Word: germanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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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...
...rivalry, hard-working servicemen and civilian specialists along the whole broad front of U.S. missilery felt a new nearness to space as Explorer radioed back its readings (see SCIENCE). And of the legions of scientists, generals, admirals, engineers and administrators at work on missiles and man-made moons, German-born Wernher von Braun, 45, best personified man's accelerating drive to rise above the planet. Von Braun, in fact, has only one interest: the conquest of space, which he calls man's greatest venture. To pursue his lifelong dream, he has helped Adolf Hitler wage a vengeful...
...Liegnitz in 1245, and the family's aristocracy was certified by the centuries. Wernher was born in Wirsitz, East Prussia (now part of Poland), the middle son of Baron Magnus von Braun, the local state administrator. Today Wernher's older brother, Sigismund, is counselor at the German embassy in London; his younger brother, Magnus, is program-control manager of the Chrysler Corp.'s new missile division in Detroit. Last week in a comfortable Oberaudorf apartment, Baron Magnus von Braun, tanned and vigorous, celebrated his 80th birthday, marked by a four-page letter from Wernher and a gift...
Rocketeer Oberth's work had inspired many another young German rocket bug, most of them flirting dangerously with destruction as they pursued their untried hobby. Von Braun joined a small group firing rockets from an abandoned ammunition dump in suburban Berlin. When he left for a term at Zurich's Institute of Technology, he continued his experiments, built a contraption that spun mice in simulation of rocket takeoffs. Afterward, his roommate, an American medical student, dissected the mice, announced to Von Braun that the high acceleration caused cerebral hemorrhages. Their landlady had another kind of announcement: any more...
...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...