We all know about Nazis.
Nazis were violent and powerful Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler.
Though their crimes against humanity can never be forgiven, Nazis space/missile program was
no doubt one of the most advanced programs of it’s time.
And, without it, the American’s may have never reached the moon.
So, here’s how Hitler helped America win the space race.
One of the largest assets America received from Nazi Germany was not technology, but
actually a world renowned rocket scientist: Wernher Von Braun.
Braun was originally born in Wirsitz Germany in 1912 right before the first World War.
Luckily, Braun was born to a rather prosperous family which allowed him to pursue his passions
and interests from a very young age.
Given that he would eventually become a rocket scientist, it’s not surprising to hear that
he was extremely interested in astronomy and space from a very young age.
Apparently, he received a telescope as a gift from his mom, and he would use it to observe
the stars all the time.
Despite his interest in astronomy and space though, he wasn’t particularly good at math
or physics.
In fact, he didn’t do very well in school up until age 13 when he read the book “The
Rocket into Interplanetary Space” by Hermann Oberth.
He didn’t suddenly become smart after reading this book or anything like that.
School was still very much a massive challenge for him, but the book motivated him to work
much harder.
And this work would eventually land him a seat at the Berlin Institute of Technology.
During his time here, Braun would attempt to get as involved as possible with rocket
development.
Two notable examples of this were his membership in the German Society for Space Travel and
his tendency to help Oberth with liquid fuel rocket motor tests.
If you guys don’t remember, Oberth was the guy who wrote the Rocket into Interplanetary
Space, so Braun basically had the opportunity to work with his childhood hero.
Braun didn’t take this opportunity lightly, and worked hard to impress both Oberth and
the captain of the German Society for Space travel Walter Dornberger.
Eventually, Braun would graduate from the Berlin Institute of Technology in 1932, and
he would enroll in the University of Berlin to complete his PhD in physics.
Unlike most research papers, which Elon Musk suggests are useless, Braun’s research was
definitely not useless.
His doctoral thesis covered his research and development of a 300 and 660 pound thrust
rocket engine.
In fact, his research was considered a military security risk and so his research paper was
simply titled “About Combustion Tests”.
Braun would quickly turn around and implement his research with a couple of engineers.
Together, they would end up launching two rockets by December of 1934 both of which
were successful and reached an altitude of 2.4 km.
Keep in mind that Braun was only 22 years old at this point.
Despite all of this progress though, Braun’s future with rockets was cloudy.
The German Society for Space Travel was facing massive financial issues, and Captain Dornberger
actually had to get a special research grant to fund Braun’s two rockets.
Unfortunately, the society would end up going under, and this effectively cut off rocket
funding for Braun.
This was especially problematic as private rocket tests were forbidden, so Braun had
to get funding through the military.
Fortunately for Braun, a new chancellor had just come into power and this man had extremely
grand visions for Germany.
Hitler wanted to show the world how technologically advanced Germany was.
He not only wanted to develop rockets/missiles that were more powerful than any other country,
but he wanted Germany to be the first to reach the moon.
Hitler knew he had to go step by step though, so he funded rocket development as soon as
possible.
Hitler would scrap the rocket testing grounds in Berlin which he deemed were way too small.
Instead he set up a massive military development facility in Peenemunde.
Hitler would appoint Dornberger as the military commander and Braun as the technical director.
And with that, Hitler ordered the team to get to work on the famous German V2 rocket.
Now, Braun really had no ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction.
He really just wanted to develop rockets for space research and eventually civilian travel.
Given that this was his only opportunity to work on rockets though, he would take the
job.
Over the next several years, Braun would slowly iterate through rocket designs beginning with
the A1 rocket that he previously launched during his PhD research.
After a couple of iterations, in 1942, Braun would land on the A4 rocket aka the V2 rocket.
This rocket was able to hit locations that were 315 km away, something that no other
country could do at the time.
As we discussed though, this was only the beginning and Hitler had much bigger visions.
So, just as the A4 rocket was perfected, Hitler ordered Braun to develop the A-10 rocket.
Hitler wanted the A-10 rocket to boast a 100 tonne thrust engine capable of hitting targets
900 km in distance.
He was hoping to eventually modify this rocket to support crews and send Nazis to space and
the moon.
Knowing this, Braun not only worked on the regular A-10 rocket but also the modified
version.The modified version was a combination of the A-10 rocket and the Me 262 German fighter
jet.
Braun knew that spaceflight required strong fuel efficiency and good aerodynamics as opposed
to just raw power.
So, that was the reasoning behind combining the rocket with a fighter jet.
Hitler would never see this project through though as he is thought to have committed
suicide at the end of World War 2.
Surprisingly though, Braun would end up seeing this project through till the very end.
You see, after D day in 1944, Braun realized that Hitler had little chance at winning the
war.
Braun would flee the V2 rocket complex before the allies captured, but he and his team would
end up surrendering to the Americans in Bavaria.
Braun would explain to the US authorities that he never had any intention to actually
harm civilians and that he was simply a rocket scientist.
Whether the authorities believed him is something that we’ll never know.
What they knew for sure though was that Braun was a brilliant rocket scientist.
After all, the man was literally working on sending the Nazi leader to the moon at age
32.
So, they decided that whether he was telling the truth or not, his knowledge would be extremely
valuable to the Americans.
Braun and 1600 of his Nazi scientist peers would be assigned to a top secret US intelligence
program called operation paperclip.
Operation paperclip was established by president Harry Truman and was designed to harness as
much information as possible from top Nazi scientists.
President Truman ordered that no Nazi supporters should be recruited.
However, there are several reports suggesting that the OSS which would later become the
CIA went ahead and eliminated all incriminating evidence linking these scientists to war crimes.
Though that is no doubt an ethically questionable move, the operation is thought to be essential.
The Soviet Union was doing the exact with a set of Nazi scientists that they had captured.
So, the US would be at a disadvantage to the USSR if they didn’t go ahead and take advantage
of Nazi scientists as well.
We don’t really know what all the US learned from these scientists, but it of course includes
significant knowledge about German missiles and rockets.
Operation paperclip would take place between 1945 and 1959 at which point, the US was satisfied
that they had gathered more than enough information from the scientists.
As a result, the scientists would be released and allowed to just become regular American
citizens.
As for Braun specifically, he would become the technical director of the US Army ballistic
weapon program in 1952, and he would become a US citizen in 1955.
This is quite ironic as just a decade before that, he was the leader of the Nazi rocket
program.
Anyway, right as operation paperclip was closed up, President Eisenhower would establish NASA.
Braun and his entire team would be transferred from the Army to NASA and Braun would be made
the director of NASA’s marshall space flight center.
This sounds like it's straight out of a movie or a book, but somehow this actually happened.
Within two decades, Von Braun went from trying to get Nazis to the moon to trying to get
America to the moon.
Aside from being the director of the flight center, Braun was the chief architect of the
Saturn rockets.
He led the development of the Saturn I, IB, and V. And as we all know, the Saturn V would
end up being the rocket used in Apollo 11 to get Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the
moon.
Somehow, Braun’s childhood dream was fulfilled, probably in a way that he never anticipated.
What’s just as surprising though is the Saturn V rocket.
To this day, the Saturn V is still the tallest and the most powerful rocket ever.
Starship is looking to dethrone the Saturn V, but at this point it doesn’t even matter.
I mean the Saturn V has held that title for over 50 years which just goes to show how
far ahead Braun and his team were.
After the Apollo 11 mission, Braun would be promoted to deputy associate administrator
of Nasa in 1970.
However, he didn’t stay around for long there.
He had already accomplished his dream of sending humans to the moon and NASA was starting to
receive crippling budget cuts.
So, Braun would resign from his position at NASA in 1972 and he would become the vice
president of Fairchild industries.
Unfortunately, that same year, Braun would be diagnosed with kidney cancer.
Despite the diagnosis, Braun would continue working at Fairchild industries, and he would
start up one more project before his death in 1977.
In 1975, he founded the national space institute which would eventually become the national
space society in 1987.
Somehow poetically, Braun’s rocket journey began with a space society and it ended with
a space society.
Near the end of his life, Braun would win two major awards which were the NASA distinguished
service medal in 1969 and the national medal of science in engineering in 1977.
The first award is the highest award given out by NASA and the second award is the highest
science award given out by the US.
Today, Braun’s legacy can be found in history book’s and museums, but the average person
really isn’t aware of this extremely accomplished man likely because of his checkered past with
the Nazis.
People familiar with his work, however, are extremely complementary of Braun.
Apollo program director Sam Philps for instance originally said that he did not think that
the US would have reached the moon as quickly if it wasn’t for Von Braun.
After discussing with his colleagues, however, he revised this statement asserting that he
did not believe that the US would have reached the moon at all if it wasn’t for Von Braun.
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