60 years of the Spacee Age Part 2 Werner Von Braun Escape
from Vengeance
Watch the Episode on YouTube here:
This
episode Explores Werner Von Brauns Rise escape Nazism and the legacy of the V2 into the American Space Program.
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Welcome back to 60 years of the Space
Race, an ongoing internet video series exploring the history of the human
presence in outer space in Commemoration of the 60 year anniversary of the
launch of Sputnik in 1957.
Make sure to check out the last episode
where we talked about chief Russian Rocket Engineer Sergei Korolev.
If Sergei Korolev was a shadow shrouded
in mystery then his counterpart on the opposite side of the battlefields of
World War 2: The German Werhner Von Braun was a giant covered in controversy.
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Born in 1912 into Prussian (East
German) aristocracy his family moved to Berlin after their original homeland
was ceded to Poland due to the peace treaties of WW1.
The 2nd of 3 sons Werner
Von Braun was immensely fascinated by Science Fiction, taking Jules Verne’s From Earth to the Moon as inspiration to
shape his interest in space exploration.
***
Today we see rockets simply as
machines used to get people and things into space but a century ago they were inventions
undreamt of in any other era before. Rockets were seen as devices of immensely untapped
potential and the young Von Braun among others were captivated by the “romance
of the open sky” that they portrayed, although the darker side of such
technologies had yet to have been revealed.
He became a member of The German
Society for Space Travel: “Der Verein fur Raumschiffart”, where Von Braun and
other visionaries like Willy Ley and Hermann Oberth lay the ground work in
launching early rockets of the liquid fuel type. They were mostly scientists
and engineers “technical people” gathered together to test some new technology
known in German as the Rakete but at the heart of the Society were passionate enthusiasts
driven to work towards a common goal:
The popularization of rockets and
their possible use in space travel. An idea still years ahead of its
time…
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But for the Vfr their time had come.
When the Nazi’s came to power they pretty much shut all civilian rocket
societies. Such technologies they deemed a Military priority instead.
Regardless, Von Braun and his close
knit team of scientists persisted with their work. Getting in bed with the
Nazi’s as a source of funding during the lead up to World War 2.
Von Braun was given an opportunity
to build rockets for the German Army due to a loop hole in the Treaty of
Versailles that did not specify rockets under the list of banned weapons.
***
The world’s first long range
missiles were built by Von Braun and his team under the supervision of General
Dr. Walter Dornburger who was also a man equally swept up by the dream of
exploring space despite his military background as an artillery officer. Don’t
let the title of General deceive you. There’s a Dr. in there too.
Just like Korolev for a time it
seemed like the sky was the limit and the team rode their dreams of rocketry to
horizons never before seen by humanity.
***
Off the coast of the Baltic Sea at
Peenumunde Army Research Center Von Braun and his team would build the world’s
first functional (not like my adulthood) liquid fuelled rocket, marking the
seaside town of Peenumunde as the birthplace of modern rocket science.
Liquid fuel rockets generally give
you more bang for your buck and allow you to control the flow of fuel that is
burned to produced thrust. Controlling this reaction and guiding the rocket to
where it needs to go is pretty much the essence of rocket science. And the Peenumunde
team did this with startling success with their prototype The A – 4.
***
Now this is when the mists of
history began to condense.
Von Brauns rocket project belonged
to the army at first; The German Heer. But as the Nazi regime consolidated
power in the buildup to World War 2 Von Braun was advised into joining the SS;
the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.
They were a group of ruthless thugs in
jackboots sworn loyalty unto death to Adolf Hitler. The relationship of Von
Braun and the Nazi party is difficult to understand. On one hand you see a brilliant
man fulfilling his patriotic duty to his homeland while also pursuing his
scientific ambitions, there’s nothing wrong with that.
On
the other hand: the Nazi’s did some fucked up shit.
***
As the war dragged on, the SS made
moves to dig its fingers into the rocket program and Adolf Hitler seeking any
desperate measure possible to turn the tide christened the A – 4 as the V-2; “Der Vergeltungswaffe 2” “Vengenace Weapon 2”.
Since Nazi Germany could not win the
war in the traditional sense on the battlefield Hitler sought a game changer in
the form a “wunderfaffe” a never before seen super weapon, the V-2 was one such
weapon; the world’s first ever intercontinental guided missile.
The vengeance weapons were built in a
secret underground facility called Mittelwerke near the city of Norhausen using
slave labour from the Buchenwald concentration camp. The prisoners were put to
work at gunpoint in the worst possible conditions imaginable. Thousands of the
rocket factory workers died from execution, starvation and disease.
Reminds you a little of Sergei Korolev’s
story except this time the boot was on the rocket makers foot.
It is ironic then, that the
instruments of humanity’s planetary liberation
were built under conditions of enslavement.
***
As a bystander to all of it was
Wernher Von Braun who really could not do anything about it.
He had dreamed of using rockets for
space travel not for killing people. Upon hearing news of the first casualties
from London due to the V – 2 in 1944 Von Braun was quoted to have said: “the
rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet.” Most people
to have known von Braun accorded him as a good man, an honorable man that was
put down a dark path because of the time period he lived in.
As the death throes of the Nazi
regime begin in earnest in 1944 von Braun who at the time held the rank of sturmbannführer or Major was arrested
and questioned for his loyalty for having dared suggested that the rockets be
used for space travel after the war and not for the mass murder of civilians.
Suffice to say that the V – 2 rocket program could not proceed without him and
with help from General Dornburger, he was dropped of charges and put back to
work.
Seeing the imminent defeat of the
Nazi Regime von Braun had to think of the future of his work. As British,
Soviet and American teams swept through the devastated German heartland in
search of anything they could find on the V -2 the scientists had to choose a
captor among the soon to be victorious Allies. But not just that, the Nazi’s
were beginning to shoot their own people that would not fight to the death in
the losing war.
Der Krieg truly was verloren
***
It was time to leave Germany. As the
entire country crumbled around them the rocket scientists staged a daring
escape using forged documents and simple subterfuge to bypass SS guards travelling
across the country and into the custody of the 324th infantry
Regiment of the US army.
It would be a new phase of life for
Wernher Von Braun, one that would climax with an American walking on the moon.
***
This has been 60 years of the Space
Age an ongoing internet series chronicling the journey mankind into space in
commemoration of the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Thanks for watching and I will
see you in the next episode.
