Q: What drew you to Wernher von Braun as a subject?A: Born in 1951, I grew up as a boy in Canada with the space race a major issue in the media. In the 1960s I was an incorrigible space buff, living and breathing every launch of the astronauts. Von Braun was of course a heroic figure to me, as I accepted completely how he was presented then. But my desire to become an aerospace engineer or astronomer did not pan out because my talents were elsewhere; eventually I became an historian of Modern Europe focusing on Germany. In 1987, three years after finishing my doctorate, I felt like I’d hit an intellectual dead-end with my previous research into German labor and social history. Still a space enthusiast, it became interested in combining my professional training with my hobby and researching the history of German rocket development in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. I particularly thought of writing a major biography of von Braun, as none of those that had been published then (or since) were anything close to adequate. That led to a fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum, then luckily a job as a curator. In the process, I decided that a book on the Nazi rocket program was more pressing, so I wrote The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (1995). In 1997, after doing spin-off projects and other things, I came back to my idea of a biography of von Braun and have been working on it ever since. I can fairly say that it is the product of twenty years of work.
Q: What kind of research did you do and did you have access to any previously neglected or underutilized sources?
A: I’m happiest as an archival researcher, digging through old documents and papers, looking for new information. Von Braun was built on the foundation of The Rocket and the Reich, where I had spent five years researching the Nazi period in German records in Munich, Freiburg and Washington, DC, among other places. To do the biography, however, I had work my way through a mountain of von Braun’s papers and U.S. government records, mostly in Huntsville, Alabama, the Washington, DC area and Atlanta, relating to his period working for the U.S. Army and NASA. But I had the most fun supplementing my German research by tracking down obscure sources and people on von Braun’s family, childhood and schooling in the early 20th century. Another important source turned out to the forgotten papers of Wernher von Braun’s father, now in the Bundesarchiv Koblenz. They have illuminating post-World War II letters from Wernher. The German von Brauns were helpful as well, the children of his elder brother. The American von Brauns, on the other hand, are inaccessible to everyone. They are extremely sensitive to the Nazi issue that came back to haunt Wernher von Braun’s reputation, especially after his somewhat premature death from cancer at age 65 in 1977.
Q: In 2003 Aviation Week and Space Technology polled its readership on the 100 most important people in the history of flight. Wernher von Braun was ranked second, behind the Wright brothers. Why is he considered one of the most influential advocates of flight in the 20th century?
A: While von Braun was by no means the inventor of the idea of space travel nor was he the sole father of the U.S. space program, I argue in my Prologue that “no one had so great a role in both selling the idea of spaceflight and making it come true. His historic role rests on four fundamental achievements: 1) as technical director of the V-2 project, he led the design and construction of the world's first large rocket, and first ballistic missile; 2) as chief advocate for space travel in the 1950s, in Collier’s magazine and on Walt Disney’s TV program, he helped sell the American and Western public on the feasibility of that seemingly utopian proposition; 3) as technical director of the U.S. Army’s missile facility in Huntsville, he was instrumental in the launching of the first American satellite in 1958; and 4) as Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, also in Huntsville, he was the consummate manager of the gigantic Saturn booster project that sent two dozen Apollo astronauts to the moon between 1968 and 1972.” His closest competitor in the role of space pioneer was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the USSR’s “chief designer” for missiles and space, who had more space firsts to his credit, but even he started out after World War II by copying the V-2.
Q: A New Yorker profile of von Braun from 1951 spoke candidly of his affiliation with the Third Reich—when did that become a problem in the eyes of the American public?
A: At some level it was a problem from the moment the U.S. government admitted at the end of 1946 that he and other German engineers and scientists were in the States. It was always necessary to explain why von Braun, a former Nazi, was working for us and how valuable he was. But then the Cold War came along, when combined with the secrecy of Project Paperclip, which brought the Germans over, allowing the government to bury many uncomfortable facts, such as his Nazi Party and SS memberships and his connection to the use of concentration-camp labor. As von Braun became more prominent in the 1950s, he was interviewed by the New Yorker and wrote a few autobiographical pieces, in which he pictured himself as an apolitical engineer who only dreamed of going into space. The U.S. media was happy to propagate that image in the context of the Cold War and space race. In spite of several East German attempts to smear him with his Nazi past in the sixties, it was not until seven years after he died that it became a major problem. When the Justice Dept. announced in 1984 that Arthur Rudolph, one of his closest associates, had left the U.S. and denounced his citizenship because of his involvement in concentration-camp labor, then all the scandals came out.
Q: In 1965 Tom Lehrer wrote a song about Wernher von Braun, mocking von Braun’s cavalier attitude toward the results of his work in Germany: “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.” How has public perception of Von Braun evolved and what do you think it is today?
A: Paralleling the account given above of his public image, there were always those who for reasons of ideology or personal dislike of Germans didn’t care for von Braun. But especially after he helped launch the first U.S. satellite, he was a national hero and the majority of the public probably accepted the media’s image of him. Lehrer’s biting song however reflected the loosening of Cold War culture in the sixties, allowing more criticism. As public consciousness of the Holocaust rose in the 60s and 70s, more awareness of his Nazi problem began to creep into the media and popular culture. But as I said, it really took the Rudolph case to break things open in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world.
Q: Von Braun seemed to have no regrets about accepting the resources of the Third Reich to follow his dreams of space travel; more people died building the V-2 than were killed by its use as a weapon. What sort of questions does this raise about the moral responsibility scientists have about their work and research?
A: Von Braun is a symbol of the compromises scientists and engineers have often willingly made in the twentieth century to pursue research or objectives they held dear. Usually this involved building weapons or systems that carry out war or genocide, with the appeal that to do so was to defend one’s country. Von Braun, raised as a conservative German nationalist, was no different in all too easily accepted the patriotic argument to back up his true desire, which was to build rockets. In the book I see him a classic example of the Faustian bargain, accepting money and power from an evil regime because it allowed him to pursue his technical aims. The Faustian bargain is often overused by those who written about scientists and engineers, as most governments don’t fit the bill, but by any measure, Hitler’s certainly does. Von Braun is in many ways an appealing figure, but his reputation will never escape the consequences of that bargain he made with the Third Reich.
Q: In writing this book, what did you discover about Wernher von Braun that most surprised you?
A: I thought I knew him and his motivations well enough, but I found myself surprised to discover that he was obsessed with spaceflight not just because he believed it was the good for mankind, or because of his ambition to be a pioneer, but above all because he wanted to go there himself. He became obsessed by the age of 16 (1928) with the dream of flying in space, and in particular leading the first expedition to land on the Moon. This dream carried him through Nazi Germany and into the fifties and beyond and certainly helps explain his behavior.
Q: Was this a difficult book to write?
A: Not especially, but it was a huge project in terms of the number of archival collections and sources I had to consult. At the front end of the project it was a little daunting, as I knew it would take years to do the research. Another issue was the inaccessibility of his family and the hostility of his former associates, who are angry about The Rocket and the Reich. Yet I knew that, as long as I had full access to his papers at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, which was guaranteed by where I worked, NASM, I would be able to pull it off.
Q: What’s next?
A: I have been thinking about writing about the creation of the continental defense in the Cold War, about the construction of a huge technological system of systems: DEW Line, the Ballistic-Missile Early Warning System, NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, SAGE and other computer networks, fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft missiles. It was a giant U.S.-Canadian enterprise to try to ward off, or reduce the impact of, a Soviet nuclear attack. In the end, all it could tell us was to launch our missiles before we were completely incinerated.