Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (review)

Had Neil Armstrong not set foot on the moon in July 1969, some other astronaut would have. Had young Wernher von Braun not become fascinated by the prospect of interplanetary voyaging while growing up in Weimar Germany, however, the history of both the cold war and the space age might have been very different.

Von Braun sold the idea of the large ballistic missile weapon to the German armed forces, and headed the technical effort that produced the A-4, or V-2, the starting point for all postwar ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. After negotiating the transfer of his team to the United States, he inspired a generation of his new countrymen with his dream of spaceflight, spearheaded the development of the launcher that orbited the first American satellite, and capped his career by managing the creation of the Saturn rockets that carried the first human beings to the moon. While the public cheered his successes, however, they never forgot that he had been rocket builder to Adolf Hitler, or that his wonder weapons were the product of slave laborers working under horrific conditions.

Bob Ward has drawn on thirty years of experience as a Huntsville, Alabama, journalist covering the activities of von Braun and his team in order to craft this biography of the man who was both a celebrated figure of the space age and one of the most controversial. The strength of the book is in the coverage of the American career of "Dr. Space." On the basis of his personal observations and extended interviews with family and friends, Ward succeeds in bringing von Braun to life for readers. He conveys a genuine sense of the man's charisma and larger-than-life personality, he offers revealing personal anecdotes not to be found elsewhere, and he sheds light on von Braun's attitudes toward everything from public relations to management. He provides insight into von Braun's work, from the early years of the U.S. space program through the Apollo era to the conclusion of his long career as a planner at the Washington headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and as an industry executive.

Ward's treatment of the German years is less satisfactory. He offers little new information about this critically important period when von Braun laid the foundation for his extraordinary career. In addressing the most controversial aspects of von Braun's involvement with the Nazi regime, Ward does little more than recite the standard arguments provided by earlier von Braun defenders. That is to miss the point. It is clear that von Braun was not a Nazi true believer. His wartime superiors were certain that he was focusing his attention on spaceflight, rather than the development of successful weapons, and even jailed him for a time. Nor is there much reason to doubt that he found the use of slave labor distasteful, or worse. There cannot be much question that he was one of the most brilliant engineer/ managers of the twentieth century. For all of that, Ward, and other von Braun defenders, fail to recognize the mythic elements of his early career. He was a willing, even eager, participant in a modern Faustian bargain—a talented man who signed a pact with the forces of evil in exchange for realizing his heart's desire. If there is a central message to von Braun's career, it is that there was not much he would not have done in order to take the next step toward spaceflight. During the war years, this included acceptance of the worst excesses of the Nazi system in order to produce the V-2, a weapon that took more lives among the slave laborers who built it than among those on the receiving end.

Dr. Space will be of interest to students of rocketry and spaceflight, as well as of the broader issues linking science, technology, and the state. We will, however, have to wait...