Some of you may recall that, throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, former members of the German armed forces engaged in a concentrated campaign among British and American military circles to convince their erstwhile allies that the real threat to Western civilization came from the Soviets and world communism, that the Germans weren't really such bad guys, and that we should all work together to keep the scary red Mongol hordes from stacking skulls for sport in the capitals of Europe.
Mostly, the war-weary and gullible Yanks and Brits fell for it hook line and sinker - it didn't help that the Americans and the Soviets were engaged in a competition of let's-see-who-can-kidnap-the-most-Nazi-scientists (all based on the huge mutual misunderstanding that the other side was trying to get these guys and thus we had better get them first). Not to mention, the Germans did have vastly snazzier uniforms than the baggy atrocities worn by the likes of Monty and Patton - just ask Hugo Boss.
This of course inadvertently gave rise to the space race. The world's superpowers were convinced by their respective pet German rocket scientists to engage in the world's first astronautical dog-and-monkey-killing-competition, as the German "guests" of the great nations engaged in snickering competition with each other who could convince their captors to strap ever-more-ludicrous payloads to multibillion dollar Roman candles and shoot them at the moon.
Or, to quote the late great rocket Doktor
"I chust send zem up, I don't care vhere zey come down
zat's not mein department" says Wernher von Braun.
Part of this critical effort was the supply of high quality Rückflussverhinderungsdichtungsmontagepräparate, a uniquely German product developed towards the end of the war by a consortium of IG Farben, BMW, and Dinkel AG, producer of the ill-fated GX "Kleinefeuerwerkswaffe" rocket interceptor. This component, designed for use in the never-completed V-10 intercontinental ballistic propaganda delivery system (Hitler, in his late-war delusion, actively believed that inundating New York with pamphlets outlining the decrepitude of the negro jewish capitalist freemason homosexual pornographer oligarchs running the United States, the Americans would come to their senses and surrender), was intended to be built in great numbers from commonly available household materials.
Alas, it was only by 1952 that production really got off the ground. The product turned out to be far more complex than previously intended, requiring copious amounts of titanium ore, copper wiring, and a certain pink-toned food coloring recently deemed unsafe for human consumption - as a side note, leaving West Germany with a critical and morale-sapping pink children's cough syrup shortage. Their less-than-scrupulous Eastern neighbors, by virtue of having no comparable device to the "Präparat X", and not caring so much about the horrible mutations produced by the coloring agent, never managed to get beyond the early experimental stage. Even then, the reds' primitive experiments were permanently disrupted by a carelessly wrinkled engineering schematic that led to a catastrophic blast when a furnace was crookedly built - the cleaning lady responsible being promptly bundled off for re-education in refreshing Irkutsk.
Although the West had a different kind of "boom", it was not to last - the advent of pernicious "Rock & Roll" music, and the demands placed on German industrial capacity by the production of mopeds to feed the appetites of the rebellious younger generation led to the factory being abandoned in 1957.
Now it sits empty, inhabited only by bunny rabbits, gypsies, and the occasional photographer with erotic model, engaged in a pornographic shoot.
And that last bit is actually true.
Mostly, the war-weary and gullible Yanks and Brits fell for it hook line and sinker - it didn't help that the Americans and the Soviets were engaged in a competition of let's-see-who-can-kidnap-the-most-Nazi-scientists (all based on the huge mutual misunderstanding that the other side was trying to get these guys and thus we had better get them first). Not to mention, the Germans did have vastly snazzier uniforms than the baggy atrocities worn by the likes of Monty and Patton - just ask Hugo Boss.
This of course inadvertently gave rise to the space race. The world's superpowers were convinced by their respective pet German rocket scientists to engage in the world's first astronautical dog-and-monkey-killing-competition, as the German "guests" of the great nations engaged in snickering competition with each other who could convince their captors to strap ever-more-ludicrous payloads to multibillion dollar Roman candles and shoot them at the moon.
Or, to quote the late great rocket Doktor
"I chust send zem up, I don't care vhere zey come down
zat's not mein department" says Wernher von Braun.
Part of this critical effort was the supply of high quality Rückflussverhinderungsdichtungsmontagepräparate, a uniquely German product developed towards the end of the war by a consortium of IG Farben, BMW, and Dinkel AG, producer of the ill-fated GX "Kleinefeuerwerkswaffe" rocket interceptor. This component, designed for use in the never-completed V-10 intercontinental ballistic propaganda delivery system (Hitler, in his late-war delusion, actively believed that inundating New York with pamphlets outlining the decrepitude of the negro jewish capitalist freemason homosexual pornographer oligarchs running the United States, the Americans would come to their senses and surrender), was intended to be built in great numbers from commonly available household materials.
Alas, it was only by 1952 that production really got off the ground. The product turned out to be far more complex than previously intended, requiring copious amounts of titanium ore, copper wiring, and a certain pink-toned food coloring recently deemed unsafe for human consumption - as a side note, leaving West Germany with a critical and morale-sapping pink children's cough syrup shortage. Their less-than-scrupulous Eastern neighbors, by virtue of having no comparable device to the "Präparat X", and not caring so much about the horrible mutations produced by the coloring agent, never managed to get beyond the early experimental stage. Even then, the reds' primitive experiments were permanently disrupted by a carelessly wrinkled engineering schematic that led to a catastrophic blast when a furnace was crookedly built - the cleaning lady responsible being promptly bundled off for re-education in refreshing Irkutsk.
Although the West had a different kind of "boom", it was not to last - the advent of pernicious "Rock & Roll" music, and the demands placed on German industrial capacity by the production of mopeds to feed the appetites of the rebellious younger generation led to the factory being abandoned in 1957.
Now it sits empty, inhabited only by bunny rabbits, gypsies, and the occasional photographer with erotic model, engaged in a pornographic shoot.
And that last bit is actually true.
More, again, at Kosmograd Dot Net
