In "V2" page 179 Dornberger writes:

"Do you know that your closest colleagues (including von Braun) have stated in company at Zinnowitz that it had never been their intention to make a weapon of war out of he rocket? That they had worked, under pressure from yourself (Dornberger) at the whole business of development and only in order to obtain money for their experiments and the confirmation of their theories? That their object all along has been space travel?"

The men had been arrested by the Gestapo and were going to be executed. Dornberger was also threatened with arrest, but he managed to get von Braun and the other released.

From by Tom Lehrer's "Wernher von Braun"[1],

Don't say that he's hypocritical

Say rather that he's apolitical

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department!" says Wernher von Braun

1. https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14

Good info Walter, but I wasn't trying to get too deep.

Point is to not judge a book by its cover.

Another interesting factoid about the V2 program is it accelerated the collapse of the Reich.

How can that be, you might ask?

The V2 program was an incredibly expensive program, and sucked up enormous resources. But the V2 proved to be an inconsequential weapon, and did very little damage, because its guidance system was primitive.

The V1, ironically, was effective. Not because it wreaked critical damage on Britain, but because it was cheap to build and deploy, and the British spent a great deal of resources trying to stop it.

It reminds me of the current drone warfare.

Hitler also demanded that it be used to attack London, blowing up civilian homes, when it would have been much more effective attacking the staging areas for D-Day.

[dead]