V2 by Robert Harris
This story takes place over five days at the end of November,1944, when German V2 missiles struck all over London. The Nazis were on the run, with the Allied invasion that began on D Day, June 6, 1944, overtaking German territory. Much of what’s in the book is factual, but the author does make it clear that this is a work of fiction.
Dr. Rudi Graf is the technical liaison officer between the military and the scientists who design, build, and launch the V2 missiles that terrorized citizens of London in the final days of the war. Graf, a civilian, has to put up with lots of fools, including devout SS officers who were the architects of many of the atrocities that the Nazis did during the war. Graf is an engineer who is apolitical and realizes that many of the higher ups in Hitler’s regime are crazy.
About forty to sixty V2s were launched each week against London. That’s not a huge number, but the missiles were a terror weapon that struck fear in the hearts of people exposed to them. Planes carrying bombs could be shot down or forced by intense antiaircraft fire to leave the area. V2s just kept on coming at you. Harris describes the launch of the missile which is literally awe-inspiring. The SS goon, Biwack, who watches the launch with Graf, is very happy at the thought that many Londoners will die as the missile strikes.
In London, a young woman, Kay Caton-Walsh is with her older lover, dressing after a romp in bed. Their reverie is shattered by an explosion as the V2’s warhead explodes nearby. Kay is dazed but her paramour, Air Commodore Michael Templeton, has serious injuries. Six people are killed by the rocket with 294 injured. Templeton tells Kay to sneak out lest someone – his wife perhaps – find out about their affair.
Back in Germany, Graf explains to the SS officer that they have to keep moving the launch sites to avoid Allied bombers. Graf has worked on missiles for 16 years, starting when he went to school with Wernher von Braun, the driving force of the Nazi missile program in WWII. Von Braun was also the architect of the American effort to land on the moon 25 years later.
Graf and von Braun started a rocket club as teenagers and went to college together. Wernher’s family was elite while Rudy Graf’s was middle class. Von Braun joined the Nazi party reluctantly while Graf never did. While Wernher was the head of the German missile effort, Rudy was just an engineer, but they remained close.
Many V2 parts fail before launch. Graf is adept at fixing problems with the missiles. He is a hands-on engineer. One of the rockets that was being prepared for launch catches fire. Graf takes care of the problem and the missile takes off.
Back in London, Kay is walking home when another V2 hits nearby. She is OK but 162 people die in the attack. Kay is a low-level photo analyst for British intelligence. She tries to make sense out of the images put on film by British spy planes. One of her jobs is to figure out where the V2’s are being launched. After having been affected by two of the missiles, things have become personal.
In Germany, Graf helps entertain Nazi bigwigs at a big dinner. They toast to the success of the Third Reich, which Graf and other sane officers see as shaky in late 1944. After lots of drinks, a general proposes that they set a new record for launches tomorrow - 12. This is nuts, think the engineers, who have to work hard to keep V2s from exploding at launch. Graf makes a comment about this and a colonel berates him for being defeatist. Graf goes to bed very sober despite the heavy drinking at the party.
The next day, the first of the twelve missiles takes off. The book details the slaughter the V2’s caused that day in London, with hundreds killed and thousands injured. Not all of the rockets were successful; about one-third routinely went off course and fell into the sea.
Just outside of London, Kay is looking at photographs, trying to find V2 launch sites. The images are from airplanes flying above 20,000 feet so she needs to use a magnifying glass. We learn that she tested into the aerial intelligence program and went through rigorous training, including basic spycraft, before starting her job of staring at tiny images all day. She is a member of the Royal Air Force. Kay lives with four other women in a barracks of sorts. They are allowed one bath a week.
Her boss is Wing Commander Leslie Starr, who comes on strong to her and the other young ladies, but she has absolutely no interest in him. He is called Wandering Starr because that’s what his hands do when he’s near an attractive woman. Starr needs to take Kay to a meeting at the Air Ministry to talk about how to figure out where the V2s come from. Her lover, Air Commodore Michael Templeton is sitting across from her with crutches for the leg injuries he sustained in the V2 blast. They both play dumb, a good thing since Templeton’s wife, Mary, accompanied him to the meeting. Mary, who is much younger than her husband, looks a lot like Kay.
Kay reminisces about how she met Templeton, in 1943 when she went to the Air Ministry for the first time. Winston Churchill was there, being escorted by Air Commander Templeton. After Churchill left, the other people at the meeting went out pub-hopping which is when she and Templeton connected.
Back to the meeting, where we learn that the Germans retook land near the Dutch coast where they could launch their missiles. There's heavy tree cover so it’s hard to see where the launch platforms actually are, and they are portable. We also learn that the V2s, while terror weapons, will not change the course of the war, Germany will lose. Templeton agrees, but he does note that if one were to hit Parliament, that would be a mess. During 1944, 150,000 buildings were damaged and 5,000 destroyed by the missiles.
Templeton wants to carpet bomb the treed areas where the V2’s operate, but the planes would have to fly so high to avoid being shot down that some of the bombs would destroy civilian areas and kill a lot of innocent people. It’s a no-go.
While people are thinking about what to do, a young Fighter Command officer has an idea. The British have just perfected a radar system that can pick up a launch very soon after takeoff. It might be possible to use basic ballistics arc math to figure out where the rocket came from and bomb the site before it can be moved. The calculations would have to be done very quickly for this to have any chance of working. In 1944 there were no computers so the math would have to be done by hand with slide rules. Air Commodore Templeton approved the plan and take it up the command ladder.
The meeting breaks up and Kay and Templeton have a chance to chat privately. She asks him to get her assigned to the slide rule team. She’s very good at math and is bored silly looking at pictures all day. He’ll work on it.
Meanwhile, Graf is about to launch the 10th V2 of the day. He is exhausted since he’s had to fix a lot of problems on the rockets. During his infrequent breaks, he relaxes and thinks back on how he got where he is. He was involved in the early days of the development of the V2 in 1934. He becomes sad as he recalls an accident with a rocket prototype that killed three of his colleagues.
Von Braun joined the group and helped move the project ahead. Graf was called before a Gestapo investigative team in the mid-1930s that was interested in von Braun’s rapid rise as a key rocketeer. The Nazis couldn’t quite believe that von Braun just happened to be very talented. They thought that he must be a spy for some anti-German country. Graf and others assured the tribunal that Wernher was indeed on the up-and-up. Graf was again called before Gestapo interrogators in 1944 and was asked if he could confirm that von Braun had criticized the Nazi war effort and had said that not even the V2 could change the outcome. Wernher had indeed said that, a belief shared by most of his team. Naturally, everyone lied to the Gestapo and assured them that rocketeers were very supportive of the war effort.
One of the tasks of the V2 development group was to find a site to build the rockets. They settled on Peenemunde, near von Braun’s ancestral home. It was very isolated yet near railway tracks that could transport the finished missiles. The German Air Ministry quickly approved the deal and bought the land from a local farmer.
In October 1943, the V2 was ready to test. The first one blew up on the launch pad and killed many people. Nazi guards delayed Graf so he was late getting there. He missed the botched launch so he was not blown up when it blew up.
Kay did get assigned to the new unit of computers - women who were good at math and could be pushed to do the fast calculations needed to pinpoint the location of V2 launch sites. She was flown to Belgium in the dead of night to be trained for her new job.
Graf is back at the V2 launch area late at night. He is ordered to a meeting to try to figure out why so many of the 12 V2s fired that day didn’t work. The answer is pretty obvious – you can’t fire that many missiles in one day – but the brass will be looking for someone to blame. The meeting reaches no conclusion but Graf knows that the program had been scaled up quickly, before design problems could be worked out. The Nazi high command is getting desperate as they try to find a miracle weapon that will win the war for them.
Von Braun stoked the insanity by overpromising what the V2 could do and how many rockets could be built and launched successfully. Hitler saw a film of the first V2 launch in late 1942, right after the Soviets had defeated the Nazis at Stalingrad. The Fuhrer was looking for the next best thing and the V2 was it. He fast-tracked the operation.
Kay is shocked by what she sees in Belgium. The Nazis have been pushed out but the people are starving, with children begging in the street. She arrives at the base where she will be working and is awed by the large radar dishes and radio antennas. The human computers are put in a large house near the base. Later they will be assigned to live with local families. Kay’s co-workers are all well-educated young English women who are good at math. The ladies barely have a chance to unpack when they are called to a meeting to learn how to use the new radar units to get the ballistics information needed to figure out the launch sites of the V2s. Their goal is to finish their computations within six minutes of getting the radar data. That will give the RAF pilots enough time to get to the site and bomb it before another missile can be launched.
The ladies go to class to learn how to do speedy algebraic computations. Basically, they attended what was known as an advanced math class when I went to high school.
After a rough day doing calculations, Kay is picked up and brought to her new home with the Vermeulens. The family does not speak English very well and Kay speaks some French, so it’s awkward. They are friendly but reserved. Until a few weeks ago, the town was occupied by Nazis so they’re still a bit skittish, afraid that the thugs will return. Dr. Vermeulen, a retired professor, is the head of the house. Kay was given some fresh eggs to give to them which they accept gratefully. Fresh food is very hard to get.
Arnaud, who is the son of her hosts and is about her own age, speaks some English. He tells her that his brother, Guillaume, died in the war. She expresses her condolences but Arnaud says that everyone sacrificed to get rid of the Nazis.
Kay goes to her room and works on ballistic arc problems well into the night. She is motivated. She also is a little afraid of Arnaud. He was injured somehow and walked with a limp which got him out of the military. He seems a bit off to her.
Graf is back at his quarters playing chess with Lieutenant Seidel, one of the saner Nazi officers, who is surprised that so many missiles explode. Graf tries to explain to him that the V2 is the most complicated piece of equipment ever built and that things will go wrong. After Seidel wins the chess match, they talk about a brothel for officers that is just down the street. Earlier that day, Graf ran into a young woman who was hiding in the woods, obviously running-away from something bad, probably the brothel. He didn’t report her and she ran away. While Graf and Seidel sip liqueur, we learn that the most important woman in Graf’s life, Karin, was killed in August, 1943, in an air raid on the Peenemunde rocket facility. She was one of the 20,000 people who worked there. She was asleep in her bed when a bomb destroyed the barracks and killed everyone in it. She and Graf had begun dating that spring, and things had moved along nicely until the raid.
Graf and Seidel, no doubt lubricated by the alcohol, head to the brothel. Seidel is a regular so he hooks up with Marta. Graf looks around and sees the young girl, Femke, he saw in the woods. She is eighteen. They go off to a room where Graf talks to her about why she was near the rocket launch. She collects parts from blown-up rockets, hoping that she can get them to the British so that she can leave the brothel. She does have contacts with British intelligence. Graf tells her that Germany is losing the war and that the V2s will change nothing. He overpays her and heads home.
The next morning, Arnaud drives Kay near to the place where she will be working. She sits down for breakfast with other female computers and a couple of RAF officers who give the ladies an overview of the area, with admonitions not to drink the water out of certain wells. After eating, they all go off to a room to wait for a V2 to take off so that they can do the math to find out where the launch site was. A rocket is launched but the radar can’t track it. The radar does work on the next launch. Kay quickly figures out where it came from but she was too slow for the British jets to destroy the launch sites. However, she is getting better at this.
That same morning, Graf is supervising the launch of the missiles. He is hung over from the night before but he soldiers on. While he is thinking about where Femke will end up, the launch site is attacked by British bombers. Graf throws himself to the ground, which is probably unnecessary since the bombs missed the target.
The RAF bombing run failed to destroy any German targets but the fact that the Brits came close to inflicting real damage bothers people. The SS officers of course assume that one of their own told the British where the site was but there is no evidence of that.
Back in Belgium, Kay’s boss announces that, because of the fine work of the computers, two V2 launch sites were destroyed. That is a lie designed to boost morale. Kay and her friend Barbara leave after their shift is over and go to get something to eat. Neither one quite believes that the bombers destroyed anything, but things are moving in the right direction. Barbara tells Kay that there is a rumor that Kay got her assignment because she was having an affair with a top commander. She admits that she was but that it’s over.
The ladies want a drink or two but they can’t find a bar anywhere. While they’re looking, a woman is chased and caught. The mob proceeds to cut her hair off. The ladies try to intervene and things get rowdy. Arnaud, the son in the family where Kay is staying, arrives and spirits the women away from danger. He was in the village and saw that things might get dicey. He assures Kate and Barbara that this happens all of the time as people try to track down collaborators. The person who gets the haircut usually isn’t working for the Germans but that doesn't matter. Arnaud brings them to a tavern that is hidden in the woods and they drink. Arnaud’s friend, Jens, joins them and before the night is over both women and their dates indulge in adult activities.
Back with the V2 crew, SS soldiers are rousting people out of bed and searching for a spy although there isn’t one. The saner Nazis are infuriated at the heavy-handed operation but they’re not surprised.
During the raid, Graf thinks back to when he worked at Peenemunde designing the rockets. SS thugs were everywhere, watching everyone, including the thousands of prisoners doing slave labor to build the missiles. True believer and Nazi General Hans Kammler was in charge of production. He had a doctorate in civil engineering which prepared him to build the many Nazi concentration camps where millions died. He constructed a concentration camp near the missile production line where the workers, mostly Jews, lived until they died, which many did.
Graf is worried about the young woman, Femke, who works at the officer’s brothel. He borrows a car and just as he arrives there he hears gunshots. The SS executed everyone in the brothel. Graf wonders how he became associated with such evil men.
Kay wakes up to find that Arnaud has left her room so that his strict parents don’t find out that they slept together. She heads off to walk to work. She and Barbara, who went off with Jens, chat about their evenings before they begin their shift.
Back at the V2 site, Graf is summoned to meet with General Kammler who has shown up to figure out why so many missiles blow up or can’t be used because of some problem. Since Kammler is SS, he arrests everybody, confident that someone is guilty of something. Graf and von Braun are brought in for questioning.
Kammler has found out that a unit of British women is using data from the new radar units to figure out the locations of the launch sites. He asks Graf if this is possible. Graf assures him that it is.
Kammler wants vengeance against the village where women are residing so he decides to blast them with a V2. Normally, the German air force – the Luftwaffe – would bomb the place but in late 1944 there aren’t too many planes left that can fly. Graf protests that you can’t aim a V2 precisely enough to hit a specific target, especially one that is only a few miles away, but the Nazi general overrules him and orders an immediate launch.
Dr. Graf gets out his slide rule and does the ballistics calculations needed to aim the missile at a new target. He’s pretty sure that his numbers are wrong, but he’s under orders to launch, so what the heck. The grounds crew will have to send a radio signal to shut off the engine early in order to hit Mechelen, the Belgian town where the British are staying. If that signal fails, the rockets will hit Reims, France, not a legitimate target. The missile takes off.
In Mechelen, people notice the new launch and start doing their calculations. They soon see that the missile is aimed at them, not London. People run outside into the air raid shelter. The missile hits, but nowhere near them. Kay sees that there is smoke coming from the house where she is staying and she goes there to see if the family and Arnaud are all right.
No one’s home so she goes in and finds out some interesting things. Arnaud’s brother, Guillaume, didn’t die in the war and he fought for the Germans. Kay recalls that at the bar, a patron gave Arnaud the Nazi salute, which triggered her suspicions. Kay is pretty sure that Guillaume is still in the village and may be a German spy who told the Nazis about the women computers and the radar equipment.
After launching the rocket that hit Mechelen, Graf is attending the mass funeral of the twelve men who were killed when a V2 blew up on the launch pad a few days earlier. As Kammler exhorts the audience to work harder for the Fatherland and tells lies about how well the war is going, Graf reflects. He thinks about all the people he’s known who have died in the war. His girlfriend, Karin. Many men he worked with on V2 launches. Femke who worked at the officer’s brothel and was shot dead by the SS.
He leaves the ceremony early to go launch another rocket. This time he sabotages it so that the rocket will not turn towards England but just go straight up and come straight down.
Back in the village, a group of British soldiers searches for Guillaume, the Nazi spy. Dr. Vermeulen lets them in and they see Guillaume sitting at the kitchen table. They arrest him and take Kay in for questioning. She assures them that she did not divulge any secrets but is embarrassed that she had a relationship with Arnaud. As it turns out, Guillaume was not a spy. He was a deserter from the German army. Once he saw the atrocities of the Nazis, he walked away and came home. There was a spy in the village, a teacher who was a Nazi sympathizer. He blew the whistle on the British radar operation. It turns out that the teacher was Jens, the man Kay’s colleague, Barbara, slept with. She might have had some pillow talk with the spy. She is on her way back to England. Barbara will be dismissed from the service but probably won’t be prosecuted.
Graf is brought in for questioning after the latest missile “failure” that sent the V2 straight up and down. A soldier said that Graf was the last one to work on the rocket. Graf lies and denies it. But he is arrested and put in a cell. Later, SS goon Biwack interrogates him, confronting Graf with some microfilm that was found in his quarters. As Graf is being beaten up, von Braun shows up and yells at Biwack, assuring him that the microfilm is a top-secret project that he and Graf were working on for the Reich. Graf and Wernher drive off to Peenemunde. Von Braun proposes a way that Graf can continue to work on rockets and be rid of the Nazis – defect to the Americans and bring their rocket secrets with them.
It is now months later, September of 1945. The war is over and von Braun, Graf, and two other German rocket scientists are traveling through London to go to a meeting to set up their futures in the USA space program. Wernher had hidden troves of sensitive information about the German rocket program in a cave at Peenemunde, so he had a lot to bargain with. Since the meeting is with the Royal Air Force and it deals with the V2 program, Kay is there.
Since this is a novel that ends well, you know what happens. Graf and Kay glance at each other from across the room. Sparks fly. A relationship is kindled. Graf decides to work with the British rocket effort instead of going with Wernher to America.
Bob’s Take
Good and bad. Graf is a good guy surrounded by characters who range from sort of good to despicable. There are probably no good Nazis in the book but many officers just went through the motions as opposed to being true believers who will do anything for the Fuhrer. Wernher von Braun had to join the party in order to play with rockets, but he didn’t buy into the drivel and crazy ideas of the Third Reich. SS Officer Biwack is a mean, stupid, anti-Semite who gets excited when he thinks about all of the innocent people in London killed by V2s. Kay is a good person who is having an affair with a married man who's not such a good person.
Fact or fiction? It’s fiction but many of the major figures are real. Hans Kammler was as evil as a human can be. Wernher von Braun is complicated. He was the inventor of the V2 rocket which killed thousands. He also was the head of the American space effort that led to the 1969 moon landing. One joke was that the name of von Braun’s autobiography was I Aim at the Stars but Sometimes I Hit London.
Having the best weapons technology may not be good. The V2 was an impressive piece of technology that was much more advanced than anything the United Sates had. One problem with having sophisticated weapons is that they are very delicate and break down often. The V2s were really hard to mass produce and launch because so many got damaged or blew up.
The same was true of the German tanks in WWII. Stephen Ambrose, the great author who chronicled World War II military actions, pointed out that the Nazi tanks were much more advanced that what the US Army had. The bad news was that were more fragile than ours and they had to be sent back to the factory for repairs. American GIs, who were mechanics in civilian life, traveled with the US tanks and fixed them on the battlefield where they were damaged.
Two sets of victims. More people died manufacturing the V2 than were killed by its warheads. Over 5,000 people were killed by the rocket attacks, but 20,000 prisoners who worked at the production factory died.
This was a relatively short book that had a lot of history in it. Many of the characters were real and a lot were composites, but most of what is recounted in the novel has some basis in fact. I really enjoyed it and it was a quick read.
