Braun,Wernher von b. March 23, 1912;Wirsitz (Posen), Prussia d.June 16, 1977;Alexandria,Virginia
Rocket engineer who was of use to both Nazi Germany and the United States.
Wernher von Braun’s influential aristocratic family had the resources to send him to such prestigious private schools as the French Gymnasium in Berlin from 1920 to 1925 and the Herman Lietz Schools in Ettersburg and Spiekero.
He studied mechanical engineering and physics at the Technical University of Berlin and the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (1930—1932). Interest in space travel consumed his spare time; as a student he was a member of the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), experimenting with rockets. Braun received a doctorate in physics from the University of Berlin in 1934 with a classified thesis about rocketry, “About Combustion Tests.”From 1930 to 1932, he was employed as an assistant at the Rocket Field Reinick- endorf, and in 1934 he became the chief of the Rocket Experiment Station at Kum- mersdorf. When the Army Rocket Center in Peenemunde opened in 1937, he was appointed its technical director devoted to developing liquid-fueled missiles. Besides the technological innovations, Braun learned to sell his ideas to the leadership of the Third Reich. He was a member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) since 1937 and was also admitted to its elite wing, the SS, in which he rose from the rank of second lieutenant to major during the years 1940—1943. His work was essential in developing the A1 to A4 rockets. The A4 Rocket was renamed V2 (Vergeltungswaffe, or vengeance weapon) by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Gobbels. During the half year the V2 rocket was in active use, London was the prime target of the 1,027 missiles launched. The success of Braun’s work can easily be quantified: 2,511 people were killed and 5,869 seriously injured.
Braun was arrested by the Gestapo on March 21, 1944, for what he later alleged were “anti-Nazi remarks.” After two weeks, however, he was released from custody.
As Soviet troops closed in on Peenemunde, Braun successfully evacuated the research and production facilities to locations in southern Germany. In the Mittelwerk, an underground factory used by the war industry, slave laborers assembled V2 missiles and other weapons under terrible conditions. More than a third of the 60,000 laborers, supplied by the nearby concentration camp Dora, died of starvation and disease.As the defeat of Nazi Germany became inevitable, Braun and his team of rocket scientists turned into last-minute renegades. On May 2, 1945, after Braun’s brother had negotiated the conditions, Braun surrendered to U.S. troops. After four months at the U.S. Army Interrogation Camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1945, Braun, together with the core of his Peenemunde team, was transferred to the United States in a move codenamed Operation Paperclip. Initially the project was to be limited to a few months. Efforts were made to cover up the team’s past. These included sealing incriminating evidence of Nazi affiliation and altering conclusions of interrogations. The U.S. Army denied demands for Braun’s return to Germany as a witness in trials against accused war criminals from the Mittelwerk-Dora complex. He did, however, visit Germany in the winter of 1947 to marry Maria von Quistorp, his first cousin. Braun was project director at the army’s Research and Development Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, from 1945 to 1950. Using parts salvaged from the Mittelwerk, the team continued to assemble and launch V2 rockets under U.S. Army supervision. Braun was never accused of any war crimes but was repeatedly under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was feared that his skills could be of interest to a remilitarized Germany.
The cold war triggered a space race in which Braun played a decisive role. In 1950, the research was moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where Braun was named technical director at the Guided Missile Development Group.
In 1955, Braun and his team of German scientists were granted U.S. citizenship. He was director of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency from 1956 to 1960.Braun led the development of new generations of missiles, named Redstone, Jupiter, and Pershing, with both military and civilian potential. The cold war space race started when the Soviet Union successfully launched the satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. U.S. military leaders increasingly understood the potential of Braun’s team, which long had wished to show their technological advantage to the world. The Redstone carried the first American into space on May 5, 1961. Most importantly, Braun’s team improved the U.S. capability of launching a massive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
Braun actively educated the American public about space exploration. Parallel to his work for the army, Braun established himself as a leading visionary for space exploration and popularized the subject in books and articles. One of his mentors was Walt Disney, who engaged the German scientist as a consultant and narrator for a series of films in the 1950s: Man in Space, Man and the Moon, and Mars and Beyond. His exceptional ability to explain the complex details of borderline science in accurate and engaging terms won him the attention and trust of President John F. Kennedy and leading military officials.
In 1960, he became director at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). His most important project was the development of the Saturn rockets. The Saturn V was used in the Apollo program and successfully launched astronauts to the moon. For his work he was honored with more than twenty honorary doctorates, and two American orders, military and civilian decorations. After retiring from NASA in 1971, Braun accepted the position of corporate vice president at Fairchild Corporation. In 1975, he entered German service again, as a member of the board of directors at Daimler Benz Company.
Tommy Tobiassen
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References and Further Reading
Lampton, Christopher. Wernher von Braun. New York: Franklin Watts, 1988.
Piszkiewicz, Dennis. Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon. Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1998.
Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1988.
Stuhlinger, Ernst. Wernher von Braun, Crusader for Space: A Biographical Memoir. Malabar: Krieger, 1994.