Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( ; ; 23 March 1912 – 16 June 1977) was a German American aerospace engineer and space architect. He led the development of German rocket technology in World War II, during which time he became a member of the Nazi Party and later the Allgemeine SS. Following the war, he relocated to the United States, developing missiles for the US Army and later designing rockets for NASA’s Apollo program.
As a young man, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde Army Research Center during World War II. The V-2 became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line on 20 June 1944. Following the war, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1 in 1958. He worked with Walt Disney on a series of films, which popularized the idea of human space travel in the US and beyond from 1955 to 1957.
In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In 1967, von Braun was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science.
Von Braun is seen by some as escaping justice for his participation in Nazi war crimes due to the Americans' desire to beat the Soviets in the Cold War. He is also sometimes described as the "father of space travel", the "father of rocket science", or the "father of the American lunar program". Towards the end of his career, he also advocated a human mission to Mars.
Early life Wernher von Braun was born on 23 March 1912, in the small town of Wirsitz in the Province of Posen, Kingdom of Prussia (then part of the German Empire, now part of Poland).
His father, Magnus Freiherr von Braun (1878–1972), was a civil servant and conservative politician; he served as Minister of Agriculture in the federal government during the Weimar Republic. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp (1886–1959), traced her ancestry through both parents to medieval European royalty and was a descendant of Philip III of France, Valdemar I of Denmark, Robert III of Scotland, and Edward III of England."Dr. Wernher von Braun'i mälestuseks", Füüsikainstituut. Retrieved 4 February 2011 He had an older brother, the West German diplomat Sigismund von Braun, who served as Secretary of State in the Foreign Office in the 1970s, and a younger brother, Magnus von Braun, who was a rocket scientist and later a senior executive with Chrysler.
The family moved to Berlin, Brandenburg, in 1915, where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. After his Confirmation, his mother gave him a telescope, and he developed a passion for astronomy.Magnus Freiherr von Braun, Von Ostpreußen bis Texas. Erlebnisse und zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen eines Ostdeutschen. Stollhamm 1955 Von Braun learned to play both the cello and the piano at an early age and at one time wanted to become a composer. He took lessons from the composer Paul Hindemith. The few pieces of von Braun's youthful compositions that exist are reminiscent of Hindemith's style. He could play piano pieces of Beethoven and Bach from memory. Beginning in 1925, he attended a boarding school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, Free State of Thuringia, where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923, By Rocket into Planetary Space)Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen by Hermann Oberth, R. Oldenbourg 1923 by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. In 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. Space travel had always fascinated him, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.
In 1928 the Raketenrummel or "Rocket Rumble" fad initiated by Fritz von Opel and Max Valier was highly influential on von Braun as a teenage space enthusiast. He was so enthusiastic after seeing one of the public Opel-RAK rocket car demonstrations, that he constructed his own homemade toy rocket car and caused a disruption in a crowded sidewalk by launching the toy wagon, to which he had attached the largest firework rockets he could purchase. He was later taken in for questioning by the local police, then released to his father for disciplinary action. The incident highlighted the young von Braun's determination to "dedicate his life to space travel".
In 1930, von Braun attended the Technische Hochschule Berlin, where he joined the Spaceflight Society (Verein für Raumschiffahrt or VfR), co-founded by Valier, and worked with Willy Ley in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in conjunction with others such as Rolf Engel, Rudolf Nebel, Hermann Oberth or Paul Ehmayr.Various sources such as The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War ( pp. 5–8) list the young Wernher von Braun as joining the VfR as an apprentice to Willy Ley, one of the three founders. Later when Ley fled Germany because he was a Jew, von Braun took over the leadership of the Verein and changed its activity to military development. In spring 1932, he graduated with a diploma in mechanical engineering. His early exposure to rocketry convinced him that the exploration of space would require far more than applications of the current engineering technology. Wanting to learn more about physics, chemistry, and astronomy, von Braun entered the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin for doctoral studies and graduated with a doctorate in physics in 1934. He also studied at ETH Zürich for a term from June to October 1931.
German career In 1930, von Braun attended a presentation given by Auguste Piccard. After the talk, the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him: "You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time." Piccard is said to have responded with encouraging words.As related by Auguste's son Jacques Piccard to fellow deep-sea explorer Hans Fricke, cited in: Fricke H. Der Fisch, der aus der Urzeit kam, pp. 23–24. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2010. (in German)
Von Braun was greatly influenced by Oberth, of whom he said:
According to historian Norman Davies, von Braun was able to pursue a career as a rocket scientist in Germany due to a "curious oversight" in the Treaty of Versailles which did not include rocketry in its list of weapons forbidden to Germany.
Involvement with the Nazi regime
Nazi Party membership In 1937, as part of a broad push by the Nazis to recruit members in positions of technical and social leadership, von Braun was pressured to join the Nazi Party to continue his work on rockets. He applied for membership in the Party on 12 November 1937, and was issued membership number 5,738,692.
Michael J. Neufeld, an author of aerospace history and chief of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, wrote that in a 1947 affidavit for the U.S. Army, von Braun stated he had been required to join the Party in the year the war started in 1939—two years later than he in fact joined, in 1937.
It has not been ascertained whether von Braun's error with regard to the year was deliberate. Neufeld wrote:
Von Braun's later attitude toward the Nazi regime of the late 1930s and early 1940s was complex. He said that he had been so influenced by the early Nazi promise of release from the post–World War I economic effects, that his patriotic feelings had increased. In a 1952 memoir article he admitted that, at that time, he "fared relatively rather well under totalitarianism". Yet, he also wrote that "to us, Hitler was still only a pompous fool with a Charlie Chaplin moustache" and that he perceived him as "another Napoleon" who was "wholly without scruples, a godless man who thought himself the only god".
Later examination of von Braun's background, conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, suggests that his background check file contained no derogatory information pertaining to his involvement in the party, but it was found that he had numerous letters of commendation for outstanding performance of duties during his time working under the Nazi party. Overall FBI conclusions from its report drafted during the Cold War point to von Braun's involvement in the Nazi Party to be purely for the advancement of his academic career, or out of fear of imprisonment or execution.
Membership in the Allgemeine-SS Von Braun joined the SS horseback riding school on 1 November 1933 as an SS-Anwärter. He left the following year. In 1940, von Braun joined the SS and was given the rank of Untersturmführer in the Allgemeine-SS and issued membership number 185,068. In 1947, he gave the U.S. War Department this explanation:
When shown a picture of himself standing behind Himmler, von Braun said that he had only worn the SS uniform that one time, but in 2002 a former SS officer at Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun had regularly worn the SS uniform to official meetings. He began as an Untersturmführer (Second lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Major). Von Braun later stated that these were simply technical promotions received each year regularly by mail.
Work under Nazi regime In 1932, von Braun received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Technische Hochschule Berlin, Germany. During a period in 1931, von Braun attended the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. During this time in Switzerland, von Braun assisted Professor Hermann Oberth in writing a book concerning the possibilities of creating and manufacturing liquid-propellant rockets. Shortly after this, von Braun founded his own private rocket development business in Berlin, and through which he made the first rocket fired by gasoline and liquid oxygen.
In 1932, having caught wind of von Braun's rocket business, the German Army connected with von Braun to pursue basic missile research and weather data experimentation. Von Braun said that the German government financed the development of test stands and facilities for experimentation in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1939, von Braun was appointed a technical advisor at Peenemünde Army Research Center on the Baltic Sea.
In 1933, von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the Nazi Party came to power in a coalition government in Germany; rocketry was almost immediately moved onto the national agenda. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf.
Von Braun received his doctorate in physics (aerospace engineering) on 27 July 1934, from the University of Berlin for a thesis titled "About Combustion Tests." His doctoral supervisor was Erich Schumann. However, this thesis represented only the public aspect of von Braun's work. His actual thesis, entitled "Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket" (dated 16 April 1934), detailed the construction and design of the A2 rocket. It remained classified by the German army until its publication in 1960.Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beiträge zu dem Problem der Flüssigkeitsrakete. Raketentechnik und Raumfahrtforschung, Sonderheft 1 (1960), Stuttgart, Germany. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two liquid fuel A2 rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and .