At the age of 20, to be honest, I was still an ignorant youth and did not realize the significance of a change in political leadership. My father was naturally wiser. Under President Hindenburg, he held a post corresponding to that of Minister of Agriculture, but when Hitler came to power, his father resigned. He told me more than once that the new policy would end in tragedy not only for the people of Germany, but also for many other nations. However, I was fanatically fascinated by rocket science and ignored its horrific predictions.
(Werner von Braun)
Like other celebrities, Wernher von Braun was careful to keep his past out of the American public. You could read about his life in many articles. Von Braun always readily collaborated with those who described his life, and almost always looked through the final versions of his biography in order to supposedly eliminate the inaccuracies in the manuscripts. Several times he himself told about his past. If necessary, he could distort real facts, replacing them with fiction. Why not?
When he arrived in America, everything that the Americans managed to find out about him came from the lips of von Braun himself, his friends and colleagues, and also followed from official documents that the American special services managed to find in Germany. But many, very many facts from von Braun's life were hidden in a fog of obscurity, and the reason for this was that many archival documents were burned during the fires in Germany or were deliberately destroyed by the Nazis. If any documents still existed, then, most likely, in the Soviet zone of occupation and therefore were not available to American army officials. But the most intriguing story of Wernher von Braun's life before he set foot on American soil is, of course, not what he said or wrote about his past, but what von Braun kept silent about.
Immigrants in the overwhelming majority of cases were ordinary people who came to work, peasants who dreamed of grabbing a decent piece of land, or blacks sold into slavery. Only a few of them were aristocrats who, unable to withstand the blows of fate, went to seek their happiness overseas. Wernher von Braun belonged to this particular group.
The family name of von Braun's ancestors comes from the knight Henimanus De Bruno, who lived in the Bavarian town of Branau in 1285. Subsequently, over the centuries, the spelling of the surname Bruno changed, and the latter was written in German as Brunowe, Bronav, de Bronne, Brawnaw and, finally, became the modern one - Braun. The descendants of the knight De Bruno for several centuries were landlords and owned large estates in Silesia and East Prussia. Werner von Braun's father, Magnus Alexander Maximilian von Braun (1878-1972), bore the title of baron and, continuing the family tradition, was a major landowner and had estates both in East Prussia and Silesia.
Werner von Braun's mother, née Emmy von Quistorp (1886-1959), could not boast of such an ancient lineage as her husband. Nevertheless, the genus Quistorp was as famous in Germany as the genus Browns. The Quistorp family came from Sweden, but for several centuries representatives of this genus lived in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. In Germany, many of the Quistorp were known as priests of the Lutheran Church, as university professors, as bankers and as large landowners.
Baron Magnus von Braun married Emmy von Quistorp in 1910. A year later, Emmy gave her husband her first son, Sigismund. A year later, on March 23, 1912, Emmy gave birth to her second son, Werner Magnus Maximilian von Braun, in Wierzitz, in the province of Posen. In 1919, the third son, Magnus, appeared in the Brown family.
Werner was born two years before the outbreak of the First World War. At that time, Baron von Braun held a high position in the Landrat of the province of Posen. The First World War was a disaster for both Germany and the von Braun family. Germany, having suffered defeat in the war, was forced to give the territory of the province of Posen to Poland, to which this territory belonged earlier. The Browns lost their lands.
After the war, the von Braun family settled on their estate in the county of Leuvenberg in Silesia. Living away from the German capital Berlin, the Browns were protected from the political and economic turmoil that hit many German cities in the 1920s. In the decade since the end of the First World War, Baron von Braun managed to become famous in German political circles and take the post of Minister of Agriculture.
Young Wernher von Braun's interest in science and technology was awakened on the day of his confirmation in the Lutheran church. On this day, Emmy gave her son a telescope. The rest, according to Werner himself, was already an inevitable consequence of this gift. “So I became an amateur astronomer, and this sparked in me an extraordinary interest in the universe. I began to dream of constructing a device that would take a man to the moon. " This device, of course, could only be a rocket.
Wernher von Braun got into the world of rocketry thanks to his two compatriots - Max Vallier and Fritz von Opel, who dreamed of glory and were fascinated by the idea of conquering space. Vallière wrote a book on space travel and rockets. Opel was engaged in the design of cars at that time, but had not yet managed to become famous in this field. Vallière recruited Opel as a partner in order to fund his experiments with rockets. In the mid-1920s, solid-propellant or "powder" rockets were already used as signal missiles on ships. Vallière and Opel bought several of these missiles and began installing them in racing cars and snowmobiles for driving on ice. Thanks to the use of rockets, Opel and Valier managed to break the existing speed records. As a result, they managed to make an excellent advertisement for Opel cars and transport for future space travel, which Vallière wrote about in his book.
When young Werner learned of the successes of Vallière and Opel, he went to Berlin and bought half a dozen signal flares there. He tied the rockets to a small van, in which the von Brauns sometimes traveled along the coast, and took this transport to one of Berlin's main streets, the Tiergarten Allee. There he set fire to the fuses connected to the solid fuel in the rockets, or rather gunpowder, and the van he had upgraded rushed forward along the street, leaving behind flames of fire from the rockets. Passers-by were horrified by what they saw and shied away in all directions. Werner himself only had time to see his brainchild. Fortunately, no passers-by were injured, and the police, who first arrested the young inventor, soon released him, advising the Minister of Agriculture to keep his son under house arrest.
Thanks to the wealth and nobility of his father, young Werner received an excellent education. Parents sent Brown to a prestigious Berlin gymnasium, where teaching was in French. Werner quickly and easily mastered French. Apparently, he inherited the ability for languages from his mother. However, with mathematics and physics, things were not very good. Baron von Braun did not hide his dissatisfaction with his son's poor grades in these subjects and assigned Werner to Hermann Leitz's boarding school, located near Weimar. This educational institution was famous for its advanced teaching methods, almost friendly relations between students and teachers and a very rich curriculum.
While in this unusual educational institution, Werner often looked through popular science astronomy journals. In one of them, he saw an advertisement for a new book called "The Path to the Planets." (Wernher von Braun, recalling this, seems to have made an inaccuracy. In fact, this book was called "The Way to Space Travel" and was published in 1929.) Its author was a compatriot of von Braun - a certain Hermann Obert. Drawings depicting a giant rocket and the moon were placed under the ad copy. Werner commissioned this book, hoping that in it he will find a lot of interesting information about travel in interplanetary space. When the book was finally in his hands, he eagerly began to turn page after page, and what he saw, he was simply shocked. The pages of the book were riddled with complex mathematical calculations and filled with many tables with numbers. Werner realized that without a serious study of mathematics and physics, he would never understand how to conquer space. And he plunged headlong into the study of these disciplines. As a result, he began to receive excellent grades in physics and mathematics and successfully passed his final exams.
In the spring of 1930, Werner became a student at the Ecole Polytechnique in Charlottenburg. In the late 1920s, all over Germany, and in its capital in particular, many young people were fascinated by the idea of creating rockets for space travel. Rocket enthusiasts formed the Space Travel Society, which they believed would help them fulfill their dream. In Berlin, Werner became an active member of this society. There he met the young writer Willie Lei. Lei later became the first author of the history of German rocketry. In one of his books, he rather accurately described Werner von Braun when he was still at the Ecole Polytechnique. “Outwardly, he was a fine example of the type of people who were later called the“ Aryan Nordic ”type by the Nazis. He had blue eyes and blonde hair, and one of my relatives discovered an amazing similarity between Wernher von Braun and the outstanding English writer Oscar Wilde, or rather the famous portrait of the latter by Lord Alfred Douglas. Werner von Braun's manners were impeccable and were apparently the result of a strict family upbringing. "
Willie Leigh knew everyone in Germany who was seriously interested in rocketry. It was he who introduced Werner to the patriarch of German rocketry, Hermann Obert, the author of the book that made such a strong impression on von Braun in his last year at boarding school. Obert in those years was in Berlin, where he was going to test the rocket engine he designed. Werner was apparently introduced to Obert by phone, and von Braun took this opportunity to get closer to realizing his dream.
"I am still studying at the Ecole Polytechnique," Werner said to Obert modestly, "and I cannot offer you anything but my free time and enthusiasm, but can I be of any use to you?"
Obert received money for the implementation of his ideas and for testing from his like-minded people, adding his savings to these funds, and therefore he also decided not to miss this opportunity. An enthusiastic assistant, of course, would be useful to him. “Okay, come and see me now,” said Obert and from that day became von Braun's first teacher in rocket science.
Hermann Obert was born in 1894 in Transylvania, in a remote corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following in his father's footsteps, he first studied medicine at the University of Munich, but the First World War interrupted his studies and he went with a field hospital to the front lines. After what Herman had to see at the front, he lost interest in medicine forever. In addition, with the end of the war, Transylvania passed to Romania, Germany's enemy in this war, and Obert automatically turned into an enemy, of course not for German culture or science, but for Germany as a whole. Nevertheless, he returned to continue his studies in physics and mathematics. Obert chose theoretical research on rockets as vehicles for space travel as the topic of his doctoral dissertation. This topic fascinated him in early childhood. At the University of Heidelberg, he failed to defend his dissertation, and, most likely, the reason for this was not only a lack of imagination among university professors, but also the fallacy of some of the conclusions in Obert's dissertation.
Obert, it would seem, should have been very upset not having achieved the desired recognition in German scientific circles, but he did not give up his ideas. At his own expense, he published a dissertation in the form of a book entitled "A Rocket in Interplanetary Space". This small book became surprisingly popular, and soon Obert had a whole group of students who were ready to create rockets according to the design of their teacher. These people formed the backbone of the "Space Travel Society". The attention that Obert finally achieved outside the scientific community inspired him, and in 1929 a revised and expanded edition of his book was published, entitled "The Path to Space Travel." It was this book that caught the attention of the young von Braun.
In the same 1929, Obert asked for leave at his own expense from the director of a secondary school in which he taught physics and mathematics, and went to Berlin, where he found himself a very strange company in the person of one of the most famous film producers in Germany - Fritz Lang. He created the film "Girl on the Moon" about a trip to the moon in a rocket. To make his film more convincing, Lang hired Obert and Willie Leigh as technical consultants. In addition, the director persuaded Obert to design a rocket and launch it on October 15, 1929, the day of the film's premiere. Girl on the Moon was a huge success, but Obert never completed the rocket. He was a brilliant theorist, but he clearly lacked practical knowledge to create a spacecraft.
In 1930, Obert returned to Berlin to try and test a rocket with a liquid propellant engine. Obert's assistants in this matter were several members of the Space Travel Society, including Werner von Braun. During these years, Obert was hatching grandiose plans that were born during his work with Lang. He designed a simple rocket engine and named his brainchild Kegeldueze (Conical Jet). Together with his assistants, Obert made great strides and tested the new engine at the proving ground. The trials were funded by the Institute of Chemistry and Technology (this institution did what the National Bureau of Standards did in the United States). When the tests were completed, Obert received a certificate attesting to the quality and efficiency of his engine - the first liquid fuel engine built in Germany. However, despite the success achieved, Obert soon again found himself without financial support. He returned to Romania, where he continued teaching at the school. The designer provided further improvement of his brainchild to his students from the Society for Space Travel, and above all he hoped for the talent of Wernher von Braun.
Young enthusiasts of rocketry were approaching the realization of their dreams already under the leadership of the military pilot and participant of the First World War, engineer Rudolf Nebel. Nebel rented a former military warehouse located in the vicinity of Berlin, north of the capital. This warehouse was supposed to become the base for the design and testing of rockets created by members of the Space Travel Society. At the end of September 1930, rocket enthusiasts moved into this building and reinforced the signboard "Berlin Rocket Launch Center" above the entrance.
Werner von Braun, Rudolph Nebel and Willie Lei, along with other members of the community, constructed some of the first prototype missiles and tested them at the site next to the new production building. These rockets, assembled from scrap metal, were simple in design and far from perfect. Only in a few cases was it possible to ensure that the missiles flew along the intended trajectory. The missile tests attracted the attention not only of Berliners, local fire departments and the press, but also of German army officials.
For the German army, the Reichswehr, missiles were of great interest also because the Versailles Peace Treaty, which limited the number of German weapons, did not mention missiles at all. Moreover, missiles would become more effective weapons than conventional artillery.
In the spring of 1932, several plainclothes army officers visited an amateur rocket launcher to see what the young rocket designers had accomplished. Visitors were amazed at what they saw and even more so that all the work on the creation of the missiles was carried out with little or no financial support. Army officials were disappointed only by the frivolous attitude of the designers to the documentation concerning both the new developments themselves and the missile tests. In order to make sure that amateur enthusiasts are able to make a combat missile, representatives of the Reichswehr promised to pay the designers 1360 marks if they can make a prototype of a combat missile and launch it from one of the artillery ranges. In addition, in the agreement between the army and the "Society" it was said that in the event of a successful launch of a combat missile, the Reichswehr promises to provide financial support to the "Society" in further developments.
In the early morning of August 1932, Wernher von Braun, Rudolf Nebel and their colleague Klaus Riedel set out with their hopes and a new rocket to an artillery range south of Berlin. There they were met by Reichswehr captain Walter Dornberger, who was tasked with overseeing the development of missiles for the German army. The engine of the new rocket was placed in its nose, and the rear of the rocket with narrow fuel cylinders resembled a long cane. After the launch, the rocket rose to a height of about 30 m, then tilted, sharply reduced the height to ten meters and flew horizontally until it crashed into the tops of the pine trees of the nearest forest. The test of the new rocket disappointed both its designers and the Reichwehr representatives who were present at the test site. Army officials have not received a compelling basis for financial support for the developers.
Young Wernher von Braun did not accept this failure. He collected data on missile tests and developments created by members of the "Society", and went to Colonel Karl Becker, who in those years headed the department of ballistics and weapons of the Reichswehr. Becker greeted Brown rather warmly and, after listening to all the suggestions of the young designer, proposed a new deal to the development team. The army was ready to provide them with financial support in the event that they agree to continue their work in strict secrecy. However, Rudolf Nebel, the most influential of the members of the "Society", began to object to this condition. He clearly did not want their creative team to turn into a purely army unit.
Upon learning of this, Becker offered von Braun another option: to continue his scientific work at the University of Berlin, at the expense of funds allocated by the Reichswehr, before receiving a bachelor's degree. Becker himself was a professor at this university. In this case, the topic of von Braun's scientific work was to be the study of liquid-propellant rocket engines. Becker's belief in the capabilities and abilities of Wernher von Braun was further reinforced by the fact that Werner's father, Baron von Braun, was not only a minister in the Weimar Republic, but also a friend of Becker.
Experimental research on the topic of his doctoral dissertation was carried out by Werner von Braun in the military research laboratory in Kummersdorf-West. Werner reported on the results of these studies on October 1, 1932. Then he was only 20 years old. After this lecture, he was immediately awarded a bachelor's degree. Shortly after this event, Wernher von Braun became close to mechanical engineer Heinrich Groinov and another rocket enthusiast - Walter Riedel, the namesake of Klaus Riedel. The troika worked under the leadership of Walter Dornberger, who had recently been promoted to colonel. Soon, Dornberger entrusted the technical management of the project to Werner von Braun, retaining only purely administrative functions.
Already in the United States, Wernher von Braun explained the reasons why he and his associates began working for the Nazis:
We needed money to carry out our experiments, and the German army was ready to help us. We decided to take this opportunity without thinking at all about the consequences of our cooperation with the Reichswehr. It should also be noted that in 1932 the idea of another world war looked absurd. The Nazis were not yet in power, and we did not have any reason to assume that what we do will be used against humanity in the future. We were all fascinated by only one thing - the exploration of outer space. And our main concern was to get as much as possible from the Golden Calf, which in those years seemed to us the German army.
Walter Dornberger was the second and perhaps the most influential of Wernher von Braun's teachers. Dornberger was a career army officer. He served in the German artillery during the First World War. Shortly before the armistice in 1918, he was captured and spent two years in a prisoner of war camp in France. After his release, he temporarily left military service to pursue bachelor's and master's degrees. After that he returned to the Reichswehr again. He was assigned to the ballistics department and assigned to oversee the development of missiles for military purposes. Colonel Dornberger was then 37 years old. This man of medium height, always clean-shaven, with neatly combed dark brown hair, was distinguished by self-confidence and righteousness, as well as decisiveness in actions and deeds. Undoubtedly, it was these qualities that helped him make a military career.
While von Braun, Dornberger and a small group of them were developing the first and rather primitive, by current estimates, rocket engines, the German political landscape underwent catastrophic changes. Political chaos and economic depression have not let Germany out of their tenacious embrace since the end of the First World War. Many Germans believed that their country needed a strong government to rally the German nation and restore Germany to its former glory. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and the Germans gained power. In March, the people of Germany also handed over control of the Reichstag to the Nazis.
For the next 12 years, according to friends and colleagues of Wernher von Braun and according to autobiographical articles, he was engaged in the design of rockets with the sole purpose of creating spaceships. Von Braun considered the creation of combat missiles only as a means of financing his space projects. From the articles of von Braun himself and the published memoirs of his friends and associates, it follows that the brilliant missile designer was completely naive in the field of politics, which interested him little. Only in the last years of World War II did von Braun find himself embroiled in the dirty political adventure of the Third Reich.
In fact, von Braun's interest in space travel and his work for the Nazis were not at all mutually exclusive. In Germany in the early 1930s, in order to fund his space projects, von Braun had no choice but to create rocket weapons. Moreover, if the Nazis supported space projects, it was only because they considered the launch of a spacecraft with a man on board another confirmation of the exceptional role of Germany in the history of mankind. That is why the Nazi authorities in Nazi Germany became a sponsor of Wernher von Braun's space programs.
All the rockets created by von Braun and Dornberger for the German army embodied the entire amount of knowledge about spacecraft and systems that was accumulated by German scientists and engineers at that time.
Combat missiles were called "aggregates" in the documents. By mid-1933, a group led by Dornberger and von Braun began work on the creation of "Aggregate-1" (or A-1). The A-1 rocket looked like an artillery shell. Its diameter did not exceed 30 cm, and its length was about one and a half meters. This rocket had a liquid fuel engine that provided a thrust force of 260 kg. The stability of the flight trajectory was ensured using a gyroscope weighing about 34 kg, placed in the nose of the vehicle. The A-1 rocket was ready for launch at the end of 1933. Literally a split second after starting the engine, the A-1 rocket turned into a ball of fire and a pile of metal. This was due to a delay in the ignition timing in the engine.
Von Braun and Dornberger decided not to tempt fate and refused to create a second A-1 rocket. Instead, they began working on a modernized version of the A-1, the A-2 missile. It had the same dimensions and engine as its predecessor, but the gyroscopic system was located not in the nose, but in the middle of the rocket body, between the tanks with fuel and liquid oxygen.
While working on the creation of the A-2, von Braun completed his doctoral dissertation and sent its manuscript to the University of Berlin. His dissertation work "Design, theoretical and experimental developments for solving the problem of creating a rocket on liquid fuel" was approved by the Academic Council of the University on July 27, 1934 and was immediately marked with the stamp "Top Secret". It was published only after the end of the war. Thus, at the age of 22, Wernher von Braun had already received his doctorate and renown in the scientific community in Germany. The scientist's talent and dedication allowed him to become a leader in the field of rocketry not only in Germany, but throughout the world.
In December 1934, von Braun and Walter Dornberger finally met the expectations of their army sponsors and successfully launched two A-2 missiles at once, named Max and Moritz. Missile tests were carried out on the islet of Borkum in the North Sea. Both missiles reached the target altitude of about 2-3 km above sea level.
In 1935, American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard was also involved in the creation and testing of liquid-propellant rockets. Goddard and von Braun were not familiar with each other's work, and therefore Goddard had to independently search for technical solutions already found by von Braun. Goddard was able to design lighter and longer missiles. The American designer launched his first rocket on May 31, 1935 at the Roswell test site, in the state of New Mexico. This rocket reached an altitude of about 3 km, surpassing von Braun's achievement.
Meanwhile, Wernher von Braun began work on the A-3 rocket. It had undeniable advantages over previous von Braun models and Goddard rockets. The A-3 rocket was much larger than its predecessors and seemed huge at that time. It had a diameter of about a meter and a length of over 8 m. Fully fueled, it weighed over 600 kg, and its engine provided a thrust force of about 1200 kg. The targeting system of this missile was also different. Previous von Braun missiles raced towards the target along a constant, pre-calculated trajectory, while the A-3 had a sophisticated guidance system that made it possible to change the trajectory during flight. This was the first guided missile.
After von Braun announced the design of the A-3 rocket, the army officials who listened to his report immediately remembered that the A-2 series missile launches were also successful, and realized that they would have to allocate millions of marks for new developments. The Luftwaffe wanted a contract with von Braun to develop jet engines for fighter aircraft. As a result, Dornberger and von Braun received DM 6 million from the Wehrmacht and DM 5 million more from the Luftwaffe for the development of missiles and jet engines, as well as for the construction of new production buildings and a test site in a remote corner of Cape Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea.
With the receipt of funds, it remains only to draw up a work plan. The missile base at Peenemünde was to become the property of both the army and the Luftwaffe, with the latter to finance all the costs of building communications and production buildings. Walter Dornberger took over the overall project plan. He understood perfectly well that the army did not intend to finance developments that would find application in the distant future, but expects results from his people, which in the near future will provide Germany with a tactical superiority over the enemy. Dornberger drew up the specification and characteristics of a new type of combat missile. The new rocket was supposed to have enough power to deliver a ton of explosives at a distance of at least three hundred kilometers. It should fall less than a kilometer from its intended target. This accuracy was twenty times higher than the accuracy of long-range artillery guns. The dimensions of the new rocket must be such that it can be transported by road, as well as by rail, and not only over an open surface, but through various tunnels.
Werner von Braun, together with Walter Riedel, one of the most talented and experienced developers, prepared sketches of the main components of the rocket. As conceived by the designers, it was supposed to have a length of about 14 m and a diameter of more than one and a half meters. Together with the stabilizers located in the tail section of the rocket, its width was supposed to be almost 5 m. The rocket would need 12 tons of liquid oxygen and fuel, and it should be lifted from the Earth's surface thanks to jet engines that create a thrust force of about 25 tons. The new rocket should develop speed of about 6000 km / h and have a range of about 300 km. The military named the new missile A-4. As for the A-3, which was also included in the development plan, this rocket was to be used to test individual systems and components that make up the A-4 design. The draft specification for the A-4 also included descriptions and drawings of the production halls, launch sites, and other structures at Cape Peenemünde.
The construction of the missile base at Peenemünde progressed significantly faster than the development of missiles. This desert peninsula is located in the northern part of Usedom Island, the westernmost of the two large islands near the mouth of the Oder, off the coast of the Baltic Sea. Due to its remoteness from the mainland, Peenemünde was the ideal location for a secret missile base. The dense forests that covered the peninsula provided an excellent camouflage for production buildings and launch sites. The army occupied the western part of the promontory, and the Luftwaffe began building its airfields in the northwest. Both parts of Peenemünde were subordinate to the General Staff and were called the "Army Experimental Station Peenemünde." The buildings intended for the headquarters were one-two-story houses with gabled roofs with a very modest set of decorative elements both outside and inside. By May 1937, the first phase of construction was completed, and soon army officers and representatives of the Luftwaffe began to move into their new apartments.
Wernher von Braun was appointed technical director of the secret facility and held this post until the base at Peenemünde was turned into a heap after the bombing of the Cape by British and American aircraft.
Until that moment, Peenemünde had been the perfect playground for this prodigy who is passionate about making rockets. Von Braun and his people created there something that the amateur-enthusiasts from "Raketodrome" could only dream of. Von Braun had his own small building at his disposal, in which he and his team could devote themselves for hours to their favorite business, which seemed to them nothing more than an exciting game.
Peenemünde provided excellent opportunities for relaxation and recuperation after long months of hard work. Werner von Braun's grandfather also loved to hunt in these places, and the ingenious rocket designer also did not deny himself this pleasure. His partner was most often Walter Dornberger. On warm days, one could plunge into the waves of the Baltic Sea. And in the evenings, after work, von Braun, with Dornberger and several of his team members, usually relaxed in the officers' club, listening to all kinds of incredible stories in the style of the stories of Baron Munchausen.
On December 4, 1937, almost three years after the successful launches of Max and Moritz, twins of the A-2 series, Wernher von Braun announced that he was ready to launch the new A-3 rocket. One of the tiny islets a dozen kilometers north of Peenemünde - the island of Greifswalder Oje - was chosen as a launching pad. The first launch was unsuccessful. The rocket took off from the launch pad and made a quarter turn around its axis. Under the pressure of a strong gusty wind, the parachute opened, which was intended to return the device to the ground safe and sound. But then the movement of the rocket got out of control and it fell into the sea. Werner von Braun and Walter Dornberger analyzed this situation for several days and came to the conclusion that it was caused by the premature deployment of the parachute. They removed the parachute from the next missile and tried again. The second rocket repeated the trick of the first. The third rocket has already been launched not only without a parachute, but also on a calm day. She reached an altitude of about 800 m, and then, losing control, fell into the sea.
It was clear that some part of the design was defective. After carefully studying it, von Braun and his assistants realized that the guidance system, which some large specialist from the naval forces had developed on the basis of a gyrocompass, was to blame. Von Braun decided to create a new model instead of the A-3 - the A-5, which would differ from the A-3 only in a more advanced guidance system.
In early 1939, the Luftwaffe realized that its participation in the army's missile program was a rather expensive pleasure, and decided to go the other way. The Luftwaffe retained only its own airfields, while the rest of the real estate and missile problems were ceded to the army. What came under the control of the army began to be called rather modestly - "Army unit of Peenemünde".
March 23, 1939 was a truly great day for Wernher von Braun. On this day he turned 27 years old, and for the first time he personally met with the Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer demanded that he be informed about the implementation of the rocket program. The meeting took place, but not on the peninsula, but in Kummersdorf-West, just 30 km from the Reich Chancellery, located in the center of Berlin. And before that, Walter Dornberger, as an officer in charge of the development of liquid-fueled missiles, showed Hitler and his accompanying persons samples of rocket engines that provide a thrust force of 250 and 800 kg. And then Werner von Braun told the Fuehrer in detail about the device and missile control system. As a visual aid, he used a cutaway image of the A-3 rocket. After this short lecture, the Fuehrer was shown the A-5 rocket from the inside. For this purpose, the rocket body and stabilizers were previously removed. In conclusion, Dornberger told Hitler about the A-4 rocket, which should become Germany's most powerful weapon.
After getting acquainted with the missiles, a dinner party took place, at the end of which the Fuhrer exclaimed: "All this is great!"
Walter Dornberger took Hitler's commentary as an expression of pride in the achievements of German rocket scientists, but perhaps Dornberger was too optimistic to think so. It is possible that the Fuehrer could not admire the rockets at all, but those vegetarian dishes that he was treated to during lunch.
Dornberger later expressed his surprise that Hitler was completely unimpressed by the roaring sounds of rocket engines, complex missile designs and the grandiose plans of the developers of new German weapons. But Hitler's skepticism was well-founded. Dornberger and von Braun spent tens of millions of marks, but since the launch of the A-2 missiles in December 1934, they have not carried out a single successful launch of the devices they created.
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland by order of the Fuehrer. The Second World War began. Within a few weeks, Germany and its temporary ally, the USSR, divided the territory of Poland among themselves. England and France declared war on Germany, and soon other countries were drawn into the hostilities.
Dornberger, von Braun and their team continued their work in October 1939. A year after the unsuccessful launch of the A-3, the A-5 rocket was ready. Its dimensions did not differ from the dimensions of the A-3: length - about 6 m, diameter - about 80 cm. The A-5 rocket had the same engine with a thrust force of about 130 kg, which ran on liquid fuel. However, the improvement of the guidance system and some other components led to an increase in its weight to 800 kg.
Three prototypes of the A-5 rocket were launched from Greifswalder Oye. All three launches were successful. The missiles reached a given trajectory after 45 seconds, and then made a soft landing by parachutes at sea, where they were picked up by warships.
After these impressive successes, nothing could stop the German army, Wernher von Braun and his team. Now they had a design on the basis of which it was possible to start creating the A-4 rocket, and the Third Reich received the planned world war. Now it seemed that funding for the creation of new missiles was secured.
However, Hitler thought differently. Germany's military successes were obvious, and the Fuehrer believed that conventional weapons would be enough to successfully end the war. In February 1940, he froze all those projects for the development of new types of weapons, the implementation of which took more than a year. The German army continued to develop missiles at Cape Peenemünde, using funds from other, less promising projects. Over 4 thousand highly qualified workers and engineers took part in this program.
The A-4 rocket was ready for a test launch only two and a half years later. The first guided missile of this type was launched from the 7th Peenemünde launch site on June 13, 1942. Having risen to a height of several thousand meters, she quickly emerged from the thick clouds and fell to the ground not far from the launch site.
The second A-4 rocket was launched on August 16. She climbed majestically, but there her guidance system failed. Having overcome the sound barrier, the rocket moved for 45 seconds along a given trajectory at an altitude of over 10 thousand meters, and then exploded in the air. All hopes were now pinned on the launch of the third prototype.
The A-4 rocket, about 15 m long and weighing 14 tons, stood in the center of Launch Pad 7, at the northernmost tip of Peenemünde. Walter Dornberger, his subordinates in military uniforms, Wernher von Braun with his engineers were located several kilometers to the south. They saw how their brainchild rose above the tops of the pines, and only a few seconds later they heard the roar of the engines. For 4.5 seconds, the rocket moved vertically upward, then turned slightly to the east. After 22 seconds, she broke the sound barrier and continued to accelerate. Moving at an angle of 50 degrees to the Earth's surface, it gained altitude, leaving a white plume of condensed exhaust gases in the sky. After 58 seconds of flight, the access of fuel to the engine was blocked by radio. The rocket at that moment was moving at a speed of over 6000 km / h along a given trajectory to a target located in the Baltic Sea, 200 km from Peenemünde. 5 minutes after the launch, the rocket fell into the sea, leaving a bright green spot on the surface of the water, since it was filled with dye.
Werner von Braun and Walter Dornberger drove to the launch site, and a few hours later an impromptu banquet was held there. The celebration was also attended by Hermann Obert - von Braun's first teacher in the field of rocketry. Obert managed to return to Germany again, but, unfortunately, only to make sure that his former student and protege surpassed him. Nevertheless, Obert received his share of congratulations and flattering statements - statements about the person who inspired von Braun to great achievements.
In the evening, an official celebration took place. Walter Dornberger addressed his subordinates with the following words: “We invaded space with this rocket of ours and were the first to use it as a bridge between two points on Earth. We have proven that rockets can be used to move through space. Now, in addition to land, sea and air, we have another medium for movement - an endless empty space - an environment in which we can travel from continent to continent ... But while the war continues, our most important task is to quickly create a rocket like a new one type of weapon ".
For the creation and successful tests of the A-4 rocket, Wernher von Braun was awarded the Iron Cross of the 1st degree.
A few years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, von Braun wrote: “The completion of the history of the A-4 rocket was no longer as grandiose as the beginning of this outstanding project. Moreover, the ending turned out to be tragic not only for those who directed the launch of these missiles aimed at London and Antwerp, but also for their developers. "
A month and a half after the successful launch of the first A-4 missile, the course of the war began to change clearly not in Germany's favor. In November 1942, the German 6th Army faced stubborn Soviet resistance at Stalingrad. On November 19, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive, which by the end of January 1943 changed the course of the war. Of the 330 thousand soldiers and officers of the 6th Army, only 100 thousand survived. All of them were captured. Only about 5 thousand German soldiers and officers returned home from the Siberian camps. After such huge losses, when many German families lost their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands, the people of Germany began to realize that the Third Reich would not last long and the whole of Germany would soon undergo massive bombing by British and American aircraft, followed by the invasion of enemy troops into the country.
Unfortunately, the triumph that ended the flight of the A-4 on October 3, 1942, did not lead to new successes in the field of German rocketry. This type of rocket proved to be not a very reliable spacecraft, and the A-4s often crashed on their return to Earth. Von Braun and his colleagues tried to correct these shortcomings. Walter Dornberger regularly pounded the doorsteps of the Berlin Chanceries in the hopes of increasing funding to complete the project. Finally, he managed to draw the attention of government officials to this problem. In May 1943, Albert Speer, who held an important position in the Ministry of Armaments and War Industry, together with his advisers witnessed the successful launch of the A-4 at Cape Peenemünde. Two days after this event, Speer informed Dornberger that he had been awarded the rank of Major General. During the tests of the A-4 at Peenemünde, SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler was also present. It was he who suggested that Hitler increase the priority of the development of rocket weapons.
Each successive defeat of the German army caused Hitler a fit of rage mixed with despair. Now he had no choice but to become an enthusiast of those projects that, on his order, were frozen in the early 1940s, when he believed that the war was practically won. On July 7, 1943, Major General Dornberger was ordered to inform the Fuehrer about the state of development of the A-4 missiles. Together with von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff, Dornberger went to East Prussia, to the town of Rastenburg, in the vicinity of which Hitler's headquarters, called the "Wolf's Lair", was located.
This trio with Peenemünde met with the Fuehrer in the assembly hall of the Wolf's Lair. The meeting with Hitler was attended by Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the German General Staff, General Walter Buhle, the head of the armaments department of the German army, and Albert Speer, along with his adjutants and secretaries. They all took seats in the front row, and Wernher von Braun took the stage. After the lights were turned off in the hall, a film was shown showing the successful launch of the A-4 rocket nine months ago. The film was accompanied by commentary by von Braun. Many details related to the production and launch of the rocket were shown - the building at the 7th test site, in which the rocket was assembled, transported to the launch site, static engine testing, a mobile launch unit, rocket installation at the launch site and refueling ... If the Fuehrer and those accompanying him were not impressed by the film, Brown and his colleagues were ready to repeat the launch of the A-4 into the Baltic skies.
Albert Speer described von Braun's performance and the impression made on the Fuhrer in the following words: “Von Braun spoke confidently, without a shadow of timidity. There was absolutely no note of youthful enthusiasm in his voice. He stated his theory so clearly and clearly that from that day on, Hitler became an admirer of the brilliant scientist. "
When von Braun finished his presentation of the new type of weapon, Walter Dornberger gave some explanations about its production. The discussion between the listeners and the speakers boiled down to finding out whether the A-4 should be launched from mobile units or from a stationary underground bunker. Dornberger liked the first option more, but for some reason the Fuehrer preferred the second. It is clear that Hitler won this dispute, and he immediately ordered the construction of underground missile silos. And Walter Dornberger consoled himself with the fact that he received what he had long dreamed of - a high military rank.
Following this historic meeting, Wernher von Braun was also awarded for services to the Third Reich. At the prompting of Dornberger, Albert Speer turned to the Fuehrer with a proposal to confer on von Braun the title of titular professor. This title was not academic and was awarded as an honorary title by the head of state. Hitler, still impressed by his new weapon, approved this idea. He signed the necessary papers, and Speer only had to conduct a formal awards ceremony.
After the missilemen were under the auspices of the Fuhrer, the intelligence services of the countries at war with Germany, especially British intelligence, immediately became interested in them. Western intelligence officers managed to get very alarming information that in Germany, at a military base off the coast of the Baltic, testing of a new type of weapon has begun. Aerial photography from the British Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft revealed that the secret base was hidden in the woods at Cape Peenemünde. Several military missiles were also photographed, including the one that was soon used to strike London. On the night of 18-19 August, the British Air Force headquarters dispatched 497 Stirlings, Halifaxes and Lancasters to this location. This operation was authorized by Winston Churchill himself. As a result of the massive bombing, it was planned to destroy not only the missile base itself, but also all the scientists, engineers and workers who worked on the creation of the missiles. And, of course, one of the main targets was the missiles themselves, which threatened England in the first place. The air raid lasted 45 minutes, and after all the bombs were dropped, the cape was completely engulfed in fire. However, the British pilots failed to complete the combat mission to the end. Most of the German scientists and engineers managed to hide in the bomb shelters. Of the 4,000 German citizens living on Peenemünde, including family members of scientists, designers and other specialists, 178 people died. Also killed were 557 foreign workers, mainly Russians and Poles, whom the German authorities used mainly for auxiliary work. These unfortunates were locked in their barracks in a special camp in the southern part of the Peenemünde base.
The British failed to carry out aimed bombing, and the destruction was not so strong. Churchill and the British Air Force were extremely upset. Quite a few V-2 missiles in the assembly process did not receive any serious damage. Nevertheless, the raids could be repeated, and Hitler ordered the transfer of missile production to a secret underground plant in the Harz mountains in central Germany. Hitler commissioned Himmler to organize the tunneling and construction of production buildings. Soon, the Reichsfuehrer SS and chief of the Gestapo involved the Wehrmacht in this business, and entrusted Walter Dornberger to control the missile development program.
Werner von Braun talked about how the Reichsführer hurried him. In February 1944, Himmler called von Braun and invited him to the SS headquarters in Hochfeld, East Prussia. Brown recalls the trepidation with which he entered Himmler's office. There he saw "a genius of evil with a charming appearance and excellent manners, but ready to cut the throat of anyone who dares to stand in his way." These words of von Braun characterize the Reichsfuehrer quite accurately. Himmler was indeed extremely polite to von Braun and resembled a humble country teacher, but this is precisely what caused the scientist a subconscious feeling of fear. “I hope you understand how important it is for us to have the A-4 missile,” Himmler said. - The entire German people hope that this wonderful weapon will allow the Wehrmacht to protect our country from its enemies ... As for you personally, I can imagine how tired you are of the army staff rats with their bureaucratic squiggles. Why don't you go directly under my authority? You undoubtedly know that no one has such an influence on the Fuhrer as I do, and therefore my support will be more effective for you than the efforts of all the generals of the Wehrmacht put together. "
“Herr Reichsfuehrer,” Brown replied immediately, “I do not see a better boss for me than General Walter Dornberger. The fact that we do not always meet the deadlines is due more to technical problems than to bureaucratic red tape. The A-4 rocket is like a flower, and in order for it to bloom, you need sunlight, a correctly calculated dose of fertilizer and a conscientious gardener. The remedy that you suggest is similar to liquid fresh manure. Such fertilization, of course, is very effective, but it may well destroy our delicate plant. "
Reading von Braun's notes about his meeting with Himmler, one is amazed at the insolence of the outstanding scientist when talking with the Nazi leader, whose name alone struck terror into the hearts of millions of people on our planet. Many years after von Braun's account of this meeting, facts became known that raised doubts about the veracity of von Braun's account (see Chapter 3). Von Braun did not tell anyone about this audience then, not even his friend and boss Walter Dornberger.
Three weeks later, von Braun was arrested by Gestapo agents. He and several of his subordinates, including his younger brother Magnus, were accused of high treason. The Gestapo said that von Braun and his men put the dream of space travel above the important work of creating a V-2 rocket for the Reich. The arrested were held in dungeons in Stettin for two weeks, until the intervention of Walter Dornberger and the intercession of Albert Speer opened the way for them to freedom.
Von Braun unwittingly found himself embroiled in a showdown between the Wehrmacht and the SS, and after his arrest, his reputation with the Nazis was shaken. Even after his liberation, many of the high-ranking Nazis believed that space exploration was a higher priority for him than serving the cause of National Socialism. But after the end of the war, the case when the Gestapo declared von Braun an enemy of the Third Reich became his lifeline.
There is a lot of mystery about the arrest of von Braun and his colleagues. The Gestapo executioners usually did not stand on ceremony with the arrested, and even with the generals of the Wehrmacht. Usually they were tortured not only in order to extract confessions, but also in order to obtain information about the real subversive activities in the Third Reich. However, Brown and his men were treated very well in prison, according to the Gestapo reports. There was no word in these reports that the arrests of Wehrmacht officers or civil servants working for Peenemünde were the result of denunciations written by von Braun or any of his colleagues. From all this, we can conclude that von Braun and his comrades were pawns in a cunning game that Himmler played against the generals of the Wehrmacht, and he, of course, was interested in protecting von Braun and his people and using them on occasion. once.
Von Braun's strong ties with the German army and with his boss and teacher Walter Dornberger were severed after the action carried out by the Wehrmacht Lieutenant Colonel Count Klaus von Staufenberg. This German officer was serving in Tunisia, and there his car hit a mine. Staufenberg lost his left eye, right arm, and two fingers on his left hand. After being discharged from the hospital, he was appointed chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the reserve army. Count von Staufenberg had long been disillusioned with Nazi politics and believed that Hitler was to blame for all the failures of the Wehrmacht. According to his post, he regularly appeared at the headquarters of the Fuhrer "Wolf's Lair", where he reported on the replenishment of the armies that fought on the eastern front. On July 20, 1944, von Staufenberg entered the hall where Hitler was holding a conference. Soon the lieutenant colonel excused himself and left, leaving his leather briefcase on the floor by the table. A few seconds later, there was a violent explosion. As a result, one of the participants in the meeting died, and several were seriously injured, three more died from their wounds already in the hospital. Adolf Hitler, the main target of the assassination attempt, escaped with burns, several superficial wounds and bruises. In addition, the Fuhrer's membranes burst and his right hand was temporarily paralyzed.
Staufenberg's accomplices in Berlin, also Wehrmacht officers, could have tried to seize power, but at the decisive moment they lost their nerves. By the end of that day, SS officers arrested all the conspirators, including Staufenberg, and executed them in the prison yard.
The chief of Staufenberg, General Fromm, swore that he knew nothing about the impending assassination attempt, but no one believed him, and he was also arrested. Hitler entrusted Heinrich Himmler with the duties of Fromm. As a result, the Reichsfuehrer SS led the reserve army and the armaments department, and with this department the rocket weapons development program, which was led by Walter Dornberger and Werner von Braun.
Before Himmler could deal with his new responsibilities, the Wehrmacht set out to grab a tidbit. To this end, army officials decided to take over the military enterprises in Peenemünde, since they were not the property of the army, but belonged to the state. On 1 August 1944, the Peenemünde plants were renamed Electromechanische Werke (EKW). Major General Walter Dornberger felt that he was losing control of the rocket development program, to which he had given 12 years of his life. Therefore, he became temporarily the head of an industrial company. Dornberger was a reasonable man and understood that he could not cope alone. He needed reliable people who would know a lot about technology, management and production. Soon one of the most famous employees of the EKW, Wernher von Braun, became the de facto head of all work related to the creation of missiles.
Himmler was unable to subordinate the factories and research laboratories of Peenemünde to his department, but the Mittelwerk plant, which produced the V-2 missiles, remained under his command.
In early September 1944, Himmler managed to remove the Wehrmacht generals from the leadership of the V-2 missile tests, appointing his deputy SS Lieutenant General Hans Kammler as the chief director of this action. This general was completely unsuitable for this role, since he was an architect by profession and became famous in the Third Reich for the design and construction of buildings for the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz) concentration camp. Kammler did more than build. It was he who developed the project, according to which the Warsaw ghetto was razed to the ground after the uprising of its inhabitants. Hans Kammler supervised the construction of the Mittelwerk underground plant, which produced the V-2 rockets. So, in September 1944, Kammler oversaw the first successful rocket launch towards London. A little later, the firepower of the A-4 missiles fell not only on England, but also on other countries of Western Europe.
The day after the shelling of London, one of the central newspapers of the Reich came out with the following headline on the front page: "Weapons of Vengeance II in Action against London." With the filing of the propaganda department of Paul Goebbels, from that day on, the A-4 rocket received a new name - V-2 (from the abbreviated German word vergelfungswaffe) or "V-2". It is under this name that this ballistic missile went down in history.
A few years later, when von Braun was already living in the United States, but had not yet received American citizenship, he spoke about his reaction to the use of the V-2 rocket. “The newcomers to Peenemünde could not understand our dissatisfaction and pessimism. After a series of defeats of the Wehrmacht, they exclaimed: "You should be happy and proud of your brainchild" V-2 "". This is the only weapon that our opponents cannot stop. This is a success. Rockets smash London every day. "
"This is a success," we said, but not so enthusiastically and added quite quietly: "But we are shelling our own planet."
Werner von Braun continued to lead the design department at Peenemünde, and one day the day came for testing a new missile - the A-9. This rocket, in order to give it a significance no less than the A-4 rocket, later became known as A-4b. The new rocket had the same hull as the A-4, but with a greater span of the stabilizers on the tail. These stabilizers were supposed to allow the rocket to approach the target not from above, but moving horizontally above the Earth's surface. The new device had a double flight range and a flight time of 17 minutes. On January 24, 1945, the A-9 (A-4b) rocket launched from Peenemünde reached a speed of 4320 km / h. And although she did not manage to land safely, it was in fact the first, albeit unmanned, supersonic aircraft.
The next step in rocketry was to be the A-10 rocket. As conceived by von Braun, it was supposed to be a carrier rocket for the A-9 rocket. After reaching a speed of 4320 km / h, the A-9 had to separate from the A-10 and, continuing the flight on its own, reach a speed of 10,080 km / h, and then return and land softly. In 40 minutes of flight, the two-stage A-9 / A-10 rocket could carry 454 kg of cargo over a distance of 4000 km, equal to the distance from Northern Europe to New York. However, the A-10 rocket remained only on the blueprints, and its production never began.
In von Braun's head, designs of more powerful rockets were already being born - the A-11 and A-12, which could deliver the A-9 and even the thirty-ton A-10 into low-earth orbit. But in the winter of 1944-45, all of Germany was already in ruins, and these new structures remained dreams. Moreover, the A-4 missiles could have been destroyed, and together with those who created them.
By the end of January 1945, the rumble of cannonade from the shots of Soviet guns, located 80 km from the cape, was clearly audible at Peenemünde. Everyone who worked at the missile base already knew that this territory would soon be taken over by the enemy. Werner von Braun urgently called a confidential meeting, to which he invited only a few of his deputies, those whom he trusted as himself. He was going to solve one single question - what to do in connection with the approach of the enemy? The opinion of those present was unanimous. Von Braun and his men will not wait for Soviet troops to capture Peenemünde, but must go to southern Germany and offer their experience and knowledge to the Americans. Why Americans? Because the United States was the only country from the coalition powers that had sufficient funds and the desire to continue work on the development of missiles. The decision to surrender to the Americans was, of course, kept secret by von Braun and the other participants in this secret meeting, since such a decision was an open betrayal of the Third Reich.
On the last day of January, von Braun gathered the chiefs of sectors and departments and his deputies in his office and announced that he had just received an order from SS Lieutenant General Hans Kammler to urgently evacuate personnel and equipment used in the most important projects on south of Germany. Von Braun stressed that this is an order from above, and not just a proposal. He later admitted that there were several orders from various departments, and they contradicted each other. Von Braun chose the one that most closely matched his plans.
He and all his subordinates prepared remarkably quickly for the departure from Peenemünde. Three thousand people, unique equipment and tons of documentation - drawings, test results and other invaluable documents - moved to the south of the country by rail, on trucks and even on barges. By early March 1945, the evacuation from Peenemünde was almost complete. Von Braun settled in the town of Bleicherode, and Walter Dornberger, who assisted in the evacuation, chose the town of Bad Sachza in the center of Germany for his office. Both of these towns were quite close to the Mittelwerk underground plant, where the first V-2 rockets were assembled a year ago.
Von Braun did not have the opportunity to continue his developments, just as there was no opportunity for Nazi Germany to escape defeat. Von Braun's main task now was to keep his team alive.
One night in mid-March, von Braun drove to Berlin for a meeting at the Ministry of Armaments. He hoped to solicit funds to build a new research center. The chances of getting any money from the government were slim. Von Braun's only trump card was that he was able to maintain a team of high-class professionals. However, he did not make it to Berlin. His chauffeur dozed off at the wheel and the car fell into a ditch. Miraculously surviving von Braun crawled out from under the wreckage of a car. His left arm was broken in two places, and his shoulder was in great pain. For the next several months, he walked around with a cast on his arm and was on the verge of physical and nervous exhaustion, making desperate attempts to maintain the integrity of his team.
Talking about this period later to American reporters, von Braun remarked: “We were then at the mercy of a local tyrant who was the most cruel person I have ever met. It was one of the SS generals named Kammler. "
These words of von Braun sounded more than strange to those who knew that he had worked side by side with Kammler for a year and a half and knew the character of this man perfectly. Kammler was in charge of testing the V-1 cruise missiles and Von Braun's favorite creation, the V-2 ballistic missile. And it was Kammler's order to move south that von Braun chose to use as a guide to action.
By early April 1945, American tanks were already 19 km from Bleicherode, and American troops were trying to capture the entire area around the Mittelwerk. Kammler ordered von Braun to gather 400 of the most talented scientists and engineers and go even further south - to the town of Oberammergau, at the foot of the Bavarian Alps. Walter Dornberger and his small group received the same order. What prompted Kammler to issue these orders is difficult to say. It might seem that in the depths of his soul he still hoped that in the impregnable alpine redoubts it would be possible to continue the war with the Americans. But, most likely, Kammler was already thinking about negotiating with the Americans and selling them German missile technology and specialists in exchange for his life. A similar plan was hatched by von Braun. It is not known if he knew about Kammler's secret plans, but he had to obey the order anyway, since he had the rank of SS Sturmbannführer.
On April 11, General Kammler invited Werner von Braun to his place and announced that he was forced to leave Oberammergau on duty, while von Braun and his people would remain under the protection of the deputy generals. The next day, Kammler did disappear, and apart from a short message he sent to Himmler's office, no one else heard of him. This person has disappeared forever.
In the days that followed, von Braun's men dispersed to the villages that surrounded Oberammergau. They continued to think about how to improve the missiles they had created, and waited for the demise of the Third Reich. On the slopes of the Alps, they felt relatively safe. There were no air raids and no SS men with their interrogations and purges. Von Braun was finally able to get serious about treating his injured shoulder and broken arm.
On May 1, 1945, German radio broke the news. Fuhrer Adolf Hitler died heroically during the battle with the enemy at his headquarters in Berlin. The next day, von Braun and six members of his team, including his younger brother Magnus von Braun and teacher Walter Dornberger, crossed the Alps into Austria, where they surrendered to the Americans.
In the early days, von Braun and the rest of the prisoners were thinking hard about what they should say to the Americans. The seven surrendered members of the von Braun team, along with von Braun himself, were held by the Americans in Garmisch. The captured rocket men only told what they were allowed to tell by von Braun, General Dornberger and Dornberger's chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Akster. They didn’t have to give it all, as they would then be sent back to destroyed Germany. They wanted to bargain so that the deal would be very profitable for them. This restraint was noticed by United States intelligence officers and made them dislike those being interrogated. Under the leadership of Colonel Holger Toftoy, American soldiers began to assemble parts of the V-2 rocket in the Mittelwerk. From the selected parts, it was possible to assemble a hundred ballistic missiles. In addition, the Americans found 14 tons of documentation, which von Braun once ordered to be hidden in a safe place. And, finally, the people who created these missiles got to the Americans. With missile parts, documentation, and German scientists and engineers, the United States could launch its own missile program.
Wernher von Braun will remember these exciting days for a lifetime: “The American intelligence officers interrogated me for several weeks. Finally Colonel Holger Toftoy asked me the most outspoken question: "Do you think you can become a citizen of the United States?"
“I said I would try,” von Braun recalled many years later.
Richard Porter, who was investigating von Braun's past after the war, was asked many years later who had the idea to bring von Braun and his men to the United States, and he replied that it was most likely von Braun's own idea.
Strange, but for some reason Wernher von Braun was not bothered much with questions like:
Why did you change your country so quickly after the war?
Did you use the Nazis to get things done, or were you really a staunch Nazi?
Did you know about the concentration camps and what happened in them?
Why were you and your people able to move to the United States so quickly when concentration camp survivors have been waiting for years?
All these issues can be combined into one global one. What did Wernher von Braun keep silent about in his authorized biography and in the articles in which he talked about his life?
Notes:
Landrat is a local government body in Germany. - Approx. ed.
Werner von Braun and John F. Kennedy, 1962
Messages about the imminent visit to Earth of representatives of alien civilizations naturally evoke the most contradictory emotions in people. From the unbridled belief that this will soon indeed happen, to the complete denial of the possibility of this kind of development of events.
On the other hand, representatives of traditional science have repeatedly expressed their opinion that, they say, it would be foolish to assume that the terrestrial civilization is the only one of its kind even in our galaxy. And this inevitably leads to the conclusion that contact between earthlings and aliens is not such a fantastic assumption.
This kind of reasoning gave rise to a completely predictable consequence. Numerous researchers have been searching for more than a decade in the direction that contacts with aliens have happened before, and moreover, repeatedly, that the governments of most countries of the world have absolutely clear information about this, but for a number of reasons prefer to hide it from their citizens. And, moreover, there are suspicions that they can and will certainly play the "alien card" in their own interests, which are very far from the interests of ordinary people.
From this point of view, the revelations of Werner von Braun, which became known to the general public only in 2001, almost 25 years after his death in 1977, are extremely important.
Recall that Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun, who was born on March 23, 1912 in the Prussian town of Wierzitz (now a small Polish town) and died on June 16, 1977 in the city of Alexandria (Virginia, USA), is considered one from the founders of modern rocketry, the creator of the first ballistic missiles in history. In the United States, he is referred to as the "father" of the American space program.
Von Braun and his role in the US lunar program will be discussed in more detail later. In the meantime, we recall that von Braun, taken from Germany to the United States in May 1945, with his colleagues at the Peenemünde rocket center, among other things, was the very person who carried out the launch of the first American artificial Earth satellite into low-Earth orbit on January 31, 1958, partially thereby reducing the gap between the United States and the USSR in space exploration.
Shortly after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created on July 29, 1958, Wernher von Braun (since 1960) became a member of NASA and director of the NASA Space Flight Center. It was von Braun who was the direct leader of the development of the Saturn series launch vehicles and the Apollo series spacecraft, which were destined to play an important role in the landing of American astronauts on the lunar surface.
On May 26, 1972, von Braun retired from NASA. The official version of his departure is that his views and the views of the NASA leadership on the further development of US space programs (including the further exploration of the Moon) turned out to be almost diametrically opposed. When von Braun had been developing a mission to Mars three years earlier, planning to implement it already in the 1980s, NASA officials began to cut funding for the Apollo program. And the US population, which in the first half of the 1950s provided von Braun with tremendous support, was not particularly enthusiastic about the implementation of further space programs: after all, the Americans had already visited the moon, what more could it seem to wish for?
On July 1, 1972, Wernher von Braun took over as Vice President for Engineering and Development of Fairchild Industries, an aerospace company headquartered in Germantown, Maryland. ... Von Braun worked at Fairchild Industries for four and a half years: on December 31, 1976, he was forced to leave his job for health reasons and died six months later.
And now - a small digression.
In 2009, the Eksmo publishing house published the works of the American researcher Joseph P. Farrell translated into Russian, which were published in the United States in the first half of the 2000s. The first of these books was titled Giza Death Star (The Paleophysics of the Great Pyramid and the Military Complex at Giza. Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2002). Farrell's second book was titled The Giza Death Star Deployed. The Physics and Engineering of the Great Pyramid. Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton, Illinois, 2003.
Farrell, from an alternative point of view, examines the purpose of the ancient pyramids near the city of Giza, located in upper Egypt on the left bank of the Nile. This complex includes the pyramids-tombs of the pharaohs Cheops, Khafren, Mikerin, next to which the famous Great Sphinx is located.
So, Joseph Farrell believes that the Egyptian pyramids were part of a grandiose military complex for the creation of beam weapons of colossal destructive power. Moreover, the military complex on the Giza plateau was already used in antiquity, which led to catastrophic consequences for the solar system. In these three works, Farrell writes that the principles of paleophysics were used in the construction of the "Giza war machine". These principles make it possible even today to create weapons of extraordinary power, which are capable of destroying an entire planet. Farrell believes that experimental samples of such weapons were already created and tested in combat conditions at the end of the 20th century. In general, everyone who is interested in this issue is highly recommended to read Farrell's research.
We are interested in the next moment.
In The War Machine of Giza (Part 2, Chapter IV, subtitle Richard Hoagland), Farrell refers to the book Disclosure : Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History "), which was released in the United States in early 2001.
This 560-page work is a collection of written testimonies and stories from people who have seen UFOs or participated in certain secret projects. One such witness was Dr. Carol Sue Rosin, who worked with Werner von Braun at Fairchild Industries from 1974-1977.
About her communication with von Braun, Carol Rosin, in particular, said: “The most interesting idea for me was the thought that von Braun constantly emphasized during all four years during which I had the opportunity to work with him. He talked about the strategy that was used to manipulate society and those who make decisions - this is a method of intimidation, creating an image of the enemy.
According to this strategy, Wernher von Braun assured me, the Russians should be considered the main enemy.
Terrorists were named next, which was soon confirmed. [He] said that there will be a third enemy against which we will create weapons placed in space.
This enemy is asteroids. He chuckled the first time he spoke of it. It is to defend against asteroids that we will build space-based weapons.
And the funniest of all were those whom he called aliens. This is the last of the dangers. During the four years that we knew each other, he kept pulling out this last card. “And remember, Carol, the final card is aliens. We're going to build space-based weapons to defend against aliens, and it's all a lie. "
The last card is hostile alien creatures. The persistence with which he repeated this prompted me to conclude that he knows something that he is afraid to talk about. He was afraid to talk about it. He did not give me any details. I'm not sure if in 1974 I would have understood these details or even believed him. "
Stephen Greer's Reveal and Carol Rosin's Testimony
Stephen Greer's project "Exposure" is a very large-scale event, well known in the United States and many countries around the world.
On May 9, 2001, an action, unique in many ways, took place at the US National Press Center in Washington. On this day, more than 20 representatives of the US armed forces, intelligence agencies, representatives of business structures spoke in front of numerous journalists, among whom were correspondents of the BBC, CNN, CNN Worldwide, Voice of America, as well as journalists from foreign media , which presented evidence not only of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms, but also of their repeated visits to Earth. The participants in the press conference also talked about the active development of alternative energy sources and engines operating on completely different principles.
Stephen Greer himself is a doctor of medicine, a member of one of the most prestigious medical associations in the United States - "Alpha Omega Alpha". For many years he worked in his specialty. In 1992 he acted as the founders of the "Exposure" project.
Stephen Greer ...
... and his famous book "Exposure"
He is also a member of the international community, which is researching the possibility of obtaining energy from alternative sources (in particular, “zero point” energy), which would allow, in principle, to abandon the use of the Earth's mineral resources for energy generation.
Former colleague of Werner von Braun - Carol Rosin - also took part in this press conference. She was born on March 29, 1944. Rosin met von Braun in early 1974 and became the first woman to take up the position of corporate manager at Fairchild Industries.
Former colleague of Werner von Braun - Carol Rosin
After the death of von Braun, Rosin fought for many years to ensure that, first at the level of the US government (and then the entire world community), a legislative ban was introduced on the placement of any weapons systems in outer space. In 1983, Carol Rosin founded the Institute for Security and Cooperation in Outer Space (ISCOS), a non-profit organization, which she heads as president to this day. It is noteworthy that the leaders of this organization at one time included science fiction writers Arthur Clarke, Isaac Asimov, as well as astronaut Edgar Mitchell.
Together with her associates, Carol Rosin has prepared a bill prohibiting the use of outer space for military purposes. And on December 8, 2003, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich (born 10/08/1946) introduced it to the US Congress.
By the way, during the 2003-2004 US presidential campaign, Kucinich nominated himself for the US Democratic Party (lost the primaries to John Kerry). The second attempt was made by Kucinich in the 2007-2008 election campaign: he was supported by a wide variety of activists, including the owner and publisher of the magazine "Hustler" Larry Flint. But in the end, during the primaries, Barack Obama was nominated for the post of President of the United States from the Democratic Party.
In 2004, Carol Rosin was interviewed by the well-known US investigative journalist Linda Moulton Howe, some of whose most interesting passages are given below.
What exactly did Wernher von Braun tell you about the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations?
He not once or twice repeated the idea that there are about a hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone. And to think that intelligent life exists only on Earth is at least naive. Talking about aliens, about "aliens", he often turned into reasoning about what he called the "formula of war." It must be remembered that when I started working at Fairchild Industries, the USA and the USSR were in a cold war.
Von Braun put it this way: “Let's start with what you see every day. And you see a continuous series of military conflicts and more and more enemies who are assigned to this role in order to keep the wars constantly going on. The purpose of these wars, ultimately, is aimed at establishing domination in outer space, for which it is imperative to control the minds of people. Therefore, they, our government structures, will never tell people the truth about who we are and who surrounds us in the Universe. "
For this, Dr. Brown said, including for the constant pumping of the Pentagon's budget, a "list of enemies" was drawn up, designed to maintain the regime of war in the world. This list, as Dr. Brown told me back in 1974, is as follows: the Soviet Union, international terrorism, asteroids, aliens.
Wernher von Braun in the last years of his life: February 1970 photo
How did von Braun explain the choice of these enemies?
Recalling the time when he started working in the US military-industrial complex, von Braun noticed that there were indeed fears about the Soviet threat. But the Russians, as such, were never enemies for the United States - they made them so.
Terrorists - natives of the "Third World" countries, asteroids - when I spoke with von Braun, no one even heard about these threats (unlike today). I asked Dr. Brown: what does asteroids have to do with it? To which he replied that, of course, the matter was not in asteroids. The main task is to carry military technologies into outer space. For this, the manipulation of public consciousness will certainly be used, and a lot of arguments will be made in favor of the fact that weapons must be placed in space to protect our national interests.
Dr. Brown kept repeating that the last card to be played in this play would necessarily be hostile aliens. Von Braun constantly repeated: “None of the representatives of alien civilizations are hostile to earthlings. All talk about threats from their side is a lie! "
Is it possible to understand von Braun's words in the sense that US government circles can, together with the Russian leadership, play a spectacle about hostile aliens in order to maintain the flow of budgetary funds allocated for military purposes?
No, von Braun never said that the Russians are part of this process. He believed that the center of decision-making was located precisely in the United States. It was von Braun who gave me, if I may put it that way, the task of doing everything possible to ensure that a ban on the placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space was imposed at the legislative level.
It may seem strange to someone that von Braun has entrusted such a big and responsible job to me. But von Braun himself more than once noticed that when he and his colleagues were transported to the United States as part of the Paperclip program in 1945, an incredible number of rumors circulated about them both then and later: that they continue to be ardent Nazis, that they , in fact, criminals and stuff. It was all a complete lie.
I'll tell you more. Even among the activists of the movement for peace and disarmament, I have met people who were sincerely convinced that it was von Braun and his colleagues who initiated the Star Wars program, which began to be implemented in the early 1980s, under Ronald Reagan. Which, naturally, in no way corresponded to reality.
Von Braun and his colleagues, having arrived in the United States, really wanted to engage in precisely rocket and space research. But it so happened that the existing system of the US military-industrial complex absorbed and pulled them into itself. This system is extremely interested in maintaining a mossy, outdated view of the world around us and makes great efforts to keep people within the framework, so to speak, of the "earthly paradigm."
But von Braun and his colleagues were looking far ahead. Without much exaggeration, we can say that they were the true representatives of the space age.
Thus, the following picture is obtained: Wernher von Braun was extremely concerned about the fact that the US leadership was hiding from its citizens the truth about the existence of alien civilizations. And, moreover, it seeks to use the thesis about hostile aliens in order to increase the budgets of military structures. So?
It's not just the Pentagon. This process involves enterprises and research centers operating within the aerospace industry, laboratories, universities, institutes. In a word, everyone who has a job keeping this secret. Moreover, most people working in these sectors of the economy and science are not even aware of the existence of this secret.
On the other hand, people can be understood in a purely human way: everyone needs a job, everyone needs to support their families, feed their children, pay for their education. What will a person facing a dilemma choose: to remain silent or to speak publicly the truth, losing money, sacrificing a career, position in society?
Well, OK. And why, in this case, representatives of other states, say, China, do not speak the truth about the alien mind?
You know, for many years I myself could not understand how all this is interconnected. We can say that I was looking for the truth alone, on my own. During my work at Fairchild Industries, I was a very highly paid manager who was hired under the patronage of Wernher von Braun. But von Braun himself perceived me, first of all, as a person whose thoughts and actions are determined by his basic education. After all, I am a school teacher by education.
As for China, I can say this. I have visited China several times, and I feel that there are many people there who know the secret. But the fact is that the Chinese will never initiate any global processes. Yes, they are not indifferent to the truth, but they believe that representatives of other countries should be the first to tell the truth about alien civilizations. Well, for example, the same United States.
And how might this look like in practice? Will there be some kind of global press conference in the United States at which officials will openly declare that we are not alone in the Universe, and will present representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence to the shocked journalists?
It may sound ridiculous, but I heard something like this a few years ago when I spoke with a scientist at one of the Chinese universities. They are just expecting such a scenario. I then asked my Chinese interlocutor why, knowing the truth, they do not make it public?
He answered me in the way that, they say, we, the Chinese, are subjects of the Celestial Empire. We are in no hurry. We prefer to wait. And we will never show aggression even if, say, the United States declares our country as one of its potential enemies.
Again, if we go back to my conversations with Wernher von Braun, I want to emphasize once again how great his fears were about the placement of weapons of mass destruction in low-Earth orbit. He has repeatedly reiterated that none of those who have been declared "America's enemy" really were.
Carol, why did you start talking publicly about your conversations with Dr. von Braun so many years later?
For many years I was silent, fearing ridicule. It was not easy to remain silent, because Dr. Brown's words literally haunted me for many years. And when, in the early 2000s, I began to find out that representatives of the intelligence communities and special services, representatives of the army, the military-industrial complex and science began to speak openly on these topics, I made the decision that now I can no longer remain silent.
In this case, why are representatives of alien intelligence not making attempts to prohibit the United States (or any other country) from militarizing outer space? They do not interfere because it is dangerous for them?
Not at all. They will never interfere in our purely earthly affairs. But as soon as an attempt is made to place weapons in space or, say, to throw toxic waste into outer space, they will not allow this to be done.
I cannot provide direct evidence, but I have information that at one time they blocked an attempt to deploy weapons of mass destruction in space.
It must be understood that Earth weapons have not yet been deployed in space. But there is no guarantee that it will not appear there tomorrow. Judge for yourself. The bill on the peaceful uses of outer space, developed by me and my like-minded people, was submitted to Congress by Dennis Kusinich (working number of the bill N. R. 3615), not only has not been adopted, but has not even been brought up for discussion.
I believe that the current composition of the US Congress and the current administration of the White House will not impose a ban on the deployment of weapons in space. I hope that the new President of the United States, the new people in the United States Congress will make this crucial decision. It would be nice if a similar ban was adopted at the international level - this, of course, could push the US leadership to take a step forward.
But if that doesn't happen, Carol? What is the worst-case scenario from your point of view?
I believe that this will be the complete destruction of humanity. And this is a very real danger. Moreover, this serious danger comes not only from the possibility of placing weapons of mass destruction in space, but also from natural disasters, man-made disasters that can occur at any time.
China has recently announced that it is going to launch its program of exploration and development of the moon. It is known that the US leadership is very concerned about the fact that China is an increasingly growing economic and political power on Earth. Will it not turn out that in 5-6 years conflicts can occur not only on the Earth, but also on the Moon?
Of course, if the current trends continue, territorial conflicts on the moon are quite a possible reality. That is why the non-proliferation of weapons in space is one of the most important tasks. True, the Chinese leadership has already stated that outer space should not be militarized. And I repeated this more than once over the course of several decades. The leadership of Russia acted in the same vein. And China and Russia, along with the United States, are among the three leading space powers on Earth. Two against one - this inspires some hope.
That is why one should take very seriously the words of Wernher von Braun that if aliens are included in the list of US enemies, then the use of space weapons against them will be justified?
Space-based weapons against the enemies of the United States (whether aliens or some of the world states) may well be used by the US leadership as long as citizens believe in this scenario.
By the way, everything I told you about has already come true! As an example, I will cite another event that I witnessed in 1977, when I was still working at Fairchild Industries. I attended one meeting where the prospects for the 1991 Gulf War were discussed! This, by the way, was one of the main reasons that made me sharply change my attitude to work in this corporation and quit.
I looked at diagrams and graphs, heard speeches about potential enemies of the United States, about the use of high-precision weapons using space guidance systems. Neither I nor most of the people in the meeting room at that time had even heard of any of this.
Here's proof that wars are planned long before they even start. My husband can easily confirm my words: when there were three months left before the start of the "Gulf War" (which, as we remember, started on January 17, 1991, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm), I began to closely monitor the news on television. My husband, seeing me literally chained to the TV screen, once laughed and said: “Carol, you are crazy! What is the "Gulf War"? Nobody even talks about the war! "
And then, at a meeting in 1977, it was said that the "war in the gulf" would definitely happen, since a huge amount of money had already been invested in the development of space guidance systems and more advanced weapons systems. And this whole complex will definitely need to be tested in real combat mode.
The development of more and more new weapons systems is one of the main driving forces behind the creation of a "list of enemies" and forecasting military conflicts. War is extremely necessary in order to test new weapons in combat conditions, put them into service and decide on the budget for the development of new weapons systems.
If you keep track of how weapons systems are developed and improved, you will surely notice an obvious trend. In each of the major military conflicts, more and more new, more and more sophisticated, more and more murderous weapons are necessarily used. Now the next step is the deployment of weapons in outer space.
It is possible to place only three geostationary satellites at an altitude of 22,300 kilometers above the Earth's surface. And with their help to control the entire surface of the globe. With just three satellites! Now imagine what they can do if the latest military technology is launched into outer space!
Carol, did Dr. von Braun mention in conversations with you about 2012, which, there is such a point of view, will be the year of the "end of the world"?
No, he never mentioned this date, but very often he repeated the idea that the time factor is extremely important. In his understanding, it is the time required to finally prevent the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. He said the following: “Before corporate interests are properly funded, before lethal weapons systems are deployed in space, that is, where they are as dangerous as they are near us, we must achieve complete and final a ban on the deployment of space-based weapons on planet Earth. "
Age of myths
It is believed that the XX century was the period in the history of mankind when the systems of mass communication developed at unprecedented, truly leaps and bounds. Telegraph, telephone, radio, cinema, television, cellular communications, the Internet - even this short list is quite impressive.
It would seem that such a rapid development of telecommunication systems opens up truly gigantic opportunities for humanity in general and for an individual taken to become familiar with the scientific, cultural, historical heritage, for the exchange of information for the purpose of education, enlightenment, and the discovery of more and more secrets of the universe.
And what do we see in the harsh reality? And we see that it was the 20th century that became the era when myth-making acquired hypertrophied proportions. This has a very direct bearing on the topic of the mysteries of the lunar programs of the USSR and the USA, and indeed of the exploration of outer space. Reading other texts, listening to other speeches, it is impossible to understand: either a person is deliberately engaged in disinformation (but why?), Or out of stupidity, or because of an incomprehensible haste, he is too free to operate with facts, engaging in frank substitution of concepts.
Here are just two, but very illustrative examples.
In the public consciousness of modern Russia in recent years, the idea that the scientific and technological developments of US scientists were much ahead of the developments of their colleagues from the USSR has been taking root more and more deeply. That, they say, gave the Americans the opportunity, by concentrating their will and reason into a fist, to get ahead of the Soviet Union not only in the exploration of the Moon, but also in the landing of the first man on the Earth's satellite in July 1969.
Here is a very recent example of this kind.
On April 12, 2011, on the air of the Echo of Moscow radio station, as part of the No Fools program, Sergei Korzun's interview with cosmonaut Musa Manarov sounded. During the conversation, speaking about how well the first manned flight into space was prepared, how much it was connected with politics, the host of the broadcast, in particular, remarked: breakthrough solutions. Recently, journalists recalled that the first Earth satellite in 1957 was launched a day earlier than the Americans, precisely because the Americans announced this launch in advance. "
Here are the facts. The first artificial Earth satellite was launched in the USSR on October 4, 1957. The first US artificial satellite was launched on January 31, 1958. The launch of the Soviet satellite was undoubtedly of political significance. His callsigns could be heard by every radio amateur anywhere in the world: after all, back in June 1957, detailed recommendations on the reception of signals from artificial satellites from near-earth orbit were published in advance on the pages of the Radio magazine.
Of course, this dealt a colossal blow to the image of the United States: after all, the American mass media in those years constantly exaggerated the topic of the technical backwardness of the USSR. The United Press then bitterly remarked: “90 percent of the talk about artificial earth satellites was in the United States. As it turned out, 100 percent of the case fell on Russia. "
And here is a similar example of disinformation of foreign origin.
On July 21, 2009, all progressive mankind celebrated the 40th anniversary of the American astronauts' exit to the lunar surface. In 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft with Neil Armstrong (born 08/05/1930), Michael Collins (born 10/31/1930) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin ; born 20.01.1930) landed on the moon. The 40th anniversary of the lunar landing was widely celebrated around the world. Naturally, the representatives of the "civilized countries" did not do without equivocations towards Russia.
On July 21, the French TV channel "TF-1" broadcast a reportage by Christophe Gascard, dedicated to the memorable date. The text of the report turned out to be so funny that it makes sense to quote it almost entirely with a few comments. This is, in particular, what the American-centric Frenchman said.
“There is one country in the world where the 40th anniversary of the American landing on the moon has not become the news of the day. This is Russia, the former Soviet Union, the country that has lost this insane competition: who will be the first to set foot on the lunar surface.
Forty years have passed since the first steps on the moon - this event did not delight the Russians. The proof of this is that there was no storyline on this topic in the daily news, only a message at the end of the episode. The same is true in the print press - in none of the newspapers the moon landing took the first page […].
It is worth noting that 40 years ago, the landing was completely silent. The first steps on the moon have not been shown live on television. Only a few days later, propaganda briefly reported this feat.
The feat of the United States was, therefore, the defeat of the USSR: the Cold War was in full swing. After the launch of the first satellite in 1957, the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, on this day forty years ago, the Soviet Union lost the space battle. On July 20, 1969, the USSR had to admit defeat to its American rival.
Today, forty years later, Russia wants to take revenge - to conquer Mars. Scientific research is already underway in Moscow. The ultimate goal is to land on the "red planet" by 2030. And this time the Russians definitely don't want to be second. "
New space programs for the exploration of Mars launched by the United States, the European Space Agency, and Russia are a topic for a separate discussion. As for the 40th anniversary of the American landing on the moon ...
As the thoughtful researchers of the American "lunar odyssey" have already noticed more than once, when the trio of US astronauts reached the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, in the European part of the USSR the time was approaching midnight. On the same day, and not a few days later, in a news release on the Central Television of the Soviet Union, an announcer read a message that at 23 hours 17 minutes Moscow time, the lunar cabin of the American spacecraft Apollo-11 made a successful landing on the Moon in the area of the Sea of Tranquility.
And when the American astronauts stepped onto the lunar surface (it was already July 21), the clock was 2 hours 57 minutes GMT. In Moscow at that moment it was about six in the morning. What kind of live television could we talk about?
This is how myths are born. But here are the questions: why the scientific program of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the exploration of the moon, so successfully launched, was frozen for 30 long years by the mid-1970s? Indeed, in the period from 1978 to 1980, NASA planned to build a manned station in a circumlunar orbit, and no later than 1983 - to deploy the first permanent base station on the Moon itself. Why were these plans frozen?
Why was the Soviet project to build a base on the Moon "Zvezda", developed under the leadership of Academician Vladimir Barmin, was shelved in 1972? Why exactly in the same year, 1972, the last manned flight of NASA astronauts to the Moon ("Apollo-17") took place?
At the official level, the termination of the implementation of scientific lunar programs, both in the USSR and in the USA, was most often explained by their high cost. But was this the only reason? I think not.
To be continued...
Scientific awards:
| U.S. National Science Medal After the First World War, Wierzitz was transferred to Poland, and his family, like many other German families, left for Germany. The von Brauns settled in Berlin, where 12-year-old Werner, inspired by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel's speed records in rocket-powered cars, caused great confusion on a crowded street by blowing up a toy car to which he attached many firecrackers. The little inventor was taken to the police and kept there until his father came to the police station for him. Von Braun was an amateur musician, received an appropriate education, could play the works of Bach and Beethoven from memory. He learned to play the violin and piano from an early age and initially dreamed of becoming a composer. He took lessons from Paul Hindemith, the famous German composer. Several of von Braun's youthful writings have survived, and they all resemble those of Hindemith. In 1944, shortly before the Nazis began bombing England with the V-2, Goddard confirmed that von Braun had taken advantage of his work. The prototype V-2 flew to Sweden and crashed there. Some parts of the rocket were shipped to the United States, to a laboratory in Annapolis, where Goddard conducted research for the US Navy. Apparently, Goddard investigated the wreckage of a rocket, which on June 13, 1944, as a result of a technical error of personnel, went on the wrong course and crashed near the Swedish town of Beckebu. The Swedish government exchanged the fragments of an unknown missile to the British for Spitfire fighters. Only a fraction of the debris got into Annapolis. Goddard recognized the parts of the rocket that he had invented and concluded that the fruit of his labors had been turned into a weapon. Since the space travel society VFR ceased operations in 1933, there have been no rocket associations in Germany, and the new Nazi regime has banned civilian rocket science. Only the military was allowed to build missiles, and a huge missile center was built for their needs (German. Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemunde ) in the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany, on the Baltic Sea. This site was chosen in part on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who remembered that her father loved to hunt ducks in the area. Dornberger became military director of the training ground, and Brown became technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde center developed liquid-fueled rocket engines and take-off jet boosters for aircraft. They also developed the A-4 long-range ballistic missile and the Wasserfall supersonic anti-aircraft missile. After the war, explaining why he became a member of the NSDAP, Brown wrote:
Brown's claim is often disputed because in 1940 the Waffen-SS did not yet show any interest in the work carried out at Peenemünde. And it is also controversial assertion that allegedly persons similar to von Braun were pressured to join the NSDAP, leaving alone membership in the SS. When a photo of Brown was shown standing behind Himmler in SS uniform, Brown allegedly replied that he was wearing the uniform only for the occasion, but in 2002 a former SS officer in Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun regularly appeared at official events in the SS form; it should be noted that this was a requirement. Initially, he was awarded the rank of Untersturmführer, subsequently Himmler promoted him three times in rank, most recently in June 1943 to SS Sturmbannführer. Brown claimed it was an automatic promotion, which he received in the mail every year. By then, the British and Soviet intelligence services were aware of the missile program and the development team at Peenemünde. On the night of 17-18 August 1943, British bomber aviation conducted Operation Hydra. 596 aircraft headed for Peenemünde and dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on the missile center. Nevertheless, both the center itself and the main group of developers survived. But the raid killed engine designer Walter Thiel and chief engineer Walther, delaying the German missile program. The first combat A-4, renamed V-2 for propaganda purposes (Vergeltungswaffe 2 - "Retaliation Weapon 2"), was launched across the UK on September 7, 1944, just 21 months after the project was officially adopted. Helmut Walter's experiments with hydrogen peroxide rockets, carried out at the same time, led to the creation of light and simple Walter jet engines, convenient for installation on an aircraft. Helmut Walter's firm in Kiel was also commissioned by the Reich Air Ministry to create a rocket engine for the He 112. Two different rocket engines were also tested at Neuhardenberg: a von Braun engine running on ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen and a Walter engine running on hydrogen peroxide and calcium permanganate as a catalyst. In the von Braun engine, the jet stream was created as a result of direct combustion of fuel, and in the Walter engine, a chemical reaction was used in which a hot steam was generated. Both engines provided thrust and high speed. Subsequent flights in the He 112 took place on the Walter engine. It was more reliable, easier to control and posed less danger to both the pilot and the aircraft. Use of slave laborOn August 15, 1944, Brown wrote a letter to Albin Sawatzki, who was in charge of V-2 production, in which he agreed to personally select workers from the Buchenwald concentration camp who, he allegedly admitted in an interview 25 years later, were in a "terrible state." In the book "Wernher von Braun: Knight of the Space" (eng. Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space ) Brown repeatedly claims that he was aware of the workers' conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. His friend quotes von Braun's words on his visit to Mittelwerk:
When Brown's teammate Konrad Dannenberg was asked in an interview with The Huntsville Times if von Braun could protest the dire conditions of the forced laborers, he replied, "If he did, I think he could have been shot on the spot." Others accused von Braun of participating in or allowing such inhuman treatment. Guy Morand, a French Resistance member who was a prisoner in the Dora concentration camp, testified in 1995 that after an apparent attempt to sabotage:
Another French prisoner, Robert Cazabonne, claimed to have witnessed von Braun stand and watch the prisoners being hanged from hoist chains. Brown himself stated that he "never saw any ill-treatment or murder" and only "there were rumors ... that some of the prisoners were hanged in underground galleries." Arrest and release under the NazisAccording to the French historian André Selye, who passed through the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Himmler received von Braun in February 1944 at his Hochwald headquarters in East Prussia. To strengthen his position in the hierarchy of Nazi power, Heinrich Himmler conspired to take control of all German weapons programs with the help of Kammler, including the development of the V-2 at Peenemünde. Therefore, Himmler advised Brown to work more closely with Kammler on V-2 problems. However, according to von Braun himself, he replied that the problems with the V-2 are purely technical and he is confident that he will solve them with the help of Dornberger. Apparently, von Braun from October 1943 was under the supervision of the SD. One day a report was received about how he and his colleagues Klaus Riedel and Helmut Grettrup in the evening at the engineer's house expressed regret that they were not working on the spacecraft and they all believed that the war was not going well. This was regarded as "defeatist sentiment." These statements were reported by a young female dentist who was also an SS agent. Together with Himmler's false accusations about von Braun's sympathy for the Communists and his alleged attempts to sabotage the V-2 program, and considering that Brown had a pilot's diploma and regularly flew on a government-provided plane and thus could have escaped to England - all this was the reason for the arrest of von Braun by the Gestapo. Not expecting anything bad, Brown was arrested on March 14 or 15, 1944 and was thrown into the Gestapo prison in Stettin. He spent two weeks there, not knowing what he was accused of. Only with the help of the Abwehr in Berlin was Dornberger able to secure von Braun's conditional release, and Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Industry, persuaded Hitler to reinstate Brown so that the V-2 program could continue. Speer, quoting in his memoirs "Führerprotokoll" (Hitler's meeting minutes) of May 13, 1944, writes that Hitler said at the end of the conversation: "As for B., I guarantee you that he will be exempted from persecution until you will need it, in spite of the general difficulties that may follow. " Surrender to the AmericansIn March, while on a business trip, Brown broke his left arm and shoulder due to the fact that his chauffeur fell asleep at the wheel. The fracture was complicated, but Brown insisted that he be put in a plaster cast so that he could no longer stay in the hospital. The designer underestimated the injury, the bone began to heal incorrectly, a month later he had to go to the hospital again, where his arm was broken again and a new bandage was applied. In April, the Allied troops penetrated deep enough into Germany. Kammler ordered the scientific team to board the train and travel to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. Here they were under the close protection of the SS, which was ordered to eliminate all missilemen if they were threatened with hitting the enemy. However, von Braun was able to convince SS Major Kummer to disperse the group to nearby villages so as not to become an easy target for American bombers. On May 2, 1945, spotting an American soldier from the 44th Infantry Division, Werner's brother and fellow rocket engineer Magnus caught up with him on his bicycle and told him in broken English: “My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender. " After his capture, Brown told the press:
High-ranking officials in the United States were well aware of how valuable the booty had fallen into their hands: the name of von Braun topped the Black List, the codename for a list of German scientists and engineers among those whom American military experts would like to interrogate as soon as possible. On July 19, 1945, two days before the planned transfer of territory to the Soviet occupation zone, Major Robert B. Staver, Jet Propulsion Chief, US Army Artillery Corps London, and Lt. Col. R.L. Williams imprisoned von Braun and heads of its departments in a jeep and taken from Garmisch to Munich. Then the group was airlifted to Nordhausen, and the next day - 60 km south-west, to the town of Witzenhausen, located in the American zone of occupation. Von Braun lingered briefly at the Dustbin Interrogation Center. Dustbin, "Trash bin"), where representatives of the elite of the Third Reich in the field of economics, science and technology were interrogated by the British and American intelligence services. Initially, he was recruited to work in the United States under the Operation Hopelessness program (eng. Operation overcast), later known as Operation Paperclip. Career in the USAUS ArmyPost-war timeMemoryLinks
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). His father, Magnus von Braun (1878-1972), was the Minister of Food and Agriculture in the government of the Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmi von Quistorp (1886-1959), had both lineages of ancestry going back to royal families. Werner had a younger brother who was also named Magnus von Braun. For confirmation, the mother gave the future rocket engineer a telescope, which gave him an impetus to his passion for astronomy.
After the First World War, Wierzitz was transferred to Poland, and his family, like many other German families, left for Germany. The von Brauns settled in Berlin, where 12-year-old Werner, inspired by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel's speed records in rocket-powered cars, caused great confusion on a crowded street by blowing up a toy car to which he attached many firecrackers. The little inventor was taken to the police and kept there until his father came to the police station for him.
Von Braun was an amateur musician, received an appropriate education, could play the works of Bach and Beethoven from memory. He learned to play the violin and piano from an early age and initially dreamed of becoming a composer. He took lessons from Paul Hindemith, the famous German composer. Several of von Braun's youthful writings have survived, and they all resemble those of Hindemith.
In 1930 he began working on liquid-fueled rockets in Germany. In 1932 he was admitted to the Dornberger military missile research group. In 1932-1933, at a training ground near Kummersdorf, he launched several missiles at an altitude of 2000-2500 meters.
Werner von Braun was working on his dissertation when Hitler and the NSDAP came to power in 1933. Rocketry almost immediately became an important issue on the agenda. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger, who actually oversaw the development of missiles in the Reichswehr, arranged for Brown to be awarded a research grant from the artillery department. Since then, Brown has worked alongside the existing Kummersdorf Dornberger Test Site for solid-propellant rockets. He was awarded a Ph.D. in physics (rocket science) on July 25, 1934 from the University of Berlin for his work entitled "On Experiments on Combustion," and was curated by the German physicist Erich Schumann. But this was only an open part of his work, a complete dissertation, dated April 16, 1934, entitled "Constructive, theoretical and experimental approaches to the problem of creating a rocket on liquid fuel." It was classified at the request of the army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two missiles, which reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km.
At that time, the Germans were extremely interested in the development of the American rocket physicist Robert Goddard. Until 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly to discuss technical issues. Werner von Braun used Goddard's schemes published in various magazines and combined them in the construction of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets. The A-4 rocket is better known as the V-2. In 1963, Brown, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said about Goddard's work: “His rockets ... by today's standards may seem very primitive, but they left a noticeable mark in development and already had many of the elements that are used in the most modern rockets and spaceships. ".
Participants in Operation Paperclip to evacuate German scientists and designers from the defeated Third Reich to the United States. Wernher von Braun 7th from right in 1st row.
In 1944, shortly before the Nazis began bombing England with the V-2, Goddard confirmed that von Braun had taken advantage of his work. The prototype V-2 flew to Sweden and crashed there. Some parts of the rocket were shipped to the United States, to a laboratory in Annapolis, where Goddard conducted research for the US Navy. Apparently, Goddard investigated the wreckage of a rocket, which on June 13, 1944, as a result of a technical error of personnel, went on the wrong course and crashed near the Swedish town of Beckebu. The Swedish government exchanged the fragments of an unknown missile to the British for Spitfire fighters. Only a fraction of the debris got into Annapolis. Goddard recognized the parts of the rocket that he had invented and concluded that the fruit of his labors had been turned into a weapon.
Since the space travel society VFR ceased operations in 1933, there have been no rocket associations in Germany, and the new Nazi regime has banned civilian rocket science. Only the military was allowed to build missiles, and a huge missile center was built for their needs (German. Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemunde) in the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany, on the Baltic Sea. This site was chosen in part on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who remembered that her father loved to hunt ducks in the area. Dornberger became military director of the training ground, and Brown became technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde center developed liquid-fueled rocket engines and take-off jet boosters for aircraft. They also developed the A-4 long-range ballistic missile and the Wasserfall supersonic anti-aircraft missile.
“I was officially asked to join the National Socialist Party. At that time (1937) I was already the technical director of the military missile center in Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would mean that I had to give up my life's work. So I decided to join. My membership in the party did not mean for me participation in any political activity ... In the spring of 1940 SS Standartenfuehrer Müller came to me in Peenemünde and informed me that SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler had sent him with an order to convince me to join the SS. I immediately called my military commander ... Major General W. Dornberger. He answered me that ... if I want to continue our joint work, then I have no choice but to agree. "
This assertion of Brown is disputed by some biographers because in 1940 the Waffen-SS did not yet show any interest in the work carried out at Peenemünde. It is also disputed that people with von Braun's position were pushed to join the NSDAP and the SS. Commenting on a photo of him posing in an SS uniform behind Himmler, Brown said that he was wearing the uniform only for the occasion. However, in 2002, Ernst Kütbach, a former SS officer in Peenemünde, told the BBC that von Braun regularly appeared at official events in SS uniform. Initially, von Braun received the rank of Untersturmführer, subsequently Himmler promoted him three times, most recently in June 1943 to SS Sturmbannführer. Brown stated that this was an automatic promotion, which he received in the mail every year.
The first combat A-4, renamed V-2 for propaganda purposes (Vergeltungswaffe 2 - "Retaliation Weapon 2"), was launched across the UK on September 7, 1944, just 21 months after the project was officially adopted.
Helmut Walter's experiments with hydrogen peroxide rockets, carried out at the same time, led to the creation of light and simple Walter jet engines, convenient for installation on an aircraft. Helmut Walter's firm in Kiel was also commissioned by the Reich Air Ministry to create a rocket engine for the He 112. Two different rocket engines were also tested at Neuhardenberg: a von Braun engine running on ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen and a Walter engine running on hydrogen peroxide and calcium permanganate as a catalyst. In the von Braun engine, the jet stream was created as a result of direct combustion of fuel, and in the Walter engine, a chemical reaction was used in which a hot steam was generated. Both engines provided thrust and high speed. Subsequent flights in the He 112 took place on the Walter engine. It was more reliable, easier to control and posed less danger to both the pilot and the aircraft.
On August 15, 1944, Brown wrote a letter to Albin Sawatzki, who was in charge of V-2 production, in which he agreed to personally select workers from the Buchenwald concentration camp who, he allegedly admitted in an interview 25 years later, were in a "terrible state."
In the book "Wernher von Braun: Knight of the Space" (eng. Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space) Brown repeatedly claims that he was aware of the workers' conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. His friend quotes von Braun's words on his visit to Mittelwerk:
It was creepy. My first impulse was to talk to one of the SS guards, to which I heard a harsh reply that I should go about my business or I risk being in the same striped prison uniform! ... I realized that any attempt to refer to the principles of humanity would be completely useless.
When Brown's teammate Konrad Dannenberg was asked in an interview with The Huntsville Times if von Braun could protest against the abysmal conditions of the forced laborers, he replied, "If he did, I think he could have been shot on the spot."
Others accused von Braun of participating in or allowing such inhuman treatment. Guy Morand, a French Resistance member who was a prisoner in the Dora concentration camp, testified in 1995 that after an apparent attempt to sabotage:
Without even listening to my explanations, (von Braun) ordered Meister to give me 25 punches ... Then, deciding that the punches were not strong enough, he ordered me to be whipped more brutally ... von Braun ordered me to transfer that I deserve the worst that in fact I deserve to be hanged ... I believe that his cruelty, which I personally fell victim to, was an eloquent testament to his Nazi fanaticism.
Biddle, Wayne. Dark side of the moon(W.W. Norton, 2009) pp. 124-125.
Another French prisoner, Robert Cazabonne, claimed to have witnessed von Braun stand and watch the prisoners being hanged from hoist chains. Brown himself stated that he "never saw any ill-treatment or murder" and only "there were rumors ... that some of the prisoners were hanged in underground galleries."
According to the French historian André Selye, who passed through the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Himmler received von Braun in February 1944 at his Hochwald headquarters in East Prussia. To strengthen his position in the hierarchy of Nazi power, Heinrich Himmler conspired to, with the help of Kammler, take control of all German weapons programs, including the development of the V-2 at Peenemünde. Therefore, Himmler advised Brown to work more closely with Kammler on V-2 problems. However, according to von Braun himself, he replied that the problems with the V-2 are purely technical and he is confident that he will solve them with the help of Dornberger.
Apparently, von Braun from October 1943 was under the supervision of the SD. One day a report was received about how he and his colleagues Klaus Riedel and Helmut Grettrup in the evening at the engineer's house expressed regret that they were not working on the spacecraft and they all believed that the war was not going well. This was regarded as "defeatist sentiment." These statements were reported by a young female dentist who was also an SS agent. Together with Himmler's false accusations about von Braun's sympathy for the Communists and his alleged attempts to sabotage the V-2 program, and considering that Brown had a pilot's diploma and regularly flew on a government-provided plane and thus could have escaped to England - all this was the reason for the arrest of von Braun by the Gestapo.
Not expecting anything bad, Brown was arrested on March 14 or 15, 1944 and was thrown into the Gestapo prison in Stettin. He spent two weeks there, not knowing what he was accused of. Only with the help of the Abwehr in Berlin was Dornberger able to secure von Braun's conditional release, and Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Industry, persuaded Hitler to reinstate Brown so that the V-2 program could continue. Speer, quoting in his memoirs "Führerprotokoll" (Hitler's meeting minutes) of May 13, 1944, writes that Hitler said at the end of the conversation: "As for B., I guarantee you that he will be exempted from persecution until you will need it, in spite of the general difficulties that may follow. "
W. von Braun after surrender to the Allies in May 1945. Left - Dornberger.
In March, while on a business trip, Brown broke his left arm and shoulder due to the fact that his chauffeur fell asleep at the wheel. The fracture was complicated, but Brown insisted that he be put in a plaster cast so that he could no longer stay in the hospital. The designer underestimated the injury, the bone began to heal incorrectly, a month later he had to go to the hospital again, where his arm was broken again and the bandage was applied again.
In April, the Allied troops penetrated deep enough into Germany. Kammler ordered the scientific team to board the train and travel to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. Here they were under the close protection of the SS, which was ordered to eliminate all missilemen if they were threatened with hitting the enemy. However, von Braun was able to convince SS Major Kummer to disperse the group to nearby villages so as not to become an easy target for American bombers.
On May 2, 1945, spotting an American soldier from the 44th Infantry Division, Werner's brother and fellow rocket engineer Magnus caught up with him on his bicycle and told him in broken English: “My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender. " After his capture, Brown told the press:
“We know that we have created a new means of warfare and now the moral choice - which nation, which victorious people we want to entrust our offspring - is more acute for us than ever before. We want the world not to get caught up in a conflict like the one Germany has just gone through. We believe that only by handing over such weapons to those people who are instructed on the path by the Bible, we can be sure that the world is protected in the best way. "
High-ranking officials in the United States were well aware of the valuable booty they had: the von Braun surname topped the Black List, the codename for a list of German scientists and engineers among those whom American military experts would like to interrogate as soon as possible. On July 19, 1945, two days before the planned transfer of territory to the Soviet occupation zone, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Stever, Jet Propulsion Chief of the U.S. Army Artillery Corps' Research and Intelligence Service in London, and Lt. Col. R.L. Williams imprisoned von Braun and heads of its departments in a jeep and taken from
Physics (1934)
Werner Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun(it. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun; March 23, Virzitz, Posen province, Prussia - June 16, Alexandria, Virginia, USA) - German, and since the year - an American designer of rocket and space technology, one of the founders of modern rocketry, the creator of the first ballistic missiles, a member of the NSDAP since 1937, Sturmbannführer SS (1943-1945). In the United States, he is considered the "father" of the American space program.
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Biography
Wernher von Braun was born in Wierzitz in the Posen province of the then German Empire (now Wyrzysk in Poland). He was the second of three sons in a family that belonged to an aristocratic family, and inherited the title "freiherr" (corresponding to the baronial). His father, Magnus von Braun (1878-1972), was the Minister of Food and Agriculture in the government of the Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmi von Quistorp (1886-1959), had both lineages of ancestry going back to royal families. Werner had a younger brother who was also named Magnus von Braun. For confirmation, the mother gave the future rocket engineer a telescope, which gave him an impetus to his passion for astronomy.
After the First World War, Wierzitz was transferred to Poland, and his family, like many other German families, left for Germany. The von Brauns settled in Berlin, where 12-year-old Werner, inspired by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel's speed records in rocket-powered cars, caused great confusion on a crowded street by blowing up a toy car to which he attached many firecrackers. The little inventor was taken to the police and kept there until his father came to the police station for him.
Von Braun was an amateur musician, received an appropriate education, could play the works of Bach and Beethoven from memory. He learned to play the violin and piano from an early age and initially dreamed of becoming a composer. He took lessons from Paul Hindemith, the famous German composer. Several of von Braun's youthful writings have survived, and they all resemble those of Hindemith.
In 1930 he began working on liquid-fueled rockets in Germany. In 1932 he was admitted to the Dornberger military missile research group. In 1932-1933, at a training ground near Kummersdorf, he launched several missiles at an altitude of 2000-2500 meters.
Work on V-2 in Nazi Germany
Werner von Braun was working on his dissertation when Hitler and the NSDAP came to power in 1933. Rocketry almost immediately became an important issue on the agenda. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger, who actually oversaw the development of missiles in the Reichswehr, arranged for Brown to be awarded a research grant from the artillery department. Since then, Brown has worked alongside the existing Kummersdorf Dornberger Test Site for solid-propellant rockets. He was awarded a Ph.D. in physics (rocket science) on July 25, 1934 from the University of Berlin for his work entitled "On Experiments on Combustion," and was curated by the German physicist Erich Schumann. But this was only an open part of his work, a complete dissertation, dated April 16, 1934, was called "Constructive, theoretical and experimental approaches to the problem of creating a rocket on liquid fuel." It was classified at the request of the army and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two missiles, which reached heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km.
At that time, the Germans were extremely interested in the development of the American rocket physicist Robert Goddard. Until 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly to discuss technical issues. Werner von Braun used Goddard's schemes published in various magazines and combined them in the construction of the Aggregat (A) series of rockets. The A-4 rocket is better known as the V-2. In 1963, Brown, reflecting on the history of rocketry, said about Goddard's work: “His rockets ... by today's standards may seem very primitive, but they left a noticeable mark in development and already had many of the elements that are used in the most modern rockets and spaceships. ".
In 1944, shortly before the Nazis began bombing England with the V-2, Goddard confirmed that von Braun had taken advantage of his work. The prototype V-2 flew to Sweden and crashed there. Some parts of the rocket were shipped to the United States, to a laboratory in Annapolis, where Goddard conducted research for the US Navy. Apparently, Goddard investigated the wreckage of a rocket, which on June 13, 1944, as a result of a technical error of personnel, went on the wrong course and crashed near the Swedish town of Beckebu. The Swedish government exchanged the fragments of an unknown missile to the British for Spitfire fighters. Only a fraction of the debris got into Annapolis. Goddard recognized the parts of the rocket that he had invented and concluded that the fruit of his labors had been turned into a weapon.
Since the space travel society VFR ceased operations in 1933, there have been no rocket associations in Germany, and the new Nazi regime has banned civilian rocket science. Only the military was allowed to build missiles, and a huge missile center was built for their needs (German. Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemunde) in the village of Peenemünde in northern Germany, on the Baltic Sea. This site was chosen in part on the recommendation of von Braun's mother, who remembered that her father loved to hunt ducks in the area. Dornberger became military director of the training ground, and Brown became technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde center developed liquid-fueled rocket engines and take-off jet boosters for aircraft. They also developed the A-4 long-range ballistic missile and the Wasserfall supersonic anti-aircraft missile.
After the war, explaining why he became a member of the NSDAP, Brown wrote:
“I was officially asked to join the National Socialist Party. At that time (1937) I was already the technical director of the military missile center in Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would mean that I had to give up my life's work. So I decided to join. My membership in the party did not mean for me participation in any political activity ... In the spring of 1940 SS Standartenfuehrer Müller came to me in Peenemünde and informed me that SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler had sent him with an order to convince me to join the SS. I immediately called my military commander ... Major General W. Dornberger. He answered me that ... if I want to continue our joint work, then I have no choice but to agree. "
This assertion of Brown is disputed by some biographers because in 1940 the Waffen-SS did not yet show any interest in the work carried out at Peenemünde. It is also disputed that people with von Braun's position were pushed to join the NSDAP and the SS. Commenting on a photo of him posing in an SS uniform behind Himmler, Brown said that he was wearing the uniform only for the occasion. However, in 2002, Ernst Kütbach, a former SS officer in Peenemünde, told the BBC that von Braun regularly appeared at official events in SS uniform. Initially, von Braun received the rank of Untersturmführer, subsequently Himmler promoted him three times, most recently in June 1943 to SS Sturmbannführer. Brown stated that this was an automatic promotion, which he received in the mail every year.
By then, the British and Soviet intelligence services were aware of the missile program and the development team at Peenemünde. On the night of 17-18 August 1943, British bomber aviation conducted Operation Hydra. 596 aircraft headed for Peenemünde and dropped 1,800 tons of bombs on the missile center. Nevertheless, both the center itself and the main group of developers survived. But the raid killed engine designer Walter Thiel and chief engineer Walther, delaying the German missile program.
The first combat A-4, renamed V-2 for propaganda purposes (Vergeltungswaffe 2 - "Retaliation Weapon 2"), was launched across the UK on September 7, 1944, just 21 months after the project was officially adopted.
Helmut Walter's experiments with hydrogen peroxide rockets, carried out at the same time, led to the creation of light and simple Walter jet engines, convenient for installation on an aircraft. Helmut Walter's company in Kiel was also commissioned by the Reich Air Ministry to create a rocket engine for the He 112. And in Neuhardenberg, two different rocket engines were tested: the von Braun engine on ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen and the Walter engine on hydrogen peroxide and calcium permanganate as a catalyst. In the von Braun engine, the jet stream was created as a result of direct combustion of fuel, and in the Walter engine, a chemical reaction was used in which a hot steam was generated. Both engines provided thrust and high speed. Subsequent flights in the He 112 took place on the Walter engine. It was more reliable, easier to control and posed less danger to both the pilot and the aircraft.
Use of slave labor
On August 15, 1944, Brown wrote a letter to Albin Sawatzki, who was in charge of V-2 production, in which he agreed to personally select workers from the Buchenwald concentration camp who, he allegedly admitted in an interview 25 years later, were in a "terrible state."
In the book "Wernher von Braun: Knight of the Space" (eng. Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space) Brown repeatedly claims that he was aware of the workers' conditions, but felt completely unable to change them. His friend quotes von Braun's words on his visit to Mittelwerk:
It was creepy. My first impulse was to talk to one of the SS guards, to which I heard a harsh reply that I should go about my business or I risk being in the same striped prison uniform! ... I realized that any attempt to refer to the principles of humanity would be completely useless.
P. 44 English edition
When Brown's teammate Konrad Dannenberg was asked in an interview with The Huntsville Times if von Braun could protest against the abysmal conditions of the forced laborers, he replied, "If he did, I think he could have been shot on the spot."
Others accused von Braun of participating in or allowing such inhuman treatment. Guy Morand, a French Resistance member who was a prisoner in the Dora concentration camp, testified in 1995 that after an apparent attempt to sabotage:
Without even listening to my explanations, (von Braun) ordered Meister to give me 25 punches ... Then, deciding that the punches were not strong enough, he ordered me to be whipped more brutally ... von Braun ordered me to transfer that I deserve the worst that in fact I deserve to be hanged ... I believe that his cruelty, which I personally fell victim to, was an eloquent testament to his Nazi fanaticism.
Biddle, Wayne. Dark side of the moon(W.W. Norton, 2009) pp. 124-125.
Another French prisoner, Robert Cazabonne, claimed to have witnessed von Braun stand and watch the prisoners being hanged from hoist chains. Brown himself stated that he "never saw any ill-treatment or murder" and only "there were rumors ... that some of the prisoners were hanged in underground galleries."
Arrest and release under the Nazis
According to the French historian André Selye, who passed through the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp, Himmler received von Braun in February 1944 at his Hochwald headquarters in East Prussia. To strengthen his position in the hierarchy of Nazi power, Heinrich Himmler conspired to take control of all German weapons programs with the help of Kammler, including the development of the V-2 at Peenemünde. Therefore, Himmler advised Brown to work more closely with Kammler on V-2 problems. However, according to von Braun himself, he replied that the problems with the V-2 are purely technical and he is confident that he will solve them with the help of Dornberger.
Apparently, von Braun from October 1943 was under the supervision of the SD. One day a report was received about how he and his colleagues Klaus Riedel and Helmut Grettrup in the evening at the engineer's house expressed regret that they were not working on the spacecraft and they all believed that the war was not going well. This was regarded as "defeatist sentiment." These statements were reported by a young female dentist who was also an SS agent. Together with Himmler's false accusations about von Braun's sympathy for the Communists and his alleged attempts to sabotage the V-2 program, and considering that Brown had a pilot's diploma and regularly flew on a government-provided plane and thus could have escaped to England - all this was the reason for the arrest of von Braun by the Gestapo.
Not expecting anything bad, Brown was arrested on March 14 or 15, 1944 and was thrown into the Gestapo prison in Stettin. He spent two weeks there, not knowing what he was accused of. Only with the help of the Abwehr in Berlin was Dornberger able to secure von Braun's conditional release, and Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Industry, persuaded Hitler to reinstate Brown so that the V-2 program could continue. Speer, quoting in his memoirs "Führerprotokoll" (Hitler's meeting minutes) of May 13, 1944, writes that Hitler said at the end of the conversation: "As for B., I guarantee you that he will be exempted from persecution until you will need it, in spite of the general difficulties that may follow. "
Surrender to the Americans
In March, while on a business trip, Brown broke his left arm and shoulder due to the fact that his chauffeur fell asleep at the wheel. The fracture was complicated, but Brown insisted that he be put in a plaster cast so that he could no longer stay in the hospital. The designer underestimated the injury, the bone began to heal incorrectly, a month later he had to go to the hospital again, where his arm was broken again and a new bandage was applied.
In April, the Allied troops penetrated deep enough into Germany. Kammler ordered the scientific team to board the train and travel to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. Here they were under the close protection of the SS, which was ordered to eliminate all missilemen if they were threatened with hitting the enemy. However, von Braun was able to convince SS Major Kummer to disperse the group to nearby villages so as not to become an easy target for American bombers.
On May 2, 1945, spotting an American soldier from the 44th Infantry Division, Werner's brother and fellow rocket engineer Magnus caught up with him on his bicycle and told him in broken English: “My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender. " After his capture, Brown told the press:
“We know that we have created a new means of warfare and now the moral choice - which nation, which victorious people we want to entrust our offspring - is more acute for us than ever before. We want the world not to get caught up in a conflict like the one Germany has just gone through. We believe that only by handing over such weapons to those people who are instructed on the path by the Bible, we can be sure that the world is protected in the best way. "
High-ranking officials in the United States were well aware of the valuable booty they had: the von Braun surname topped the Black List, the codename for a list of German scientists and engineers among those whom American military experts would like to interrogate as soon as possible. On July 19, 1945, two days before the planned transfer of territory to the Soviet occupation zone, Major Robert B. Staver, Jet Propulsion Chief, US Army Artillery Corps London, and Lt. Col. R.L. Williams imprisoned von Braun and heads of its departments in a jeep and taken from Garmisch to Munich. Then the group was airlifted to Nordhausen, and the next day - 60 km south-west, to the town of Witzenhausen, located in the American zone of occupation. Von Braun lingered briefly at the Dustbin interrogation center, where British and American intelligence services interrogated the economics, science and technology elite of the Third Reich. Initially, he was recruited to work in the United States under the Operation Overcast program, later known as Operation Paperclip.
Career in the USA
US Army
Post-war time
Despite the attention to space flights that the US authorities began to pay after the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite (AES) in 1957, the first person in space in 1961 was again not an American. The flight of Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin was the reason for the proclamation of John F. Kennedy's keynote speech, in which he stated that for the prestige of the nation it was necessary to ensure the landing of an American astronaut on the moon before 1970. Wernher von Braun became the head of the US lunar program.
Since 1970 - NASA's deputy director for manned space flight planning, since 1972 he worked in industry as vice president of Fairchild Space Industries in Germantown, Maryland.
His projects of the lunar station were not destined to be realized in connection with the curtailment of the struggle between the two powers (the USA and the USSR) for the prevalence in the exploration of the Moon. The results of his work became a powerful basis for the conquest of space by other designers of rocket technology.
Death
After leaving NASA in 1972, he lived only five years and died of