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Major Walter Burkhardt, a commander of a paratrooper battalion, offered up similar visions. If it were possible to deliver “enormous shells” over a distance of sixty to a hundred kilometers, he promised, “we could set it up in CALAIS and say to the English: Either you make peace tomorrow, or we shall destroy the whole of your ENGLAND. Those things have got a future.”³⁸⁶ Private Honnet of 26th Tank Division was equally confident of Germany’s ultimate victory: “If the reckoning comes like that, it will be terrible. They will be able to reduce the whole of ENGLAND to ruins within a few days, not one stone will be left standing.”³⁸⁷

Within the space of a few short months in 1943, a consensus emerged that the rumored secret weapon had to be a long-distance missile. POWs speculated that it weighed as much 120 tons and carried a 15-ton warhead—ten times the capability of the V2, the missile Nazi Germany did in fact succeed in developing. Sergeant Herbert Cleff promised that it could destroy everything within a ten-kilometer radius of London.³⁸⁸ (For the British, Cleff proved to be an excellent source of details about the V1 and V2 missiles more than a year before they were deployed.) In March 1944, Hans Ewald, a U-boat W/T operator, said he believed that four such missiles could reduce London to rubble.³⁸⁹

Other POWs were more modest in their expectations, predicting a zone of destruction between one and ten square kilometers around the point of impact.³⁹⁰ But their belief in the effect and imminent deployment of a miracle weapon was so great that many POWs interned near London felt themselves to be at personal risk and hoped they would soon be transferred to a more remote camp—preferably in Canada.³⁹¹ The imprisoned soldiers were aware that the general German populace shared their high expectations. “I was in GERMANY in March,” Major Heinz Quittnat reported. “I can tell you the following: the majority of the German people placed their hope in the reprisal weapon. They imagined that when the reprisal weapon was sent into action, the morale of the English people would quickly be broken, and ENGLAND would be ready to come to terms.”³⁹²

The soldiers did not ask themselves why Britain would suddenly capitulate, having weathered ten months of intense aerial bombardment in 1940–41. Notwithstanding technical speculations about the size, payload, and range of the missile, the POWs did not analyze what specific effects such a weapon could have on the war. Instead, they merely voiced their hope that the secret missile would miraculously turn Germany’s fate around. An army private first class named Clermont said: “Well, I certainly believe in our reprisals. The English mother-country will be wiped out.”³⁹³ Navy Lieutenant Armin Weighardt agreed: “The new weapon is going to win the war! I believe in it!”³⁹⁴ Likewise, Luftwaffe Lieutenant Hubert Schymczyk told a comrade in April 1944: “I believe absolutely in our reprisals. When it starts here, then it will be all up with poor old ENGLAND.”³⁹⁵

The belief in a miracle weapon was rampant in all three main branches of the military, which says a lot about the illusions maintained by navy and Luftwaffe officers. Despite possessing technical expertise and despite having directly witnessed Britain’s extraordinary military and economic capacities, they never asked themselves how the decisive blow they imagined and hoped for could ever be achieved practically. It seems to have been unthinkable for such men that the war could be lost. For that reason, they believed in a utopian technology that would make everything turn out all right. On this topic, as with the POWs’ belief in the Führer, the wishes and emotions that soldiers had invested in the National Socialist project and the war were so powerful that they could not be overridden by any countervailing experiences. On the contrary, belief in a miracle weapon grew stronger the more illusory the prospect of German victory and a rosy future became.

In June 1944, shortly after the Allied landing at Normandy, the miracle weapon got its premiere. During the night of June 12–13, the first V1 missiles were hastily fired at London. The first time the weapon was used en masse was four days later, the same day that German propaganda began speaking of retribution. All told, 244 V1 missiles were fired as part of this action. Forty-five crashed immediately, and only 112 reached London.³⁹⁶