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EDITORIAL INFORMATION

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 and the most daring and deadly advance in weaponry ever seen. Now, Micheal 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 Cold War era and a tactical legacy that remains essential today. Both democracy's and communism's ballistic missile and space programs, as well as the SCUD and Patriot missiles of the Gulf War, began in the service of the Nazi state.

Michael J. Neufeld is curator of World War II history at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

(Extracted from the back cover).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Preface.

-Prologue: Summer 1943.

-1- The Birth of the Missile.

-2- The Founding of Peenemünde.

-3- Breakthrough in Key Technologies.

-4- Peenemünde's Time of Troubles.

-5- Hitler Embraces the Rocket.

-6- Speer, Himmler, and Slave Labor.

-7- The Move Underground.

-8- Rockets, Inc.

-Epilogue: Peenemünde's Legacy.

-Appendix 1: The German Army Ordnance Liquid-Fuel Rocket Series.

-Appendix 2: Organizational Structures of the Army Rocket Program.

-Significant Abbreviations Used in the Notes.

-Notes.

-Bibliography and Archival Sources.

-Index.

OUR REVIEW

A truly remarkable, wonderful book. This history of German missile technology is a must in the library of all those readers who are interested in this issue. Its author, an expert in the matter at hand given his position and his work at the National Air and Space Museum, has developed in a magnificient way the origins, motivations, technical development and advent of the German rockets that, in time, became the technological foundation that gave birth to many of their counterparts all over the world. Particularly, V-2, the first rocket with a convincing aspect, contained most of the innovations needed to make both the military missile and the space rocket come true, whose offspring would later fly to the Moon and the planets.

The book is well provided with historical photographs, maps, and very adequate descriptions. Furthermore, Neufeld has a special care when dealing with the personalities and the characters that made that revolution possible. Such people as Wernher von Braun, Dornberger, Oberth and others have accomplished references, just like some historical societies such as VfR, a seminal institution which bred many of the rocket engineers for the next decades. In a word, a very well written book, a very formative one indeed, whose splendid contents will never deceive the reader.