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

The author of this book, Bob Ward, is a former editor-in-chief of the Huntsville [Alabama] Times who has previously published several collections of humorous anecdotes about the space program and about von Braun. To the extent that his latest work dwells on von Braun's merits as a ballistic missile and space vehicle designer (V-2, Redstone, Jupiter, Saturn), a rocket team manager, a "space gospel" popularizer, even a supposed philosopher, these have been set forth in earlier biographies, most amply in Stuhlinger and Ordway's 1994 Wernher von Braun: Crusader forSpace. On that score, the volume adds nothing substantial. But Ward's book is also advertised on the dust jacket as a "balanced" study, "rejecting both the highly idealized and the bitterly harsh versions of von Braun's life found in previous books." In his preface, Ward himself lays claim to "journalistic objectivity" (p. xii). Indeed, he is the first biographer to acknowledge that "not all of von Braun's [post-1945] space visions were benign" (p. 90), referring to the latter's 1952 proposal (first published by the U.S. Business Advisory Council, subsequently in the U.S. Army journal Ordnance) to build an orbital station that might be used as a launching platform for nuclear missiles—"the 'ultimate weapon'" against Soviet aggression, according to von Braun. However, Ward omits an additional ominous ingredient of the concept: von Braun advocated threatening the Soviets with a preemptive strike ("a determined, power-packed 'NO'")—patently involving the risk of global nuclear conflict—when "the enemy" was "only beginning his development of manned space-craft."

Other instances demonstrate the same ambivalent approach: When discussing a 25 August 1943 engineers' meeting chaired by von Braun (p. 47), Ward bypasses the fact that the engineers (as shown in the minutes) recommended further use in underground production of the concentration camp inmates who had started arriving in Peenemuende two months before. Ward also attempts to minimize the well-documented fact that von Braun sought out qualified detainees at the Buchenwald concentration camp and arranged for their transfer to the underground Mittelwerk production plant, claiming that these detainees "were assigned living quarters within Mittelwerk . . . preferable to the horrific Dora labor camp" (p. 48). Not a shred of evidence has been produced for that assertion. Forced laborers worked in the Mittelwerk factory and lived as inmates in Dora; transfer from Buchenwald to Mittelwerk meant transfer to Dora.

Elsewhere, while admitting that "roughly 80 percent" of Peenemuende employees who came to the United States as "Paperclippers" had joined the Nazi Party "or related groups" (p. 36), Ward leaves the reader with the impression that they did so "primarily to hold on to their jobs." He does not discuss individuals such as Arthur Rudolph, Redstone and Pershing Project Director, subsequently Saturn V Program Manager, who became a party member in mid-1931 (No. 562007), or Konrad Dannenberg, in charge of developing the Jupiter IRBM, who joined the Nazi Party nine months after Rudolph (No. 979652), or Cape Kennedy Launch Operations Director Kurt Debus, an early (1933) SA member who entered the SS in 1939 (No. 426559). Ward's assertion to the contrary (p. 46), Rudolph admitted to OSI interrogators in 1982 that, at the Mittelwerk, he could and had in fact requested more forced laborers. And did "the Bonn government," after Rudolph's return to Germany, actually "investigate Rudolph's wartime past, absolv[ing] him of any war crimes," as Ward contends (p. 158)? It did nothing of the sort. Rather, the Hamburg District Attorney's Office instituted preliminary proceedings against Rudolph, which were closed for lack of evidence of premeditated murder—the only offense not statute-barred, therefore still punishable, under German law. Even though the book's British edition (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2006) has been entitled From Nazis to Nasa, the Nazi pasts of von Braun and other top Huntsvillers is consistently downplayed by Ward.