Les Armes Secrètes Allemandes.

Title page: “Avec 23 croquis. Deuxième édition revue et augmentée,” Éditions Berger-Levrault, Paris, 1948, with a copyright notice of 1947 for the first edition and a printing and legal-deposit line of the second quarter of 1948 (Nancy). The facing page lists Ducrocq’s L’Humanité devant la navigation interplanétaire (Calmann-Lévy), also in this catalog. The introduction argues that while the Allies seemed to be winning, Germany was bringing a series of secret weapons to production that marked a revolution in the art of war.

Thirteen chapters trace the V-weapons from their conception, with the V-1 and V-2 described and diagrammed, through the German jet aircraft and rocket fighters (“La réaction partout,” “Les V-2 avions,” the “fusée T”), to the final phases of the war, and the contents run to p. 252.

The last two chapters turn to the future: “Le satelloïde artificiel” treats the flying island, the stationary space station, life on board, military uses and its construction and transport, and “Héritage de la V-2 et espoirs de la science” asks how the V-2 might travel in interplanetary space (a different fuel, a multiple rocket, atomic energy), the glided flight of the A-9, and what German plans existed for interplanetary journeys.