Wernher von Braun

Born March 23, 1912 (Wirsitz, Germany)

Died June 16, 1977 (Alexandria, Virginia)

German-born American rocket engineer

Wernher von Braun was the most famous rocket engineer of the twentieth century. He began his career in Germany, where he developed the revolutionary V-2 rocket during World War II (1939–45). Fleeing to the United States at the end of the war, he became an important figure in the American rocket and space programs. Teams of engineers under his direction designed the Redstone, Jupiter, and Pershing missiles (rockets that carry weapons). Von Braun then led development of the Jupiter C, Juno, and Saturn launch vehicles, which carried early U.S. satellites (objects that orbit in space) and spacecraft beyond Earth's atmosphere and ultimately to the Moon. Von Braun was both a celebrity and a national hero in the United States.

"To millions of Americans, [Wernher von Braun's] name was inextricably linked to our exploration of space and to the creative application of technology."

President Jimmy Carter

Begins developing rockets

Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun was born on March 23, 1912, in the town of Wirsitz (later Wyrzysk, Poland) in eastern Germany. He was the second of three sons of Baron Magnus Alexander Maximilian von Braun, a banker and government official, and Emmy (von Quistorp) von Braun, an

accomplished musician and talented amateur astronomer (one who studies stars and planets). She encouraged her son's fascination with spaceflight by giving him a telescope and books by science-fiction writers Jules Verne (1828–1905) and H. G. Wells (1866–1946; see entry). Wernher attended the French Gymnasium (high school), where he excelled in languages but failed physics (the science that deals with matter and energy and their interactions) and mathematics. He then attended the Hermann Lietz School at Ettersburg Castle, a school famous for its advanced teaching methods and emphasis on practical trades. At age thirteen he attempted to read Rocketsto Planetary Space by the space pioneer Hermann Oberth (1894–1989; see entry), but he could not understand Oberth's complicated mathematical formulas. He then vowed to master math and physics. Before he graduated, he was teaching mathematics and tutoring struggling students.

In 1930 von Braun enrolled at the Charlottenburg Institute of Technology in Berlin. He also joined the German Rocket Society, which was founded in part by Oberth. Von Braun soon became Oberth's student assistant, and together they successfully developed a small rocket engine. Funding for the project ended, however, and Oberth returned to his native Romania. Von Braun and his associates continued their work at an abandoned field outside Berlin, using the old buildings for laboratories and living quarters. For a time von Braun attended the Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. There he began the study of the physiological effects of space flight, conducting crude experiments with mice in a centrifuge (a machine used for simulating gravitational force). The experiments convinced him that humans could withstand the rapid acceleration and deceleration of space flight. He then returned to Charlottenburg Institute and to his work at the field where he launched his rockets.

Develops V-2 rocket

While von Braun and his associates were developing their rocket, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) had manipulated his way to power as head of the Nazi Party. Elected chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, Hitler took over the parliament (legislative body) and suspended the constitution. He began ruling by decree (an order that has the force of law) and rebuilding the German army, which had been virtually dismantled by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I (1914–18). The treaty had forbidden Germany to have any gun, cannon, or weapon with a bore (barrel) exceeding three inches. But the Nazis saw a loophole. The treaty did not envision rockets and made no mention of them, so German military planners hoped to develop rockets as weapons. German army ordnance (weapons) experts began frequent visits to von Braun's rocket field and monitored his team's rocket development work. Impressed with von Braun's knowledge and the scope of his imagination, ordnance officials invited him to continue his research at the army's facilities at Kummersdorf.

On October 1, 1932, von Braun officially joined the German Army Ordnance Office rocket program. Two years later he received a doctorate in physics from the University of Berlin. By that time he was technical director at Kummersdorf with a staff of eighty scientists and technicians. They had completed the preliminary design for the A-4 rocket, which became known as the V-2. This was an ambitious undertaking, since the missile was to be 45 feet (13.7 meters) long, deliver a one-ton (.97 metric ton) warhead (the section of a missile containing the explosive or chemical) to a target nearly 160 miles (257.4 kilometers) away. The rocket motor was also far more powerful than the largest liquid-fueled rocket motors then available. It could deliver a 25-ton (22.6 metric ton) thrust (upward force) for 60 seconds, compared to the 1.5 tons (1.36 metric tons) of thrust supplied by other rockets. The following year the group moved to new military facilities at Peenemünde, a town on the Baltic coast.

When Hitler started World War II by invading Poland in 1939, Germany gave rocket development the highest priority. Hitler envisioned using this new weapon in his quest to take over Europe. Von Braun's team encountered difficulties in perfecting their rocket, however, so the first launch did not occur at Peenemünde until October 3, 1942. Failures continued to plague the project, and fully operational V-2s were not fired until September 1944. By the end of the war in June 1945, approximately six thousand rockets were manufactured at an underground production site named Mittelwerk. The factory used the slave labor of concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war. (Concentration camps were compounds where the Nazis imprisoned and executed millions of people, including Jews and other "enemies of the state.") Although several thousand V-2s struck London, England; Antwerp, Belgium; and other Allied targets, they were not strategically significant in the German war effort. (The Allies were military forces led by Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.)

Heads U.S. rocket program

The Nazis wanted the rocket as a weapon of war, but von Braun had a different vision: space travel. His interest in space exploration rather than military application led to his arrest and imprisonment by the German secret police in 1944. The Nazis released him only after they realized that jailing their leading rocket scientist was an unwise political move. The program lurched backward without von Braun's leadership, disrupting Hitler's timetable for the war. When Germany was near collapse, von Braun led his associates and their families from Peenemünde to the Bavarian coast so they could surrender to the Americans. He reasoned that the United States was the nation most likely to use its resources for space exploration. The rocket team surrendered to U.S. forces on May 2, 1945, just before the Russians advanced into the abandoned rocket development center.

Von Braun's Nazi Connections

Wernher Von Braun's prominence in American spaceflight efforts often overshadows his responsibility in the suffering and loss of life associated with the German V-2 rocket. Although he always gave credit to his team for the technical success of this and other programs, he clearly played a key role in the development of the missile. He and his army superior, General Walter Dornberger (1895–1980), were also successful in obtaining funding and other support for the V-2. Although he had no direct responsibility for production at Mittelwerk, von Braun was aware of conditions in the concentration camp that provided the factory's labor. Moreover, he had joined the Nazi Party on May 1, 1937, and became an officer in the elite SS (an abbreviation of Schutzstaffel, German for "Protective Corps") in 1940. (The SS started as Hitler's bodyguards, but under Heinrich Himmler [1900–1945] it came to control military police activities, Nazi intelligence, and the administration and maintenance of the death camps.)

While historians note that more research is needed on this subject, available American records support von Braun's claim that he was forced to join both organizations to avoid abandoning his rocketry work. He further stated that his motivation in building army missiles was their ultimate use in space travel and scientific endeavors. He said he was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 because he was not interested in using the V-2 as a weapon.

During interrogation by Allied intelligence officers, von Braun prepared a report in which he forecast trips to the Moon, orbiting satellites, and space stations. Recognizing the scope of von Braun's work, the U.S. Army authorized the

transfer of von Braun, 112 of his engineers and scientists, 100 V-2 rockets, and rocket technical data to the United States. They went to Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas, as part of a military operation called Project Paperclip. (Project Paperclip was a program in which the United States military employed and protected numerous Nazi scientists and intelligence agents.) In 1946 they worked on rocket development and used captured V-2s for high-altitude research at the nearby White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico.

Promotes spaceflight

In his free time von Braun wrote about space travel and corresponded with his family and his cousin, Maria von Quistorp. In early 1947 he obtained permission to return to Germany to marry Maria. The couple returned to Texas after the wedding; they later had three children. Von Braun continued work on V-2 launchings, conducting some of the earliest experiments in recording atmospheric conditions, photographing Earth from high altitudes, perfecting guidance systems, and conducting medical experiments with animals in space. He also completed his book, The Mars Project, an account of planetary exploration, but he was unable to interest a publisher until much later. In 1950 the von Braun team transferred to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, where between April 1950 and February 1956 it developed the Redstone rocket. On April 15, 1955, von Braun and forty of his associates became naturalized U.S. citizens.

The Redstone eventually played a significant role in America's early space program. During the 1950s, however, the Russian space program moved ahead of U.S. efforts. This development caused considerable alarm in the United States. Immediately after World War II, the United States and the former Soviet Union became engaged in the Cold War (1945–91), a period of political hostility that resulted in an arms race to achieve military superiority and a space race to be the first to send humans into space. Von Braun repeatedly warned American officials of Soviet advances in the space race, but his requests for permission to orbit a satellite (a man-made object that orbits in space) were denied.

Satellite delayed by politics

When the Soviet Union successfully orbited the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957, the U.S. government finally authorized von Braun's group to work on a satellite. Within ninety days the team developed the Explorer 1 satellite from a modified Redstone rocket (the Jupiter C), with the cooperation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. The Explorer 1 was launched into orbit on January 31, 1958.

Nearly four decades later, newly released government documents revealed information that had been kept secret: The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953-61), the U.S. president at the time of the Sputnik 1 launch, had deliberately delayed production of an American satellite. This political strategy, unknown to von Braun, was a gamble to gain an edge over the Soviets in the use of spy satellites. In 1995 Christian Science Monitor reporter Robert C. Cowen published an article about the documents after they were declassified, or made public. According to Cowen, "when Sputnik 1 caught most Americans napping on Oct. 4, 1957, it also helped fulfill one of the Eisenhower administration's secret strategic goals. It helped legalize the future use of spy satellites." Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), Cowen wrote, "basked in a propaganda coup…[but he] also implicitly acknowledged a new limit to nation sovereignty. It ends short of the lowest orbit in which an earth satellite can travel. And that meant that the Soviet Union had nothing to complain about when the United States later orbited unarmed reconnaissance [spy] satellites."

Heads space center

In 1958 the United States created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Two years later von Braun was appointed director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, a NASA agency at Huntsville. On October 27, 1961, NASA launched the first Saturn 1 vehicle. It was 162 feet (49.37 meters) long, weighed 460 tons (417 metric tons) at liftoff, and rose to a height of 85 miles (136.76 kilometers). On November 9, 1967, the newer Saturn 5 made its debut, and it was more than twice as long as the Saturn 1. Just before Christmas in 1968, a Saturn 5 launch vehicle, developed under von Braun's direction, launched Apollo 8, the world's first spacecraft to travel to the Moon (see Buzz Aldrin [1930–] and Neil Armstrong [1930–] entries). In 1970 NASA transferred von Braun to its headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he became deputy associate administrator.

Von Braun resigned from NASA in 1972 to become vice president for engineering and development with Fairchild Industries of Germantown, Maryland. Besides his work for that aerospace firm, he promoted human space flight, helping to found the National Space Institute in 1975 and serving as its first president. An enthusiastic advocate for spaceflight, von Braun published numerous books and magazine articles, served as a consultant for television programs and films, and testified before the U.S. Congress about the possibilities of space flight. Perhaps most important in this regard were his contributions, with others, to a series of Collier's magazine articles (1952–53) and to a Walt Disney television series (1955–57). The articles and the series were enormously influential and, along with the fears aroused by the Soviet space program, energized American efforts to conquer space.

Von Braun received numerous awards, including the first Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy in 1958. The award was named for American physicist Robert Goddard (1882–1945; see entry), who was conducting rocket experiments around the time von Braun began working on the A-4. Goddard was highly secretive and rarely shared his research, but some historians suggest that the Germans may have managed to learn about his work. Von Braun also received the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service Award (presented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower) in 1959 and the National Medal of Science in 1977. In addition to his role as a space pioneer, von Braun pursued a wide range of interests. An accomplished musician, he played the piano and cello. He was also an ardent outdoorsman who enjoyed scuba diving, fishing, hunting, sailing, and flying. Von Braun died of cancer at a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16, 1977.

For More Information

Books

Hunt, Linda. Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Ward, Bob. Mr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 2004.

Periodicals

Cowan, Robert C. "Declassified Papers Show U.S. Won Space Race After All." Christian Science Monitor (October 23, 1999): p. 15.

"Previously Unpublished von Braun Drawings." Ad Astra (July/August 2000): pp. 46–47.

Von Braun, Wernher. "Man on the Moon—The Journey." Collier's (October 18, 1952): pp. 52–60.

Von Braun, Wernher, with Cornelius Ryan. "Baby Space Station." Collier's (June 27, 1953): pp. 33–40.

Von Braun, Wernher, with Cornelius Ryan. "Can We Get to Mars?" Collier's (April 30, 1954): pp. 22–28.

Web Sites

Graham, John F. "A Biography of Wernher von Braun." Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA.http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/history/VonBraun/VonBraun.html (accessed on June 29, 2004).

"Wernher von Braun." http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbraun.htm (accessed on June 29, 2004).