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by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and it continued to solve mathemat-
ical problems through 1950.
Although Zuse approached the German government about using computers for
military purposes, there was apparently no interest and no recognition of their cap-
abilities. In fact, Zuse proposed to build an encryption computer, but the idea was
rejected.
As a result of government indifference, Zuse had to use scrap parts and hire
workers, such as invalids, who were not assigned to military tasks. As in other
countries, some of Zuse's workers were women.
In retrospect, the German failure to understand the need for high-speed com-
puting harmed German war efforts and benefited Allied war efforts. During World
War II, the German government spent more money on occult studies than on com-
putation. However, Germany did build cryptanalysis machines that were success-
ful in cracking Soviet military codes.
As with other countries, Germany did develop a sort of analog computer to aid
in aiming torpedoes when they were fired from submarines. There were also Ger-
man analog computers used for naval gunfire control.
The German V-1 cruise missile and the V-2 rocket also had analog computer
guidance systems, as well as gyroscopes and inertial sensors. However, neither the
V-1 or V-2 proved to be accurate. Cities were the targets rather than specific loca-
tions within those cities. However, random hits did cause deaths and destruction.
These missiles were constructed using slave labor from concentration camps.
One report claimed that due to the harsh treatment of the workers, more people
died while building V-2 rockets than were killed by the rockets used in combat.
The V-2 did trigger a need for an effective antimissile defense that would later
result in satellites and the Patriot Missile. The V-1 could be shot down by fast
fighter aircraft, but the V-2 descended almost vertically at more than Mach 3
speed, so there was no effective defense.
An even more sophisticated analog computer developed in Germany during the
war was the Lotfernrohr 7 bombsight, which was installed in the world's first op-
erational jet bomber, the Arado AR 234 bomber in 1945.
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