In the 1930s, German rocket scientists used to shoot off their vehicles near Berlin. After Adolf Hitler's Nazi party won the 1933 election, his desire to use rockets as weapons necessitated a more secluded test site. In 1936, operations were moved to the remote village of Peenemunde on the Baltic Sea.

There, the Germans built an extensive network of factories, labs, test sites and a giant plant to generate electricity and liquid oxygen for fuel. 
Two unmanned weapons were developed at Peenemunde, both used to attack Britain. "V" stands for "Vergeltungswaffe," or "vengeance weapon," and their use started long after Germany had any chance of winning the war. The V1 was a sub-sonic, jet-powered missile dubbed the "buzz bomb." The V2 was the first ballistic missile, first launched on Oct. 3, 1942. By war's end, Germany produced 662 V2 rockets; most were fired at Britain and Belgium. 

With the end of World War II, the site was taken over by the Soviet Red Army which - in accordance with allied agreements - destroyed whatever they found, provided it wasn't destroyed already. During the 1950s, when the East German People's Army, the Volksarmee, was being built up, the Peenemünde site was taken over by Germans again, using it for military exercises and for teaching young soldiers how to drive their military trucks. With the devolution of the German Democratic Republic, the DDR, this use became also obsolete, and for a short period of a few months or so, the whole north of the island, including the military security area, became open to the public.

The former army test site, the Heeresversuchsanstalt, is now devided into three parts, covering the most northern part of the peninsula of Usedom. The west now houses a museum which commemorates both Peenemünde's past as a rocket development center as well as its military history during post-war times. Within the compounds of the museum, next to the little harbour basin, lies the test site's own power plant.