Von Braun was born in Germany, led a Nazi research team, and later became an American Citizen, and an important force in the American Space Program.
Before there was Apollo 11, or the Saturn Rocket there was Werner Van Braun. Sending men into space, and to the moon was his dream from the time he was a small boy. He was born in Germany in 1912, and was active in the German scientific societies related to rocketry as young as age 17. He read Jules Vern, and H.G. Wells, and dedicated his life to adding to the scientific knowledge to make their fiction a reality. He was also inspired by the work of the German Professor Oberth and the American Robert Gottard He studied Physics at the German Universities of Zurich and Berlin, finishing his Phd. In 1934. His Doctoral thesis was on the propulsion of rockets.
From a purely scientific standpoint, and giving him the benefit of the doubt, one could say that he had the great misfortune of living in the time of the Nazi rise to power. A more cynical view would say that he was a Nazi, and that he was promoted three time by Heinrich Himmler. In his later years in America he would perhaps say, “Nazi Schmazi” if Nazism came up in a conversation. Doubtless, his greatest interest was in the science of rocketry. Once when asked about his inventions being used to carry warheads and kill people he responded, “That’s not my department.” From whatever motivations, he was the lead developer of the V-2 “buzz bombs” whose five hundred mile range put London in range for German warheads in the later years of WWII. There is still research going on in search of his true role in the Nazi rocket factories where war prisoners were used as forced labor, and very harshly treated. It is said that more people were killed in the production of V-2s than in their use as military weapons.
When German defeat became self evident, Von Braun surrendered his entire rocket team intact to the Americans. They were transported to Fort Bliss Texas, and later Huntsville Alabama where they continued their rocket research, and eventually developed both the Saturn and the Pershing rockets. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1955, and is famous for having worked with Walt Disney on a series of films about space travel. He wrote a book about going to the moon in 1961, and predicted men would reach the moon within 25 years. His vision was rather grander then the accomplished fact, he wrote that a team of about 50 scientists would land on the Moon, but it was just Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mooonwalk. The Von Braun Civic Center in Huntsville bears his name, and he was the head of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and an important member of the community there for many years.
His boyhood visions of space travel became a reality due to his life’s work. Large portions of modern technology rest upon the rocket technology he pioneered. Satellites, GPS, and much more that we now almost take for granted would not be possible without rockets to deliver them into orbit. Now that the Cold War has cooled, and is generally deemed to be a thing of the past, it looks as though the benefits of rocket technology may exceed the dangers. Surely, at this point in time more people have been helped by rockets than have been hurt by them.
