Peenemünde and the total war
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The end of the Peenemünde teams

The research centre in Peenemünde was evacuated and blown up in February 1945 ahead of the Russian advance.

In Dora, conditions for the prisoners worsened abruptly during the winter; nevertheless, rocket production continued until the end of March 1945. The camp was evacuated in the first few days of April, and thousands of prisoners died during the evacuation.

The Americans, who discovered the underground factory at Dora on 11th April 1945, accepted the surrender of von Braun, accompanied by several dozen engineers, on 2nd May.

The French and Russians were also in search of defectors in order to transfer the technology developed in Peenemünde. Several hundred engineers, from the teams working for Nazi Germany, were to participate in the military and civilian missile programmes during the "Cold War", in the United States, the USSR and in France.

The V2, an innovative missile, had no real influence on the course of the war. Contrary to what Eisenhower thought, it did not come "too late" to reverse the course of the Second World War, but "too soon": the combination of the rocket and the atom bomb formed the basis of the world’s military history during the second half of the 20th century.

The V2 has one unique characteristic in the history of arms: its production resulted in more victims than its military use…