In 1969, the United States landed the first man on the moon. It was the culmination of the one of the greatest and most useless dick wagging contests in world history. Though many thousands of people gave everything they had to see this moment, perhaps no other had a boner of pride quite like the one wielded by Wernher Von Braun. For Wernher, it was the completion of over forty years of work, though in his mind, it was only the first step towards the conquering of the stars. Wernher was the father of modern rocketry. Eve the rockets used by the Soviets were descended from his early designs. More importantly, he was also the most forceful promoter of space travel, single handedly raising the eyes of an entire nation to the stars. It’s too bad the guy was a Nazi.
Wernher, being a German, was of course born in Germany, though with the added luxury of being part of a wealthy family. From an early age, he took a great interest in rocketry and the idea of space travel. Though his early boyhood attempts only resulted in him blowing up a wagon in the middle of a street, he kept at it. The entirety of his education was centered on physics, mathematics, and engineering. Unfortunately, by the time he graduated, there really wasn't that much money going around for random rocket research and dreams of the stars. However, there were plenty of jobs available in the area of militarizing rockets. Wernher, not being a man to turn up his nose at any opportunity, took one of these jobs with the German Army in 1937. Recognizing it as a surer way to rise higher within his chosen field, he soon after joined the Nazi Party.
Like many Germans of the late 1930's, Wernher was overall supportive of Hitler and his Nazi regime. Sure, there were definitely questionable things going on, but with the economy and standard of living rising exponentially, many people were more than happy to bury their heads in the sand. For Wernher, it was all about the pursuit of his goal. As the world fell into chaos and Hitler unleashed the horrors of the Holocaust, Wernher happily worked away on an island in the Baltic Sea, building bigger and better rockets. In 1940, to gain further authority for his research, he joined the SS, Hitler's fanatical private army and secret police. By 1943, Wernher was only 31, but already in charge of the entire program, which allowed him to develop the V-2, the first rocket designed for space travel and the model for every child’s drawing of a rocket today. Unfortunately, soon after, things began to turn against the Nazis, and Hitler personally ordered Wernher to quit fucking around already. Hitler wanted a super weapon.
To manufacture the weaponized V-2, the Nazis built a secret factory under a mountain. Not having enough people available to run the factory, which they called Mittelwerk, what with the war and all, the Nazis settled on using slave labor, building a nearby concentration camp called Mittelbau-Dora. The concentration camp became the home to 60,000 POWs, Jews, and others labeled as ne'er-do-wells. The building of the factory was horrific, costing 8,000 lives. The construction of the V-2 was no better. Murder, unsafe working conditions, starvation, and disease all took their toll. Some 12,000 prisoners are estimated to have died working in Mittelwerk. Though he would later claim ignorance, Wernher knew all about it. He and his staff were said to have personally picked prisoners for the skills they needed, and when attempts at sabotage began, he ordered prisoners flogged and even hanged. His loyalty and perseverance eventually led to him getting permission to launch one of the 3,000 V-2’s built straight up into the sky rather than at Allied cities. It was the first man-made object to reach space.
When it became apparent that the Nazis were not going to win the war, Wernher arranged it so he and his team could be captured by the Americans, thus avoiding the Soviet Army which took control of the Mittelwerk. Both of the soon to be Cold War belligerents were desperately grabbing up whatever Nazi scientists and super weapons they could find. Wernher and his team were taken back to the U.S., where they were given government jobs, their dark pasts hidden away. They were given personas of unwitting dupes, eggheads too busy with their research to notice what was happening. While his team developed the rockets which launched the first ballistic missiles and first American satellites, Wernher worked tireless to promote space travel, even appearing in several Disney specials. Eventually, his efforts, along with the Soviets shooting a man into space, led to the American manned space program, which culminated a decade later with the moon landing.
It was the peak of Wernher’s career. Public support dropped after the moon landing, and NASA abandoned plans to go to Mars. Wernher puttered around NASA for the remainder of his career, his last accomplishment being the founding of NASA’s space camp for kids. He died very painfully of cancer in 1977 at the age of 65. The majority of his Nazi scientists also lived out their lives in the U.S., thought one, Arthur Rudolph, was eventually tried for war crimes in 1984. He was 78 years old. After being found guilty, he was allowed to return to Germany where he died a free man in 1996.
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Backfire_(World_War_II)#/media/File:V-2_lift-off.jpg