Standing out as a champion of space exploration through the development of rockets, Wernher von Braun’s work will be long remembered. Between the 1930’s and the 1970’s he was the unquestioned leader of this pursuit. In 1932 he began his work developing ballistic missiles for the German army. Before graduating in 1934 with a Ph.D., he had won a research grant from the German Ordnance Department for his work in rocketry, and subsequently became the director of Germany’s military rocket development program in 1936. At that time the developing German war machine was not noticed by the world at large. Based upon research one may assume that von Braun’s sole goal was space exploration via rocketry and not to be used as a wartime advantage. But there is much disagreement on this based on what was to follow in Hitler’s wartime decisions. Von Braun assembled a rocket team at a secret laboratory at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast.
The V-2 rocket was an outgrowth of this team of scientists. The V-2 was the immediate antecedent of those used in later space explorations in both the United States and the Soviet Union. Weighing 27,000 pounds and 46 feet in length, the V-2 flew at speeds in excess of 3,500 miles per hour and had the capability of delivering a 2,200 pound warhead to a target 500 miles away. The first flight was in October 1942 and was later used in hitting targets in Europe beginning in September 1944. The V-2 “Buzz Bomb” harassed the citizens of Great Britain, there is no doubt, but the degree of destruction was not of great consequence due to the lack of an exacting guidance system. When the first V-2 hit London, von Braun remarked to his colleagues, “The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet!” Reportedly over 500 of the V-2’s were launched prior to war’s end, and with their random impact points caused damage and some deaths.
In 1943 labor for the V-2 production was sorely needed and the chief engineer of the Peenemunde factory became aware of the availability of concentration camp prisoners, endorsed their use, and helped win approval for their transfer. Heinrich Himmler, the commander of the SS, Hitler’s elite paramilitary unit, conspired to take control of the rocket program as a means of expanding his power base. When von Braun and his immediate supervisor, Col. Walter Dornberger, resisted this attempt, the SS arrested von Braun, with the charge that he had tried to sabotage the V-2 program. Field Marshall Keitel’s explanation was that, “The sabotage is seen in the fact that these men have been giving all their innermost thoughts to space travel and consequently have not applied their whole energy and ability to production of the A-4 [as it was then known] as a weapon of war.” After two weeks under arrest, Col. Dornberger was able to secure the release of von Braun.
The SS, or Protection Squadron, was formed in 1925 as a personal protection guard unit for the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler. SS is taken from the German word “schutzstaffel”. The SS abbreviation would become widely recognized. The word “Nazi” became the English identification of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, a political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945. Hitler, with his fast rise to power, rapidly established a totalitarian regime known as the Third Reich.
Von Braun’s relationship to the Nazi Party is complex. Although he was not an ardent Nazi, he did hold the rank as an SS officer. Also complicated is his relationship to slave labor. Though distant from direct involvement, he was surely aware of its use for rocket production. About his membership in the National Socialist German Workers Party, von Braun is quoted as follows:
“I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time (1937) I was already technical director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemunde…My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activities…in Spring 1940, one SS-Standartenfuhrer (SS Colonel Muller)… looked me up in my office at Peenemunde and told me that Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I called immediately on my military superior…Major General W. Dornberger. He informed me that…if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.”
Wings Over Cumberland 