12. A Failed Weapon That Killed More of its Makers Than of its Targets
In the nine months of its operational deployment, the 3000 V-2 rockets fired by the Nazis killed 2754 people. The majority were not soldiers, but civilians whose deaths, while tragic, did not impede the Allied war effort by much. On the other hand, over 20,000 workers – mostly slave laborers – died as they toiled to manufacture the V-2s. That gave the missile the tragic distinction of being perhaps the only weapons system in history whose production cost more lives than did its actual use. Thus, when their costs are contrasted with their results, the V2 literally produced little bang for the buck.
In the hands of the Americans and Soviets after the war, German technology bore bigger fruit. Both for ill, with the missiles and ICBMs whose payloads might wipe out humanity someday, and for good, in space rockets that set mankind on the path to exploring the cosmos – a path that might prove the species’ salvation, someday. Of course, the Nazis had not poured all those resources into the V-2 program in order to pave the way for humanity’s exploration of the cosmos. Nor had they intended the program and its scientists to seed the space programs of their American and Soviet enemies after the war. The Nazis had intended the V-2 as a war-winning weapon, and from their perspective, it failed miserably to accomplish what they had wanted.
