Hitler’s “wonder weapons,” the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, were produced by slaves in conditions of appalling hardship and brutality. Industrial output was sustained only by ruthless exploitation of captive manpower. The commitment to high-technology “revenge weapons,” estimated to have cost the Reich around one-third of the resources expended by the Allies on the Manhattan atomic-bomb project, represented a massive and futile burden on a shrinking war economy.
