Genius and villainy.
Werner von Braun is one of the founders of modern rocketry, the creator of the first ballistic missiles, a member of the NSDAP since 1937 and an SS Sturmbannführer. After World War II - a key figure in American astronautics. Physicist and rocket engineer, chief designer of the Saturn-5 launch vehicle, which in 1967 put the Apollo 11 spacecraft into orbit, which delivered the crew to the moon.

1. Family.
Baron ( Freiherr) Werner Magnus Maximilian von Braun ( Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun) was born on March 23, 1912 in the town of Virzitz ( Wirsitz, now Wyrzysk,Poland) in Prussia. Father Magnus von Braun served as Minister of Food and Agriculture in the government of the Weimar Republic, mother, Emmy von Quistorp, was from the Prussian royal family. At the age of 13, for confirmation, it was my mother who gave the future great rocket scientist a telescope.
2. Remember how it all began.
The first experience in rocketry was not very successful - 12-year-old Werner, inspired by the speed records in cars with rocket engines by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel, blew up a toy car, to which he attached many firecrackers, on a crowded street. The little inventor was first taken into custody, taken to the police and held there until his father came to the police station for him.

In 1930, Werner entered the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the group "Society for Space Travel" (Verein für Raumschiffahrt - "VfR"), takes part in tests of a rocket engine on liquid fuel, later studies at the Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich. His dissertation, dated April 16, 1934, is entitled "Constructive, theoretical and experimental approaches to the problem of creating a liquid fuel rocket" and becomes secret at the request of the Wehrmacht. At the end of 1934, a group under his leadership successfully launches two missiles that reach heights of 2.2 and 3.5 kilometers. From 1937 to 1945, von Braun worked at the Peenemünde missile base on the shores of the Baltic Sea, where he was involved in the creation of the so-called "weapon of retaliation".
3. Weapons of retaliation.

"V-2", ( V-2 - Vergeltungswaffe-2, weapon of retaliation, another name: A-4 - Aggregat-4) is a single-stage liquid-propellant ballistic missile. It was launched vertically, on the active section of the trajectory, an autonomous gyroscopic control system, equipped with a software mechanism and devices for measuring speed, entered into action. The maximum flight speed was up to 6120 km / h, the flight range reached 320 km, the trajectory height was 100 km. The warhead contained up to 800 kg of ammotol. The average cost is 119,600 Reichsmarks.

One of the most revolutionary technological solutions applied on the V-2 was the automatic guidance system, which did not require constant corrections from the ground, the coordinates of the target were entered into the onboard analog computer before launch. Gyroscopes installed on the rocket monitored its spatial position during the entire flight and any deviation from a given trajectory was corrected by rudders on the side stabilizers.

4. Combat effectiveness.
The weapon of retaliation, which Hitler so hoped for, and which should have terrified the inhabitants of London and Antwerp, was virtually useless. The rocket was seriously underdeveloped, and the level of the then technologies could not provide acceptable accuracy, half of the missiles fired reached the target, and even that one worked according to the principle "to whom will God send".

In Britain, 2,724 people were killed in missile strikes, meaning that each missile, an expensive miracle of German engineering, killed one or two people. However, for the civilian population, the horror of these missiles was different: the air-raid sirens could not warn of their approach, the V-2s hit suddenly and were a factor of demoralization.

In fact, the V-2 caused another terrible damage - its main victims were those who collected it. The prisoners worked at the Mittelwerk underground factory that worked around the clock, many prisoners with the necessary technical skills, for example, welders were taken from other camps. The living conditions of the prisoners were appalling: people were kept without sunlight, in unsanitary conditions, they were starving and lacking sleep.

There were cases of murder of prisoners for attempting to sabotage work: according to eyewitnesses, the guilty were demonstratively hung on assembly line cranes and Sturmbannführer von Braun witnessed these executions.
5. Career in SS.

Werner von Braun himself was least of all like a naive simpleton who took money from the Nazis for the sake of fulfilling the bright dream of space. He was not only a member of the Nazi party, he made a career in the Waffen SS from Untersturmführer to Sturmbannführer (corresponds to the army ranks of lieutenant and major), he knew perfectly well that prisoners from a concentration camp were working at his missile factory.

He regularly communicated with the high Nazi command, and it did not take a lot of intelligence to understand what regime he was working for. It was von Braun who persuaded Hitler to focus his efforts on the manufacture of the V-2 rocket, and the fact that in a military sense this rocket turned out to be ineffective does not absolve its creator from responsibility - after the V-2, Peenemünde began developing a new, more powerful rocket , designed to defeat large objects, but they simply did not have time to complete the project.

6. Operations "Paperclip".
In the spring of 1945, von Braun and his staff decided to surrender to the Americans. In June 1945, the move of the chief and his staff to America was approved at the level of the US Secretary of State, but until October 1, 1945, the American public did not know anything about this. The intelligence services "laundered" von Braun from Nazism, he was among the scientists for whom the United States Intelligence Agency ( Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, JIOA) created fictitious biographies and removed references to military ranks, NSDAP membership, and ties to the Nazi regime from public records.

As a result, von Braun, personally responsible for the shelling of London, Antwerp, Paris and the deaths of prisoners, instead of being tried as a war criminal, was assigned to lead the American space program.
7. Start of the space race.
America got von Braun, the Soviet Union got the assembly plant "Mittelwerk" and several surviving "Fau", albeit without drawings and calculations. Like the Americans, the Russian missilemen took the trophy down to a screw and copied it completely. It turned out to be not easy, in the country it was necessary to create a modern technical base for rocketry - for example, more than 40 different types of rubber were used in the design of the "V", while the USSR industry produced only eight.

The first Soviet ballistic missile, the R-1, was a modified version of the V-2, but the subsequent R-2 and R-5 became a technological breakthrough, and the revised R-7, a two-stage ICBM, became the carrier of the first artificial earth satellites.
What does von Braun have to do with it? The fundamental principles behind rocketry have not changed significantly over these 70 years. The design of all rocket engines remains the same, most of them run on liquid fuel, and gyroscopes are still used in onboard control systems - all of these solutions were first implemented in his development. We still live in the V-2 era.
8. Career in the USA.
After several travels, von Braun and the rest of his team from Peenemünde settled in Fort Bliss, Texas, at a large American army base north of El Paso. The work progressed slowly, any proposal for new ideas about missiles was rejected: the Americans counted every cent. Since 1956, Brown has led the program for the development of the Redstone ICBM and space rockets based on it - Jupiter-S, Juno and the Explorer satellite.

The impetus for the acceleration of work and their financing was the launch of the first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union, only after that Brown received permission to launch "Juno" - the satellite entered space with a delay of one year. It was the version of the Redstone launch vehicle that was used in 1961 by the ode to launch the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space.

9. The outstanding scientist was awarded.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the awards would look together at once, and even on a black uniform?
10. Apolitical genius.

When it became clear that America could sweep away an entire city with a single bomb,
a certain scientist, turning to his father, said: "Now science knows sin."
And do you know what he said? He said, "What is sin?"

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Of course, Wernher von Braun personifies the type of scientist who is completely devoid of any semblance of morality. Everything he did was successful: you can bomb London or launch people to the moon - the final result is important. After the war, he never once expressed remorse for his involvement in Nazi crimes - even ostentatious and formal. and nevertheless, on the website of the US Space Research Office of NASA, he is given the following description: "Without a doubt, Wernher von Braun was the greatest scientist in the field of rocket physics in history."

Sources:
V2Rocket.com, Wernher von Braun:http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/vonbraun.html
"V-2: Hitler's Rocket That Launched the Space Age":http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/science/2014/09/140915_vert_fut_nazis_space_age_rocket
V-1: Buzz Bombs of the Third Reich against Britain:http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/uk/2014/06/140609_v1_flying_bombs
Original:

Werner von Braun worked for the USSR?
In the fall of 1933, the English journalist S. Delmer, who worked in Germany, wandered into a vacant lot on the outskirts of Berlin. On it, two men were doing something with a mysterious long cigar-shaped object with a pointed nose. “And what will it be?” Delmer asked. “Yes, one of the missile options. We think our missiles will be thrown into the dustbin of history and artillery and bombers, ”said the older one, who introduced himself as engineer Rudolf Nebel. “Rockets will turn the course of human history, it will leave the earth,” added a second, handsome blond man in his twenties, introduced by Wernher von Braun. The Englishman, looking skeptically at his companions, did not wait for the end of their work, and left. He would have known that in ten years the FAU-2 missiles, created under the leadership of the blond, would terrify "good old England" ...
Engineers von Braun and Korolev are called to the start!
Werner von Braun was born on March 23, 1912 in the city of Wyrzice, now called Wyrzysk and located in Poland. The boy, who came from an old Prussian noble family, was smart, greedy for knowledge. After finishing school, he studied at three institutes in Zurich and Berlin.
At that time, scientists from many European countries were already thinking about the development of not only relatively small powder rockets, known to the ancient Chinese, but also huge rockets fueled by liquid fuel. The impetus for this was the work of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky "Exploration of world spaces with jet devices", in which the great Russian dreamer and scientist, back in 1903, described the principle of a liquid-propellant rocket engine.
And in 1929, in Germany, the Minister of the Reichswehr gave a secret order "to begin experiments in order to study the possibility of using a rocket engine for military purposes." The Germans had a backlog since 1917, when the sergeant major of the Austrian army, the future Nobel laureate Hermann Obert, developed a project for a combat missile using a mixture of alcohol and oxygen to deliver 10 tons of explosives over several hundred kilometers. In the 1920s, not only Nebel and von Braun experimented with rocket engines in Germany. To join forces, a group for the study of liquid-propellant rocket engines (hereinafter referred to as LRE) was created to conduct work on rocketry at the ballistics and ammunition department of the Reichswehr Armament Directorate under the leadership of military engineer Captain Walter Dornberger.
It was under the leadership of Dornberger, who quickly became a general, that the development of liquid-fueled jet engines began in Germany. In October 1932, 20-year-old Wernher von Braun came to work in the captain's engineer laboratory. He turned out to be extremely sensible and soon became the leading designer and closest assistant to Dornberger. In 1933, under their leadership, the A-1 rocket was developed, which meant "unit first". In 1934, the second unit had already reached an altitude of 2.2 km. The A-2 rocket weighed 150 kg, had a length of 1.4 meters and a diameter of 30 cm. It was her that an Englishman saw in a vacant lot near Berlin ...
Almost simultaneously with the Germans, work began on rockets with liquid fuel rocket engines in the Soviet Union. In 1931, Groups for the Study of Jet Propulsion (GIRDs) were created on a voluntary basis in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, Baku. 24-year-old Sergei Korolev is appointed head of the Moscow GIRD. Since August 1932, the GIRD began to be financed by the Office of War Inventions of the Workers 'Peasants' Red Army (RKKA). Things went well, the correspondence competition "Korolev-Brown" began!
From the start, the rivals left about the same.
In August 1933, the Soviet rocket "09" took off to a height of 1.5 km, in November, the "GIRD-X", the first Soviet rocket, which operated on liquid (fuel - ethyl alcohol, oxidizer - liquid oxygen), took off into the sky. In the summer of 1935 rocket "07" was launched, rising to 3020 meters. She had a length of 2.01 meters, a starting weight of 35 kg. In terms of starting weight, the Soviet "nine" has already lost four times to the German "A-2" ...
At the end of 1933, the Jet Research Institute was formed, one of the deputy heads of which was Korolev. Soon he already had the rank of division commander, which corresponded to the later rank of "major general". The RNII developed several types of liquid-propellant rocket engines, some of which in 1937-39 were installed on rocket planes and cruise missiles designed by Sergei Korolev. But for a ballistic missile, these engines were not powerful enough, and therefore nothing like Nebel's 1917 project was not designed. Then the "purges" began. Deprived of his military rank, the "saboteur" Korolev, right up to 1945, dropped out of the distance competition with the "blond beast" Wernher von Braun ...
FAU-2: "what cannot be"
And in 1936, the Dornberger-Brown rocket laboratory was visited by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Ground Forces Fritsch and the head of the research department of the Ministry of Aviation Richthofen. They found the work of the rocket scientists promising and gave instructions to develop a missile capable of delivering a 1 ton warhead at a range of 275 km. 20 million marks were allocated for the development of missile weapons (including the FAU-1 cruise missile), and in the Baltic Sea on the island of Usedom, near the fishing village of Peenemünde, they began to build a special missile range.
In 1937, an intermediate rocket A-3 was already launched here. It was 5 times more in weight than A-2, and 3 times in size. The Germans pulled out far ahead. True, the launch of the A-3 was unsuccessful. But a project was already drawn up for an even more powerful rocket A-4, which was destined to become the "weapon of retaliation for the FAU-2." For the final development of the A-4 design, von Braun's team developed the A-5 rocket, about three times smaller than the future "FAU". From 1938 to 1942, several hundred (!!!) of such missiles were launched from Peenemünde. Wernher von Braun became the world leader in rocketry for a long time ...
The best scientific forces and research organizations in Germany were involved in the work on the FAU-2, and huge funds were released. But the developers had a lot of problems. The main thing is the engine. After all, he had to develop a thrust of about 25 tons! The best Soviet rocket engines developed up to 300 kilograms. And the Germans came up with their own "chips". Unlike the previously used fuel supply system with pressurized compressed air, two turbine pumps began to supply fuel to the combustion chamber of the FAU-2 engine, powered by gases generated from the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide when it was heated. Small in size and weight, these turbo pumps developed enough power to power a terribly voracious engine that consumed nine and a half tons of fuel in 4 minutes.
By making the combustion chamber of the liquid-propellant rocket engine two-shell and pumping a cold oxidizer - liquid oxygen between the jackets, Brown and his colleagues ensured that the combustion chamber did not burn out from the action of high temperatures during the entire operation time. It was thanks to these innovations that the Germans were able to create a liquid-propellant engine with a huge thrust at that time.
BROWN GOES OUT
In March 1939, Peenemünde was visited by Hitler. The work of the fascist missilemen made a great impression on him, but after the victories over Poland and France, the "missile appropriations" were cut by half: it was necessary to prepare for a war with the USSR. The attack on the Soviet Union postponed the start of tests of the FAU-2 until 1942, and only on October 3 of that year was the first success achieved: the rocket flew about 200 km, reached an altitude of 90 km and fell 3.4 km from the target. The launch weight of "A-4" was 12.7 tons, length - 14.3 meters, diameter - 1.65 meters. According to the project, the rocket, developing a speed of up to 5500 km / h, was supposed to rise to an altitude of 180 km. From there, its warhead weighing 980 kg, continuing to move along a ballistic curve, could “reach” a target located up to 320 km from the launch site. Nothing like this has ever been done in the world! An altitude of 180 kilometers is near space, and Hitler's Germany escaped into it. One! Therefore, decals, a swastika or a cross, were not painted on the sides of the "FAU-2". What for? All the same, no other missiles would be nearby ...
Large-scale production of "FAU-2" was organized at the enterprises of the underground industrial complex, built in the former gypsum mines near the town of Nordhausen. The engineers and craftsmen were Germans, Czechs, French; their working and living conditions were bearable. But a huge number of workers were from prisoners who lived in terribly difficult conditions, under the constant threat of execution. Until 1945, it was planned to make 12,000 missiles, but although in some months they were made up to 690 pieces, the total number of "units" produced until April 45, when Nordhausen was captured by the Americans, was 5940 units. The first combat launch of the "FAU-2" was carried out by the Germans on September 8, 1944, across London. The rocket fell in the Chiswick area ...
SUPER-FAU-2
After the allies landed in Normandy and their rapid advance to the east, the German missilemen, in order not to lose sight of England, decided to increase the range of the FAU-2. They added wings to the serial A-4 by December 1944. The new "product" was named A-4B. According to calculations, the range of destruction should have increased to 600 km. In fact, an aircraft was launched into space, which on the third attempt was made to fly approximately in a given mode. However, von Braun did not have time to fine-tune the new "unit" - the war was over.
Uncle Sam's Intercontinental Gift
To launch a missile strike on America was the Fuhrer's cherished dream. Let the blow and not all-destructive, but in the right place, from the standpoint of the panic produced, and at the right time. By 1944, German rocket scientists had already realized that it was impossible to reach America with a single-stage rocket - that part of it, in which the engine and fuel, after it burns out, becomes a brake for the warhead. This part of the rocket needs to be separated. And more fuel with an oxidizer would be needed, and the engine is more powerful ...
The Germans sat down for calculations, sparing neither alcohol nor liquid oxygen for experiments, and by January 1945 they made a prototype of a rocket complex, which already consisted of two "units", A9 / A10, with a total takeoff weight of 86 tons. The fuel weight of the 70-ton A-9 was 52 tons, the engine was supposed to develop a thrust of 200 tons, only 3 times less than that of the royal rocket R-7, which after 16 years lifted Yuri Gagarin into space. The A-9 was supposed to accelerate to a speed of 4250 km / h of the A-10, a 16-ton winged version of the FAU-2. But the A-10 was supposed to accelerate to 10,000 km / h and deliver 1 ton of explosives to the target across the Atlantic. The A-10 was supposed to be guided either by a radio beacon, which would have been installed in advance, or by a suicide pilot.
Hitler wanted to get into the 102-storey Empire State Building! He hoped that in this way it would be possible to withdraw the United States from the war. The whole operation was given the name "Elster". In November 1944, German agents Erich Gimpel and William Kolpag landed in the United States from a German submarine. Each of them had to independently get a job in some kind of organization for the maintenance of a skyscraper, install a lighthouse in it, send a message to Germany and put the lighthouse into operation. Gimpel still got a job at a tour desk and even sent a telegram to the "vaterland", but Kolpag surrendered to the FBI on his own. He spoke about a characteristic feature of his colleague: he puts change not in his wallet, but in the breast pocket of his jacket. The FBI got all the newsstand owners and cashiers to their feet, and Gimpel was taken over before he installed the beacon. Gimpel got an electric chair, Kolpag-long term. The shooting at the "Empire" did not take place ...
At various times, reports were published that the A9 / A10, driven by a suicide bomber, did take off for America, even the name and surname of the pilot were called. He allegedly successfully flew to the design height, separated the warhead and switched to planning to the target, but burned out when entering the dense layers of the atmosphere. "Fire, fire everywhere" - these were supposedly his last words. And, of course, "Heil Hitler!" ...
Was von Braun a criminal?
Demoted from the brigade commander only to the major, Sergei Korolev in 1945 was released from the "sharaga" into the wild. And immediately he was sent to Germany to study German rocketry. Examining the FAU-2 in 1945, the former correspondence rival of Wernher von Braun, amazed by the success achieved by the Germans, said to test pilot Mark Gallai: "I see what cannot be." It was! It thundered and killed!
In total, during the period of use, until March 23, 1945, 1269 missiles were launched at England, and 1739 missiles were launched against other targets already on the territory of continental Europe. Antwerp got the most - 1593 missiles. According to British data, 1,054 FAU-2s exploded in England, killing 2,754 and seriously injuring 6,523 people. In the Antwerp area, 1,265 rockets exploded, killing and maiming about 30,000 people. In total, with the help of Brown's "aggregates" the Germans dropped 1,034 tons of explosives on England. Scary and cruel. But…
In 1944, an average of 4,100 four-engine Allied bombers dropped at least 6,000 tons of bombs on German cities every day, and not only on industrial enterprises. Six times more than Brown dropped on England in 7 months. The pleasure of terrorizing England with the FAU-2 cost Germany enormous sums. The cost of building a missile center at Peenemünde alone was sufficient to produce 10,000, or one-fifth of the total number of tanks produced by Germany during the war. And how many tanks were "eaten" by those 5940 missiles produced that did not drop a single gram of explosives on Soviet cities or troops? So it turns out that von Braun indirectly ... worked for the USSR.
Moreover, after the war, more than 150 German rocket specialists, “nurtured by von Braun,” came to the USSR "to help Korolev", including 13 professors, 32 doctors-engineers, 85 graduated engineers and 21 practicing engineers. It was because of the "creative competition" with them that Sergei Pavlovich Korolev overtook Werner von Braun on October 4, 1957 and April 12, 1961, launching the first artificial earth satellite and the first man into space. Paradoxically, but for such work in the USSR, at least the medal "For Victory over Germany" the "Rocket Baron" deserved!
Victor Novitsky 2

To Werner von Braun, mankind owes much to the landing on the moon, space flights to Mars and Venus. But the German scientist designed not only the American Saturn launch vehicles and the Apollo spacecraft. During World War II, von Braun was the project manager for the creation of V-2 missiles, which the Nazis fired at London and other cities. Thousands of people died from these missiles ... Stefan Brauburger tries in his documentary book to explain why it was the creator of such a terrible weapon that helped humanity to fulfill the dream of flying to other planets.

Losers and leader

As a child, Wernher von Braun read science fiction and raved about space. As a teenager, he equipped a small observatory with his classmates. Parents had to come to terms with their son's hobby, although it was very difficult for them. Werner von Braun's father was a well-born aristocrat, held high government posts (up to the Minister of Agriculture of the Weimar Republic), and his son was engaged in some kind of nonsense. In the classroom he was bored, and in the seventh grade he even stayed for the second year. Then his parents sent him to a private boarding school, setting a categorical condition: if he did not correct his marks there, he could forget about his expensive hobby. In just a few months, Wernher von Braun became the first student in the class.

This is typical of him. If he set a goal for himself, he always achieved it. According to the author of the book, in many respects it is the will and determination of von Braun, and not only his talent, that explain his success as a designer. Another important factor: he was a brilliant organizer and a born leader. Having defended his dissertation on the design features of liquid-propellant rockets at 22, von Braun became the youngest doctor of technical sciences in Germany.

But the Nazis have already come to power in the country. They did not care about the romance of space flights, they were interested in rockets only as a new type of weapon. In May 1937, Wernher von Braun was appointed technical director of the Peenemünde test site on Usedom Island in the Baltic Sea, which had become a huge rocket center. Of course, only a party member could lead such a center, and the designer had to urgently join the NSDAP.

The Weapon of Vengeance and the First Companion

Werner von Braun was tasked with creating a liquid-propellant rocket that could carry an explosive charge weighing up to one ton over long distances. The new rocket was named V-2. V ("fau") is the first letter of the German word "Vergeltungswaffe" - "weapon of retaliation" ". And "two" because a little earlier the Germans created a V-1 cruise missile.

On June 13, 1944, London was subjected to the first V-1 bombardment. At the beginning of September, V-2 was released in London and Antwerp and Paris, liberated by that time by the allies.

In April 45, Wernher von Braun, along with several of his employees, surrendered to the Americans. Three and a half hundred railroad cars with equipment and missile components were delivered by sea to the United States. At the same time, the German scientists themselves were sent there. SS Sturmbannführer von Braun, his colleagues Hauptsturmführer Rudolf (Rudolf) and Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht Dornberger (Dornberger) began to work in research centers and design bureaus of the Pentagon. The Americans showed a more than condescending attitude towards them: the Cold War began, the United States (as well as the Soviet Union) was in dire need of specialists in the field of missile technology. Therefore, they simply turned a blind eye to the past.

True, as noted by Brauburger, not military programs, but space projects were the priority in Wernher von Braun's work on the Americans (at least since the mid-fifties). It was his group that launched the first American satellite Explorer-1 - 195 days later than the first Soviet artificial earth satellite. Following this success, Werner von Braun was tasked with creating a Saturn launch vehicle for flights to the moon.

Do Americans need the Moon?

From 1969 to 1972, the Americans landed on the moon six times.However, in the end, due to the high cost, the United States abandoned not only this, but also the further preparation of the expedition to Mars, the technical support of which was also entrusted to Werner von Braun, and the construction of a long-term orbital station similar to the Soviet Mir.

Without a real job, Wernher von Braun gave up noticeably. He was soon diagnosed with cancer and died in June 1977 at the age of 65. After his death, the US Department of Justice created a special commission of inquiry, which took up the past of German designers and technicians. All Germans who began their scientific careers in the "Third Reich" were fired from the American space agency NASA with a scandal. It is quite possible that Wernher von Braun would have suffered the same fate.

Stefan Brauburger.
"Wernher von Braun. Ein deutsches Genie zwischen Untergangswahn und Raketenträumen".
Pendo Verlag, München 2009

Werner von Braun has convincingly proved in his life that genius and villainy are compatible things. As an SS officer, he worked on the creation of the "weapon of retaliation" of the Third Reich, filmed for Disney and sent a man to the moon.

Baby pranks

Werner, who was born in March 1912, woke up early in his passion for science. When von Braun was 13 years old, after confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope. Since that time, conquering the moon has become his dream. Werner's father was the Minister of Agriculture of the Weimar Republic, the boy received a good education and could afford more than his peers. Werner's life began on its own, which turned out to be historical, path when he learned about the successful development of rocket engines, which were engaged in by his compatriots Vallière and Opel. Von Braun literally got the idea to create a rocket engine. I decided to start with signal flares, went to Berlin and bought half a dozen firecrackers there. He tied them to a small van and drove to one of Berlin's main streets, the Tiergarten Allee. Obviously, he wanted publicity for his first "scientific" experiment. Miraculously, no one was hurt, although there was every chance for this: the van accelerated to high speed, spewing out flames from the missiles. Werner was immediately arrested by the police, but due to his father's high position in society, he was soon released. Then no one could have guessed that this boy would become "the father of the American space program and NASA."

Headhunting

The production of "weapons of retaliation" by the Germans for a long time remained a secret for world intelligence services. Only in 1943, the French created the Marco Polo secret service, which was engaged in high-tech intelligence of the Third Reich and transmitted the collected information to the United States and Great Britain. Since that time, "bounty hunting" has become a top priority for the Allied intelligence services.

In November 1944, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff created the Industrial and Technical Intelligence Committee. The Office of Strategic Services, as part of the covert operation Overcast, was engaged in the export of German missilemen to work in the United States. The most "coveted head" for the Americans was von Braun. A list of 1,500 scientists found in the closet of the bombed-out University of Cologne led the intelligence services to his discovery. Wernher von Braun was in the first place on this list. As it turned out later, the decision to surrender to the Americans was made by a team of scientists much earlier than this historic event took place. Von Braun was even arrested for expressing "defeatist" views.

Operation Overcast could not be kept secret for a long time. The American media found out about it and immediately called the program "the import of Nazi criminals into the country." To avoid publicity in March 1946, the operation was renamed to Paperclip, and German scientists were listed as "victims of Nazism" according to documents.

First tests

The first tests of "V-2" in the United States were marked by a number of disasters and almost led to an international scandal. Of the first four launches, only one was successful - the third. During the fourth, the gyroscopic installation malfunctioned and a huge unguided rocket flew in the opposite direction. According to the instructions, in such situations it was necessary to shut off the oxygen to the engines using a radio signal, but this time it was not so obvious: highly toxic fuel threatened to splash into the waters of the Rio Grande River, which would lead to an environmental disaster. As a result, the rocket rushed further in the direction of Mexico and crashed into a rocky slope, leaving a hole nine meters deep on it. Diplomatic scandal and war with Mexico were avoided; for ordinary Mexicans, von Braun's brainchild turned out to be a "gold mine", for a long time they traded in the sale of "fragments of a rocket", their weight was comparable to three "V-2".

Swiss-Dutch

Von Braun's integration into American life was not easy. He was well aware that with open arms he would not be accepted everywhere. On his arrival in the states, while he was traveling by train from Washington to El Paso, accompanied by Major Hamill, one of the passengers approached him. Brown had a strong accent and introduced himself as a Swiss in the steel industry. It turned out that the fellow traveler himself had been to Switzerland more than once, and he knew firsthand about the production of steel, well, it was time for him to go out. Saying goodbye to Brown, the stranger squeezed his hand tightly and said: "If it were not for you, Swiss, we would hardly have been able to defeat Germany."

Von Braun found it difficult to enter American society. In the documents of the special services, he appeared under the nickname "Dutchman". Brown wanted to become his own, American. He sincerely wanted publicity and fame, studied English and practiced spoken language, recording himself on a tape recorder. He achieved his goal.

"I strive for the stars"

Von Braun, a former SS officer, became a national hero for the United States. Mass media convincingly showed their strength, in less than a year American newspapers turned Nazi criminals into nice immigrant guys worthy to become good Americans. On December 9, 1946, The Times magazine published the first official account of the work of von Braun and his team. The magazine even contained photographs of a scientist self-confident in the assembly price against the background of his developments. The article ended like this: "They were promised that someday they will be able to obtain American citizenship." The pinnacle of Brown's media presence was the release of the film I Strive for the Stars (1960). The film was based on the biography of the scientist, telling about his life from childhood to the management of NASA. Von Braun himself did not like the film. He also did not like those who once suffered "from the genius" of Wernher von Braun. In London, people staged pickets demanding the film to be canceled, and in Antwerp, which suffered the most from the V-2, the film was banned.

Brother Brown

Not everything went smoothly in Werner's post-war life. One day his brother almost let him down. In June 1946, he sold an ingot of platinum to a jeweler in El Paso, one might say, for a song - for $ 100. Magnus Branu told his buyer that this ingot was brought from Holland by his American father. Allegedly, he fought during the First World War in Europe. This was in no way true, Brown Sr. first came to the United States only 9 months after that ill-fated deal. Having come up with such a pyramid of lies, Magnus Brown did not even bother about anonymity, gave his real name to the jeweler and even left his phone number. The jeweler did not think long and reported the strange client to the authorities. Interrogated by the would-be smuggler, Major James Hamill, Magnus immediately admitted that he brought the platinum to the United States himself, thereby violating customs laws. However, Magnus Brown never got on trial. Instead, he was lynched by his own brother. Upon learning of what had happened, Wernher von Braun personally severely beat his brother, whose adventurism could destroy all the ambitions of the "star-striving".

Brown and Disney

In 1955, an event occurred that once again proved von Braun's luck - he met Walt Disney, a genius animation director. Disney at this time was trying to carry out his project for the construction of Disneyland, he needed money, people - spectacles, and von Braun - another share of publicity. The product of the synergy of these aspirations was three films: "Man in Space", "Man and the Moon", "Mars and Others". Characteristically, Disney could not find money for a long time. His amusement park was a long-term project requiring ongoing investment. So he went on television. At the time, it was not yet seriously considered as a marketing tool, but Disney signed a contract with ABC and was right. By the most conservative estimates, the broadcast was seen by more than 100 million viewers. And there was something to look at: von Braun talked about space interestingly, showed a model of a "bottle suit" for astronauts and a model of the lunar station. President Eisenhower himself called Disney personally and asked for a copy of the tape. They tried to get the materials of the sensational programs in the USSR: Professor Leonid Sedov turned to Frederick Durant, President of the International Federation of Astronauts, with a request to get a copy. Given the smoldering Cold War and Walt Disney's anti-communism, the film hardly made it to the USSR.

January 1945. Peenemünde is threatened by Soviet troops. Von Braun leaves the rocket center and takes refuge in an alpine ski resort, where his long-awaited saviors, the Americans, appear in early May. Von Braun had prepared for surrender to the Americans in advance. On the eve of the evacuation from Peenemünde, he gathered all his engineers and asked them to decide on the issue of surrender. For obvious reasons, von Braun and his designers did not want to surrender to the Soviet army. They knew very well about the atrocities of the Nazis on Russian soil and were afraid of revenge. Therefore, von Braun's employees decided to surrender to the Americans.

On one of the first days in May 1945, noticing an American soldier, Wernher von Braun's brother and colleague Magnus caught up with him on a bicycle and addressed him in broken English:
“I am Magnus von Braun. My brother is the inventor of the V-2. We would like to surrender. "

A close fragment of an interview with Werner von Braun, which he gave after his captivity, has survived: “We know that the fact that we have created a new one puts us in front of a moral choice which victorious nation we will hand over our offspring. This question stands before us more acutely than ever before. We do not want the world to be involved in another conflict. We believe that passing our new weapon
people who live according to biblical laws, we will be sure that the world is protected. " (A few months after this interview, Von Braun's "People of Biblical Law" dropped atomic charges on Hirosoma and Nagasaki. More than 250,000 people were killed in the two bombings. The vast majority of military analysts estimate that the bombing had no impact on the end Japan Former Nazi designer von Braun, however, had nothing to do with it. - Author's note).

The Second World War smoothly spilled over into the Cold War. And, since the world missile race had already been declared by Nazi Germany, and with it the hunt for missile and nuclear secrets began, the Americans did not hesitate and in the summer of 1945 transferred the von Braun group with missiles, components and documentation to Fort Bliss (Texas ), located in the immediate vicinity of the White Sands Missile Range in the neighboring state of New Mexico. It is these places that should be considered the cradle of the American missile program.

Over the next 15 years, Wernher von Braun worked in the United States military creating V-2 guided ballistic missiles, he followed their launches at the White Sands Proving Grounds as part of the Hermes Project, which launched less than a year after von Braun's capture - April 16, 1946

In 1950, the von Braun design team was transferred to the Redstone arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama (the same name is one of von Braun's rockets). Here, specialists began construction of the Jupiter-C army ballistic missile based on the Redstone ballistic missile.
In 1955, von Braun received US citizenship, and until that time the designer was not presented to the general public, being constantly under the supervision of intelligence officers.

1960 was another turning point in the fate of the designer. The von Braun Rocket Center was transferred to the Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, and was immediately ordered to build the Saturn rockets. Von Braun's career continued its meteoric rise. He was named the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and was also confirmed as chief designer of the Saturn V rocket. It was this launch vehicle that was intended to carry out manned flights to the moon as part of the Apollo program. In addition, von Braun was in charge of the explorer and Apollo artificial earth satellites.

Former Nazi designer von Braun, who did not want to surrender to the USSR, became one of the leading space explorers in the United States. Wernher von Braun's career culminated in 1972, when he was named Deputy Director of NASA and Manager of the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome. However, in the same year, the US economy experienced a recession, which was one of the reasons for the curtailment of the lunar program. The space dreamer, a fan of space exploration, von Braun was offered to engage in more economically and militarily profitable programs of launching technical and reconnaissance satellites. Apparently, the designer did not find a common language with the higher management and was dismissed. The lunar program was curtailed, and mankind continues to dream of spacecraft flights to Mars - a long-standing goal of von Braun - to this day.

Von Braun's most recent position was that of vice president of Fairchild Space Industries, an aerospace company.
In 1973, Wernher von Braun underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. However, in 1974, he still continued to work on the satellite project, and devoted all his free time to flying on a glider. But illness and old age took their toll, and in June 1977 the "rocket baron" Wernher von Braun died.