Leonard Kramer and Shen Ge will be discussing the controversial figure of Werher von Braun in this episode. Von Braun is a highly controversial figure widely seen as escaping justice for his Nazi war crimes due to the Americans’ desire to beat the Soviets in the Cold War. As a young man, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany’s rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II.
Following the war, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.
We will leave the final thoughts to you as the viewer. Was he a hero, visionary or a Nazi criminal? Without him, would the V2 rocket ever existed? Would the American have won the moon race? Who knows?
Image By NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center – https://archive.org/details/MSFC-9131095 higher resolution, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22799499
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gather around while seeing you of Warner V Brown a man whose Allegiance is ruled by expedience call him a Nazi he won’t even frown Nazi shasi says Warner Von Brown don’t say that he’s hypocritical say rather that he’s apolitical once the Rockets are up who cares where they come down that’s not my department says Warner Von Brown some have harsh words for this man of renown but some think our attitude should be one of gratitude like the widows and cripples in Old London Town who own their owe their large pensions to waren F Brown you too may be a big hero once you’ve learned to count backwards to zero in German Al English I know how to count down and I’m learning Chinese says more her mom Brown all right all right that was a little satirical we will go to what what like if you already know the story you may know already what’s going on here if not well you’re you’re watching this episode presumably so you’re gonna learn a lot more than you uh than you knew before this but I’m just talking to empty air now for the audience who I am all right this is me hi Shen but what is this okay you’re right let’s let’s let’s take it one step at a time S2 on Space the only weekly space show um hopefully that is something we can get back on track last week um had some things going on in my personal life so cannot uh do it but now we are uh this is episode 210 the complicated Legacy of War her Von Brown V yeah War her Von Brown you can watch this episode uh well you know Sgt on space on YouTube no doubt you’re already watching it um I’m going to say thank you uh to Kyle Bakers well from gra for your donations I’m going to leave the ticker at the bottom running patreon.com Sgt homespace um and of course you know even if you’re not supporting monetarily financially uh share like subscribe all that stuff that you um you know but before um I mentioned before I go on and talk about this um there was somebody in the back just talking right now um you may want to know who that is oh wow look at that look at that face it’s taking up the entirety of like view okay let let’s fix this a little bit I wasn’t really quite I didn’t do the test pattern I can see your uh 100 is that 100 EUR or what I don’t know what it is 100 something in the background well now I’m gonna get robbed You’re get Rob everybody yeah I think I think I came that that’s been there for several years I came back from Italy I don’t know about four years ago and I had some money in my pocket uh that I that I just took out1 EUR is like how much is that I think that’s about $109 so okay so really not not a lot it’s not yeah well it’s a lot I mean you know $9 okay no $109 oh $19 yeah okay all right so let’s get um let’s get the show on the road so to speak um okay oh actually first of all uh nice headband I I need to give you a compliment first well thank you it’s my swag As We Know and all right nice shirt you got a nice you got a nice shirt and I know it’s it’s full of aliens I’m gonna yeah I don’t know there here let me see I’m not going to strip my shirt off but there’s there’s an alien creature on here somewhere oh this guy look there’s a there’s one of these see look oh wow yeah anyways uh yeah water there’s um there’s a bar around close by here called Roswell I don’t know if you heard of it no but I’m there okay well it’s like an alien bar they have like space drinks like like okay dark matter or like rings of Jupiter or something I don’t know like I go there occasionally so I’m planning to go there tonight for a little bit all right that’s the point let’s talk about um Warner V Brown here Warner Brown I uh um you know that that poem was actually based on um Wars and music by Tom Tom Le uh Tom was a s he’s a he’s actually alive he he must be old as he must be in his 80s late 80s because he was active when I was a child and I knew about this song uh I think we decided not to play the song because uh but people can go on YouTube and find it yeah I I’ll share the link with you guys later you can go on oh and Leisa says I want to check out as yes yes sometime for sure but the song the song is pretty funny um not playing here because I don’t know if we would get in trouble for copyright issues well yeah and it’s not even just getting in trouble it’s like it’s somebody else’s work and somebody else’s thing and so we need permission to do that BL blah if you if you guys want to learn it you can just play this but um War her brown brown um I will say if you you know for those of us in the space industry no doubt everyone’s heard of his name um really help America in terms of uh the initial stages of the space age but really let’s just pretend that you know not everybody who watches the show is a space person so who is this guy yeah uh actually actually um what I’ve discovered is you know when I talk to people um some people um I was I’m kind of surprised that a lot of people don’t know who he is is I was talking to some people the other day and you know and and I said well you know I have this podcast and you know what are you going to do your podcast Werner Von Brown who’s that you know so Werner Von Brown um he was a German and then naturalized American um citizen who um was I I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that he was the greatest um rocket engineer rocket physicist that uh uh that has ever um well certainly certainly uh in in the 20th century he was a very important person very in very um influential and uh charismatic um a promoter and developer and engineer of of the rocket of of modern rocketry and he began his life in uh uh in March 23rd of 1912 he was born in worix Germany which is now in Poland and uh he was like one of those people who who is like an aristocrat they would talk about him as being you know well aristocratic whatever that means kind of a pro prosperous family his father was um I think his father was a well nominally his father was a farmer but I mean he was like he ended up being agricultural Minister during the early years of the 20th century but um he was uh very do you know how to say this for sure for sure never mind all right go on no I don’t know how to say that I I look I I don’t I you know I’m just gonna try with the German uh yeah wonder how good your German is mine’s non-existent so um and you know his education so he was educated at some of the best uh schools uh he he probably was a little bit uh add um because he he his grades kind of fell off at a certain point and he would go from one thing to another when he was he he became very interested in rocketry early on I heard I read a story that he and his two brothers uh well actually his one brother um they uh they went and got some they bought some fireworks and they strapped them to a a a wagon and then uh well you know what kids do and uh they ended up getting arrested and and then the their father came and got them and he told him don’t ever do that again and and and well you know so that’s how that worked but anyway um he got very interested in it he he he saw I think there at the time in the 20 there was a movie that was directed by a famous director named um Fritz Lang that some people have heard of uh and it was called the woman in the moon or in German I’m going to try Okay fra in fra inand that not bad what does that yeah and that means woman in the moon and so and and it’s a it’s a it’s a kind of a Sci-Fi kind of story about building a rocket based upon um some designs or some speculations by a physicist named um his name was oberg or Herman I think Herman o oberth who was kind of an obscure uh teacher in uh Romania or Austria Hungary uh and and um he he later became uh sort of he came to Germany and he he sort of they sort of organized rocket clubs and stuff like that remember these were very young these were very young people uh young men uh in their teens and 20s and so the the movie was based upon some of the designs of of of oerth oberth uh and and so in and you can find interviews of of um of uh Von Brown by the way his name is brown the way he the way I hear him pronouncing his own name on videos is is Werner Werner Von Brown he would say it that way because it’s it’s pronounced all different ways but um anyway oberth uh wrote this book and and Von Brown got the book and he’s he and you can hear him saying you know he he he opened up the book and he was very excited about this idea of building a rocket going to the Moon even and um but it was full of mathematics and he he he wasn’t up for that right so uh he he he was very dist he he I think he I think I think I could quote him as saying I was very distressed by this and so he went to his teachers to find out how he could learn mathematics to to to uh uh understand what was what the equations were in this book and they were also in in influenced by silovsky who was the Russian physicist um from like 25 or 30 years earlier who invented the rocket equation so um so there’s there’s all that Legacy there uh he went to uh um oberth was kind of promoting rocketry sort of as a hobby or sort of as a um you know as a as an advocation um Germany had Lost World War I and so there were these treaties that kept them from uh building certain kinds of weapons and the art and so it as happened you know um Von Brown uh he went to a technical institute um and he got a BS degree in mechanical engineering that’s right let me share this and that was and uh and a PhD in physics later later he got a PhD and the story about him getting the PHD is interesting because um that was this was when he was about 20 he got he he he finished he finished his his uh I think he finished his his undergraduate in 1932 when he was was only about 20 or 21 and he was working on he was working with oberth uh to try to promote it and and ended up he was kind of talented at at sort of promoting things doing the things you need to do to get money he would go to businesses and explain this kind of thing to it to them and and so they would maybe they just gave him money to go away you know but uh they started doing experiments with liquid fuel Rockets using um uh I guess liquid oxygen he he knew about the American work by Robert Goddard um who who uh kind of invented the sort of Robert Goddard really in the in the United States he developed really the first liquid fueled rocket with uh a nozzle you know the kind of kind of nozzle that we’re used to looking at today uh and yeah rocket propulsion yeah now Robert Now goddard’s goddard’s problem was that he didn’t have anybody to give him money but uh but wner Von Brown made contact with this uh this kind of cool guy named Walter dornberger uh who was a an officer in the German Army now this was this was just pre-nazi time okay so they were just army guys they weren’t you know the they weren’t Nazis they weren’t they weren’t weren’t really Nazis yet you know so so dorber dornberger also had some kind of stem kind of degree maybe it was it was Arona engineering of some and uh um so he kind of uh he kind of took um Von Brown under his wing in the Army and and was able to promote was able to get him money and they wanted him to do his PhD on uh you know some liquid propellant rocketry and so he finished and he finished his uh PhD in 1934 when he was I think 22 Yeah from 1912 1934 yeah 22 he got age 22 wow and and this was a real PA this was this was this was a b and PhD just like the kind of phds that people get today you know and uh so so the his thesis was a critical military secret and they the uh so so in okay so in 1932 he graduated he he was doing this stuff for the Army and then he wasn’t in the Army but he was working for the Army and then the the the the Nazis were elected and and kind of and also the depression and people didn’t have a lot of work and that kind of thing and so um the the Germans you know the Germans kind of got interested and so he’s he he started working try to promote or selling his work to the to the Nazi Party U you know unfortunately um so yeah I mean so when he initially so to make things clear when he initially did this work nazzis were not in power yet he was working to liquid well is a liquid German Army he was yeah on liquid propellent rocket trp right then Nazis obviously we all know uh basically took over Germany yeah they work since they were and they had money and he wanted to keep doing his his research I guess yeah and so this you know and and I think during the 30s they continued to work on it and he he he was like he was very young I mean it’s it’s astonishing to me that that they were giving him what was equivalent to maybe $5 million today you know uh to I want to test anybody hey anybody in the audience this is a fun test for you which one of these guys looks like War her burn Brown age 22 right at that time around okay obviously not this guy yeah do you know Leonard well you know my eyesight is a little bit uh all right it’s Sam it’s this person oh that’s him okay yeah this has to be earlier than that I I think but this is 1930s experim so Germany at that point was leading the Forefront in the world on liquid rocket development I mean El was working on this right yeah and and the reason the Army the reason the Army was so interested in it was that they had this idea that it could be like Advanced artillery they had some restrictions on the size of the gun that they could make but the the the the the surrender treaty or the treaty with the rest of the world about you know surrendering because of World War I um restricted the size of certain kinds of guns but it didn’t seem to mention or at least this is the story that that I’ve heard is that that um uh it didn’t mention anything about rocketry so you could so so they could use rocket it as big as you want you build gigantic Rockets yeah guess when they signed a treaty at the end of War one um these things didn’t exist right it was like theoretic yeah not really I mean at the time of World War I yeah this this really got started in the 20s and when people were interested in and and you know a lot of it’s enabled by the ability to liquefy oxygen because the because you want to use liquid oxygen to use Liquid fuel you need an oxidizer and so so um you there there are some kinds of what they call hypergolic like uh yeah um we can dive more into this but this episode’s about Von Bron so let’s let’s continue with his life what’s going on yeah so okay yeah so so they started on a on a program and they had I forgot what the name well they called it the V2 later he started calling it it was the a a program an a stance or something but I forgot what it was but anyway he had an A1 and an A2 and some of them were just models they got uh they and all kinds of problems that they had to solve you know like propulsion mixing of the fuels um and their biggest problem really was guidance okay because they you know they wanted to be able to and and the German Army told them look you are working on a weapon okay you I don’t want to hear this about flying men in space and and all that kind of stuff don’t let me hear you talking about that because um you know we’re Nazis okay you you know you do what we tell you to do um and and and so so that was the that was the situation he was he was the B rocket there was no interest from the Nazi like primarily was used as a weapon of War it wasn’t meant to send anything to space so yeah the A4 which eventually became the the V2 um was you know part of the development plan um Von Brown was uh he was it seems like he was very meticulous and very careful um in his science and making sure and His science and engineering um so uh and then they had about they had about 500 people working on it oh and and it’s important um they moved the site to build these Rockets um from a place that was outside of Berlin to a place in the extreme northeastern part of where of Germany of today’s Germany um on at the mouth of a of a river actually the river’s name is called um the place is called Pam Munda penam Munda and the P Pana is is a name of a river and Mund Mund is mouth so it literally it’s such a mouthful Punda PanAm Munda uh and and that was that was a a a base that they built to to develop these develop and and they later moved it to another underground facility yeah that’s coming yeah yeah that’s coming uh so so uh uh they they began working on it he got it by about 19 uh I think by about he had many failures with this uh the Army was getting uh nervous getting kind of annoyed with him um they demanded that he join the uh party right and he didn’t really I think he really didn’t want to do that um but he he uh he he had you know important people that were telling him and and his boss at one he he said in one of the interviews I saw with him he said that uh he had an interview with a guy named himler um is that the high ranking Nazi official yeah he he was one of the high ranking Nazi officials who ran the What’s called the shoot shoot Stuffle okay and uh that’s called otherwise known as the SS right and and so yeah so so so he wasn’t just merely like evil like you know video game evil he was like evil yeah right okay so he was like really bad um and so he he had this interview or this discussion with him with himler telling him okay look you know uh I’d like you to come and I’d like you to report to me you won’t have to work with you know I you know I can organize things much better I would like you to work with me and so uh and I will be your boss and so he told himler um no look uh um dornberger is like he described him as the best boss you could ever have for this kind of thing and so he turned he turned himler down and then two weeks later and this I think this happened in 43 42 I think it happened in 42 he got arrested all right and and uh and and actually that could have been a bad bad scene uh but then dornberger then intervened with Hitler actually to say you know my boy is uh uh you know has been arrested and look you can’t do this program without without without him so actually I’m getting a little I’m getting a little ahead of the story yeah go on so so 19 in in in a in the fall I think octo September or October of 1942 they really had it kind of sort of perfected they had the they had it um launched to about 56 km in the air you know vertical flight um they filmed it from every different direction and then um starting in start then then uh well it turned out that the SS did take over and they the the by the middle they continued work on all through 1943 and then by by um in the um by near the end of 1943 um the Allies noticed somehow they became aware of some of this work they had some aerial reconnaissance and they knew that there was a that Punda was um being um uh um you know used to develop this rocket so the the British sent a a sent a a squad of planes about a big Squad of heavy bombers and and it’s a deep penetration from England all the way to PanAm Munda uh to bomb the site and they bombb the hell out of this out of the site and really their goal was to kill the scientists it wasn’t really they weren’t really that interested in the in the stuff but in the in the stuff that was there they were more interested in killing the scientists so in that respect it was not successful but at that point then the SS said you guys get out of here we’re going to take you to a place called mythal work which is near a concentration camp and and they the because um uh Von Brown and dornberger had gone to see Hitler Hitler was sort of uh uh cool to this he didn’t and they showed him a video of it of it you know it’s actually a pretty slick video um which you can see in a Nova episode a a Nova episode that was made in 1977 uh you know the TV show Nova with PBS you should go out there and watch it7 there a shin bombing of Pam P yeah no what Nova episode 1977 like no the signs show it was in 1977 uh and it uh and it’s about it’s about the rock it’s about the V2 and about winner Von Brown and and and that kind of thing um that uh um uh yeah yeah so so uh you can see the video and the reason I S cite it there is that I couldn’t find it anywhere else they just have a very grain view of this video that was shown to Hitler and and wer Von Brown uh narrates said that he narrated because because veren Ron Brown is in the is in the show he was alive and you know at that time uh T and talk you know discussing discussing his the his history there um so okay so so they had this rocket 43 they got bombed uh the SS the sh staffle uh took over and moved them there to a SLA and started getting slaves to work on it and and Von Brown said he wasn’t up for that you know um and and uh uh and and the quality of the Rockets was not very good because you know you know you don’t really have a motivated crew of people but um so they started building it Hitler was impressed with the video and you know said I want $30,000 of these built and uh I don’t care you know who you kill to do it so it was it was a bad scene mle work and um near near the uh I think I think the Concentration Camp was called I think booken wall yeah I mean uh m m okay lard I’m I’m gonna I’m going to have to say can we split this current episode into two okay so because I because we’ll get the because we have to talk about the Germans the you know what happens to them after the after that bombing yeah exactly I mean there’s a lot to cover here um and I’m trying to make sure these episodes Don’t become like hourong episodes when it’s only supposed to be half an hour so okay let’s finish up the let’s talk about okay so he goes to M go M work M work MTH yeah got a few more minutes so continue Leonard okay so middle work so um so so anyway by 1943 so they started sending the the uh uh they started launching Rockets into uh Paris the Paris and then uh London and so uh up about I think that a total of of 3,000 and they called them V2 rockets at this time about 3,000 of those were launched um it it was not really a very effective weapon as you might imagine because uh it wasn’t very accurate um it it would hit a Target within a you know they could they could project a Target within um a few kilometers of where it was going to land so really it was basically a terror weapon because they just spread destruction it wasn’t really used to be like targeted towards a specific the the really scary thing about it was that it was a spaceship it went into space and it came back down um at at supersonic speed so people could be just walking uh around or you know going to work and then boom they’re dead you know it’s just it would just explode because you wouldn’t hear it so that that was what was going on there so the the war had gone against Germany um started go against of a damage from a V2 locket attacks in 1945 in London yeah and in fact that particular picture I know something about I I can I can tell you about that picture later oh really like what well um after after Von Brown was uh captured he had he was trying to keep away from the French and the British because he knew the British uh would not be very happy with him uh he wanted to be in the Americans hands it’s really getting ahead of the story a little bit but um but he was in Britain for a while and the the British driver the sergeant that was driving him someplace stopped in front of this building for a few minutes to show to show uh to show sort of you know to give to you know to show uh Von Brown you know look this is what you did right right I mean you help develop a weapon which caused massive damage and death so so they were still they actually still had some work that they were doing at panom Munda so the so the offices and stuff was still at PanAm Munda but the Russian were approaching because it was very it was far in the East Von Brown said that they could hear the um they could hear the the advancing Russians they did not want to be in Russian hands they really uh uh oh I and so well actually actually they were ordered they got conflicting orders he said they got conflicting orders there was one Field Marshal or something in that area that said okay you guys uh you’re going to stop work and you’re going to pick up a rifle and and fight to the death you know and then they got orders from somebody else no you should withdraw to uh west of of uh Berlin where they have the kurts mount what they call kurts kurts mountains you know like um so a little bit West of Berlin and so they talked about it and they said well I think we like this idea better so that’s where they withdrew to uh I think um Von Brown said that he wrote up some bogus orders and stuff like that to to get so they got west of of Berlin and then they all decided the things were going bad uh the Americans had already been across the the Ry River and the French um the free French and and uh the British were advancing and so um uh he wanted to he they wanted to turn themselves into the the Americans um he had some SS people you know like some badass SS people who were kind of guarding them okay and make they don’t turn themselves in to the enemy I guess well no they they were they were trying to figure out what to do because their order their orders were probably hang on you know guard these guys and if if push comes to shove kill all of them you know because they don’t want the the German SC they don’t want the scientists to fall into the um into the hands yeah right and so uh um um Von Brown said that he worked with or he kind of talked to the the the officer that was in charge of these guards and he got them to understand look you know this is not going well I think maybe you should disperse us through the countryside a little bit get us away from a central place because you know allies could just bomb One play bomb us and then the story gets a little bit muddled it’s not clear to me what exactly but the SS just kind of disappeared okay so they I think they they they knew what was going on um Bon Brown uh then they got the news Hitler was dead okay they heard that on the radio Hitler was dead and then a few days later they heard that there was or a week later they heard there was an Armistice okay so there’s no more fighting anymore so they they can kind of and and they were they had stationed themselves in a a town called obero which I found on on Google Maps it’s a ski resort and uh it’s in the Alps that it’s in the Bavarian Alps it’s south of Munich very close to um Austria and it looks like a really nice place so they surrendered that’s well what they did was um they had heard that the the uh the French were nearby but then they said well the Americans are are are nearby it’s not quite clear what happened but um Von Brown’s brother they decided he speaks English the best so he he he he he um he took off on a bicycle and he he walked down he he uh he found he found he found Americans um nobody was killing anybody at this point okay so that was all they were all done with that and uh and the Americans said uh he said uh oh I’ve got my my brother is the V2 inventor and they and so they were very pleased to uh which one’s B here and well actually tells you I think uh the one with the broken arm yeah so and these other these other guys I think are Americans or something here US Army and r byar on May 2nd 1945 picture from intelligence Charles Stewart Herbert axter oh this is German guy jel assistant to Juan Bron and then Juan Bron himself and then his younger brother I guess that’s the younger brother oh his younger brother mag Magnus then lastly the engineer Hans lindenberg right when he was leaving you know he I I found an article that he wrote um in about 1946 46 or 47 in a um it was like a pamphlet or new or a a magazine article and he describes this situation you know how he broke his arm that was that was when they were evacuating to the Harts Mountain they were doing it in the dark and driving without headlights and his driver had a why they driving without headlight never do that guys yeah well unless unless there are enemy planes that could be uh spotting you and strafing your okay that if you yeah so so it’s famous how he broke his arm and there were complications and and that that kind of thing um but uh uh yeah so we’re uh we’re out of time we’re out of time for now because um his life is long and this is just like trying to summarize like you know 25 years of his life in 40 minutes you know but um we’re going to continue with his life next time because he was instrumental in getting us to the Moon perfect so let’s do that next the moon’s a big topic so and obviously okay so um what have we been listening to as what have we been uh we’ve been listening to been listening to leard talk and me injecting comments what else but really you you’ve been watching2 on Space uh this was 210 the complicated Legacy of one her V BR we thought we could cover this in one episode but looks like we’re going to break it into two um leard is just too long-winded and Leonard I’m organized there you know if you discuss history especially um you know if you dive into any detail no doubt you’re going to have to talk for right for a while like I said I found I found out a lot of interesting things about him he left his girlfriend behind he was he was worried about her and um and he finally her name was Maria and uh but anyway there’s there’s GNA be more so that said um you’ve been listening to or watching St space only weekly space show make sure you like subscribe share all that fun stuff thank you for everyone for watching and thank you K Baker s w John Graves for your kindly donations uh we will be back let’s see will we be here next week we may not be around next week I I I’m going to be out of town for a little bit but um regardless our next episode we will continue and talk about the rest of his life which uh is is going to be a lot so um in any case to our viewers 10,000 years in the future yeah you already know all of this stuff you probably already know all this but you know what to to us weren’t Ron Browns in the past to you guys were like in the ancient past but yeah so it all happened all at once you know kind of like so to you guys I mean just to clear it up Von Bron does not live in the same time frame as us that was that that’s right yes so all right but um Point okay take care everyone I I do my thing where I say namaste Namaste and then Leonard’s going to blow his kiss possibly oh all right so thank everybody good night W up because you never know what you will see see you all next time bye good night
2 Comments
look at von brauns tomb stone , it says it all
Learn to spell his name correctly before making a vid about him !!!