The Rocket and the Reich Peenemunde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era

WINNER OF THE DEXTER PRIZE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY

Launched by the Third Reich in late 1944, the first ballistic missile, the V-2, fell on London, Paris, and Antwerp after covering nearly two hundred miles in five minutes. It was a stunning achievement, one that heralded a new age of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. Michael J. Neufeld gives the first comprehensive and accurate account of the story behind one of the greatest engineering feats of World War II. At a time when rockets were minor battlefield weapons, Germany ushered in a new form of warfare that would bequeath a long legacy of terror to the Cold War, as well as the means to go into space. Both the US and USSR's rocket programs had their origins in the Nazi state.

Michael J. Neufeld is a space history curator at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and the author of Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War.