Germans scale down plan for tribute to V2 rocket

AMID continuing uproar over the plans, now abandoned, to hold an official ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary of the launch of Hitler's V2 rocket, local organisers of the event announced yesterday their determination to press ahead with a scaled-down commemoration.

Peter Profe, director of the museum in Peenemunde, from where the rockets were fired, said that a four-day programme of talks, discussions and film shows would begin tomorrow as scheduled. Dismissing accusations that the commemoration represented a celebration of the V2, which killed thousands of British civilians, he said that its main purpose was to pay tribute to the start of modern space technology.

'The technological breakthroughs of the V2 paved the way for travel in outer space after the murderous military use to which it was put by the Nazis,' he said. 'There are no such things as bad rockets. There are people who use or misuse them.'

Mr Profe and his colleagues emphasised that events at their museum would include newsreel footage showing the destruction the rockets caused in London, Antwerp and other cities and detailed descriptions of the hardships endured by the concentration camp labourers who were forced to build them. There would also be a presentation on the bombing of Peenemunde by the British and Americans in which around 2,000 were killed, he said.

The museum at Peenemunde was opened to the public in May last year and has attracted more than 200,000 visitors, many from countries targeted by the rockets. Controversy over its arrangements to mark the 50th anniversary erupted late last week, however, when it emerged that Erich Riedl, a junior economics minister, and senior representatives from the German aerospace industry planned to attend a special ceremony at the museum.

After protests at home and abroad, particularly from Britain, Mr Riedl announced on Monday that he would, reluctantly, not be taking part. Dieter Vogel, the government spokesman, condemned the ceremony, describing it as 'tactless', especially considering the fact that 3 October also marks the second anniversary of German unification.

Politicians continued to call for heads to roll yesterday. Walter Kolbow, defence spokesman for the opposition Social Democrats, said the episode was like a 'scene out of a loony bin' and denounced Mr Riedl as a 'lobbyist for the German arms industry'.

The minister did, however, have some allies. Franz Schonhuber, leader of the far-right Republican Party and a former SS trooper, declared that if there was a scandal, it was not the plans to commemorate the anniversary but the 'permanent crawling' to 'anti- German' criticism from abroad.