THE NAZI WHO SENT MAN TO MOON

Wernher Von Braun was born in born in Wirsitz,Germany (now in Poland) on 23 rd March ,1912.He had aristocratic ancestry from both his father and mother’s side.During his childhood his mother had given him a telescope and he developed passion for astronomy.The family moved to Berlin after world war 1 when wirsitz was transferred to Poland.He also learnt to play and cello and became an accomplished musician who could play Bach and Beethoven from memory. In fact during his early life he aimed at being a musician. Braun attended a school near weimar where he did not do very well in mathematics and physics.In 1928 his parents moved him to Hermann-Lietz-Internat on the East Frisian island of Spiekeroog. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1929) (By Rocket into Interplanetary Space) (in German) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. Space travel had always fascinated von Braun, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.

In 1930 he attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, the "Spaceflight Society") and assisted Willy Ley in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in conjunction with Hermann Oberth. He also studied at ETH Zurich. Although he worked mainly on military rockets in his later years there, space travel remained his primary interest. The following episode from the early 1930s is telling in this respect. At this time 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 travelling to the Moon at some time."

Von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when Nazis came to power in Germany.He completed his doctorate  in physics from University of Berlin .Only part of his doctoral thesis because The full thesis contained many secrets of rocketry and was published only in 1960.Braun was influenced by the father of rocketry,the american Robert H Goddard. An artillary captain Domberger arranged for grants from ordnance department.

Civilian rocket tests were forbidden by the new Nazi regime. Only military development was allowed and to this end, a larger facility was erected at the village of Peenemunde in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea. Dornberger became the military commander at Peenemunde, with von Braun as technical director. In collaboration with the Luftwaffe, the Peenemünde group developed liquid-fuel rocket engines for aircraft and jet-assisted takeoffs. They also developed the long-range A-4 ballistic missile and the supersonic Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile.
In November 1937 (other sources: December 1, 1932), von Braun joined the National Socialist German Workers Party. An Office of Military Government, United States document dated April 23, 1947, states that von Braun joined the Waffen-SS (Schutzstaffel) horseback riding school in 1933, then the National Socialist Party on May 1, 1937, and became an officer in the Waffen-SS from May 1940 until the end of the war.
According to Von Braun’s own version he joined  Nazi party and SS under pressure because he had no other option and ordered by SS chief Heinrich Himmler to do so.His version was disputed by many others. There is a picture which shows Braun in uniform with Himmler.Many said he wore the uniform regularly although Braun claimed he wore it only once.He was thrice promoted by Himmler although he claimed the promotions were technical ones

VON BRAUN WITH HIMMLER

In 1943 Adolf Hitler became very enthusiastic about rocket weapon signed the order approving the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" and the group developed it to target London. Hitler was so enthusiastic that he personally made von Braun a professor shortly thereafter. In Germany at this time, this was an exceptional promotion for an engineer who was only 31 years old.

DIAGRAM OF V2 ROCKET

British and Soviets were aware of Hitler’s rocket programme and Braun and bombed Peenemunde heavily on 17 -18^th august, 1943.Although many people died Braun’s group and facilities remained largely intact.

SS General Hans Kammler who as an engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers in the rocket program. Arthur Rudolph, chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon. Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at Mittelwerk on many occasions, and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but claimed never to have witnessed any deaths or beatings, although it had become clear to him by 1944 that deaths had occurred. He denied ever having visited the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp itself, where 20,000 died from illness, beatings, hangings and intolerable working conditions. A friend quotes von Braun speaking of a visit to Mittelwerk:

“It is hellish. My spontaneous reaction was to talk to one of the SS guards, only to be told with unmistakable harshness that I should mind my own business, or find myself in the same striped fatigues!... I realized that any attempt of reasoning on humane grounds would be utterly futile.”

VON BRAUN WITH SS COLLEAGUES IN 1941

Others claim von Braun engaged in brutal treatment or approved of it. Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that after an apparent sabotage attempt:
Without even listening to my explanations, [von Braun] ordered the Meister to have me given 25 strokes...Then, judging that the strokes weren't sufficiently hard, he ordered I be flogged more vigorously...von Braun made me translate that I deserved much more, that in fact I deserved to be hanged...I would say his cruelty, of which I was personally a victim, are, I would say, an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism.
Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, testified that von Braun stood by and watched as prisoners were hung by chains from hoists. Von Braun claimed he "never saw any kind of abuse or killing" and only "heard rumors...that some prisoners had been hanged in the underground galleries".
Von Braun was arrested by Gestapo because of his “defeatist” attitude on war on March 14 ,1944 but released soon because german leadership understood the importance of Braun working on rocketry.
On May 2, 1945 almost at the end of the war Braun,his brother and almosst the whole Peenemunde team surrendered to Americans in Bavarian Alps.
The americans were very much aware of the importance of the catch.He was detained and interrogated by americans thoroughly and detained him in germany for a short time. On June 20, 1945, the U.S. Secretary of State approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to America; however this was not announced to the public until October 1, 1945. Von Braun was among those scientists for whom the U.S. Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency created false employment histories and expunged Nazi Party memberships and regime affiliations from the public record. Once “bleached” of their Nazism, the US Government granted the scientists security clearance to work in the United States. "Paperclip," the project’s operational name, derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists’ new political personæ to their “US Government Scientist” personnel files.
Braun  and his remaining Peenemunde staff  were transferred to their new home at Fort Bliss, Texas, a large Army installation just north of El PasoThere he remained largely as a “prisoner of peace” and unused although . While there, they trained military, industrial and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. As part of the Hermes project they helped to refurbish, assemble and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from Germany to the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico
On March 1, 1947 Braun married his first cousin Maria in a trip back to Germany.
. In 1950, at the start of the Korean War von Braun and his team were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama his home for the next 20 years. Between 1950 and 1956, von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at Redstone Arsenal, resulting in the Redstone rocket, which was used for the first live nuclear ballistic missile tests conducted by the United States.
As director of the Development Operations Division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), von Braun, with his team, then developed the Jupiter-C, a modified Redstone rocket. The Jupiter-C successfully launched the West's first satellite, Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.
Despite the work on the Redstone rocket, the twelve years from 1945 to 1957 were probably some of the most frustrating for von Braun and his colleagues. In the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev and his team of scientists and engineers plowed ahead with several new rocket designs and the Sputnik program, while the American government was not very interested in von Braun's work or views and only embarked on a very modest rocket-building program. In the meantime, the press tended to dwell on von Braun's past as a member of the SS and the slave labor used to build his V-2 rockets.
To end his frustration Braun chose to go to public and popularize his vision of men landing on moon through articles,tv talks and journals. The May 14, 1950 headline of The Huntsville Times ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. These disclosures rode a moonflight publicity wave that was created by the two 1950 U.S. science fiction films, Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M. At this time von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a manned Mars mission that used the space station as a staging point
The U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting Vanguard rocket launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1, there was a growing belief within the United States that America lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging Space Race. American authorities then chose to utilize von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle, something von Braun had originally proposed in 1954 but had been denied.

WALT DISNEY & VON BRAUN IN 1954

NASA was established by law on July 29, 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from Johnston Atoll in the south Pacific as part of Operation Hardtack I. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the ABMA development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with Herb York at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn was allowed to continue.Presiding from July 1960 to February 1970, von Braun became the center's first Director.
The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of Saturn rockets to carry heavy payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. From this, the Apollo program for manned moon flights was developed. Wernher von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an Earth orbit rendezvous technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962 he converted to the more risky lunar orbit rendezvous concept that was subsequently realized.During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate, Kurt H. Debus, the first director of the Kennedy Space Center. His dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on July 16, 1969 when a Marshall-developed Saturn V rocket launched the crew of Apollo 11 on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.

WITH PRESIDENT JOHN KENNEDY

SATURN ROCKET

During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry in the Space Race remains on display there.
However, on March 1, 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on May 26, 1972.

APOLLO 11 LAUNCH

BRAUN WITH COLLEAGUES FROM NASA AFTER APOLLO 11 SUCCESSFUL  MOON LANDING

MAN ON THE MOON

BRAUN IN HIS OFFICE AT NASA HEADQUARTERS, 1970

WIFE MARIA

In 1973 a routine health check revealed kidney cancer, which during the following years could not be controlled by surgery. Von Braun continued his work to the extent possible, which included accepting invitations to speak at colleges and universities as he was eager to cultivate interest in human spaceflight and rocketry, particularly with students and a new generation of engineers.
Von Braun helped establish and promote the National Space Institute, a precursor of the present-day National Space Society, in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became scientific consultant to Lutz Kayser, the CEO of OTRAG, and a member of the Daimler-Benz board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on December 31, 1976. When the 1975 National Medal of Science was awarded to him in early 1977 he was hospitalized, and unable to attend the White House ceremony.

On June 16, 1977, Wernher von Braun died of pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 65. He was buried at the Ivy Hill Cemetery in Alexandria, Virginia..

(This article is largely adapted from Wikipedia article On Von Braun)