The Way the World Ends
Rocket Wife. By lrmgard Grottrup. (Andre Deutsch, I6s.)
Tiii:si diaries, one fact and the other fiction, arc about what happens to humanity when the rocket is master. Irnigard Griittrup was sent to Russia with her husband in 1946; he was ordered to re- construct the V2. on which he had worked at Peenemunde. For seven years, first near Moscow and then on an inaccessible island in the Volga. she noted down her reactions to rockets and Rus- sians. Her husband's importance ensured VIP treatment, though somewhat nastily modified; there were frequent clashes with the Soviet bureau- cracy, as well as trouble from discontented German colleagues. Frau Grottrup combines intel- ligence with a formidable harsh loyalty to the standards of the German bourgeoisie, and so found much to deplore on all sides. It was very hard for a European to be surrounded by Asiatics, disgusted by the peasants, the muddle, the laziness, the indifference to human life. Let us concentrate on the muddle, and avoid quarrelling with Frau Grottrup. It is interesting that the Russians care- lessly lost the equipment sent from Germany. wired up the rockets any old how, did every- thing on the cheap, and held up development with absurd bureaucratic squabbles. Comparing all this with the model factory at Peene- munde, it was hard to believe that anything impressive could come of it. Yet after a year the V2 was tired successfully; after ten the first sputnik; and after twelve the first moon-rocket. Frau Grottrup met only one Russian who seemed acceptably civil and intelligent; and she makes no attempt to explain how such inefficiency and care- lessness triumphed in the end.
She is, however, shrewd on a more important issue: the indifference of her husband and his colleagues to everything but the rocket. 'the blind obsessionalism of the scientist' that 'makes him the tool of the state.' Her husband bothered no more about Stalin than he had done about Hitler—they were simply the ultimate source of necessary money. This morbid self-dedication to a weapon, Without regard to its political and military purpose ('War must serve-Science'), is the most alarming topic in the hook. The other matter of crucial interest is the account of the rocket-making com- munity, exiled, divided into those who were slack with boredom and those who were alert with blinkered intelligence. But Frau Grottrup, obsessed with her own passion for the fatherland, does not sec how the small community was a miroeosm of the whole postwar world.
Mr. Roshwald is mOre philosophical. Both sides are fully prepared for a defensive H-bomb war; the top people—those who will press the buttons— and their necessary satellites, go to the bottom. an Impregnable shelter 4.000 feet below ground, with all the necessaries of life, including air, for 500 years, but no exit. All they have to do is maintain a constant state of preparedness for button- pushing. They are chosen for their deficiency in ordinary emotion and their ability to support Synthetic life, including synthetic food and mar- riage, and, because space is short, an absence of books, If there is a war they will perhaps be the Inheritors of the earth. If a man is shown, despite brainwashing, to love his mother, the psycholo- gists go to work. An accident starts the war, but reprisals are fully automatic and begin before the apology or the rockets arrive. What follows hap- pens inevitably; appropriately the plot of the book itself is almost fully automatic. But it is more than merely mechanically satisfying. Sanity and love, It says, are part of the human condition, and after the catastrophe they may return; hut they may return too late.
The potency of Mr. Roshwald's fable derives from its being so near to actuality. Not only the power of the weapon, but the headshrinking that made this power possible, are facts of contempor- ary life. Only in recent times has the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake ceased to be regarded as irresponsible: and when the pursuit depends upon large State subsidies we have a classic 'Faustian bargain. If those of us who have no part in the bargain are bored, the advertisements and the dailies will wash the humanity out of us; there are any cranks or Aldermaston marchers left, space will be found for them, says Mr. Roshwald, on Level 2. He shows us no character of the old- fashioned kind, happy about birth and sorry about death—Level 7 could not hold such a one. This book, a notable achievement, misses the heights because it promotes anxiety rather than indigna- tion: Humanity returns only with the onset of radiation sickness, sees what is left of the planet, and expires with the readiness of Lear.
FRANK K ERMODE
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