Word: brauns
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Techniques of Flimflam. Von Braun returned in 1931 to his little Berlin group, joyously helped launch 85 primitive rockets. As it happened, the German army was then looking for some sort of long-range weapons not banned by the Versailles Treaty-and it seemed just barely possible that rockets might be the answer. Captain Walter Dornberger, a boss of the embryonic program, watched some of Von Braun's rocket shoots and was impressed "by the energy and shrewdness with which this tall, fair young student with the broad, massive chin went to work, and by his astonishing theoretical knowledge...
...from the beginning," says Walter Dornberger, now technical assistant to the president of Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, "was to reach infinite space." But if Wernher von Braun had any notions about the German army's spending millions to achieve his dream of space exploration, they were quickly dispelled. Germany wanted weapons, period. The Budget Bureau would not even permit Kummersdorf to buy office equipment, and Von Braun learned early in the game the techniques of flimflamming the bureaucrats, e.g., it was a rare budget official who realized that Kummersdorf's request for funds to buy an "appliance...
Adolf's Attention. At Peenemünde with its 250-mile rocket range, Germany's missiles went higher and higher, building steps into space. That was fine for Von Braun-but it was not yet the sort of military hardware that Germany wanted. World War II put on the pressure: Peenemünde must either produce a devastating military weapon or get out of business. Peenemünde's answer was the A-4 (standing for Aggregate-4, but later named V2, for Vengeance Weapon Two, by Hitler's gang). Its first test was a dismal...
...success ultimately won Hitler's personal attention, but Hitler's blessing proved only a curse. Impossible production schedules were set for the V2, driving Von Braun to the point of resigning. Nazidom's power-grabbers began fighting for control of the weapon Hitler had approved, and in February 1944, Wernher von Braun was jailed by Heinrich Himmler's black-shirted SS because he declined to connive in putting the Peenemünde project under SS control instead of army control. Only after Dornberger convinced Hitler himself that the V-2 program would collapse immediately without...
...Attention. Von Braun returned to Peenemünde to rain V-2 ruin on London (when the first V-2 smashed London, Spaceman von Braun remarked to a friend that the rocket had worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet). But the war was already lost for Nazi Germany. Caught between the advancing Russian and U.S. armies, Von Braun and most of his tried, tested rocket team decided to go with the West. They fueled trucks with rocket alcohol and headed south. Von Braun had printed official-looking stickers with the mysterious letters VZBV-standing for some fictional...