members reached two hundred in 1943, and it also included Hermann Kurzweg of the University of Leipzig and Walter Haeussermann . Initially set up under the HVP as a rocket training battery (Number 444), Heimat-Artillerie-Park 11 Karlshagen/Pomerania (HAP 11) also contained the A-A Research Command North for the testing of anti-aircraft rockets. The chemist Magnus von Braun ,
1440-502: The military administration . The political development was not one for which Apel could muster much enthusiasm, and in common with many SPD members he was not one of those "volunteering" to sign his party membership over to the new party (though he was accepted as a member of the SED, eleven years later, in 1957 ). On 1 June 1946 Apel was "picked up" by the Soviet authorities. They showed no interest in his association with forced labour at
1520-462: The rocket , which government propaganda was by now identifying as the "Vergeltungswaffe 2" ( "Retribution weapon 2" / V-2). As the continuing bombing raids at the Peenemünde Army Research Center had their effect through 1943 and 1944, the LHW plant became the assembly location for the V-2 rockets . On 1 April 1944, at the request of the LHW management, Apel was released from his employment contract with
1600-756: The "rocket assembly hall", "experimental pit", and "launching tower". The Allies also received information about the V-1 and V-2 rockets and the production sites from the Austrian resistance group around the priest Heinrich Maier . The group later discovered by the Gestapo was in contact with Allen Dulles , the head of the US secret service OSS in Switzerland, and informed him about the research in Peenemünde. As
1680-538: The East German government, he killed himself. Erich Hans Apel was born in Judenbach , a small town in the Franconian Forest which had once benefited from its position as a staging post on a major trade route, but which had lost out commercially following the construction of a railway line providing a direct link from Leipzig to Nuremberg . Apel's father was a mechanical engineer: his mother worked in
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#17327767272601760-566: The HVP, including the V-2 rocket ( A-4 ) (see test launches ), and the Wasserfall (35 Peenemünde trial firings), Schmetterling , Rheintochter , Taifun , and Enzian missiles. The HVP also performed preliminary design work on very-long-range missiles for use against the United States. That project was sometimes called "V-3" and its existence is well documented. The Peenemünde establishment also developed other technologies such as
1840-780: The Huntsville area. Among others, he worked on Huntsville's Memorial Parkway , Point Mallard Park , and the Von Braun Center concert hall; Hilten played at the latter location with the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra during its first full season. He also did architectural work for the private homes of several other Operation Paperclip hires, including swimming pool designs for Wernher von Braun and Ernst Stuhlinger . Peenem%C3%BCnde Army Research Center The Peenemünde Army Research Center (German: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde , HVP )
1920-586: The Nordhausen facility. After inspecting the Soviet hoard, Apel joined his colleagues on the Island of Gorodomlya . Keeping the German workers on an island helped enforce the secrecy, but the German experts nevertheless received wages twice as high as those of their Soviet counterparts. Apel became head of a testing department. Seventy years later a colleague from those times remembered him as "sociable, but also
2000-458: The Politburo. He was seen as a reformer. However, economic reform rapidly fell off the agenda after October 1964 when Nikita Khrushchev fell from power in Moscow. Apel served as president of the state planning commission between 1963 and 1965. His final project was to negotiate a trade deal with the Soviet Union . However, hours before he was due to sign the resulting agreement on behalf of
2080-542: The SPD merged with the Communist Party to form the new Socialist Unity Party ( "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED) . The merger was presented as a way to prevent divisions on the political left from opening up opportunities for right wing populists to take control as had happened after 1932 . In reality it never took effect except in the Soviet zone, where it received sustained practical backing from
2160-545: The Soviet zone), adjacent to the vast underground rocket plant. Soviet interest in the German rocket programme was fully shared by the United States. During the chaotic closing weeks of the war Wernher von Braun had traveled to Nordhausen and met with Apel, offering to take him to America after the military defeat which by now everyone saw as inevitable. Von Braun was keen, as far as possible, to keep his full team with him. But his specialist in rocket hydraulics turned him down. Apel did not want to volunteer for further work in
2240-776: The U.S. with Operation Paperclip, instead remaining in Germany to aid in post-war reconstruction. Hilten served as Architect and Planner for Augsburg until 1954; his notable design projects in this capacity included the Frauenfachschule, a women's trade school, and the Rosenaustadion , a sports stadium built from the rubble of aerial bombings during the war. Hilten reportedly considered the Rosenaustadion his greatest design achievement. In 1954, Hilten traveled to Huntsville to rejoin von Braun and his team. Hilten
2320-630: The code name Zement ( cement ) for it in December, and work to blast a cavern into a cliff in Ebensee near Lake Traunsee commenced in January 1944. To build the tunnels, a concentration camp (a sub unit of Mauthausen-Gusen ) was erected in the vicinity of the planned production sites. In early 1944, construction work started for the test stands and launching pads in the Austrian Alps (code name Salamander ), with target areas planned for
2400-489: The context of an increasingly intense power struggle between Politburo members as Walter Ulbricht's period in power was seen to be coming to an end. Ulbricht himself ordered the Ministry for State Security to investigate Apel's death, though later commentators found the aspects of the investigation "uncharacteristically sloppy". On the other hand, West Berlin's mayor, Willy Brandt was never in doubt that Apel's death had been
2480-647: The continuation of the work at the White Sands Proving Grounds in the USA. Only a few members of the previous HVP staff, such as Helmut Gröttrup and Erich Apel , signed a contract with the Soviets and were forcibly transferred to the USSR as part of Operation Osoaviakhim in October 1946. Although rumors spread that the Soviet space program revived Peenemünde as a test range, more destruction of
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2560-461: The department, working under Heinrich Rau . He owed his rapid advancement in the new state to its leader, Walter Ulbricht . After years under military occupation which in many ways placed Soviet well-being ahead of German reconstruction, Ulbricht had narrowly survived the 1953 Uprising and was now keen to demonstrate that under Soviet sponsorship it was possible to create in East Germany
2640-482: The end of 1946 a further 2,270 railway wagons had transported another 14,256 rocket construction plant, partially constructed rockets, and specialist machinery from the former Nazi facility in the Soviet occupation zone to a new rocket research facility in the Soviet Union. Secrecy was so complete that ten years later the world still believed that Soviet rocket programme was based on Soviet rocket science. The Americans had taken away only 400 tonnes of "rocket materials" from
2720-459: The evenings he retreated to his bedroom in a nearby hostel, in order to work on proposals for improvements. His speciality was the hydraulic systems for the rockets. He was tireless in his work of calculation, measuring and modelling. He seems to have made a good impression, since in August 1940 he was relieved of all further obligations regarding military service. In November 1940 he was appointed to
2800-568: The facility had no air raid shelters for the prisoners. Fifteen British and Canadian airmen who were killed on the raid were buried by the Germans in unmarked graves within the secure perimeter. Their recovery at the end of the war was prevented by the Russians authorities and the bodies remain there to this day. A year later on July 18, August 4, and August 25, the U.S. Eighth Air Force conducted three additional Peenemünde raids to counter suspected hydrogen peroxide production. As with
2880-399: The finished rockets. Even if Apel had nothing to do with setting up and running the vast deadly forced labour infrastructure , as the engineer responsible for the rockets he was naturally associated with it. As Nazi Germany collapsed militarily and politically during the first part of 1945, Apel succeeded in getting back to his home village of Judenbach . Like millions of his compatriots he
2960-464: The first closed-circuit television system in the world, installed at Test Stand VII to track the launching rockets. According to Walter Dornberger , "Rockets worked under water." In the summer of 1942, led by Ernst Steinhoff , Pennemünde worked on sea launches, either from launching racks on the deck of a submerged submarine, or from towed floats. Dornberger summarized the launches from a depth of 30 to 50 feet (9 to 15 metres), "A staggering sight it
3040-526: The first marriage had ended in divorce because Apel's war work meant he was almost always away. It was frequently indicated that during his six years in the Soviet Union Apel became a communist, but in his bones it seems reasonable to conclude that he remained a political agnostic. Apel returned on 2 June 1952. The Soviet occupation zone had been relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany) . There
3120-525: The four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with its headquarters facility at Erprobungsstelle Rechlin . Major-General Walter Dornberger was the military leader of the V-2 rocket programme and other projects. Wernher von Braun was the HVP technical director (Dr. Walter Thiel was deputy director until 1943) and there were nine major departments: The Measurements Group ( Gerhard Reisig )
3200-602: The garments industry. He attended school in nearby Sonneberg and Steinach , but left school in 1932 in order to embark on an apprenticeship at the Neuhaus porcelain factory in toolmaking and mechanical engineering. The ruling Nazi Party was popular in the region and in 1935 he joined the Deutsches Jungvolk youth organisation. However, it was found that the sixteen year old disrupted the "mind-numbingly dull drill exercises" (" der stumpfsinnige Drill "), and he
3280-402: The last meeting at Peenemünde held regarding the relocation, the HVP consisted of A-4 development/ modification (1940 people), A-4b development (27), Wasserfall and Taifun development (1455), support and administration (760). The first train departed on February 17 with 525 people en route to Thuringia (including Bleicherode , Sangerhausen (district) , and Bad Sachsa ) and the evacuation
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3360-412: The middle portion of Germany that would now be administered as the Soviet occupation zone . Initially Apel worked on the local farms. On 15 January 1946 he enrolled on the "New Teachers" programme. With millions of working age Germans dead or in prison of war camps, there was a desperate shortage of teachers, and the scheme, implemented with varying levels of effectiveness in the various occupation zones,
3440-499: The military frontline. During 1943 it became clear that the British knew about the research facility at Peenemünde. With their US allies they launched a succession of bombing raids to destroy it, starting in August 1943. Most of the 733 people killed at Peenemünde in the first bombing raid, on 17 August, were forced labourers , but the dead also included Apel's boss, Walter Thiel and his family. By that time, however, Apel himself
3520-551: The ministry in East Berlin. Willi Stoph wanted a word. There was no reply. Apel, while seated at his desk, had taken his own life. A 7.65 mm bullet from his service pistol lay at his feet. The East German signature on the trade deal with the Soviets would be that of Alfred Neumann . News of Apel's death was held back until after the Soviet signatory, Trade Minister Nikolai Patolichev had left town, later that day. There were those who believed Apel had been murdered, in
3600-776: The move of the V-2 Production Works to the Mittelwerk , the complete withdrawal of the development of guided missiles was approved by the Army and SS in October 1943. On August 26, 1943, at a meeting in Albert Speer 's office, Hans Kammler suggested moving the A-4 Development Works to a proposed underground site in Austria. After a site survey in September by Papa Riedel and Schubert, Kammler chose
3680-591: The necessary knowledge. That point was reached by the end of 1948, after which the Germans on the island were restricted to "theoretical" research. That suited Apel well enough. He had found a new wife, Christa Metzner, the daughter of a German aircraft engineer from the Arado aircraft plant , whom he married in Gorodomlya. Information on his first marriage remains in short supply: Christa Apel said later that she believed Erich had married an Austrian woman around 1942, but
3760-464: The new location for rocket assembly was part of the vast underground factory at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp . Conditions were so dreadful that at least one commentator has suggested that the V-2 rockets found more victims among the slave labourers engaged in constructing the underground factory and in working on the rockets than among the citizens of London , the intended target of
3840-565: The opening attack of the British Crossbow operations against German rocket weapons, the Operation Hydra bombing raid attacked the HVP's "Sleeping & Living Quarters" (to specifically target scientists), then the "Factory Workshops", and finally the "Experimental Station" on the night of August 17/18, 1943. The Polish janitors were given advance warning of the attack, but the workers could not leave due to SS security and
3920-447: The opportunity to perfect their skills, crating up surviving German factories and their equipment, and taking them to the Soviet Union by way of war reparations. The 1937 Opel Kadett turned up in 1947 as the Soviet built Moskvitch 400 . They had also applied their skill to the rocket facility in the mountain. The Red army had used 717 railway wagons to carry away 5,647 tonnes of machinery, munitions, and partially constructed rockets. By
4000-448: The order was given Apel and his colleagues were on the train heading east as part of Operation Osoaviakhim . The mood on the train was dark and apprehensive. The journey took around 14 days. Their ultimate destination was an island in the middle of Lake Seliger in a sparsely inhabited marshy region some 400 kilometres (250 mi) northwest of Moscow . Before crossing to the island Apel was taken to Podlipki (today Korolyov) where he
4080-535: The period 1966–1970. Earlier that year he had traveled to Moscow with Walter Ulbricht to finalise the terms. Apel was not in favour of signing the agreement that the comrades in Moscow had imposed, but he had been opposed by Alfred Neumann , Chairman of the People's Economic Council and a Moscow loyalist. More importantly, he had been over-ruled by Walter Ulbricht. Early that morning the telephone rang in Apel's office at
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#17327767272604160-487: The position of plant engineer and assistant to the facility director. He was totally uninterested in politics, never joining the party , and regarded by colleagues as a dedicated engineer, body and soul. 3 October 1942 was Apel's twenty-fifth birthday. Coincidentally, he was able to spend the day as a witness to the first launch anywhere in the world of a long-distance rocket , the so-called (at this stage) A4 . The launch took place at 16.00 and everything worked perfectly,
4240-417: The project, out for success. But reality got in the way of the targets. Reparations extracted by the Soviets had bled the country of its capacity to rebuild and maintain the infrastructure necessary to support the East German government's economic aspirations. Cut off by international political rivalries from western and world markets, the nation continued to be dependent on deliveries of vital raw materials from
4320-513: The research buildings and rocket test stands had been demolished. End of April 1945, a group of more than 450 important rocket scientists from Peenemünde were captured by the U.S. Army in Oberammergau while Wernher von Braun , Walter Dornberger and several others surrendered in Reutte on May 2, 1945. As part of Operation Paperclip , a group of 127 engineers was eventually contracted for
4400-403: The rocket attaining a speed of Mach 4.5, a height of 85 kilometres (53 mi), and a horizontal distance of 190 kilometres (120 mi). At the start of 1943 Apel was promoted again, despite his young age becoming head of one of the many development departments at the Peenemünde army research facility. Shortly after this he mentioned to a group of colleagues what a wretched business it was that
4480-837: The shelter control room and the area of the former power station and is an anchor point of ERIH, the European Route of Industrial Heritage . The main turbine hall of the Peenemünde plant has been used a concert venue, including a 2022 performance by the New York Philharmonic orchestra and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic as part of the Usedom Classical Music Festival. Erich Apel Erich Apel (3 October 1917 – 3 December 1965) worked during World War Two as
4560-406: The technical facilities of Peenemünde took place between 1948 and 1961. Only the power station, the airport, and the railroad link to Zinnowitz remained functional. The gas plant for the production of liquid oxygen still lies in ruins at the entrance to Peenemünde. Very little remains of most of the other Nazi German facilities there. The Peenemünde Historical Technical Museum opened in 1992 in
4640-464: The thing should explode in the middle of a city. His boss, Walter Thiel , came to hear of the comment and called him aside, "Apel, you should have joined the medical service: you're too soft for the work here". However, there is no indication that Apel's comment adversely affected his career prospects: the researchers at Peenemünde saw themselves as an elite team engaged in vital work, and the only realistic alternative career path would have led him back to
4720-446: The town of Wolgast for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of Usedom . By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved from Kummersdorf . The Army Research Center ( Peenemünde Ost ) consisted of Werk Ost and Werk Süd , while Werk West (Peenemünde West) was the Luftwaffe Test Site ( Erprobungsstelle der Luftwaffe ), one of
4800-410: The two other planned A-4 assembly sites. On October 13, 1943, the Peenemünde prisoners from the small F-1 concentration camp boarded rail cars bound for Kohnstein mountain. Two Polish janitors of Peenemünde's Camp Trassenheide in early 1943 provided maps, sketches and reports to Polish Home Army Intelligence , and in June 1943 British intelligence had received two such reports which identified
4880-447: The underground rocket factory at Mittelbau-Dora . But they were nevertheless interested in the factory; and they did make him an offer which, for a range of practical reasons, he was almost certainly in no position to refuse. The Soviets invited him to work with them as chief engineer and representative of the (former) factory management at the Soviet Technical Commission in the Bleicherode quarter of Nordhausen (which had also ended up in
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#17327767272604960-599: The weapons industry. On 22 October 1946, across the Soviet occupation zone , in the early hours of the morning technicians and engineers from the rocket project were visited by Soviet officers, each accompanied by a translator. A brief instruction was read out: "By order of the Soviet Military Administration you must work for five years in the Soviet Union. You can take your wife and family with you, and as many of your personal effects as you wish ...". Till now Apel's working life had involved living in guest houses or barracks so he did not have many personal effects. Just hours after
5040-534: The west was largely self-imposed: between 1962 and 1965 Apel was able to oversee a modest trend whereby the proportion of East Germany's foreign trade with west rose from 21% to 25% of the total. But more than half of the country's trade was reported in 1965 to be with the Soviet Union, conducted on terms favourable to Moscow and disadvantageous to East Germany, applying set prices that were well below "world market prices", both for exports and for imports. In 1964 Otto Grotewohl and Willi Stoph took over as Chairman of
5120-468: The youngest brother of Wernher von Braun, was employed in the attempted development at Peenemünde of anti-aircraft rockets . These were never very successful as weapons during World War II. Their development as practical weapons took another decade of development in the United States and in the U.S.S.R. In November 1938, Walther von Brauchitsch ordered construction of an A-4 production plant at Peenemünde, and in January 1939, Walter Dornberger created
5200-403: Was a seven-year plan, launched in 1958 under the widely communicated motto "Chemistry gives us bread, welfare and beauty" ( "Chemie gibt Brot, Wohlstand und Schönheit" ), and designed to double chemicals production by 1965, making it the country's second largest industrial sector after mechanical engineering. The project was closely identified with Apel, whose intellectual brilliance marked him, and
5280-467: Was complete in mid-March. Another reaction to the aerial bombing was the creation of a back-up research test range, the Blizna V-2 missile launch site in southeastern Poland. Carefully camouflaged, this secret facility was built by 2000 prisoners from the concentration camp at the SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager . The Polish resistance Home Army ( Armia Krajowa ) captured an intact V2 rocket here in 1943. It had been launched but didn't explode and
5360-509: Was conscripted into the army , becoming a member of Infantry Reserve Battalion 451, based in Gotha . Around this time World War II broke out . However, on 20 December 1939 Apel was ordered to the Weapons Agency's research facility at Peenemünde on Germany's northern coast. The head of the facility was the charismatic rocketry expert, Wernher von Braun . Apel seems to have been in his element. A contemporary later recalled that he worked from 07.30 until 17.30, like everyone else, but then in
5440-508: Was designed to select those appropriately educated individuals who were thought to be not excessively tainted by Nazi involvement, to undergo a rapid "re-education" and set to work educating school-age children. At the same time he both studied and taught, until 31 May 1946, at the Professional Business Academy in nearby Steinach . In January 1946 Apel joined a political party, choosing the centre-left Social Democratic Party ( "Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD) . Four months later,
5520-405: Was determined to make a clean break with the past. War ended , formally, in May 1945. The entire southern region of Germany had been liberated by the United States Army , but the victorious powers had already agreed a partition of the western two thirds of the country into four military occupation zones. After the Americans had withdrawn to their agreed positions Judenbach was included in
5600-467: Was far away, transferred in April 1943 with his own team of assembly specialists and administrators to the Linke-Hofmann-Werke (LHW) plant in Breslau (as Wrocław was known) before 1945) . Breslau was traditionally a centre for railway production and LHW was traditionally a manufacturer of railway locomotives and rolling stock, but during the war its sophisticated engineering capabilities were also being adapted to produce components and sub-assemblies for
5680-435: Was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office ( Heereswaffenamt ). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket . The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945. On April 2, 1936, the aviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to
5760-555: Was giving rise to far more rapid economic growth than anything happening in East Germany. The lesson to be drawn was that economic planning had to be undertaken competently and in microscopic detail by the government. Political leadership was needed. In June 1954, already a junior government minister, Apel became a candidate for party membership. Membership was granted in March 1957. Slightly more than one year later, in July 1958, he became
5840-638: Was later retrieved intact from the Bug River and transferred secretly to London. The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport of Swinemünde and all of Usedom Island. Soviet infantrymen under the command of Major Anatole Vavilov stormed the installations at Peenemünde and found "75 percent wreckage". All of
5920-459: Was named Architect and Master Planner for Redstone Arsenal , where he designed buildings to accommodate the facility's rapid expansion. In 1960 he moved to the newly created Marshall Space Flight Center , taking up the same title. Hilten's designs at the MSFC included numerous test stands and launch facilities for NASA's rocket program, including the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and
6000-524: Was no call, in East Germany, for specialist expertise in weapons and rocketry. Other branches of heavy industry remained in place, however. Just four months after getting back, Apel was working as a chief engineer and department head at the East German Ministry for Machinery Construction. Promotion to a technical directorship followed in April 1953. In November 1953 he became a deputy minister in
6080-779: Was part of the BSM, and additional departments included the Production Planning Directorate (Detmar Stahlknecht), the Personnel Office (Richard Sundermeyer), and the Drawings Change Service. Erich Apel was head of a development department, Konrad Dannenberg was Walter Riedel's deputy, Kurt H. Debus was engineer in charge at Test Stand VII , and Eberhard Rees managed V-2 rocket fabrication and assembly. Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by
6160-471: Was reunited with a large quantity of heavy machinery and equipment that he had last seen in Germany during the closing weeks of the war. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 had forced the Soviets to build up an impressive expertise in deconstructing factories and their equipment, crating them up, and relocating them by train to places beyond the reach of the German army . After the war they had taken
6240-416: Was talk of revitalising the market and allowing private trade - subject to a restrictive framework - and of moving society away from a semi-military footing towards a civil one. That had been in 1963, before the fall of Khrushchev. But now the leader was ready for another 180 degree reversal over economic policy. On 3 December 1965 Apel was due to sign a new economic agreement with the Soviet Union covering
6320-596: Was thrown out after nine months because of his "negative attitude" to the quasi-military exercises in which the boys were expected to participate. After completing his apprenticeship in 1935 he stayed on at the Neuhaus factory as a toolmaker and designer until 1937. Then, between 1937 and 1939, he attended the Engineering Academy at nearby Ilmenau , emerging with a degree in mechanical engineering. Directly after receiving his degree, in September 1939 Apel
6400-515: Was when those twenty heavy powder rockets suddenly rose, with a rush and a roar, from the calm waters of the Baltic." The supersonic wind tunnel at Peenemünde's "Aerodynamic Institute" eventually had nozzles for speeds up to the record speed of Mach 4.4 (in 1942 or 1943), as well as an innovative desiccant system to reduce the condensation clouding caused by the use of liquid oxygen , in 1940. Led by Rudolph Hermann, who arrived in April 1937 from
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