This was inspired by Jamie Jacob's excellent article on Aerospace Alternatives in last issue of POD.

How do you get a rocket race in the late 30's? How about this: The rocketry pioneers of the twenties and early 30's in our time-line were individualists, generally with little business or government support. Given the millions of young men who died in World War I, it is quite possible that one or even several potential rocket pioneers died in that conflict. Point of divergence: On the World War I battlefront between Austria-Hungary and Italy an Austrian rifleman fires a little less accurately. A young Italian infantryman survives the war. In the early 1920's, he begins to indulge his interest in the expensive hobby of rocketry. In the mid-twenties he corresponds with Goddard, like many of the German rocketry pioneers of our time-line did. Unlike Goddard, the young Italian is living in a country looking for spectacular achievements that can be exploited to burnish Fascism's image abroad. He achieves the first public firing of a liquid-fueled rocket in 1926, very shortly after Goddard's secret first launch. His early achievements come to the attention of the Italian government, and that government adds rocketry to the list of propaganda spectaculars it promotes.

Rocketry gets less attention than Italy's showy air tours, but it gets some. While the Fascists are mainly interested in spectaculars, they are also incidentally funding a reasonably competent rocketry program. It takes that kind of program to get the spectaculars the fascists crave. By 1930, the Italians are building large, though very primitive liquid-fueled rockets, and are inspiring rocket enthusiasts all over Europe. They actually do have a technical lead in rocketry, mainly because they put more money into the area and because their program is led by a genuine Goddard-class rocket pioneer.

The Italian lead evaporates in the early 30's. The Italians have managed to convince world opinion that rocketry is a symbol of technological prowess. They've also inspired rocket pioneers in other countries by showing that the problems they face are not insurmountable. Military leaders aren't particularly convinced that rockets will have a major military impact, but enough political leaders either are or see political advantage in saying that they are that government funds start flowing to rocketry programs in several countries. Germany starts a clandestine military program in 1927, and loose-knit groups of private rocketry pioneers receive considerable corporate backing. The Soviet Union also starts a major research programs by 1927. France, Poland, and the US have smaller programs. Goddard's research has given the US an excellent technical foundation, and the US sponsors rocketry competitions to promote the new technology. US research is showing significant promise by 1930.

In these early days, information still flows relatively freely from country to country as enthusiasts indulge their hobby. 1927 through 1930 are in some ways the golden years of rocketry. Advances are rapid, and usually spread from country to country relatively easily.

Those early fun days gradually end in the 1930s. The Great Depression forces cutbacks to research in the west. The free flow of information begins to die as the military implications of large rockets sink in and come closer to reality. The private rocket enthusiasts give way to military programs to turn rocket technology into weapons. The Nazi takeover of Germany accelerates that trend.

The Germans surge ahead as they begin to rearm openly. Clandestine rearmament in the last days of the Weimar Republic produces a couple hundred primitive gyro-stabilized rockets at approximately the level of the A-2 as a stop-gap form of long-range artillery. Those rockets are called A-1s (confusingly to denizens of our time-line). They have a range of around 50 kilometers with a relatively small payload. Hitler makes propaganda use of them in the early days of open German rearmament. The Germans are in reality weak and very vulnerable to a preemptive attack by France, or even Poland. The large but primitive rockets are never fired in anger, and prove extremely inaccurate in test firings, but they spur a frantic effort on the part of other European powers to meet or exceed the perceived German advance. Even before those primitive rockets are paraded around for propaganda purposes, Germany is working on even larger and more powerful rockets. Von Braun is pushing for a rocket with a range of 400 kilometers and a 1500 kilogram payload.

Materials technology is considerably more primitive in the early 1930s than it was in our time-line's 1940's, and it proves a major obstacle to producing truly useful large liquid-fueled rockets. Rocketry research does act as a technology driver though to some extent, pushing development of new techniques that prove useful later in a variety of aerospace and industrial applications.

The western powers differ in their response to the perceived Nazi challenge. France continues an active rocketry program. Britain does some small-scale research, but does not pour money into the area in the mid-1930's. The US has a poorly funded, but technologically advanced program.

Two significant things happen in 1936. First, the founder of the Italian rocketry program defects to the US out of disgust with Fascist bungling and the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia. Second, the world's first rocket war breaks out as the Soviets demonstrate their rocketry prowess in the Spanish Civil War. In the ten years since the feasibility of liquid-fueled rockets was demonstrated, the Soviets have built large and militarily reasonably useful liquid-fueled rockets, and they test them against the Spanish nationalists.

In spite of all the Italian propaganda, and a considerable amount of real technological progress, the Italians have yet to field a militarily useful rocket. They do still have a fairly strong rocketry team though, and Mussolini ups the pressure for them to produce something militarily useful.

The Germans are still pursuing a very large, powerful rocket, but they have also been gradually increasing the range, payload, and accuracy of their A-1 series of rockets. Those rockets also get a workout in Spain, mainly for morale and propaganda purposes. They aren't accurate enough to really be worth using, but the Germans and their Nationalist Spanish allies need to counter the political impact of the Soviet weapons. Both the Germans and the Italians do collect a considerable amount of information from partially intact Soviet rockets that fall into their hands over the course of the Spanish Civil War.

By 1936, the state of the art of rocketry is in many ways at least five years ahead of what it was in our time-line. The competition in rocketry is fueling advances in other areas. Rockets are acting as technology drivers for development of new high-temperature materials. The huge amounts of computations necessary for a successful rocketry program are spurring interest in high-speed calculating machines in several countries, including Germany, France, and the US.

The money flowing to rocketry has to come from someplace. It has a slight but definite impact on the scale of German rearmament. The Germans have fewer planes, tanks, and submarines than they did in our time-line, though the percentage differences are not particularly high. Italy has a little less money to pour into fighter bi-planes. Poland puts less money into building a navy with little real function. The impact on other countries is not particularly noticeable.

The US has received a major gift in the form of access to most of the technological advances that the Italian program has produced in the past ten years. It takes a bit of fumbling before they start taking advantage of that gift, but it is a major shot in the arm for the US program.

War is approaching in this time-line, just as it did in ours. The Sino-Japanese war starts essentially on schedule. The Japanese have a rocketry program, and even the Chinese Nationalists have a research program. The Japanese use primitive relatively short-range liquid-fuel rockets as a terror weapon to some extent in China. The Chinese produce very primitive unguided rockets as a counter.

In Europe, Germany begins its era of bloodless conquests pretty much on schedule. By 1937, the Germans are test-firing this time-line's equivalent of the A-4/V-2, though there are still at least a couple of years worth of bugs to be ironed out before they become operational. They are also working on even larger rockets, including some projects designed to eventually hit the United States.

As war nears, England and to some extent France and Poland scramble to make up ground in the rocket race. Intelligence reports exaggerate German accomplishments, and create the impression that the Germans already have operational rockets that can hit Paris and London. German propaganda efforts help fuel those fears. The French already have a fairly large and advanced rocket program, and they put it in high gear to get militarily useful rockets into production. Britain turns to France and to some extent the United States in an effort to close the perceived gap.

The western powers are afraid that German rockets will be used as part of a "knockout blow" against French and British cities. Their fear of that kind of attack paralyzed them in our time-line even without rockets added to the mix. In this time-line, the only way out seems to be building a force of rockets and bomber aircraft that can pose the same threat to German cities. The French plan to field rockets capable of hitting vital industrial areas of the Ruhr by mid-1940. The British put more emphasis on bomber aircraft, though they are trying to make up for lost time on the rocketry front too.

Both countries need time, but Hitler does not give it to them. The Germans absorb Austria and the Sudetenland essentially on schedule in 1938. They take over the rest of Czechoslovakia pretty much on schedule in 1939. A small, but technologically advanced Czech rocket research team escapes to France.

England and France figure that Romania is next of Hitler's agenda. In the wake of the German takeover of Czechoslovakia, both governments seriously consider their options against Germany. By the summer of 1939, the Germans are actually deploying some A-4/V2-class rockets. The British and French have no counter for them as of yet, and they have a much exaggerated impression of the damage getting hit by those rockets will do. Rockets actually start altering the course of European diplomacy. England does not offer a guarantee to Poland in the spring of 1939.

Poland is on Hitler's agenda, though not necessarily next on it. The Germans are increasing their pressure on the Poles, but they are also looking at other options. The problem with attacking the Poles is that in all likelihood the Soviets would intervene in some way. The Soviets have no desire to have Hitler on their border, though they wouldn't mind taking a hunk of eastern Poland back if they could do it without much risk. A Soviet/German pact to divide Poland only makes sense for the Soviets if the Germans would be busy elsewhere afterwards. Without a British pledge to Poland, the Soviets simply aren't interested in that kind of a deal.

The German nightmare is that if they launch a full-scale invasion of Poland, the Soviets will funnel just enough arms to the Poles to keep them in the war long enough to exhaust the Germans, then come in and pick up the pieces. If necessary Hitler is willing to take that risk, but since Poland is not officially allied to France and England, there is really no need to hurry. Poland can be dealt with a chunk at a time, just like the Czechs were. The first chunk goes in late August 1939. After a period of heavy-handed attempts to gain concessions from the Poles, the Germans launch a lightning attack on the Polish Corridor. They take it in under two days, with the exception of some stubborn pockets of holdouts. German army divisions rush through the Corridor to East Prussia, where they sit poised within easy striking distance of the Polish capital of Warsaw.

The Poles are proud, stubborn people, but they are very much outgunned and outnumbered by the Germans. A Polish counter-offensive to retake the Corridor falls apart with extremely heavy casualties. The Germans retaliate by bombarding Warsaw via aircraft and their new A-4-class long-range rockets.

Mussolini manages to get a conference of the Great Powers together which tacitly confirms the new German conquest. The Polish military government implicitly accepts the loss of the territory, at least for now, by refraining from further counter-offensives and accepting a 'temporary' ceasefire. The Polish people are outraged, both by the ceasefire and by their military government's poor handling of the war. The government falls. However, the new Polish government looks the situation over, and realizes that a renewed war is simply not going to be successful.

The Germans use their possession of the Corridor to put the squeeze on the Poles. With the loss of the Corridor, the only way the Poles can import or export anything without going through German or Soviet territory is through Romania, or possibly north through Lithuania. The Lithuanians have long been hostile to Poland because of disputed territories, while the Romanian route raises the cost of imports, makes exports uncompetitive, and simply can't supply the Polish economy with everything it needs to survive.

Meanwhile, the rocket race continues. By now, Germany has fielded a considerable number of A-4/V2-class rockets. The French will have a roughly comparable rocket in production by late spring of 1940. The US has produced a slightly longer-range rocket, though the US army isn't quite sure what to do with it. They do know that they want to keep control of US rocketry efforts. The US navy is launching a strong effort to challenge that, though they aren't quite sure what they intend to do with large liquid-fuel rockets either. Every other Great Power or would-be Great Power is in the race. In late 1939, the Italians reassert their propaganda dominance in the field by doing the first public launch of a multi-stage rocket.

So, we have a rocket race in the 1930's, with the impacts spreading out into diplomacy, material science, and possibly computing. What do you think? Plausible? Any big holes or things I'm missing? What happens next? Does a World War II still happen within a year or two? If so, how do the more advanced rockets change that war? What kind of spin-offs would the rocket research lead to? Would they speed up or slow down the development of jet engines? Of nuclear weapons? Of effective anti-aircraft missiles? Do Von Braun and the other rocketry pioneers make their dream of reaching outer space happen, or do they just end up hitting London or New York if they get lucky?

What do you think? Do you want me to continue this?