From 1936 to 1945, the research stations in Peenemünde formed the largest armaments centre in Europe. Over an area of 25km², up to 12,000 people worked simultaneously on guided weapons, most famously the world’s first cruise missiles and the first ever functioning large-scale rockets. Both were designed as a weapon of terror against the civil population, made mostly by forced labourers and from 1944 they began to be used in the Second World War as “Vergeltungswaffen” (V-weapons).
