MOSCOW, August 7. /TASS/. Hitler’s Germany had been making preparations since 1943 to deliver a missile strike on the United States and nurtured plans to use an atomic bomb for striking US industrial sites from long-range bombers, according to declassified documents released by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday.
The FSB’s declassified documents are based on the interrogation of Gruppenfuhrer Werner Waechter, one of the closest associates of Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, who was taken prisoner. Along with the post of the chief of staff of the NSDAP Main Propaganda Department, Waechter headed the General Office of Armaments and Construction in the Propaganda Ministry and closely communicated with specialists in the field of Nazi Germany’s secret weapons.
During the interrogation on October 10, 1945 in Potsdam, Waechter said that Paul Heylandt, an engineer and inventor of V-rockets whom he had been familiar with since 1925 told him in 1943 about the development of the V-2 missile of "huge destructive power" outfitted with a ton of explosive and characterized by high velocity. In 1930, Heylandt invented a new rocket engine for a car but in 1935 the Reich Ministry of War confiscated his patent while Heylandt continued working on his invention under the ministry’s control, having become the owner of the rocket engine factory in Berlin.
According to Waechter, "the V-2 weapon was capable of striking targets in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean whereas the V-1 had a very limited operating range." By 1943, the V-2 missile could climb to an altitude of up to 80 km and Heylandt "worked on increasing the flight altitude to 120 km for a possibility to bombard the United States from the territory of Germany," he said.
"Upon climbing to an altitude of 120 km, a missile fired from Germany could have reached New York," Waechter said during the interrogation.
"Heylandt told me that underground facilities had been built in the Luttich area in Belgium in 1943-1944 to fire V-2 missiles. Later, these facilities were destroyed by Anglo-American aircraft while the remaining equipment was taken to Saalfeld and Harz in Thuringia where V-2 tactical tests were conducted," he said.
According to Heylandt, one testing station for the V-2 missile was located in Peenemunde in northern Germany and another testing facility was situated near Lake Bodensee at the Swiss border. The munitions were produced at the Rax factory in the outskirts of Vienna, at the test factory near Bodensee at the border with Switzerland and in Peenemunde.
"Heylandt told me that he had been present at the V-2 test at the testing station near Lake Bodensee. He said that residents of the border area were very surprised by a bright light and a strong sound produced during the testing," Waechter said.
Atomic strike on US
The FSB also made public a special report of September 1945 by Chief of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) Operations Sector Berlin, Deputy Chief of the Smersh Counter-Intelligence Section of the Soviet Troops in Germany Major General Alexey Sidnev to Deputy Interior Minister Ivan Serov, which says citing Waechter’s testimony that already in 1944 Germany "developed designs of very long-range bombers capable of bombing military-construction centers of the Soviet Union in the Urals and industrial facilities of North America."
"These bombers were intended to be used to transport atomic bombs," the special report said, citing Waechter’s testimony.
According to him, German scientists had managed to achieve nuclear fission already by 1943 and worked on the practical use of nuclear energy for military purposes.