As I sat on a curb last weekend waiting for the start of Huntsville, Alabama’s annual LGBTQ Pride parade, I caught sight of a publication for sale in a box nearby.
The juxtaposition of the word "survivor” with the name “Wernher von Braun” grabbed my attention: Was a historical paper in Huntsville actually focusing on the dark, often-hidden history of the former SS officer who was the face of the United States space program from its inception? Now, when the country is gearing up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing?
I then noticed what the rest of the words said: “Working with Wernher von Braun.” The word “survivor” would certainly apply to anyone who’d managed to live through the foul, inhumane slavery of working for von Braun during the years of the Third Reich, in his development and production of missiles for the Nazi regime to rain down on civilians in places such as London and Antwerp.
Carnage in London in the aftermath of an attack by a Nazi V-2 rocket that killed 380 people, March 9, 1945
But clearly the headline is not referring to a survivor of, say, the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp that held enslaved prisoners who were forced to work on von Braun’s beloved rocket projects. They would have looked entirely different from the smiling blonde woman on Old Huntsville’s cover.
Dying and dead prisoners at the concentration camp at Nordhausen, where those too weak or sick to labor as slaves building Wernher von Braun’s V-2 rockets were left to starve to death.
The boneheaded, tone-deaf use of the word “survivor” for someone who, I’m guessing, worked in Huntsville on the space program with von Braun (to be honest, I have not done my journalistic duty and actually looked into who the mystery blonde is. I don’t actually care) is not much of a surprise in a city, not to mention a country, that pays lip service to dealing with the Nazi past of von Braun and the other German scientists who worked for NASA, but mostly finds ways to downplay that inconvenient history. Instead, the Germans are considered flawed heroes, the men who pushed America to meet John F. Kennedy’s promise, in response to Soviet space achievements, that the U.S. would send humans to the moon within the decade of the 1960s. The Apollo space program is a major milestone in the history of the country’s scientific and technological development; for the city of Huntsville, it was huge. Now nicknamed “The Rocket City,” the former cotton-mill town in northern Alabama owes its transformation into a technological hub with the second-largest research park in the country to two enormous federal entities: the U.S. military and the U.S. space program. And to Wernher von Braun.
During the Second World War, Alabama was the site of critical military munitions-related installations. The Alabama Humanities Foundation’s Encyclopedia of Alabama notes that “Huntsville's fortunes changed dramatically after the outbreak of World War II and the establishment of the U.S. Army missile research program at Redstone Ordnance Plant in 1941 to support the U.S. war effort. The facility was renamed the Redstone Arsenal in 1943. Redstone operated largely as a chemical munitions production and stockpiling facility until 1949, when it was chosen to be the site for the U.S. Army missile research program.”
By the time the war was nearing its end, the rivalry between the U.S. and its erstwhile ally in the fight against Germany, the Soviet Union, was regaining ascendance in the thinking and future planning of U.S. leaders. One way the U.S. pursued its postwar aims of countering Soviet power was through Operation Paperclip, part of a multiagency official push to grab German military, scientific, and technological development research before the Soviets could. The website History.com sums up the program:
In a covert affair originally dubbed Operation Overcast but later renamed Operation Paperclip, roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War. The program was run by the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), whose goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop America’s arsenal of rockets and other biological and chemical weapons, and to ensure such coveted information did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union. Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA—bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country’s postwar efforts.
Many of those scientists were eventually brought to Huntsville and began working on weapons research at Redstone Arsenal. The most famous of the Germans was von Braun, who became the prime instigator and very public face of the research programs in Alabama after the focus of the work on missile technology was shifted from military applications to space exploration in the aftermath of the Soviet launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 and the onset of U.S.-Soviet competition to beat each other in a space race. The National Aeronautic and Space Administration was created by act of Congress in 1958, and in 1960 the Marshall Space Flight Center was opened on Redstone Arsenal. The center’s official biography of von Braun notes that “In 1960, his rocket development center transferred from the Army to the newly established NASA and received a mandate to build the giant Saturn rockets. Accordingly, von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel Americans to the Moon.”
While journalists and historians such as Annie Jacobsen, Eric Lichtblau, and Michael Neufeld have researched and written about the actual facts of the activities of Wernher von Braun and the other scientists whitewashed into America under Operation Paperclip, most American coverage of the space program, if it mentions them at all, tends to emphasize the supposed moral ambiguity and the allegedly difficult position they found themselves in as German rocket engineers when Adolf Hitler came to power in the 1930s.
An article published by the website AL.com in 2012 is typical: Accompanied by a slideshow of photos of von Braun either as a child or taken in the United States, “What does modern Huntsville, Alabama owe Wernher von Braun? Some say everything” notes the space and rocket achievements and the seeding of industrial and technological commercial development in the city, and embeds a reference to German history in the middle:
It was an expensive dream, and to make it reality, von Braun traded his talent and know-how to the German army before and during World War II and the American army and later NASA after the war. Both countries were slow to realize the potential of rockets, but they eventually did.
During World War II, von Braun built German V-2 rockets to launch at London with slave labor from concentration camps. That would haunt him the rest of his career, although his exact involvement in the conditions in those camps and the rocket factory remains murky.
Von Braun's service to Nazi Germany has been called a "Faustian bargain," and he was forced to defend it repeatedly in the years afterward. But what he could do for America's space program outweighed what he had done in the war for many of his contemporaries.
Now, 100 years after his birth, excitement over both the lunar landing and the war has dimmed in America. To those who venerate von Braun, the fight today is more to keep him relevant than revered until those future historians look back.
Earlier this year, an article on the same website recounted a visit by von Braun’s daughter Margrit to her hometown to speak at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The article gets the sticky part out of the way early before moving on to the happier parts of the story:
She also faced questions after a speech at the University of Alabama in Huntsville about her father’s role in Hitler’s rocket program during World War II. The program used slave labor in a race to build V-2 rockets to win the war, and prisoners died in the process. The issue of von Braun’s personal responsibility for those crimes is “controversial,” NASA’s official biography says.
“It’s really hard to revisit what people had to do in times of war,” Margrit von Braun said . “I think he was born into a horrible situation, in terms of his work career and was forced to do things.…. It’s hard to go back and look at the kind of decisions he was confronted with.”
Von Braun said her father, like many World War II veterans, did not talk about his experiences in the war. “I really don’t know much more than what’s been written about that,” she said. “It wasn’t a time in his life he talked to with us kids much at all.”
“I knew him as my father, and I knew him as a person,” she said. “And I knew the kind of heart and soul he had. He had to do things that you have to do when you’re working under a dictator.”
Von Braun said her father and his team were “extremely happy” about surrendering to American forces, and he said becoming an American citizen “was the happiest day of his life.”
So much is covered, and covered up, by anodyne phrases such as “prisoners died in the process” or “he was born into a horrible situation.” They seem to address important and damning facts, but in fact they allow for moving past those facts to the parts everyone wants to celebrate.
Michael Neufeld, former chair of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, who has conducted research and published books on von Braun for over 20 years, spoke to a writer from the museum’s Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine on the subject of von Braun’s culpability a decade ago.
A&S: What kinds of choices did von Braun have? Was there any way he could have repudiated the use of slave labor and yet still carried on his work as a rocket engineer?
Neufeld: That’s been the traditional kind of defense: that he was trapped, that he couldn’t do anything. The problem with that is that it makes him look like someone who really didn’t want to be in the Third Reich—someone who didn’t like the Nazis. But all the evidence I have is that he was quite comfortable with the Nazis and the Third Reich until late in the war. And it was only in the very last year or two of the war—through a combination of his last encounter with Hitler, witnessing concentration camp labor, but above all his own arrest by the Gestapo—that he became disillusioned about this regime that he was working for. Up to that time, although not enthused about joining the party and the SS, he’d been a fairly loyal member of the Third Reich and in some sense or other, a Nazi, if not an ideological one or one who cared about the race theory very much.
What choice did he have? Well, by the time he found himself in the middle of concentration camp labor, it’s probably true that he didn’t have many choices. And my argument in the book is, in many ways, he had sleep-walked into a Faustian bargain—that he had worked with this regime without thinking what it meant to work for the Third Reich and for the Nazi regime. And he bears some responsibility for his own actions, therefore. In the case of concentration camp labor, there wasn’t much he could do to help. But he still bears some moral responsibility for being in the middle of that situation, seeing the concentration camp labor personally, face to face. Seeing the horrible conditions and continuing to work. And I mean, he not just continued to work, he continued to work day and night energetically for that program with total commitment—even after being arrested by the Gestapo.
There’s no question that he knew about the slave labor?
He was in the underground plant at least 12 to 15 times. As I found out in the testimony that he gave for a war crimes trial in West Germany in 1969, he mentioned that he’d been through the underground sleeping quarters, which had been built in the tunnels in late 1943 for the concentration camp workers because the above-ground camp hadn’t been finished or hadn’t even really been started. And those underground accommodations were horrific. And he walked through that area and through the mining area.
I’d like to think that he would have been deeply affected by the horrific sights that he witnessed, and yet if he had objected to these deplorable conditions, I can’t imagine his superiors saying, “You’re right, Wernher. Let’s put a stop to this.”
I agree that he didn’t have much, if any, power. And that to say very much of anything was dangerous for him personally. But, again, I would emphasize his personal responsibility for having gone along with this regime, in its aggressive war plans, in building weapons for Hitler, in being a loyal member of the Third Reich, and being a member of the party and the SS. And being personally responsible for using concentration camp labor.
We like to have everything resolved black, white; hero, villain, and he’s a complicated, difficult character, and I would agree that there’s a lot of room for ethical debate about what you can hold him responsible for and what you could have expected him to do.
Meanwhile, discussions in the popular press focus on the Germans’ influence on the cultural and commercial life of Huntsville, such as a feature article in a Chattanooga, Tennessee, paper that highlighted the influences “hidden in plain sight”:
Fifteen families bought 37 acres on top of Monte Sano, a mountain just east of downtown that was quickly nicknamed "Sauerkraut Hill." The forested hills and plowed fields surrounding Huntsville reminded many of their homes in Germany and they settled firmly into the city, planting roots, raising families and becoming important members of the community.
These days, the influence of Germans in Huntsville is somewhat subtle. No lederhosen is in sight -- well, on most days, although the annual Oktoberfest at Redstone Arsenal would be an exception. No Alpine villages with gingerbread decorations dot the landscape. No beer halls -- although plenty of locally crafted beer is available. There are, however, a couple of restaurants that serve German food like schnitzel, rouladen and sauerbraten -- Hildegard's German Cuisine and Schnitzel Ranch.
But don't be fooled. The Germans' fingerprints are everywhere -- the U.S. Space and Rocket Museum, Space Camp, the Von Braun Astronomical Society and its planetarium, the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, the wealth of high-tech companies that fill local Cumming Research Park, the second-largest research park in the U.S. (North Carolina's Research Triangle is the biggest).
"Von Braun" is the most obvious nod to Deutschland, a name found all over the city and honoring Wernher von Braun, who led the German rocket research team that created "Rocket City." He also helped revamp the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, developed the educational link between the rocket scientists and the University of Alabama at Huntsville and was the spark behind Space Camp, the immersive weeklong camp that gives children and adults a taste of what it's like to be an astronaut.
The cultural center of Huntsville is named after Wernher von Braun. Called mainly by its shortened nickname, the “VBC,” the Von Braun Center opened as the Von Braun Civic Center in 1975. It contains the home ice of Huntsville’s hockey team, and in its various facilities hosts such events as concerts and touring Broadway shows, local theater productions, trade shows, gun shows, home shows, college graduation ceremonies, family reunions, religious gatherings, and concerts by the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra. The HSO’s website begins its telling of the history of the orchestra:
When von Braun and his team moved to Huntsville in 1950, they found lush surroundings and agreeable weather in this cotton mill town with a population of some 16,000. While their professional lives were dedicated to realizing visions of flights into space, many of them were skilled amateur musicians who shared a deep-seated passion for classical music.
When longtime residents Bill and Margaret Lindberg moved to what is now the Five Points area in 1955, they recall hearing their German neighbors playing chamber music on their porches. Bill’s reaction: “We have found an incredible little city! It’s only a matter of time before the new German residents will demand an orchestra!” As the Lindbergs would soon discover, an orchestra was in the process of being formed, and the first concert would come at the end of the year.
In late 1954, Arthur Fraser of Montevallo met Huntsville cellist Alvin Dreger who described his musical associations with German scientists and their families. Together, they decided to start an orchestra.
The VBC tells its own story about its naming:
WHY VON BRAUN?
The name Von Braun originated from the German engineer, Wernher Von Braun. Von Braun is known for being one of the most important weapons specialists to work on rocketry and jet propulsion in the United States. In 1945, after signing a contract with the U.S. Army, Von Braun was brought to Huntsville, Alabama from Germany. While in Huntsville Von Braun took on elite roles. His first was as the technical director of the U.S. Army Ordnance Guided Missile Project. Soon after Von Braun officially moved to Huntsville and became a U.S. citizen. He continued his work as the technical director but went on to hold the titles Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center and Vice President at the aerospace company Fairchild Industries, Inc. He even founded the National Space Institute. Von Braun is also responsible for several satellites and rockets you may be familiar with such as Explorer I, Saturn IB, Saturn V and Saturn I, which is the rocket that was used for the Apollo 8 moon orbit in 1969. The U.S. Space program played such a huge role in Huntsville that Huntsville became known as the “rocket city.” Due to the efforts of Von Braun and the success he made of Huntsville it only seemed appropriate we be named the Von Braun Center.
History is told in so many different ways. What we want to know so often takes precedence over what we should know. Commemorations of the July 20, 1969, landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon will bring up memories for people who were alive to witness the video that was broadcast back from the moon as it happened; members of generations since then, living in an era in which space travel and exploration may have become background noise, commonplace, may pay attention, or they may not. They may hear stories of the intrepid European scientists who made the space program, exciting or quotidian, possible, and they may pay attention. But the stories we tell about the men who took humans to the moon must be complete, and not leave out inconvenient truths that might spoil the fun. Especially in 2019, with so much in the world that looks very much like a throwback to times we had thought most people would never want to see happen again, it is vital that the whole truth be acknowledged, and that it not be forgotten.
The ongoing reckoning with the truth of history is well-illustrated by the caption provided by Getty with this image: US aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun, Technical Director at the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde, meets Nazi officers of the Wehrmacht, during a demonstration for the launch of the V-2 rocket, planned on June 20, 1944 in Germany.
