the 'wonder' weapons of Nazi Germany

an allied aerial shot of Peenemünde

Both the Allies and the Germans invested large amounts of resources and funds inventing new weapons. The most famous and effective wizard weapon was the atomic bomb. Driven by a fear that Nazi Germany would develop and use an atomic bomb first, physicist Albert Einstein wrote President Roosevelt in 1939 to warn him of the potential threat. US Army General Leslie Groves was tasked with creating the American program, which used a mix of eccentric academics and military spit-and-polish officers.

Raids on the German heavy water plants in Norway indicated that their program was behind the Americans, and emphasis switched to using the bomb on Japan after the German surrender.

The Germans were focusing on a number of weapons that were retaliatory in nature. The V-weapons, or “vengeance” weapons, were high-technology guided and unguided missiles: the V-1 flying bomb began attacks on London and Antwerp, Belgium in the summer and fall of 1944, after the Allied landings. Randomly striking targets, the V-1s caused terror out of proportion to their damage, but killed hundreds. Soon the V-1s were supplemented with V-2 ballistic missiles, the first true medium-range guided missile. Developed at the Peenemünde missile complex, both missiles were soon out of range of London as the Germans fell back to their own borders. The V-3, a series of large guns built into the French cliffs and aimed at London, was never completed. Slave labour from the Nordhausen concentration camp was used to build the vengeance weapons, resulting in thousands of deaths from executions and starvations.

The other major German weapon was the Messerschmitt Me-262, the world’s first operational jet fighter. In the space of seven years, the world had gone from biplanes to jet propulsion. Mounting 30mm cannon, it was a capable fighter, but dangerous to the pilot if the fuel was not handled carefully. Furious over bomber attacks on Germany, Hitler ordered the aircraft to be used as a bomber, preventing its defensive use and saving many Allied bombers. Rare metals shortages grounded many planes. If the Me-262 had been introduced a year earlier, the Allied strategic bombing offensive would have been seriously compromised.

The Allies had very different opinions on the use of technology. American combat doctrine called for very heavy firepower to be used to smash a target, even if it could not be seen. This was contrary to the basic combat instruction that taught recruits to only fire at visible targets, but the Americans eschewed most tactical technological implementations. The British, however, developed many operational weapons, most notably under the inventor Barnes Wallis, who was an explosive expert. He developed the ’bouncing bomb’ that smashed Ruhr dams, and the ’tallboy’ and ’Grand Slam’ very large bombs that destroyed submarine pens at Loríent and sank the battleship Tirpitz.

For the Normandy invasion, the British developed a number of new technologies, including flail tanks that set off mines, swimming dual-drive (DD) tanks, and carpet laying tanks. Called ’Funnies’ these tanks were not used by the Americans, except for the DD tanks. Other variants included the Churchill Armored Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) that mounted a large mortar to assault concrete emplacements. Major implementations of new technology at Normandy included Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO) to provide the Allies with enough gas, and the Mulberry Harbors, artificial breakwaters Churchill insisted on building to facilitate landing men and materiel.

By the time the Allies landed in France, the tide of technological warfare had shifted to the Allies. Almost the entire Allied air force were modern designs created in 1940 or after. The Germans were still using the same designs created in the thirties. Also, the Germans developed several types for each role, diminishing the effectiveness of their armor and aircraft by making four or five types instead of one or two.