Wernher von Braun

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.

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.

Related Topics:
Walter Dornberger - Kummersdorf - 1934 - Kilometre

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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.

Related Topics:
Nazi régime - Peenemünde - Baltic Sea - Luftwaffe - Jet-assisted takeoff - Ballistic missile - V-2 - Supersonic - Wasserfall - Anti-aircraft missile

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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.

Related Topics:
November - 1937 - NSDAP - April 23 - 1947 - Schutzstaffel - 1933 - May 1 - 1940

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

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"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 D Dornbeger. He informed me that ... if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join."

Related Topics:
Standartenführer - Reichsführer-SS - Heinrich Himmler

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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).

Related Topics:
May - 1940 - Untersturmführer - 1943 - Sturmbannführer

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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.

Related Topics:
November - 1942 - Adolf Hitler - London - V-2 - England - September 7 - 1944

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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.

Related Topics:
Hans Kammler - Engineer - Concentration camps - Auschwitz - Slave - Arthur Rudolph - April - 1943

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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.

Related Topics:
Gestapo - March - 1944 - Communist - Stettin - Szczecin - Albert Speer - Hitler

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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.

Related Topics:
André Sellier - Mittelbau-Dora - Hochwald - East Prussia - SD - Riedel - Grotrupp - February 22 - Abwehr

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