V-Weapons Program was produced in small numbers and a few were fired at Antwerp during the fight in the Ardennes in late 1944 through January 1945 The Germans were close to completion of the world’s first ICBM: a revolutionary two-stage rocket designated A9/A10 It had a range of 2,800 miles and might have been able to hit the United States Its factories and the research facilities of Hitler’s rocket scientists were overrun before it could be finished Other proposed “Wunderwaffen” existed only in fantasy form, or as rudimentary drafts The last, barbarous act of Nazi overseers of the V-weapons program at DORA was to burn alive over 1,000 slave laborers Overall, the German rocket program was an expensive military failure It mostly contributed to the later missile programs of the victorious Allies: after the war, captured V-2s and German scientists were shipped to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, where they enhanced competitive Cold War missile research See also bombs; chemical warfare; proximity fuze 1149