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THE 456th FIGHTER INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON |
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THE PROTECTORS OF S. A. C. |
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Evacuation Of Peenemünde |
In 1932 a young artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, had recruited an even younger scientist, Dr. Wernher von Braun, to experiment on military rockets for the German Army. During the 1930's the two directed an expanding team of scientists in the development of a series of rockets, beginning with the A-1, a short projectile weighing 330 pounds, and culminating in the A-4 (V-2), a 50-foot-long, 13-ton projectile which seemed to be the ultimate in artillery weapons. After Germany went to war, they assembled upwards of 200,000 people for their project at the world's most advanced experimental station, Peenemünde on the Baltic seacoast, and continued to perfect the A-4 through 65,000 modifications. But the war bedeviled their work. Shortly after the British raid of August 1943, Professor Albert Speer, Reichmininister for Munitions and War Production, met with General Dornberger to prepare for the dispersion of functions throughout the Reich. The main assembly facilities went to a network of tunnels in the Harz Mountains in central Germany near the small town of Nordhausen. On New Year's Day 1944, with the benefit of ten thousand slave laborers and convicts under the control of the S.S., the Central Works produced its first three perfected V-2's.
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Harz Mountains. Kammler, brutal and treacherous, was an engineer who had to his credit the construction of numerous concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and had served as the dedicated tool of Heinrich Himmler to win control of all armaments programs. He was responsible for injecting slave labor into the rocket program; he was instrumental in the arrest of von Braun for failing to make a clear distinction between space travel and weapons development; and, by virtue of sinister infiltration, he finally gained control of the secret weapons projects. His order to disperse was one of the few that met with the approval of von Braun and his staff; their preference, bolstered by the tales of Russian brutality told by the melancholy parade of refugees, was to surrender when necessary to the British or the Americans. General Dornberger quickly moved his headquarters to the village of Bad Sachsa; Dr. Kurt Debus, director of the test stands, took his team to Cuxhaven on the North Sea; and during February the entire organization moved with its documents and equipment to the cotton-mill town of Bleicherode, twelve miles from Nordhausen.
During the first three days of July, the American forces withdrew to their zone of occupation. The First and Third Armies, as they rolled back along the highways over which they had fought some three months before, transferred several hundred industrial and academic experts to scattered locations in Greater Hessia. The Seventh Army removed twenty-three aircraft engineers from Halle to Darmstadt, and two hundred university professors to Zell-am-See near Salzburg. The advanced guards of the Russian army, according to a prearranged plan, followed the American withdrawal at a distance of three to five kilometers. When the commander of the Soviet 129 Rifle Corps arrived in Merseburg, he learned that the Americans had given permission to Krupp to remove a synthetic fuel plant. He was in time to stop the removal of the equipment, but reported that "all the principal technical staff had been taken away." His experience was general. The Russians found the fertile countryside of Saxony and Thuringia plentiful with crops and cattle, but most of the men who had staffed its universities and industries were gone.(5)
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It was Hitler's last great hope to win World War II. Developed over ten years at a cost equivalent to $5 billion, the V-2 rocket was the world's first liquid fuel ballistic missile. But when the British bombed the top-secret factory on the Baltic coast where they were made, the Germans decided to create a new, more secure facility. Prison labor--mostly Russian, Polish and French--was used to modify and enlarge an underground oil storage depot near the town of Nordhausen, creating a factory complex in a seven-mile-long network of tunnels. Life at Nordhausen was brutal, with the SS using torture to keep order. The prisoners produced as many as 600 rockets a month, but the horrific conditions claimed the lives of 25,000 workers. In the end, it was the United States that profited the most from Nordhausen, bringing priceless hardware, reams of files and many of Germany's top scientists and engineers, including Wernher von Braun, to the United States under "Project Paperclip". The CIA, the State Department, and U.S. Army intelligence each created special programs for the specific purpose of bringing selected former Nazis and collaborators to the United States.... The government employed these men and women for their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare, for work in American laboratories, and even as special guerrilla troops for deployment inside the USSR in the midst of a nuclear war.... Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of such recruits were SS veterans; some had been officers of the bloody Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi party's security service.
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Evacuation of Peenemünde |
As the Russian Army closed in from the east in 1945, it became apparent to von Braun and his staff that things were coming to an end at Peenemünde. Von Braun's staff was now under the direct command of the SS, Hitler's elite army. SS General Hans Kammler would surely have used the scientists as a bargaining chip or have the scientists killed to keep them from being captured by the Allies.
Von Braun had received several contradictory orders from German command, which
was in mass confusion at the time. As von Braun later stated, "I had ten
orders on my desk. Five promised death by firing squad if we moved, and five
said I'd be shot if we didn't move." Since he was damned either way, von Braun
called a meeting in mid-January 1945 with the other top officials at
Peenemünde. The rumor was the the Russians were fast approaching from the
south and that the path of escape might be closed soon. If the scientists and
engineers remained at Peenemünde, they would either be killed in combat or
taken prisoner by the Russians. They certainly did not want that.
They all decided that they wanted to surrender to the Americans. If nothing
else, they were more likely to be able to continue their research after the
war. They knew that somehow they had to smuggle all their research papers and
important equipment out of Peenemünde. They certainly could not allow a
decade's worth of work to be destroyed or fall into the wrong hands again.
As the Third Reich collapsed, there was no chance that Peenemünde would be
saved. That is why von Braun was utterly amazed when he received an order from
the local army defense commander to become soldiers and fight the Russians
when they arrived at Peenemünde. This would almost guarantee their demise. But
another set of orders came from General Kammler stating that the engineers and
scientists were to move to central Germany, close to the Mittlewerk factory.
Von Braun was still wary of Kammler's real intentions. Kammler might be moving
the scientists to a location where he would have the ability to turn them,
along with the technology at the underground Mittelwerk, into hostages. But
von Braun knew it was the best option for their continued freedom.
Von Braun prepared to evacuate thousands of engineers, scientists and their
families to central Germany. It was a tremendous task, but von Braun insisted
that it be done in an orderly fashion. He was the consummate leader at this
time also. For ten years he had showed his leadership abilities with staff,
technical problems, and in dealing with politicians, but this move south
really showed the determination of von Braun. German command and society was
crumbling all around them, yet somehow the organization held together.
They went to work rapidly. Almost all of the coordination went through von
Braun's close staff. Simple things such as procuring boxes became a daunting
task at this point in the war. They invented a color-coding system to make it
easier to identify the contents of what they were moving. A convoy was
organized, in which thousands of workers, engineers, and other Peenemündians
would be transported by train, truck, car, and any method available. Moving
this many people was bound to draw attention. Von Braun knew he would be
questioned about the move by local authorities. As luck would have it, a
recent shipment of stationary from the SS, which identified Peenemünde
personnel as a branch of the SS, was badly mangled at the printer. The
letterhead was supposed to read BZBV Heer, the name of an organization within
the SS. Instead, it read VABV, in initials of a nonexistent organization. Von
Braun's staff quickly invented a top-secret agency with the initials VABV,
translated in English meaning Project for Special Dispositions.
The initials VABV were painted and marked on boxes, vehicles, and armbands,
anything that might be checked by SS inspectors or other authorities. All of
the material and equipment was then packed into trucks and cars. The convoy
headed south and along the way SS agents stopped the caravan frequently, but
the VABV trick worked and they were allowed to continue.
On February 27, 1945, von Braun and his driver were leaving Peenemünde for the
last time, speeding through the mountainous terrain when they both fell
asleep. The vehicle plunged down the cliffside, killing the driver. Von Braun
suffered a broken arm and fractured shoulder. He awoke to find himself in a
hospital bed. Even though he was in no condition to be up and moving around,
von Braun insisted that his arm be set in a cast and he was back to
supervising the convoy. Soon they arrived at their first destination, an area
called Bleicherode.
Later, they received word that Peenemünde had been captured by the Russians. A
few weeks after that, the Americans captured the Mittelwerk. General Kammler
ordered von Braun and 500 of the top scientists to be separated from their
families and moved to the village of Oberammergau. They were placed in a small
internment camp that was, in von Braun's words, "...extremely plush, not
withstanding the barbed-wire around it." Kammler was indeed holding the
scientists hostage. They were surrounded by SS guards constantly. One day von
Braun pointed out to the head of the SS guard that the Oberammergau camp could
be easily bombed by Allied aircraft. One attack could wipe out all of the
Third Reich's top rocket scientists. Any guard that allowed that to happen
would surely be shot.
The guard agreed and let the scientists out of the camp and into the streets
of Oberammergau. He also agreed to let the scientists dress in civilian
clothing so American troops would not suspect that they were of any
importance. Von Braun quickly arranged for vehicles from Bleicherode to come
get the scientists. They were really free at this point. Now all they had to
do was surrender to the Americans.
Patton's army was still far away. The supply of fuel, or lack of it, to the
Allied columns was slowing the advance of the Americans. Needing food and
supplies, the scientists again used the VABV ruse to requisition the items
from army supply posts. The scientists then moved to the resort hotel, Haus
Ingeborg, in the border town of Oberjoch, near Austria. There von Braun met up
with General Dornberger from Peenemünde. Von Braun's brother Magnus was also
there.
There was not much to do except wait for the Americans. The scientists played
cards and listen to the radio. They heard of the fall of Berlin on May 1st
along with the news that Hitler was dead. As the Americans finally drew near,
it was decided that Wernher von Braun's brother, Magnus, would go out to greet
the troops and surrender for everyone. The reasoning for this was that Magnus
could speak broken English and it was thought that a large group of German men
marching toward the Americans would seem hostile or threatening.
Young Magnus pedaled off on a bicycle to meet the Americans. The first soldier
that he encountered was a sentry with the 324th Infantry Regiment, 44th
Infantry Division, Private First Class Frederick Schneikert. Magnus was
ordered to drop the bicycle and come forth with his hands up. In a smattering
of English laced with bits of German, Magnus tried to explain his mission. The
young soldier was not really sure what to do with this boyish figure claiming
to be a rocket scientist, so he turned the matter over to his commanding
officer, First Lieutenant Charles L. Stewart. Stewart at first thought that
Magnus was trying to "sell" his brother and the other scientists to the
Americans. The communications were soon cleared up and Lieutenant Stewart gave
Magnus passes for the Germans, to ensure their safe passage to the American
encampment.
Wernher von Braun, General Dornberger, and several other scientists were so
excited after Magnus returned, that they piled into three vehicles and
immediately headed for the American camp. The Americans were struck by Wernher
von Braun's young, handsome good looks, and his charm. He did not look the
part, or resemble the image they had imagined of a top German rocket
scientist. The Americans did realize the importance of their prize and soon
reporters and newspapers flooded in to see the rocket scientists.
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Last Rocketeers Set Sights on Mars
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Peenemünde and Los Alamos: Two Studies |
Donald E. Tarter
Abstract
The Second World War produced two great and memorable
scientific and technological teams: the German Peenemünde rocket team under
the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun, and the American Los Alamos atomic
bomb team under the direction of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Taken together,
the contributions of these teams created the post-war capability for
intercontinental nuclear warfare. These teams, working in different countries
under radically different political systems, encountered severe political
difficulties during and after the war. Each, in its own way, has had to live
with its deeds, endure public suspicions, and bear the judgment of history.
This article, based on 13 hours of interviews recently completed with members
of the von Braun Peenemünde team, together with an analysis of several hours
of video interviews of members of the Oppenheimer Los Alamos team, seeks to
present a meaningful contrast and description of the environments and the
pressures under which each worked.
Introduction
Late in 1982, the United States Justice Department's Office of
Special Investigations (OSI) began a series of interrogations of a former von
Braun rocket team member, Arthur Rudolph. Rudolph had been one of the central
figures in the American Apollo Lunar Program, having been the Saturn 5 project
manager. He had left his previous home in
Huntsville, Alabama, site of the
George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, and was then residing in San Jose,
California.
Throughout 1983, OSI continued its investigations, and late that year informed Dr. Rudolph that it believed there was sufficient evidence to link him to war crimes activity at the World War II German rocket facility, Mittelwerk, a forced-labor installation in the Harz Mountains. OSI threatened prosecution and indictment unless Dr. Rudolph signed an agreement to leave the country and renounce his citizenship. After agonizing over the prospects of a long and expensive trial or doing as the OSI requested, Dr. Rudolph decided in November 1983 to leave the United States. On March 27, 1984, he and his wife boarded a plane in San Francisco en route to Germany.
The disposition of the Rudolph case bitterly incensed many of Rudolph's original German colleagues and many of his associates in the American space program. In early 1989, an effort was launched by several of his friends and colleagues in Huntsville to have the government allow his return to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the lunar landing in July. That effort failed.
A 1989 editorial in the Huntsville Times [1] noted that Rudolph chose to leave the USA because there was a possibility of prosecution, and a chance that if successfully prosecuted he would be deported and lose his government benefits. The editorial added:
The right and justice of the matter have never been established. The aging retiree chose to acquiesce rather than fight. The West German government has said it did not find evidence to prosecute him.
... [This] leaves unanswered the question of the basic justice of the Rudolph case. The OSI's decision is, of course, subject to review. Rudolph has recourse through the federal courts, but to date, he has not taken it. And his dilemma is what it always was: a court order dissolving his voluntary surrender of citizenship would also set aside the OSI's side of the agreement. By starting the case over, Rudolph would be exposed to prosecution with the prospect of deportation and the loss of retirement benefits.
It is a dilemma best left to history.
In late 1983 and early 1984 Mr. Konrad K. Dannenberg and I were beginning a project at the University of Alabama in Huntsville which would add to the recorded recollection of members of Wernher von Braun's Peenemünde rocket team. Dannenberg himself was a former member of that team. He had served as a propulsion engineer on the first successful A-4 (later termed V-2) launch in October 1942. Later, among other duties in the United States, he had served as deputy director of the Saturn Program at George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. Both Dannenberg and I were most interested in seeing that early recollections of German rocketry were preserved. Likewise, we were interested in obtaining comments about the future of space development as anticipated by these pioneers. Hence our project was entitled, "Our Future in Space: Messages from the Beginning."
As a sociologist, I was also interested in obtaining a sense of the human responses to the conditions under which scientific and technical work was conducted in the totalitarian environment of Nazi Germany. Epochal work was being done. It was work that would literally begin the space age. While popular perception dates the beginning of the space age to the famous Soviet Sputnik launch on October 4, 1957, in fact the first human-designed object ever to ascend into the environment of space was launched some 15 years and one day earlier, October 3, 1942. That object was the German A-4 rocket, launched from the Peenemünde test facility, reaching an altitude of over 80 km (50 miles) and a range of 192 km (120 miles).
Thus, at a place now almost forgotten, humanity began its ultimate adventure into the cosmos. As a realist, I know that the drive behind much of human technology has been the military advantage that it might give. As an idealist, I am opposed to the use of science to further human destructiveness. As a behavioral scientist, I wanted to understand how men refined by sophisticated scientific and technological training could be reduced to the service of tyranny and human oppression.
For over two decades I have had the privilege of associating with many of the members of the von Braun team both as a neighbor and as a scholar interested in the social impact of the space age. That association with these gentlemen who stood at the beginning of the space age has, I believe, given me some insight into the questions I have asked. It has always been difficult, at best, to discuss such matters with them. Even in the most relaxed of times, the subject is not an object of easy reflection. I had hoped that our project to videotape the remembrances of key scientific and technical personnel at Peenemünde would be able to probe for answers to difficult and sensitive moral and political questions. The news of the Rudolph case, and the fact that other members of the original rocket team were also under investigation by the Department of Justice, left a heavy pall over any such discussion. Many of the group who had originally agreed to hour-long video sessions decided that they did not wish to grant such an interview under the existing circumstances of rumor and suspicion. Television networks and newspapers were, at the time, contacting me in attempts to obtain materials that would be useful to assist in compiling their own reports on the possible connection of the Peenemünde Team to Nazi atrocities. Some members of the group who decided to go ahead with the interviews stipulated that as a condition for their appearance they would talk about the history and circumstances of technological development, but did not wish to enter into a discussion relating to politically sensitive subjects. Although circumstances made our project most difficult, a grant from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and assistance from the Huntsville affiliate of the Alabama Public Television Network permitted us to obtain 13 hours of videotaped interviews from a dozen members of the original Peenemünde rocket team, but for the reasons stated above I have relied more on information obtained in my 20 years of association with members of the Peenemünde team than on comments made directly in the video interviews. [2]
During the same period that we were recording the recollections of the Peenemünde pioneers, I, along with several of my students, was engaged in an in-depth analysis of the experience of the Los Alamos atomic bomb team, directed by the late Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer. Through an extensive search of the literature and analysis of several hours of videotaped interviews with key members of that team, we compiled what we thought were some interesting points of comparison between the experiences of the members of the Los Alamos project and those working at Peenemünde. We felt that such a comparison could, perhaps, put the whole question of the moral and political posture of those at Peenemünde into somewhat sharper focus. In addition, I had at least two reasons to seek such a comparison. Firstly, taken together, the contributions of these two great technical teams made the age of intercontinental nuclear warfare possible. Secondly, these were ends not consistent with the motives that drove them in their youth.
The young men who were later to go Peenemünde and begin the space age dreamed of interplanetary space flight. Almost all of them with whom I have talked have specifically mentioned their thrill and excitement about the early German science fiction movie, Frau im Mond ("Girl on the Moon"). This Fritz Lang movie, filmed in consultation with the early Romanian space pioneer Hermann Oberth, stimulated an entire generation of young idealists into seeking careers in space technology. Likewise, as youths, the men who were to go to Los Alamos to begin the atomic age had their own captivating visions that stirred within them. The young Oppenheimer was intrigued by a box of minerals given to him as a gift and was soon exploring the rock formations of Central Park in New York City. At the age of 11 he was accepted into the New York Mineralogical Club. The young Edward Teller was seized by the excitement of science through the works of Jules Verne. The young Leo Szilard showed an almost prescient childhood fascination with the classic Hungarian poem of pessimism, The Tragedy of Man, which, perhaps, accounts in part for his lifelong mission to forestall nuclear tragedy.
The youthful dreams and aspirations of these men did not involve the development of weapons of destruction. Rather, they hoped as adults to understand the laws of nature and to travel into interplanetary space. The world as it was, however, demanded that their noble aspirations be put to the service of much less noble ends. Though they were to move to the very edge of human understanding, they could not escape the political, economic, and social forces of their time. Their dreams were laid aside while their professional talents were channelled into designing means of death and destruction. What types of readjustment are required for such an awesome redirection of one's own purpose for existence? This question led me to investigate the experiences of these two groups for answers.
Their members shared an early experience that an increasing number of scientists and technologists in our current world now face. Out of the processes set in motion at Peenemünde and Los Alamos, the world has now evolved a global militarized culture. A very substantial portion of scientists and technologists trained for participation in our modern world economy find themselves in a situation where their prime opportunity for employment and career development lies in the service of the international arms industry. As nations drain their resources in search of military superiority, many of the more productive and hopeful goals of humankind are cancelled or delayed. The experience of those at Peenemünde and Los Alamos may give us a fuller understanding of the forces that have increasingly put science and scientists in pursuit of destructive goals.
Los Alamos and Peenemünde: A Sense of Perspective
In seeking to gain perspective through comparison of
Los Alamos
and Peenemünde, it is informative to consider the forces that led each group
to come together as a team. Few of their members anticipated careers
associated with the military establishments of their respective countries. Yet
all of them found that the military was their prime avenue of career
development.
In the case of the Peenemünde group, many of its members had been affiliated with small German rocket societies such as the Society for Space Travel (Verein für Raumschiffahrt, or VfR) that had been forming since the late 1920s. [3] While such organizations were not taken seriously in their early days, publicity that played upon the intriguing possibilities of interplanetary space flight made them an object of public curiosity.
Many accounts of German military developments prior to the Second World War suggest that the concept of the high-angle rocket appealed to German officialdom because it might offer a legal way around the restrictions placed on the development of artillery weapons in the Treaty of Versailles. [4] While a case be made for this, it should be remembered that development of potentially illegal artillery had been underway for some while. In the words of Dr. Georg von Tiesenhausen: [5]
When I was drafted in 1936, I found the 8.8 cm anti-aircraft cannon already developed, including its advanced semi-automatic range finders, and velocity and direction indicators. This was a superior masterpiece of engineering development that must have started many years earlier.
Indeed, Dr. Gerhard Reisig points out that [6]
The development of the '88' (as it was commonly called) had begun as early as 1929, in the Weimar Republic. Its use as a replacement for aging weapons was allowed under the treaty. However, the same weapon had great potential for anti-aircraft purposes, making it of questionable legality.
Given the general drift away from the strictest adherence to
the standards of the Treaty of Versailles, even in the
Weimar Republic, it
is unlikely that legal questions overshadowed more practical considerations of
feasibility and economics in the earliest days of rocketry.
Early military development of German rocketry fell under the aegis of Walter Dornberger, an artillery captain who, in 1930, had graduated from the Technische Hochschule, Berlin. In the fall of 1932, Dornberger recruited Wernher von Braun as his chief technical assistant, thus making von Braun the ranking civilian in the rocket program. Subsequently von Braun obtained his doctorate in physics in 1934 at army expense. In the meantime, on 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler had been officially appointed Chancellor and the Nazi Party of Germany quickly consolidated its power. Thus, as the Weimar Republic crumbled, the young von Braun was completing his formal education under circumstances that were to obligate him to serve the German army.
It should also be remembered that the Great Depression hit Germany with a vengeance. The severe economic climate motivated individuals to take employment anywhere it could be found, and, with the early rocketeers, it could be found only in the army. Neither German universities nor private industry showed the slightest interest in rocketry. At the best of times, private funding for studying rocket propulsion would have been most difficult to obtain, but, with the depression threatening the very survival of German industry, such a venture into basic research was out of the question. Arthur Rudolph, like so many of his counterparts, found himself without work and without money. Captain Dornberger moved through this cadre of unemployed engineers looking for ideas that might serve the army's interest in rocketry. From his recruitment efforts and from the lack of any available economic alternative, several young rocketeers were brought on to the government military payrolls. For reasons completely beyond their control, and toward ends that were divergent from their dreams, an increasing number of young German space visionaries found themselves in the service of a military establishment that was later to serve Nazi Germany.
As the activities of the early rocket pioneers grew, it became obvious that they would need a larger and more elaborate facility to test their new generation of vehicles. The first test facilities at Kummersdorf, some 25 kilometers south of Berlin, were rapidly becoming inadequate. The vicinity of the small fishing village of Peenemünde on the Baltic Coast seemed to provide the perfect place. First suggested to von Braun by his mother, the site offered isolation and a place to fire the still highly experimental vehicles. As political tensions heightened in Europe, the advanced guard of the Peenemünde team was almost totally preoccupied with the elaborate preparations involved in the opening of the world's first large-scale rocket test facility. The Army Research Center at Peenemünde became fully staffed in August 1939. On September 1, 1939, Hitler ordered his troops to invade Poland, thus formally beginning the Second World War. By 1942, the facility at Peenemünde employed 1,960 scientists and technicians and some 3,852 other workers. Work on rocket development was then proceeding at maximum intensity.
The nearly complete mobilization of German society in the course of the Second World War saw many individuals with scientific and technical skills pressed into the military service. Among the interview group was Dr./Lance Corporal Ernst Stuhlinger, who was serving on the Russian front as an infantryman when he received orders to report to Peenemünde. This was a place and a project of which he had never heard. Likewise, Konrad K. Dannenberg, an infantry lieutenant in France, was called away from the battlefield to join the rocket development center. For individuals such as these, the motivation was clear: build rockets or dodge bullets.
In contrast, the factors that led to the assembly of the Los Alamos atomic bomb team were remarkably different. The scientists who were to comprise the core group at Los Alamos came from the well-established scientific field of physics. Physics, as a discipline, had become increasingly important since the turn of the century, and had acquired respect in major universities. In Germany, however, with the rise of thc Nazi Party, the physics community had suffered a terrible blow. Fully 25 per cent of academic physicists in Germany, almost all Jewish, found themselves forced from their positions shortly after Hitler came to power. By 1934, one of every five institute directorships in Germany was vacant. [7] The number of physicists who left Germany was large, but the quality was truly astounding. Fascism flushed away the cream of European physics: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, Michael Polanyi, Theodor von Karman, George de Hevesy, Felix Bloch, James Franck, Lothar Nordheim, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr and Eugene Rabinowitch. Along with some sympathetic non-Jewish scientists such as Erwin Schrodinger and Martin Stobb, these men were to become the driving force behind atomic research in Britain and the USA.
Hence, there was a stark contrast between the unemployed and unknown engineers and technicians who were seeking affiliation with the German army, and the relatively affluent and widely known physicists who were leaving Germany in droves. Of the Peenemünde team, only a few members could be considered to have outstanding credentials in science. Among them were von Braun, with a Ph.D. in physics; Ernst Stuhlinger, also with a Ph.D. in physics; and Carl Wagner, a Ph.D. physical chemist. Engineers did not yet enjoy the status of scientists. As Ernst Stuhlinger stated: [8]
According to my own observations, during the late twenties and the thirties, the general public held natural scientists in higher regard than philosophers. Engineers were considered with less awe than scientists, but their high value to society was well recognized -- more than that of philosophers. Engineer covers a very broad field; engineers were never treated all alike. After all, engineers built the fabulous new airplanes and ocean liners, the worldwide telephone networks, and the television systems that began to appear during the mid 1930s, but engineers were also those simple-minded people who were at fault when the electric light did not work; when the car had a defect; when a train was late; or when the elevator got stuck between floors. The scientist, in the conception of the public, presented a far more homogeneous image than the engineer. There is no doubt that scientists found a far greater degree of respect than engineers in social circles during the 1920s and 1930s.
Even in the USA, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was not unusual to find lingering traces of status comparisons among certain scientists who sometimes referred to the transplanted Peenemünde Team as “von Braun’s plumbers.”
Stuhlinger continues:
During the war, many things were different. From the standpoint of those who felt responsible for the conduct of the war, those scientists and engineers who contributed directly or indirectly to the war effort were, of course, of utmost importance. For Hitler and his immediate entourage, things were again different. Hitler did not like scientists (because they failed to rally around his flag), and he let them feel it. During the first years of the war, he denounced them, or at least neglected them, saying that he did not need them. He wanted production experts who could deliver large quantities of ammunition and other war materiel. He needed and wanted engineers who could help with that production. Only toward the end of the war, when things went badly for Germany, Hitler complained bitterly that his scientists had not provided him with the wonder weapons he would have needed to win the war.
This complaint, Stuhlinger insists was directed primarily at the scientific community, not the engineering and technical community. Hitler felt that his initial mistrust of scientists had been verified. These fuzzy minded dreamers had failed to deliver on their promises, not only in terms of rocket technology, but in terms of a host of land, air and sea weapons.
According to Stuhlinger, considerations of relative status were not a factor within Peenemünde itself. Scientists, engineers and technicians worked together without reference to privilege or prestige. Whatever the general public or the Führer thought of their relative merits, for practical purposes such considerations were unimportant. [9]
Neither the community of Jewish physicists nor the community of non-Jewish scientists and engineers was particularly active politically. The prevailing attitude of both was, insofar as possible, to ignore the political world and get on with their chosen professions. There were exceptions, most notably among the academic physicists such as Szilard, Bohr and Schrodinger, but the activist attitude was not the norm. Alan D. Beyerchen, in his study of thc political posture of the physics community in the Third Reich, refers to this attitude as a form of "inner migration." [10] Edward Teller expressed much the same early rejection of political involvement by noting that the continuing European political difficulties forced him to be "enveloped in the feeling that only science is lasting." [11]
In Germany, this apolitical posture was even more pronounced for the Peenemünde group. At least three reasons can be identified that may account for this. First, their educational backgrounds had certainly not prepared or predisposed them to ask political questions or seek out political activities. Second, as they gravitated toward the closed and restricted environments of Kummersdorf and later Peenemünde, they became progressively more isolated from the intellectual currents at play in the cities and in the universities. Third, and perhaps most important, their lot was improving under the rule of the Third Reich. For the most part, the men of Peenemünde were plain, practical men, mostly members of the volkisch ideal, the German or Nordic middle class. Their training was in practical, not theoretical matters. They were, in the eyes of the Aryan thinkers, the finest example of native German utilitarianism.
Hitler's Aryan ideology even found its way into physics, in a movement led by two Nobel laureates, Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. [12] Perhaps the most prominent statement of the philosophy of Aryan physics can be found in Lenard's Deutsche Physik, published in four volumes during 1936 and 1937. [13] Aryan physics proclaimed the applied and experimental over the theoretical. Applied physics was German; theoretical physics was Jewish. Technology was preferred over theory. Non-Jewish German theoretical physicists such as Heisenberg were chastised for bringing a Jewish spirit to German physics, yet statements from the Peenemünde group tend to confirm the failure of Aryan physics to become an influential part of German physics, even in the darkest days of the push toward ideological conformity. Physicist Ernst Stuhlinger observes,
When Lenard's book, Deutsche Physik, was published, it met with head shaking and amazement among colleagues. We young physicists read a few pages out of curiosity, and then put it aside. I remember that Hans Geiger once said to a group of students, "This is all very strange. One cannot do away with the facts of physics just like that. I'm so surprised that Lenard should have digressed so far; he used to be a very fine experimenter." Under the circumstances, it was very courageous for Geiger to say that much. We students got the message. I remember that I was very glad to have this assurance and confirmation of my own thoughts.
Stuhlinger goes on to confirm Alan Beyerchen's observations
that Aryan physics was very ill-defined, and fraught with internal
contradictions. [14]
The names connected with Aryan physics were Lenard, Stark, Tomaschek and a few hot-headed students, but that was an extremely small minority among the hundreds of physicists who were active at universities at the time. Lenard, Stark and Tomaschek were really ostracized. Physics was taught as usual, with Einstein's relativity, Bohr's atom model, Heisenberg's and Schrodinger's quantum mechanics, Pauli's principle, etc.
Gerhard Reisig, who was in the field of engineering physics, dismissed Lenard and Stark as being thought of as eccentric old men, opportunists seeking to resurrect their declining careers. [15] Georg von Tisenhausen thinks they had virtually no influence in the practical or intellectual activities of engineers. In his words, "Aryan Physics? I never heard of it." [16]
Hence, as the 1930s drew to a close, we see an interesting phenomenon among the community of German scientists and technologists. Large numbers of an old intellectual elite had been dethroned, while a new and emergent elite of physicists and engineers was assuming command. Pressures for ideological conformity were apparent, even to the most politically detached, but an ideological physics was destined to be stillborn.
The historical trap was set. The engineers and technicians bound for Peenemünde were absorbed by new and seemingly unlimited opportunities. The rush of excitement and the promise to be able to pursue the long-held dream of opening thc door to the cosmos dimmed their already feeble propensity to question political policy. The Peenemünde team was lured into a political and moral lethargy that would later be enforced by the powers of a police state.
The Jewish physicists who were destined to become a major component of the yet-to-be Los Alamos team were busily directing their efforts toward the rescue of their families and colleagues. What little time was left was spent urging the British and American governments to prepare to develop the ultimate weapon against Fascism: the atomic bomb. Those who were to be at the core of the Los Alamos team were made callous by the human outrages occurring around them. In the process, their concerns for survival surpassed the moral questions raised by a weapon of mass destruction.
Social scientist have long held that moral questions can only be understood within the context of their times. Perhaps that is why so many members of these two technical teams answer the probes of modern moral investigators with the response, "You just don't understand."
The War Years
The Peenemünde research facility became fully operational in
August 1939. It was not until April 1943 that the
Los Alamos atomic
development facility was opened. Some comparisons of these two major research
and development facilities are useful in understanding the behavior of those
who worked at each. Both facilities were secret and isolated. Peenemünde had
nearly 6,000 operational personnel at its height, the Los Alamos facility had
a total workforce of nearly 5,000. Both facilities were heavily dependent upon
support facilities in other parts of their respective countries. In Germany,
these support facilities were increasingly disabled by Allied attacks as the
war progressed. In the United States, the support facilities were secure and
increasingly grew more productive. Peenemünde itself came under direct bombing
attack in August 1943. Los Alamos never had such concerns. The mission at
Peenemünde was open-ended and growing. It was assigned to develop, produce and
supply an increasing variety of rocket-propelled vehicles for military use.
The mission at Los Alamos was singular and finite: produce an atomic weapon.
Both Peenemünde and Los Alamos operated under a military commander: General
Walter Dornberger in Germany and General Leslie R. Groves in the United
States. Both project directors were civilian scientists -- Dr. Wernher von
Braun and Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer -- and both were natives of their
respective countries. Peenemünde operated in the totalitarian environment of
war-ravaged Germany, whereas Los Alamos operated in the more open and
democratic environment of a secure United States. Because collaborative
scientific and technological enterprises require a great deal of free
discussion and exchange of ideas, both facilities seemed to maintain a good
deal of internal freedom with regards to discussion of the best strategies to
achieve their stated mission. Open discussion of other applications of
technologies, most specifically space travel, were forbidden at Peenemünde,
and political discussions were most certainly forbidden, while at Los Alamos
the political ramifications of the work were an open but infrequently
discussed topic.
From the date the Peenemünde facility became fully operational to the date of the first successful A-4 test, October 3, 1942, there was a lapse of three years and two months. From the date that Los Alamos opened to the first successful test of the atomic bomb at the Trinity Site, July 1945, there was a lapse of two years and three months. The time from the first successful A-4 test launch in October 1942 to its first successful military use in September 1944 was one year and eleven months. The less complex V-l weapon was ready some two and a half months earlier and was first used on the battlefield on June 13, 1944. The time from the test of the atomic weapon at the Trinity site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, to its first use in warfare at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was a mere three weeks. Credible analysts estimate that the German V-weapon effort cost approximately three billion war-time US dollars. The Manhattan atomic bomb project cost approximately two billion dollars. [17]
While it is impossible to judge with quantitative certainty, the general conditions under which the two research and development facilities existed, and the missions they were assigned to accomplish, suggest that the task faced by the Peenemünde group was more difficult than that faced at Los Alamos. The industrial, university, and governmental support facilities that were necessary for the completion of the Manhattan Project were enormous, and they were located in a country that was not under direct attack. The administrative and production challenges faced by Peenemünde, being open-ended and constantly subject to disruptions through enemy attack, were far greater than those of Los Alamos.
The Peenemünde facility first came under direct attack with the Allied aerial bombardment of August 17, 1943. Although the Royal Air Force specifically intended its mission to kill as many of the expert technical and administrative personnel as possible, in fact only two key figures were killed, Walter Thiel and Erich Walther. Seven hundred and thirty-three other individuals died in the raids, and major damage was done to personnel housing and development works. Following the Peenemünde bombing, systematic raids were launched against supporting assembly plants and hydrogen peroxide production facilities. Peenemünde itself was not bombed again for almost a year, and never with the same intensity. This was because intelligence reports indicated that much of the testing and production had been moved elsewhere. [18] Helmut Zoike, the engineer at the control panel who actually launched the first human object in space, stated in our interviews that "The bombings came too late to hinder the A-4 development, this was already done. The raids were, also, too early to interfere with deployment. It really came at a very opportune time from the German perspective." [19] Thus, the actual raid on Peenemünde was not as crippling to the program as the continuing raids on support facilities.
It was, nevertheless, in an increasing atmosphere of desperation that the decision was made to move rocket production underground into the infamous Mittelwerk facility. This site was the location of an old gypsum mine in the Harz Mountains in north-west Germany. The conversion from mine to missile-production facility was a harsh and dirty task, performed under intense pressure, and using forced labor from a mixture of criminals, homosexuals, prisoners of war and political prisoners. Von Braun described the conditions of the labor force at Mittelwerk as "horrible;" Albert Speer used the term "barbarous;" and Arthur Rudolph calls the treatment of prisoners "primitive" and "awful." Prisoners were literally worked to death or exposed to such unsanitary conditions that they died of disease. Those who resisted faced summary execution. Bodies were disposed of in a local crematory. Only eleven months after General Dornberger had proclaimed the A-4 vehicle to have opened the doorway to the heavens, it was being produced in the dungeons of hell. [20]
The universal question asked by students of the history of technology and ethics comes here. Did the Peenemünde personnel know the composition of the Mittelwerk task force? Clearly, they did. Were they personally terrified, or did they shrug off the barbarities because it was the job that mattered? It has been their position that it was thc former: their welfare and the welfare of their families depended on their compliance with the situation as it was. Given the tyranny and the desperation of the Nazi regime, this seems a distinct possibility. Social science has no power to read the minds and motives of human beings. We can describe events, describe the behavior of individuals in those events, and record their explanations of their behavior. It is up to the student of history to interpret his or her acceptance of those explanations.
Rudolph, and others at Mittelwerk, were frequently reminded that they too could join the forced labor teams if they did not fully cooperate with the SS authorities. Previously, in March 1943, Wernher and Magnus von Braun, Klaus Riedel, Helmut Grottrup and Hannes Luhrsen had been arrested by the (Gestapo at Peenemünde and charged with treason for describing the A-4 as a space vehicle rather than a weapon of war. Obviously, this arrest was not over mere semantics, but was designed as a warning to key members of the team that nobody was immune from the force of SS control.
The madness of war became complete. German atrocities at home and in occupied territories mushroomed. This was followed by the growing insensitivity to human suffering on the part of the Allies. In July 1943, the mostly civilian city of Hamburg was fire-bombed, and in one night 45,000 Germans died -- most of them old people, women and children. [21] Other cities such as Cologne and Dresden were to suffer the same fate. Hostility had escalated into mutual barbarity. With these developments, the world's first generation of space vehicles changed their name from A-weapons, which innocuously meant assembly, to V-weapons, in which the V meant, ominously "vengeance" (Vergeltung).
By comparison, the scene surrounding the isolated mesa that was home to the Los Alamos laboratory appeared almost serene. Here, desperation was nowhere apparent on the landscape, but, rather, was hidden in the emotions and fears of the men who labored frantically against a possibility that proved eventually to be a phantasm. These scientist worked with a fair certainty that Japan would not be able to develop the atomic bomb, but there was much less certainty about what the German potential might be. In their minds, the real enemy was Germany. Japan was a force to be dealt with after the demise of Hitler was assured. Emotional responses to the Third Reich were unusually intense because of the personal associations that many at Los Alamos had with the Third Reich. Several, including Oppenheimer, had relatives who were suffering and dying under Nazi persecution. Whether they shared personal experience or not -- Jewish, non-Jewish, American-born and foreign-born -- all at Los Alamos were melded together into a coordinated and determined force to produce the agent of mass destruction that they knew was possible.
Motivations had been internalized. These men did not work under the threat of midnight arrest. There was no possibility of being assigned to forced-labor parties. They worked voluntarily for a cause they considered essential. This, too, made the task at Los Alamos easier. There were reservations expressed and even some resignations, but the team as a whole had an esprit de corps that was remarkable.
Interestingly, from a behavioral science point of view, the positive esprit de corps at Los Alamos had its counterpart in a sort of "negative" esprit de corps at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk. Dr. Paul Figge, who was a major figure in A-4 production, described it thus: [22]
The bombings hardly affected progress on the A-4 program, because our enthusiasm still remained high to accomplish the goal. So actually, the more difficult the conditions became, the more the enthusiasm grew to finish what we had begun. "Enjoy the war -- the peace will be terrible" was the motto.
Caught up as they were in the enthusiasm for their task,
members of the
Los Alamos team, as well as their
Peenemünde counterparts, were to come to accept and take pleasure in the
pernicious products of their science and technology. No member of the Los
Alamos team, during the course of his work, ever had to witness a summary
execution. No member ever lost one of his immediate family or a close
colleague to enemy bombing. No member of the Los Alamos team ever had to look
into the wretchedly pitiful face of a slave laborer dying in the process of
being forced to serve a cause he detested. Yet the war culture prevailed. Its
all-consuming power instilled into the Los Alamos team a growing callousness
that effectively precluded deep moral and ethical reflection on the ultimate
consequences of their deeds.
Donald A. Strickland, in his study of the atomic scientists' political movement of 1945 and 1946, notes that at Los Alamos there was "no political arousal before the end of the war, save for a few private conversations." He calls this an "arresting" fact, considering that the politically active Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard were frequent visitors to this remote site. [23] The drive to achieve the task was too intense for reflection. It was after the grisly weapon was a fait accompli that the ponderous questions of morality were asked.
Fermi moved to Los Alamos in September 1944. Although he was technically an enemy alien until his American citizenship was granted in 1945, he was allowed to become a lab director. Bohr, on the other hand, had incurred the severe displeasure of Winston Churchill over his insistence that the Soviets be informed as to the existence of the weapon and invited to collaborate in a scheme of international control. Bohr had further made unauthorized disclosures about the project to Chief Justice Felix Frankfurter. It has been reported that, for this, Churchill was on the edge of ordering Bohr's arrest. [24] Roosevelt adopted Churchill's position and became extremely cool toward Bohr. Despite these political difficulties, Bohr was allowed a major consultancy role at Los Alamos. These two cases seem to demonstrate that the practical matter of building the bomb was placed above political questions about those who were building it. It is not likely that the same lenience would have been extended to the key technical personnel on the Peenemünde team.
While most at Los Alamos simply lost themselves in the task at hand, there were more glaring examples of growing insensitivity to humanitarian considerations. From the time Edward Teller arrived, he set his sights not on the mission at hand, but the even greater destructive potential of the hydrogen bomb, or the "super," as he almost affectionately called it. Teller eventually refused to work under Hans Bethe on further calculations concerning mere fission weapons, and was given his own small group at the laboratory for investigation of the, development of a thermonuclear weapon. [25]
In addition to this minority thrust toward overkill, there was a disquieting theoretical possibility that the ignition of the fission weapon might just produce enough heat to cause a reaction between deuterium and nitrogen, and thereby set fire to the world's atmosphere. On hearing this, Oppenheimer immediately set Hans Bethe to work checking Teller's initial calculations. Was this, the ultimate catastrophe, really possible? For the first but not the last time in history, human beings had to make a decision as to whether a task at hand was worth the risk -- albeit infinitesimal -- of ending our collective existence. The logic we used then may give us a hint of the logic we shall have to use again.
According to Teller, the matter was firmly laid to rest in 1942, when some of his initial calculations were found to be in error. As Peter Goodchild notes in his classic study of Oppenheimer, several scientists were, over the next three years, to make the same calculations as Teller; and because Teller's initial calculations had been kept secret, they too came to Oppenheimer with great alarm. [26] Calculations were checked and rechecked right up to 1945, shortly before the first test detonation at the Trinity site. Rumors of the potential total human catastrophe had become so widespread among all levels of personnel at Los Alamos that the authorities drew up contingency plans for psychiatrists at the Oak Ridge facility to be flown to Los Alamos should panic ensue. Arthur H. Compton has said that his group calculated a three-in-a-million chance of destroying the world, and that was an acceptable risk. Edward Teller, on the other hand, insists that they were able to dismiss the possibility entirely. At that time such statements of high confidence seemed most reassuring. [27] Looking back from the perspective of a generation that has heard similar confident risk assessments before events such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the space shuttle Challenger, those expressions of high confidence sound more hollow.
A final observation on the darker face of Los Alamos is now in order. The prevailing pathos of the general culture had affected all who labored there, but perhaps the extent to which it had changed basic human values is best illustrated by J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. Based on information recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Joseph Rotblat, a physicist who assisted in bomb design, and one of the few who left prior to project completion, relates the following story. In a letter dated May 25, 1943, from Oppenheimer to Enrico Fermi, the issue of using radioactive materials to poison German food supplies was raised. Oppenheimer was asking Fermi whether he could produce enough strontium without letting too many in on the secret. Oppenheimer continued, "I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men." Rotblat offers the following observation, "I am sure that in peacetime these same scientists would have viewed such a plan as barbaric; they would not have contemplated it even for a moment. Yet, during the war, it was considered quite seriously, and I presume, abandoned only because it was technically unfeasible." [28]
Richard Rhodes comments on the same incident as follows, "There is no better evidence anywhere in the record of the increasing bloody-mindedness of the Second World War than that Robert Oppenheimer, a man who professed at various times in his life to be dedicated to Ahisma (the Sanskrit word that means doing no harm or hurt ...) could write with enthusiasm of preparations for the mass poisoning of as many as five hundred thousand human beings." [29]
After The War
Their accomplishment in the Second World War made the members of the Los Alamos and Peenemünde teams into legends. Their actions and statements after the war shaped and moulded the public perceptions of these legends, yet the environments that the two groups faced after the war were radically different. It is those differences that have done much to shape our postwar evaluations of them. Members of the teams at Peenemünde and Mittelwerk fled their posts as the Allied forces closed their grip around Germany in early 1945. They arranged a rendezvous at a small Austrian village named Reutte. There they surrendered to the American forces, and their journey to the United States began. The code name Project Paperclip was given to this movement. Some 118 individuals comprised the first group of Peenemünde personnel coming to the USA. Later, several hundred additional individuals, including family and colleagues, joined them. One member of the core group, Helmut Grottrup, decided to remain in what was to become East Germany and work with the Soviet missile program. A small cadre of other German rocket personnel joined him and were later transferred to the Soviet Union.
From the time von Braun and his group surrendered until some years after their arrival at Fort Bliss, Texas, they remained, as Ordway and Sharpe put it, "prisoners of peace." [30] They were allowed substantial freedom of movement and association, but they were subject to governmental restrictions and objects of continued surveillance by the FBI and other government agencies. Although acceptance by the American public was generally polite, some degree of suspicion and hostility was occasionally apparent. In contrast, the key figures at Los Alamos, their mission completed for the most part, sought to leave weapons work and return to academic environments. They did so with an enhanced prestige that made them instant scientific celebrities wherever they went. They existed in an atmosphere of honor and respect, and they were encouraged to express their views freely on what they had done and what it might mean for our future.
There was pressure on the atomic scientists to help us think about the new issues we faced in the nuclear age. Their academic settings made this possible. Their organization into politically active groups and their launch of the influential Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were reflections of this type of environment. But for those who had come from Peenemünde, conditions were very different. Between 1945 and 1950, there was little public discussion of their role or their activities. They worked for thc US army on the remote missile test ranges of Texas and New Mexico and their actions were shrouded in secrecy. Occasional announcements of V-2 launching were made, but very little was said about the German team that assisted. The United States government was still too uncertain about the possible public reaction to play up the presence of these men from Peenemünde.
It was not until the early 1950s that the public began to learn of the activities of these men. Shifting as they did from the sparsely populated regions of Texas and New Mexico to the more populated regions surrounding Huntsville, Alabama, they came increasingly to public attention. The focus of publicity was on Dr. Wernher von Braun. His charismatic manner and his ability to capture public attention were immediately apparent. He began to publish books such as Across the Space Frontier, Man on the Moon, and Mars Project in the early 1950s. As these works came to public attention, the Cold War intensified. With the advent of the Soviet launch of Sputnik, in October 1957, attention focused on the Germans at Huntsville. The USA increasingly began to look to them to save its international prestige by answering the Soviet challenge with its own successful orbital vehicle. After dismal failures by the Navy in its Vanguard program, von Braun's team at Huntsville was given the task and, on JJnuary 31, 1958, the Redstone rocket lifted the USA's first satellite, Explorer I, into orbit. The space age for the United States had now really begun, and Dr. Wernher von Braun was its leader.
The passions of the late 1950s and 1960s were assertive and not reflective. This was mirrored in von Braun's writings, which became commonplace in the scientific and popular press. These. dealt almost entirely with the prospects of new hardware in space and new missions for space vehicles. The more sensitive subject of science and its relation to political and foreign policy issues was almost never discussed. By contrast, the atomic scientists made such issues their central focus.
Suspicions concerning the historical role of the Peenemünde team were occasionally expressed in public dialogue in the late 1960s and 1970s, but they were seldom answered by the team itself. Their continued affiliation with the Army, and later NASA, dampened any thoughts of embroiling themselves in controversial questions. After the successful Apollo Lunar Program there was a feeling among several of von Braun's close associates that he was a victim of lingering prejudice against Germans by not being considered for the top job at NASA. His resignation from NASA in 1972 was rumored to be a result of such prejudices but, in traditional low-key style, he and his colleagues shied away from discussion of such allegations. When we sought clarification on this point for our project, Stuhlinger, Reisig and von Tiesenhausen all confirmed that they felt prejudice was a factor. But all agreed that it was more than just prejudice. As Stublinger pointed out, [31]
At the time when the first American satellite was planned, 1955-57, there were people who thought that an American satellite should be built by native Americans, not naturalized immigrants -- who even had been enemies less than ten years earlier. That attitude was probably the real reason why the Navy-supported Vanguard, and not the Army-supported Explorer, was America's satellite project for the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year. However, in my talks with large numbers of people who knew von Braun, it is clear that the true reason was neither von Braun's background as a builder of rockets for the German Army, nor a lingering prejudice against Germans in general, but "very simple human jealousy." Von Braun's popularity was extraordinary, not only with the public and the news media, but also, with Congress. For some within the high ranks of NASA, this was just too much to bear.
Reisig noted that "We found out that Americans like success but not too much success." [32]
In a strange historical irony, the leaders of these two great scientific and technical teams met their final demise in much the same way. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer's career with government came to an end with a denial of his security clearance because of past political associations. However, professional jealousy was also a key part of this decision. In the Oppenheimer case, the principal source of opposition has been identified as Edward Teller, who, in the words of Peter Goodchild, saw Oppenheimer as "a man of rival power and opposite persuasion." [33] Likewise, von Braun's fate was sealed by the same combination of past political associations and professional rivalry. Oppenheimer received strong expressions of support from his colleagues and stirred much public debate. With von Braun, there was a minimum of public discussion. Right up until 1984, when the US Department of Justice completed its investigation of Dr. Arthur Rudolph and he chose to leave the country rather than face trial, the Peenemünde team avoided public controversy.
The news of the Rudolph affair shook the German group. Virtually all had now retired and were free to express themselves on events in Germany. Some did, but most felt that their best interest could be served by remaining silent. Indeed, many long decades of silence about the political winds that had constantly buffeted them throughout their careers had crippled their capacity for public expression about these issues. It was as if by spending a lifetime in difficult circumstances where silence was the seeming solution, when public expression was demanded they had no capacity for it. At this point, they as a group, their ranks now thinned by death and debility, stood wounded and demoralized. Their great goal of leading the moon race, though accomplished, had been followed not by respect but by what they perceived as a sense of public rejection.
Los Alamos and Peenemünde: A Reflection
Now, nearly 50 [sic] years after the last great war, emotions
have not yet cooled enough to look dispassionately upon events of that epoch.
The exile of Dr. Rudolph and some lingering pressures to investigate other
members of the Peenemünde group attest to this fact. It is not the purpose of
this article to attempt to assess guilt or innocence of any individual, or to
try to place a moral judgment on either team. It is to place them side by side
and note the points of similarity and thc points of contrast. In so doing, I
have sought to show that both were the product of the peculiar and seemingly
pathological forces of their time. Nearly 13,000 individuals died as a result
of the machines built by the men of Peenemünde. This death toll was dwarfed by
the 340,000 individuals who ultimately died as a result of the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the context of those times, such numbers became
mere abstractions in a cultural ambience that had come to accept the atrocity
of mass annihilation. Today, perhaps, we can look at these figures with some
sense of perspective. [34]
We may conclude from this contrasting viewpoint of these two great technological teams that human evaluations are not based on absolute deeds, but upon the relationship of those deeds to a larger cultural and historical context. The Los Alamos team stands as an honored and esteemed group to which individuals still proudly claim affiliation. The Peenemünde team, to this day, prefers a low profile and elicits a curious public response. As the remaining members of both teams now live out their final days, they must examine their own consciences, ponder their own products and judge their own role in history. Their experience has taught those of us who would pass judgment that technology in service to war and its weapons brings, to those who prepare such weapons, honor or disgrace based not upon the lethal impact of their work but upon the moral judgments that are defined by the victors and endured by the vanquished.
Notes and References
1. Editorial, The Huntsville (Ala.) Times, January 27, 1989.
2. The videotaped interviews are available through the library of the University of Alabama in Huntsville or the library of the United States Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville. The author would like to thank the following individuals for their willingness to participate in this project: Konrad K. Dannenberg, Jim Fagan, Rudolph Hermann, Otto Hirschler, Dieter K. Huzel, Fritz K Müller, Willibald Prasthofer, Eberhard Rees, Wernher K. Rosinski, Gerhard Reisig, Ernst Stuhlinger, Georg von Tiesenhausen and Helmut Zoike. This is a revised and expanded edition of a paper presented at the 38th Annual Congress of the International Astronautical Federation, Brighton, United Kingdom, October 1987.
3. The nature and history of the early German rocket societies has been detailed in Frank H. Winter, Prelude to the Space Age: Thc Rocket Societies, 1924-1940 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983).
4. For a more detailed account of this historical matter, see Frederick Ordway, and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), pp. 16-20.
5. As stated by Dr. Georg von Tiesenhausen in personal correspondence to the author, February 1989.
6. As stated by Dr. Gerhard Reisig in interview, February 1989.
7. These figure are reported. Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler: Polities and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 200.
8. As stated by Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger in personal correspondence to the author clarifying points in the video interview, February 1989.
9. Ernst Stuhlinger, source cited above (note 8).
10. A. Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler, cited above (note 7), p. 201.
11. Richard Rhodes, Thc Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1986), p. 113.
12. A. Beyerchen, Scientists Under Hitler, cited above, chaps. 5 and 6.
13. Philipp Lenard, Deutsche Physik, 4 vols. (Munich; J.F. Lehmanns, 1936).
14. E. Stuhlinger, source cited above (note 8).
15. G. Reisig, source cited above (note 6).
16. G. von Tisenhausen, source cited above (note 5).
17. F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above (note 4), p. 242.
18. F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above, pp. 121-124.
19. As stated by Helmut Zoike in the video interviews: "Our Future in Space: Messages from the Beginning" (Library, University of Alabama in Huntsville and the archives of the United States Space and Rocket Center).
20. This refers to General Dornberger's talk on the evening of October 3, 1942, the date of the first successful A-4 launch, in which he stated that "We have invaded space with our rocket for the first time." See F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above, p. 42.
21. R. Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, cited above (note 11), p. 474.
22. F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above, p. 69.
23. Donald A. Strickland, Scientists in Politics: The Atomic Scientists Movement, 1945-46 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 34-35.
24. Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology (New York: Equinox Books, 1972), p. 902.
25. Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds (New York: Fromm International, 1985), p. 105.
26. P. Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, cited above (note 25), pp. 63-4.
27. P. Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, cited above, p. 63.
28. Joseph Rotblat, "Learning the Bomb Project," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 47, N. 7, 1985, p. 18.
29. R. Rhodes, Thee Making of the Atomic Bomb, cited above, p. 57.
30. F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above, p. 362.
31. E. Stuhlinger, source cited above (note 8).
32. G. Reisig, source cited above (note 6).
33. P. Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, cited above, p. 252, indicates the rivalry between Oppenheimer and Teller.
34. These figures were obtained from F. Ordway and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team, cited above, pp. 734, 740. Various studies produce different numbers, but these seem to be approaching the norm of estimates.
About the author
Donald E. Tarter holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Tennessee, and is the author of numerous articles published in scholarly periodicals. Now retired, for years he taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, specializing on the social impact of technology. This essay is reprinted, with permission, from the anthology History of Technology (London: Mansell, 1992), vol. 14, edited by Graham Hollister-Short and Frank A.J.L. James. Publication of this essay was suggested by Dr. Robert H. Countess, who knew Donald Tarter when they both taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville during the 1980s.
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Vengeance in the air
In the 1930s, German rocket scientists used to shoot off their wares near Berlin. But the rockets made a racket, and had this habit of falling onto local villages. After Adolf Hitler's Nazi party won the 1933 election, his desire to use rockets as weapons necessitated a more secluded test site. In 1936, operations were moved to the remote village of Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea.
There, the Germans built an extensive network of factories, labs, test sites and a giant plant to generate electricity and liquid oxygen for fuel. Nazis being Nazis, they later built concentration camps for the slave laborers who would assemble the fearsome new weapons. Peenemünde developed two unmanned weapons, both used to attack Britain as punishment. ("V" stands for "Vergeltungswaffe," or "vengeance weapon," and their use started long after Germany had any chance of winning the war.) The V1 was a sub-sonic, jet-powered missile dubbed the "buzz bomb." The V2 was the first ballistic missile, first launched on October 3, 1942. By war's end, Germany produced 662 V2 rockets; most were fired at Britain and Belgium.
In 1990, 54 years after it was founded, Peenemünde has become a "military theme park." That's the description of journalist Shareen Brysac, who described the site in Archaeology magazine ("Reliving the Nightmare...").
With more than nine square miles of ruins - including craters from the August, 1943, raid by Britain's Royal Air Force - the site has fuel tanks, wrecked launch stands, and ominous warnings about live munitions. Peenemünde draws 2,000 visitors a day.
Although the Soviets wrecked the place after taking control in 1945, little has been restored. Most excavation occurred during the Soviet occupation of East Germany. The Soviets and their communist lackeys, Brysac says, "wanted to prove that people in the West German government were war criminals." There certainly were links: One director of the operation, Heinrich Lübke, was later president of the Federal Republic of Germany, as West Germany was known before reunification.
Divided mission
Von Braun was the German rocketeer who, after serving Nazi aggression, became a luminary of the U.S. rocket and space programs. Although movies shown at the museum in the mid-1990s described a quest to reach the moon, Brysac says, "They were launching rockets and bombs at England, they were going to launch them at New York. Hitler was not interested in going to the moon."
Slave-built rockets
There was also the little embarrassment of slave labor. German records show that 32,475 slave laborers worked at the two concentration camps whose remains remain visible at Peenemünde.
The outcry over the bogus portrayal sparked major revisions of the displays, she says, which now show what happened when a V2 struck London. And while the original museum ignored slave labor, Brysac says a movie now being screened upstairs includes interviews with former slaves.
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