V-2: Innovation or War Crime?

In the final days of WWII, Germany unleashed a terror weapon that attacked from

the edge of space, striking faster than the speed of sound. Londoners heard

nothing—until a three-ton warhead exploded beside them. The missile had

already fallen from 60 miles up, flying six football fields every second. It was the V-2,

humanity’s first ballistic rocket. One blast wiped out a whole city block; survivors

spoke of a “ghost bomb.” Hitler poured today’s equivalent of $40 billion into it—more

than the U.S. spent on the A-bomb. Yet every launch cost enough to build 30 fighter planes,

and still it couldn’t stop the Allies. Instead, it birthed every rocket that would