Wernher von Braun

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Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr¹ von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States. Originally a German scientist leading Nazi Germany's rocket program before and during the Second World War, he entered the United States at the end of the war through the then-secret Operation Paperclip. He became a naturalized US citizen and worked on the American ICBM program before joining NASA. Today he is generally regarded as the father of the United States space program.

Contents 1 Early life 2 German career 2.1 Rocket science and politics 2.2 Arrest by the Nazi regime 3 Surrender to the Americans 4 American career 4.1 US Army career 4.2 NASA career 4.3 Career after NASA 5 Cultural references 5.1 On film and television 5.2 In music 6 Notes 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

Early life

Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, East Prussia (now Wyrzysk, Poland). Upon his Lutheran confirmation his mother gave him a telescope and he discovered a passion for astronomy and the realm of space. When, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, Wirsitz became part of Poland in 1920, his family, like many other German families, moved. They settled in Berlin where at first von Braun did not do well in physics and mathematics until he acquired a copy of the book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. From then on he applied himself at school in order to understand physics and mathematics. One anecdote from this period is the time the 16 year old von Braun caused a major disruption by firing off a toy wagon to which he had attached a number of firecrackers. The young von Braun was taken into custody by the local police until his father came to collect him.

In 1930 von Braun attended the Berlin Institute of Technology where he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, the "Spaceflight Society") and assisted Hermann Oberth in liquid-fuelled rocket motor tests. After receiving his degree he commenced postgraduate studies at Berlin University, earning a doctorate in physics in 1934.

German career

Rocket science and politics

Whilst von Braun was working on his doctorate, a young artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for him and von Braun then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. He received his doctorate two years later and by the end of 1934 his group had successfully launched two rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and 3.5 kilometres.

At that time, however, there was no German rocket society as the VfR had collapsed and civilian rocket tests had been forbidden by the new Nazi régime. Only military development was possible and to this end a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. This location was chosen partly on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who recalled her father's duck-hunting expeditions there. Dornberger became military commander at Peenemünde and von Braun was technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and jet-assisted takeoffs. They also developed the long-range A-4 ballistic missile (later renamed the V-2) and the supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.

In November 1937 von Braun joined the Nazi party, the NSDAP. An OMGUS (Office of the Military Governor, United States) document dated April 23, 1947 states that von Braun joined the SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in fall 1933, then the Nazi party on May 1, 1937 and became an officer in the SS from May 1940 to the end of the war.

Amongst his comments about his Nazi membership von Braun has said:

"I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time (1937) I was already technical director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activities ... in Spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) Müller ... looked me up in my office at Peenemünde and told me that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I called immediately on my military superior ... Major-General W. Dornberger. He informed me that ... if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join."

After the war, von Braun claimed he was asked to join the party and pressured to join the SS. In May 1940 he was personally awarded an honorary SS rank by Himmler only after conferring with colleagues who agreed that to turn it down would infuriate Himmler and incur his wrath. He began as an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (SS Major).

In November 1942 Adolf Hitler approved the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" and the group found themselves developing the A-4 to rain explosives on London. Twenty-two months after Hitler ordered it into production, the first combat A-4 - now renamed the V-2 ("Vergeltungswaffe 2", "retaliation" or "vengence weapon 2") - was launched toward England, on September 7, 1944.

SS General Hans Kammler, who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave labourers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labour shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.²

To increase his power-base within the Nazi régime, Heinrich Himmler conspired to use Kammler to wrest control of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde. Kammler, highly dedicated to Himmler, was also instrumental in von Braun's arrest by the Gestapo after they learned in March 1944 that von Braun had expressed a defeatist attitude toward Germany's chances of victory and a desire to design a rocket for space rather than for weapons use. Combined with Himmler's false charges that von Braun was a Communist sympathizer and had attempted to sabotage the V-2 program, he was imprisoned for two weeks at a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland). Dornberger and Albert Speer, Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, convinced Hitler to release von Braun so that the V-2 program could continue. It is otherwise likely that von Braun would have been executed.

Arrest by the Nazi regime

There are three different versions of von Braun's arrest. André Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, offers as good an explanation as any. Himmler called von Braun, an SS officer, to come to his Hochwald HQ in East Prussia sometime in February 1944. He recommended that von Braun work more closely with Krammer to solve the problems of the V-2, but von Braun claimed to have replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance. Apparently von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943 and a report on him and his colleagues Riedel and Grotrupp was being prepared. In it von Braun and his colleagues were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well. A young female dentist later denounced them for their comments. The unsuspecting von Braun was arrested and on February 22 was taken to Stettin, where he was imprisoned for two weeks without knowing the charges levelled against him. It was only through the Abwehr in Berlin that Dornberger was able to obtain von Braun's conditional release and Speer apparently intervened on his behalf as well.

Surrender to the Americans

The Soviet army was about 160 km from Peenemünde in the spring of 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Afraid of the rumoured Soviet cruelty to prisoners of war, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. After using forged papers to steal a train, von Braun led 500 people through war-torn Germany toward the American lines. The SS had meanwhile been issued with orders to kill the German engineers and destroy their records. The engineers, however, had hidden these in a mineshaft and continued to evade their own army. After they had finally managed to surrender to an American private, the American command realized the importance of the engineers and immediately went to Peenemünde and Nordhausen to capture the remaining V-2s and their parts before destroying both sites with explosives. Over 300 train-car loads of spare V-2 parts ultimately found their way to America. Much of von Braun's production team, however, was captured by the Russians. The V-2 rocket plans that had been hidden near Bad Sachs in Germany were later recovered by members of the 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment.

American career

US Army career

On June 20, 1945 US Secretary of State Cordell Hull approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America. Since the paperwork of those Germans selected for transfer to the United States was indicated by paperclips, von Braun and his colleagues became part of the mission known as Operation Paperclip.

The first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Base, just south of Wilmington, Delaware, on September 20, 1945. They were then flown to Boston, Massachusetts, and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents. These would be the documents that would enable the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.

Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El Paso. Whilst there they trained military, industrial and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles and helped to refurbish, assemble and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs", "Prisoners of Peace".

During his stay at Fort Bliss von Braun mailed a marriage proposal to his first cousin, 18-year-old Maria von Quistorp and on March 1, 1947, having receiving permission to go back to Germany, marry and return with his bride, he married her in a Lutheran church in Landshut, Germany. In December 1948, the von Brauns' first daughter, Iris, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital. In total, the von Brauns had three children: Iris, Magrit and Peter.

In 1950, von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama, his home for the next twenty years. Between 1950 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket. In 1955 von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Still dreaming of a world in which rockets would be used for space exploration and for US military domination over the Soviet Union, in 1952 von Braun published his concept of a space-station in a Collier's Weekly magazine series of articles entitled Man Will Conquer Space Soon. These articles were illustrated by the space artist Chesley Bonestell and were influential in spreading his ideas. The space-station would have a diameter of 250 feet (76 m), orbit at a height of 1075 miles (1730 km), spin to provide artificial gravity and provide a platform for lunar expeditions. In the hope that its involvement would bring about greater public interest in the future of the space program, von Braun also began working with the Disney studios as a technical director, initially for three television films about space exploration.

As Director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), von Braun's team then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. This event signalled the birth of America's space program.

Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the twelve years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union Sergei Korolev and his team ploughed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, whilst the American government were not very interested in von Braun's work and views and only embarked on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labour needed to build his V-2 rockets. It was not until 1957 and the launch of Sputnik 1 that America realised how far it lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. After the US Navy's attempt at building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit resulted in the grossly-unreliable Vanguard, American authorities recognised they needed von Braun and his team's experience, so quickly had them transferred to NASA.

NASA career

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Island in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack. Two years later NASA opened the new Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and transferred von Braun and his development team there from the ABMA at Redstone Arsenal. Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the Center's first Director.

The Marshall Center's first major program was development of the Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. Wernher von Braun's dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 at the start of its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the Apollo program Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach Earth orbit and, ultimately, the surface of the Moon. At time of the first moon-landing von Braun publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn rocket would continue to be developed, advocating manned missions to Mars in the 1980s based on the Saturn V.

In 1970, von Braun and his family relocated from Huntsville to Washington, DC when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. However, with the truncation of the Apollo program, von Braun retired from NASA in June 1972 as it became evident that his and NASA's visions for future US spaceflight projects were different.

Career after NASA

After leaving NASA, von Braun became the vice-president of Fairchild Industries in Germantown, Maryland, where he helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society. In 1976 he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser; the CEO of OTRAG; and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors.

In 1976 von Braun also learned he had cancer. The cancer progressed, despite surgery, forcing him to retire from Fairchild on December 31, 1976. On June 16, 1977, Wernher von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia at the age of 65 and is interred there in the Ivy Hill Cemetery. The von Braun crater on the Moon was so named by the IAU in recognition of von Braun's contribution to space exploration and technology.

Cultural references

On film and television

Wernher von Braun has been featured in a number of movies and television shows or series about the Space Race:

• I Aim at the Stars (1960) also titled Wernher von Braun and Ich greife nach den Sternen ("I reach for the stars") – von Braun played by Curd Jürgens). Satirist Mort Sahl suggested the subtitle "(But sometimes I hit London)"
• The Right Stuff (1983) – The Chief Scientist, played by Scott Beach, was clearly modelled on von Braun.
• From the Earth to the Moon (TV, 1998) – von Braun played by Norbert Weisser
• October Sky (1999) – von Braun played by Joe Digaetano.
• Space Race (TV, 2005) – von Braun played by Richard Dillane; a BBC co-production with NDR (Germany), Channel One TV (Russia) and National Geographic TV (US).

In music

• Wernher von Braun (1965) – a song written and performed by Tom Lehrer for an episode of NBC's American version of the BBC TV show That Was The Week That Was; the song was later included in Lehrer's album That Was The Year That Was. It was a satire on what some saw as von Braun's cavalier attitude toward the consequences of his work: "'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department', says Wernher von Braun".
• Progress vs. Pettiness (2005) – a song about the Space Race written and performed by The Phenomenauts for their CD Re-Entry. The song begins: "In 1942 there was Wernher von Braun..."

Notes

¹

• Note regarding personal names: Freiherr is a title equal to the title Baron, not a first or middle name.
  

² See, for example, Mittelbau Overview

See also

• Sergei Korolev
• Space Race

References

• Lasby, Clarence G. (1971). Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War. New York, NY: Atheneum. 338 pp. ISBN B0006CKBHY.

• Dunar, Andrew J.; Waring, Stephen P. (1999). Power to Explore: a History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990. The NASA History Series. Washington, D.C.: NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans (pp. x, 713) ISBN 0-16-058992-4.

• André Sellier, Stephen Wright, Susan Taponier, Michael J. Neufeld. (2003). A History of the Dora Camp: The Untold Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp That Secretly Manufactured V-2 Rockets. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, Inc. 576 pp. ISBN 156663511X.

• Ward, Bob. (2005) Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1591149266.

External links

• Marshall Space Flight Center History Office - Dr. Wernher von Braun
• Redstone Arsenal History Office - Dr. Wernher von Braun
• Marshall Space Flight Center History Office - The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration
• The Institute for Cooperation in Space
• Photographs of Wernher von Braun's gravesite
• The capture of von Braun and his men, May 1945 – Flume Creek Company LLC website