In 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union divided Germany's scientific and technological achievements. The United States got the father of missiles, but what did the Soviet Union get?

In October 1944, British Prime Minister Churchill sent a personal letter to Stalin. Churchill said in the letter that Nazi Germany launched 4,300 mysterious V-2 missiles towards Britain starting on September 8 of that year, causing a large number of casualties. After Royal Air Force reconnaissance, these missiles were designed and developed by the Peenemünde Rocket Center in Germany, which happened to be located in the Soviet Red Army's offensive area. Churchill asked the Soviet side to allow British experts to enter the Red Army's offensive area in order to collect intelligence on Nazi missiles. Out of traditional wariness of Britain, Stalin regarded Churchill's letter as important intelligence and immediately instructed relevant departments to obtain German missiles before the Western Allies.

As the signs of Nazi Germany’s defeat became increasingly clear, the Allies sent secret missions to the front lines one after another in order to be the first to obtain advanced German military technology. On June 1, 1945, the Soviet expert team rushed to Peenemünde, but some German experts surrendered to the US military carrying key drawings of the V-2 missile, which made the Soviet side frustrated. It turns out that the United States is also conducting a top-secret "Operation Paperclip", which aims to obtain all German missile experts, find missile technology equipment and transport them back to the United States before the arrival of the Red Army. Thuringia has Germany's largest missile factory, and the US military took the lead in entering the state. Later, according to the Allied Powers' agreement on partitioned occupation, the US military reluctantly evacuated the location of the missile factory and took away most of the valuable equipment. Just 24 hours after the Americans evacuated, the Soviet army entered Thuringia. Facing the empty factory building, the Soviet expert team was on the verge of tears. In order to make up for the losses, Marshal Zhukov decided to implement the "bread for people" plan. Zhukov signed an order to allow the Soviet-occupied area to unilaterally open its borders, and used all propaganda machines to appeal to the whole of Germany. As long as Germans who had participated in missile work were willing to come and cooperate, the Soviet-occupied area could provide sufficient food rations and excellent jobs. In Kabenhof, a small town on the border between the American and Soviet occupation zones, the Soviet army placed butter and bread directly next to the checkpoint and hung a slogan on one side: "Come on, there is hope of survival here." This move Sure enough, it worked, and some German experts who had not followed the Americans gradually gathered in the Soviet-occupied areas. One of the most valuable "harvests" was Helmut Grotrup, who was responsible for research on guidance and control systems at the Peenemünde Rocket Center.

Moscow attaches great importance to this group of German experts. The Soviet Union’s Minister of Ordnance Industry Ustinov made a special trip to Thuringia. After investigation, it was decided to set up a Nordhausen Research Institute on the spot to be responsible for restoring V- 2. Production of missile engines and their parts. Since the Soviets did not have a clear concept of missiles, the Nordhausen Institute's first step was to ask German experts to recall and sort out the entire V-2 missile production and assembly process. Under the supervision of KGB officers, Grotrup smoked his pipe every day, gestured at several missile structure diagrams hanging on the wall, and said some key words in German from time to time, while the Soviet experts next to him looked like students Recording is carried out in the same way, and the dense shorthand symbols in the notebook are difficult for outsiders to understand. Soon, Grotrup and others compiled the V-2 missile technical manual and production specification outline. In view of the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union were making use of the remaining enthusiasm of German missile experts, the Western media once made up a widely circulated Cold War joke: when the American and Soviet missiles met in the air, they could both greet each other in the same mother tongue - German. .