Nazi Mega Weapons: German Engineering in WWII
6 episodes on 2 discs. $29.99.
There’s no question that the Nazis, obsessed with “miracle” weapons, thought really big. The Reich tried with increasing desperation—especially in the war’s last two years—to jump the Allies in the technological races that helped determine the conflict’s direction.
The hour-long episodes of Nazi Mega Weapons, which premiered on PBS stations last summer and is now available on DVD, examine six of the biggest Nazi technological feats: the Me 262 jet fighter, the V2 rocket, the Atlantic Wall, French coastal U-boat pens, super tanks, and air raid–thwarting Fortress Berlin—and explain why and how they were conceived and built, as well as why they succeeded or failed (or both). The episodes draw on vivid period footage, personal accounts, present-day talking heads, and fresh new insights as they delve into the often-astounding creativity of German scientists and engineers, as well as the Germans’ widespread use of slave labor.
They also note historical ironies. The U-boat pens, for example, were successfully engineered and rebuilt to withstand even the largest bunker-buster bombs the Allies could make. But once radar and air cover transformed U-boats from predators to prey, they were irrelevant if indestructible hulks. The Atlantic Wall, the largest project run by the massive Organization Todt with 1.5 million slave laborers at its disposal, had a spine of 15,000 bunkers reaching from Norway to France; but until Erwin Rommel took charge in early 1944, the wall was a more like a patchwork, very far indeed from the megabastion Hitler had feverishly imagined. Rommel’s frantic efforts to reinforce the Atlantic Wall by installing coastline obstacles (like his eponymous “asparagus”) and laying extensive minefields (some 6 million mines in northern France alone), were fortunately too little too late—if only barely, in spots like Omaha Beach—and permitted D-Day to succeed.
Originally published in the December 2013 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.
