Editing Wernher von Braun

{{Short description|German-American aerospace engineer (1912–1977)}}
{{Family name hatnote|von Braun|Braun|lang=German}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2021}}
{{Use American English|date=April 2018}}
{{Infobox person
| birth_name         = Wernher Magnus Maximilian, [[Freiherr]] von Braun<ref name="Space Engineer "/>
| name               = Wernher von Braun
| image              = Wernher von Braun crop.jpg
| caption            = Von Braun in 1964
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1912|3|23|df=y}}
| birth_place        = [[Wirsitz]], [[Province of Posen|Posen]], [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussia]], [[German Empire]]
| death_date         = {{death date and age|1977|6|16|1912|3|23|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Alexandria, Virginia]], US
| burial_place       = [[Ivy Hill Cemetery (Alexandria, Virginia)|Ivy Hill Cemetery]], Alexandria, Virginia<ref>Ivy Hill Cemetery, Alexandria, Virginia, Wilson, Scott. Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 48952). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.</ref>
| party              = [[Nazi Party]] (1937–1945)
| nationality        = German
| citizenship        = United States
| occupation         = [[Aerospace engineering|Rocket engineer]] and designer, aerospace project manager
| known_for          = NASA engineering program manager; chief architect of the [[Apollo program|Apollo]] [[Saturn V]] rocket; development of the [[V-2 rocket]] for Nazi Germany
| education          = {{ublist|[[Technische Universität Berlin]] (diploma)|[[University of Berlin]] ([[PhD]])}}
| spouse             = {{marriage|Maria Luise von Quistorp|1947}}
| children           = 3
| mother             = Emmy von Quistorp
| father             = [[Magnus von Braun (senior)|Magnus von Braun]]
| relatives          = {{plainlist|
* [[Sigismund von Braun]] (brother)
* [[Magnus von Braun]] (brother)
}}
| awards             = {{plainlist|
* [[President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service]] (1959)
* [[Elliott Cresson Medal]] (1962)
* [[Wilhelm Exner Medal]] (1969)<ref name="Editor 2015">Editor, ÖGV. (2015). Wilhelm Exner Medal. Austrian Trade Association. ÖGV. Austria.</ref>
* [[National Medal of Science]] (1975)}}
| module             = {{Infobox military person
 | embed        = yes
 | allegiance   = [[Nazi Germany]]
 | branch       = ''[[Allgemeine SS]]''
 | serviceyears = 1937–1945
 | rank         = SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'' (major)
 | awards       = {{plainlist|
* [[War Merit Cross|Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords]] (1944)
* [[War Merit Cross]], First Class with Swords (1943)}}
 | laterwork    =
 }}
| module2            = {{Infobox scientist
| embed             = yes
| fields            = [[Rocket propulsion]]
| workplaces        = {{ublist|{{lang|de|[[Wehrmacht]]}}|[[Army Ballistic Missile Agency]]|[[Redstone Arsenal]]|[[NASA]]|[[Fairchild Industries]]}}
| thesis_title      = Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beiträge zu dem Problem der Flüssigkeitsrakete
| thesis_url        = https://tu-berlin.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1mn5dop/TUB_ALMA_DS21542281970002884
| thesis_year       = 1934
| doctoral_advisor  = [[Erich Schumann]]
| academic_advisors =
| doctoral_students =
| notable_students  = 
}}
| signature          = VonBraun-sig.png
}}

'''Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun'''<ref name="Space Engineer "/> ({{IPAc-en|US|ˈ|v|ɜːr|n|ər|_|v|ɒ|n|_|ˈ|b|r|aʊ|n}} {{respell|VUR|nər|_|von|_|BROWN}};<ref>{{Cite web |title=How to Pronounce Von Braun |date=27 July 2014 |url=https://whnt.com/news/how-to-pronounce-von-braun/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418033009/https://whnt.com/news/how-to-pronounce-von-braun/ |archive-date=2021-04-18 |access-date=2024-09-23 |quote=During the time he was in Huntsville, Dr. Braun told everyone that his name was pronounced like the color Brown.}}</ref> {{IPA|de|ˈvɛʁnheːɐ̯ fɔn ˈbʁaʊn|lang}}; 23 March 1912{{spaced en dash}}16 June 1977) was a [[German Americans|German–American]] [[Aerospace engineering|aerospace engineer]]<ref name="Space Engineer ">{{cite book | last=Neufeld | first=Michael |author-link=Michael J. Neufeld | title=Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War  | publisher=Vintage | publication-place=New York, N.Y | date=2008-11-11 | isbn=978-0-307-38937-4 | page=xv}}</ref> and [[Space architecture|space architect]]. He was  a member of the [[Nazi Party]] and ''[[Allgemeine SS]]'', the leading figure in the development of [[rocket]] technology in [[Nazi Germany]], and later a pioneer of rocket and [[space technology]] in the United States.<ref name=aljazeera2013>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun: History's most controversial figure? |last=Teitel |first=Amy Shira |website=aljazeera.com |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/5/3/wernher-von-braun-historys-most-controversial-figure}}</ref>

As a young man, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the [[V-2 rocket]] at [[Peenemünde]] during [[World War&nbsp;II]]. The V-2 became the first artificial object to travel into space on 20 June 1944. Following the war, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of [[Operation Paperclip]].<ref name="AmerExp">{{cite web |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael J. |author-link=Michael J. Neufeld |title=Wernher von Braun and the Nazis |website=American Experience: Chasing the Moon |date=20 May 2019 |publisher=PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-wernher-von-braun-and-nazis/ |access-date=24 July 2019}}</ref> He worked for the [[United States Army]] on an [[intermediate-range ballistic missile]] program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite [[Explorer 1]] in 1958. He worked with [[Walt Disney]] on a series of films, which popularized the idea of human space travel in the US and beyond from 1955 to 1957.<ref name=DisneyVonBraun>{{cite web |title=The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration |last=Wright |first=Mike |editor-last=Harbaugh |editor-first=Jennifer |date=18 February 2016 |website=NASA |url=https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/disney_article.html |access-date=10 January 2022 |archive-date=2 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221102180858/https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/disney_article.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 1960, his group was assimilated into [[NASA]], where he served as director of the newly formed [[Marshall Space Flight Center]] and as the chief architect of the [[Saturn V]] [[super heavy-lift launch vehicle]] that propelled the [[Apollo (spacecraft)|Apollo spacecraft]] to the Moon.<ref>{{cite web |title=SP-4206 Stages to Saturn, Chapter 9 |publisher=history.nasa.gov |url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/ch9.htm |access-date=8 March 2015}}</ref><ref name="NASAMSFC">{{cite web |title=Biography of Wernher Von Braun |publisher=NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |website=MSFC History Office |url=https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/bio.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020611074937/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/bio.html |archive-date=11 June 2002}}</ref> In 1967, von Braun was inducted into the [[National Academy of Engineering]], and in 1975, he received the [[National Medal of Science]].

Von Braun is a highly controversial figure widely seen as escaping justice for his awareness of Nazi war crimes due to the Americans' desire to beat the Soviets in the [[Cold War]].<ref name=time2019>{{cite magazine |title=How Historians Are Reckoning With the Former Nazi Who Launched America's Space Program |magazine=Time |date=18 July 2019 |url=https://time.com/5627637/nasa-nazi-von-braun/}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility |author=Neufeld, Michael J. |year=2002 |journal=German Studies Review |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=57–78  |jstor=1433245 |doi=10.2307/1433245 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1433245}}</ref><ref name=aljazeera2013/> He is also sometimes described by others as the "father of space travel",<ref>{{cite web |title=von Braun, Wernher: National Aviation Hall of Fame |website=Nationalaviation.org |url=https://www.nationalaviation.org/our-enshrinees/von-braun-wernher/ |access-date=2022-02-16 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201026182531/https://www.nationalaviation.org/our-enshrinees/von-braun-wernher/ |archive-date=26 October 2020}}</ref> the "father of rocket science",<ref>{{cite web |title=A Guide to Wernher von Braun's Life |publisher=Apollo11space.com |date=December 2019 |url=https://apollo11space.com/a-guide-to-wernher-von-brauns-life/ |access-date=2022-02-16}}</ref> or the "father of the American lunar program".<ref name=time2019/> He advocated a [[human mission to Mars]].

==Early life==
Wernher von Braun was born on 23 March 1912, in the small town of [[Wirsitz]] in the [[Province of Posen]], [[Kingdom of Prussia]], then [[German Empire]] and now Poland.<ref>{{cite book |last=Magill |first=Frank N. |author-link=Frank Magill |title=The 20th Century A–GI. Dictionary of World Biography |volume=7 |location=New York |publisher=Routledge |page=440 |isbn=978-1136593345 |date=2013 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nq1GU6I5umQC}}</ref>

His father, [[Magnus von Braun (senior)|Magnus Freiherr von Braun]] (1878–1972), was a civil servant and conservative politician; he served as Minister of Agriculture in the federal government during the [[Weimar Republic]]. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp (1886–1959), traced her ancestry through both parents to medieval European [[Royal family|royalty]] and was a descendant of [[Philip III of France]], [[Valdemar I of Denmark]], [[Robert III of Scotland]], and [[Edward III of England]].<ref>{{cite web |title="Von Braun, Wernher" |website=Erratik Institut |url=http://www.erratik-institut.de/7.5.6_O33.14_vonbraun/_O33.14_vonbraun.html |access-date=4 February 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719000053/http://www.erratik-institut.de/7.5.6_O33.14_vonbraun/_O33.14_vonbraun.html |archive-date=19 July 2011}}</ref><ref>[http://parsek.yf.ttu.ee/~mars/publikatsioonid/vonBraun.pdf "Dr. Wernher von Braun'i mälestuseks"], Füüsikainstituut. Retrieved 4 February 2011</ref> He had an older brother, the West German diplomat [[Sigismund von Braun]], who served as Secretary of State in the Foreign Office in the 1970s, and a younger brother, [[Magnus von Braun]], who was a rocket scientist and later a senior executive with [[Chrysler]].<ref name="mag8"/>

The family moved to [[Berlin]], [[Province of Brandenburg|Brandenburg]], in 1915, where his father worked at the Ministry of the Interior. After his [[Confirmation (Lutheran Church)|Confirmation]], his mother gave him a [[telescope]], and he developed a passion for [[astronomy]].<ref>Magnus Freiherr von Braun, ''Von Ostpreußen bis Texas. Erlebnisse und zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen eines Ostdeutschen''. Stollhamm 1955</ref> Von Braun learned to play both the cello and the piano at an early age and at one time wanted to become a composer. He took lessons from the composer [[Paul Hindemith]]. The few pieces of von Braun's youthful compositions that exist are reminiscent of Hindemith's style.<ref name="Ward 2005">{{cite book |last=Ward |first=Bob |title=Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-1591149262 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jIeqqCkDHQC}}</ref>{{rp|11}} He could play piano pieces of [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] and [[Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach]] from memory. Beginning in 1925, he attended a boarding school at [[Ettersburg]] Castle near [[Weimar]], [[Free State of Thuringia]], where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. There he acquired a copy of ''[[Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen]]'' (1923, ''By Rocket into Planetary Space'')<ref>''Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen'' by [[Hermann Oberth]], R. Oldenbourg 1923 {{OCLC|6026491}}{{failed verification|date=May 2020|reason=Source say nothing about von Braun}}</ref> by rocket pioneer [[Hermann Oberth]]. In 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the [[East Frisia]]n [[North Sea]] island of [[Spiekeroog]]. Space travel had always fascinated him, and from then on he applied himself to [[physics]] and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Biddle |first1=Wayne |title=Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher Von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race |publisher=W.W. Norton |date=2009 |isbn=978-0393059106 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ee9j-00nT3YC |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2024-03-19 |title=Wernher von Braun {{!}} Biography, Quotes, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wernher-von-Braun |access-date=2024-04-19 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>

In 1928 the ''Raketenrummel'' or "Rocket Rumble" fad  initiated by [[Fritz von Opel]] and [[Max Valier]] was highly influential on von Braun as a teenage space enthusiast. He was so enthusiastic after seeing one of the public [[Opel-RAK]] rocket car demonstrations, that he constructed his own homemade toy rocket car and caused a disruption in a crowded sidewalk by launching the toy wagon, to which he had attached the largest firework rockets he could purchase. He was later taken in for questioning by the local police, until released to his father for disciplinary action. The incident highlighted the young von Braun's determination to "dedicate his life to space travel".{{r|Space Engineer|p=62-64}}

In 1930, von Braun attended the [[Technische Universität Berlin|Technische Hochschule Berlin]], where he joined the Spaceflight Society ([[Verein für Raumschiffahrt]] or VfR), co-founded by Valier, and worked with [[Willy Ley]] in his liquid-fueled rocket motor tests in conjunction with others such as [[Rolf Engel]], [[Rudolf Nebel]], Hermann Oberth or [[Paul Ehmayr]].<ref>Various sources such as [https://books.google.com/books?id=SnAMx8A7k68C The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War] ({{ISBN|0811733874}} pp. 5–8) list the young Wernher von Braun as joining the VfR as an apprentice to Willy Ley, one of the three founders. Later when Ley fled Germany because he was a Jew, von Braun took over the leadership of the ''Verein'' and changed its activity to military development.</ref> In spring 1932, he graduated with a diploma in mechanical engineering.<ref name="biography.com">{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun biography |publisher=Biography.com |url=https://www.biography.com/scientists/wernher-von-braun |access-date=1 March 2014}}</ref> His early exposure to rocketry convinced him that the exploration of space would require far more than applications of the current engineering technology. Wanting to learn more about physics, chemistry, and astronomy, von Braun entered the [[University of Berlin|Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin]] for doctoral studies and graduated with a doctorate in physics in 1934.<ref name="recoll"/> He also studied at [[ETH Zürich]] for a term from June to October 1931.<ref name="recoll"/>

==German career==
In 1930, von Braun attended a presentation given by [[Auguste Piccard]]. After the talk, the young student approached the famous pioneer of high-altitude balloon flight, and stated to him: "You know, I plan on traveling to the Moon at some time." Piccard is said to have responded with encouraging words.<ref>As related by Auguste's son [[Jacques Piccard]] to fellow deep-sea explorer Hans Fricke, cited in: Fricke H. ''Der Fisch, der aus der Urzeit kam'', pp. 23–24. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2010. {{ISBN|978-3423346160}} (in German)</ref>

Von Braun was greatly influenced by Oberth, of whom he said:

{{blockquote|Hermann Oberth was the first who, when thinking about the possibility of spaceships, grabbed a slide-rule and presented mathematically analyzed concepts and designs... I, myself, owe to him not only the guiding-star of my life, but also my first contact with the theoretical and practical aspects of rocketry and space travel. A place of honor should be reserved in the history of science and technology for his ground-breaking contributions in the field of astronautics.<ref>{{cite web |author=Leo Nutz |author2=Elmar Wild |title=Oberth-museum.org |publisher=Oberth-museum.org |date=28 December 1989 |url=http://www.oberth-museum.org/index_e.html |access-date=15 August 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526061405/http://www.oberth-museum.org/index_e.html |archive-date=26 May 2011}}</ref>}}

According to historian [[Norman Davies]], von Braun was able to pursue a career as a rocket scientist in Germany due to a "curious oversight" in the [[Treaty of Versailles]] which did not include rocketry in its list of weapons forbidden to Germany.<ref name="Davies 2006">{{cite book |last=Davies |first=Norman |author-link=Norman Davies |title=Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory |year=2006 |location=London |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0333692851 |oclc=70401618 |page=416 |title-link=Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory}}</ref>

===Involvement with the Nazi regime===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1978-Anh.023-02, Peenemünde, Emil Leeb, Fritz Todt, Wernher von Braun.jpg|thumb|Von Braun with [[Fritz Todt]], who utilized [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|forced labor]] for major works across occupied Europe. Von Braun is wearing the [[Nazi party#Party symbols|Nazi party badge]] on his suit lapel.]]

====Nazi Party membership====
Von Braun was an opportunist who joined the [[Nazi Party]] to continue his work on rockets for [[Nazi Germany]].<ref name="AmerExp"/><!--"He was doubtlessly an opportunist"--> He applied for membership in the Party on 12 November 1937, and was issued membership number 5,738,692.<ref name="Neufeld 2007">{{cite book |last=Neufeld |first=Michael |author-link=Michael J. Neufeld |title=Von Braun Dreamer of Space Engineer of War |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |date=2007 |isbn=978-0307262929 |url=https://archive.org/details/vonbraundreamero00neuf}}</ref>{{rp|96}}

[[Michael J. Neufeld]], an author of aerospace history and chief of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian's [[National Air and Space Museum]], wrote that ten years after von Braun obtained his Nazi Party membership, he signed an affidavit for the U.S. Army, though he stated the incorrect year:<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96}}

{{blockquote|In 1939, I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time I was already Technical Director at the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde (Baltic Sea). The technical work carried out there had, in the meantime, attracted more and more attention in higher levels. Thus, my refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activity.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96}}}}

It has not been ascertained whether von Braun's error with regard to the year was deliberate.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96}} Neufeld wrote:

{{blockquote|Von Braun, like other Peenemünders, was assigned to the local group in Karlshagen; there is no evidence that he did more than send in his monthly dues. But he is seen in some photographs with the party's swastika pin in his lapel – it was politically useful to demonstrate his membership.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96}}}}

Von Braun's later attitude toward the Nazi regime of the late 1930s and early 1940s was complex. He said that he had been so influenced by the early Nazi promise of release from the [[Post–World War I recession|post–World War I economic effects]], that his patriotic feelings had increased.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun and the Nazis |last=Neufeld |first=Michael J. |publisher=PBS |date=May 20, 2019 |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-wernher-von-braun-and-nazis/ |quote=Von Braun was a right-wing nationalist by upbringing but seems to have taken little interest in Nazi ideology or anti-Semitism. As money began flowing into rearmament and eventually into the rocket program, he became more enthusiastic about the regime. In 1933–34, he was a member of an SS riding group in Berlin, but National Socialist organizations were then pressing non-member students to participate in paramilitary activities. In 1937, now the technical director at age 25 of the new Army rocket center at Peenemünde on the Baltic, he received a letter asking him to join the Party. Since it required little commitment, and it might damage his career to say no, he went along.}}</ref> In a 1952 memoir article he admitted that, at that time, he "fared relatively rather well under [[totalitarianism]]".<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96–97}} Yet, he also wrote that "to us, [[Hitler]] was still only a pompous fool with a [[Charlie Chaplin]] moustache"<ref>{{cite book|first1=Ray |last1=Spangenburg |first2=Diane Kit |last2=Moser |date=2009 |title=Wernher von Braun, Revised Edition |publisher=Infobase Publishing |page=33 |access-date=May 3, 2025 |isbn=9781438104133|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x1KAmzvm874C}}</ref> and that he perceived him as "another [[Napoleon]]" who was "wholly without scruples, a godless man who thought himself the only god".<ref name="Ward"/>

Later examination of von Braun's background, conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, suggests that his background check file contained no derogatory information pertaining to his involvement in the party, but it was found that he had numerous letters of commendation for outstanding performance of duties during his time working under the Nazi party.<ref name=":0">{{cite web |title=Wernher VonBraun Part 2 of 7 |website=FBI Records: The Vault |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=17 April 1961 |url=https://vault.fbi.gov/Wernher%20VonBraun/Wernher%20VonBraun%20Part%202%20of%207/view |access-date=26 November 2022}}</ref> Overall FBI conclusions point to von Braun's involvement in the Nazi Party to be purely for the advancement of his academic career, or out of fear of imprisonment or execution.<ref name=":0"/>

====Membership in the ''Allgemeine-SS''====
Von Braun joined the SS horseback riding school on 1 November 1933 as an ''SS-[[Anwärter]]''. He left the following year.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael J. |title=Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility |journal=German Studies Review |volume=25 |issue=1 |date=2002 |pages=57–78 |jstor=1433245 |issn=0149-7952 |doi=10.2307/1433245 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1433245 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>{{rp|63}} In 1940, von Braun joined the SS<ref name="Ward 2009">{{cite book |last=Ward |first=Bob |title=Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun |publisher=US Naval Institute Press |date=2009 |isbn=978-1591149279}}</ref>{{rp|47}}<ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun FBI file |url=https://vault.fbi.gov/Wernher%20VonBraun/Wernher%20VonBraun%20Part%202%20of%207/at_download/file}}</ref> and was given the rank of ''[[Untersturmführer]]'' in the ''[[Allgemeine-SS]]'' and issued membership number 185,068.{{rp|121}} In 1947, he gave the U.S. War Department this explanation:

{{blockquote|In spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS-Colonel) Müller from Greifswald, a bigger town in the vicinity of Peenemünde, looked me up in my office...and told me that [[Reichsführer-SS]] [[Himmler]] had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I told him I was so busy with my rocket work that I had no time to spare for any political activity. He then told me, that...the SS would cost me no time at all. I would be awarded the rank of a[n] "Untersturmfuehrer" (lieutenant) and it were {{sic}} a very definite desire of Himmler that I attend his invitation to join.

I asked Müller to give me some time for reflection. He agreed.

Realizing that the matter was of highly political significance for the relation between the SS and the Army, I called immediately on my military superior, Dr. Dornberger. He informed me that the SS had for a long time been trying to get their "finger in the pie" of the rocket work. I asked him what to do. He replied on the spot that if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael J. |title=The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemunde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era |year=2013 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution |isbn=978-1588344670 |pages=178–179 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J8NvDwAAQBAJ&q=SS-Standartenf%C3%BChrer |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>}}

When shown a picture of himself standing behind Himmler, von Braun said that he had only worn the SS uniform that one time,<ref name=space25>{{cite book |last=Ward |first=Bob |title=Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-1591149262 |page=35 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8jIeqqCkDHQC&q=uniform |quote=It had been thought that he publicly wore his uniform with swastika armband just once, during one of two formal...}}</ref> but in 2002 a former SS officer at Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun had regularly worn the SS uniform to official meetings. He began as an ''Untersturmführer'' (Second lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'' (Major). Von Braun later stated that these were simply technical promotions received each year regularly by mail.<ref name=space25/><ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun in SS uniform |website=The Reformation Online |url=https://www.reformation.org/wernher-von-braun.html}}</ref>

===Work under Nazi regime===
In 1932, von Braun received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Technische Hochschule Berlin (now [[Technische Universität Berlin]]), Germany. During a period in 1931, von Braun attended the [[ETH Zürich]] in Switzerland. During this time in Switzerland, von Braun assisted Professor Hermann Oberth in writing a book concerning the possibilities of creating and manufacturing liquid-propellant rockets. Shortly after this, von Braun founded his own private rocket development business in Berlin, and through which he made the first rocket fired by gasoline and liquid oxygen.<ref name=":0"/>

In 1932, having caught wind of von Braun's rocket business, the German Army connected with von Braun to pursue basic missile research and weather data experimentation.<ref name=":0"/> Von Braun said that the German government financed the development of test stands and facilities for experimentation in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1939, von Braun was appointed a technical advisor at [[Peenemünde Army Research Center]] on the Baltic Sea.<ref name=":0"/>

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1978-Anh.024-03, Peenemünde, Dornberger, Olbricht, Brandt, v. Braun.jpg|thumb|First rank, from left to right, General [[Walter Dornberger]] (partially hidden), General [[Friedrich Olbricht]] (with Knight's Cross), Major [[Heinz Brandt]], and Wernher von Braun (in civilian dress) at [[Peenemünde]], [[Province of Pomerania (1815–1945)|Province of Pomerania]], in March 1941]]

In 1933, von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the Nazi Party came to power in a coalition government in Germany; rocketry was almost immediately moved onto the national agenda. An artillery captain, [[Walter Dornberger]], arranged an [[Waffenamt|Ordnance Department]] research grant for von Braun, who then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at [[Kummersdorf]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sloop |first1=John L. |title=Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945–1959 |publisher=Scientific and Technical Information Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration |date=1978 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Akc7AQAAMAAJ&dq=braun+kummersdorf&pg=PA269 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Von Braun received his doctorate in physics ([[aerospace engineering]]) on 27 July 1934, from the University of Berlin for a thesis titled "About Combustion Tests." His doctoral supervisor was Erich Schumann.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|61}} However, this thesis represented only the public aspect of von Braun's work. His actual thesis, entitled "Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket" (dated 16 April 1934), detailed the construction and design of the A2 rocket. It remained classified by the German army until its publication in 1960.<ref name="astronautix">{{cite web |title=von Braun |publisher=Astronautix.com |url=http://www.astronautix.com/astros/vonbraun.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130817172206/http://astronautix.com/astros/vonbraun.htm |archive-date=17 August 2013}}</ref><ref>Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beiträge zu dem Problem der Flüssigkeitsrakete. ''Raketentechnik und Raumfahrtforschung'', Sonderheft 1 (1960), Stuttgart, Germany.</ref> By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched [[Max and Moritz (rockets)|two liquid fuel A2 rockets]] that rose to heights of 2.2 and {{convert|3.5|km|0|abbr=on}}.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bergaust |first1=Erik |title=Wernher Von Braun: The Authoritative and Definitive Biographical Profile of the Father of Modern Space Flight |publisher=National Space Institute |date=1976 |pages=43–49 |isbn=978-0917680014 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-hQKAQAAMAAJ&q=Max+and+Moritz+von+braun |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Von Braun continued his guided missile work throughout World War Two, and met with Adolf Hitler on several occasions, being formally decorated by Hitler twice, including being awarded the Iron Cross.<ref name=":2">{{cite web |title=Wernher VonBraun Part 3 of 7 |website=FBI Records: The Vault |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=13 September 1969 |url=https://vault.fbi.gov/Wernher%20VonBraun/Wernher%20VonBraun%20Part%203%20of%207/view |access-date=26 November 2022}}</ref>

At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist [[Robert H. Goddard]]'s research. Before 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with technical questions. Von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and incorporated them into the building of the ''[[Aggregate series|Aggregat]]'' (A) series of rockets. The first successful launch of an A-4 took place on 3 October 1942.{{sfn|West|2017|p=50}} The A-4 rocket became well known as the [[V-2 rocket|V-2]].<ref>{{ScienceWorldBiography|title=Robert Goddard|urlname=Goddard}}</ref> In 1963, von Braun reflected on the history of rocketry, and said of Goddard's work: "His rockets&nbsp;... may have been rather crude by present-day standards, but they blazed the trail and incorporated many features used in our most modern rockets and space vehicles."<ref name="recoll">{{cite web |title=Recollections of Childhood: Early Experiences in Rocketry as Told by Werner von Braun 1963 |website=MSFC History Office |publisher=NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |url=http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/recollect-childhood.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090212140739/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/recollect-childhood.html |archive-date=12 February 2009}}</ref>

Goddard confirmed his work was used by von Braun in 1944, shortly before the Nazis began firing V-2s at England. A V-2 crashed in Sweden and some parts were sent to an Annapolis lab where Goddard was doing research for the Navy. If this was the so-called [[Sweden during World War II#The Bäckebo rocket|Bäckebo Bomb]], it had been procured by the British in exchange for [[Spitfire]]s; Annapolis would have received some parts from them. Goddard is reported to have recognized components he had invented and inferred that his brainchild had been turned into a weapon.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Man Who Opened the Door to Space |website=Popular Science |date=May 1959 |url=http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/04/28/the-man-who-opened-the-door-to-space/ |access-date=8 November 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121005193605/http://blog.modernmechanix.com/the-man-who-opened-the-door-to-space/ |archive-date=5 October 2012}}</ref> Later, von Braun said: "I have very deep and sincere regret for the victims of the V-2 rockets, but there were victims on both sides...A war is a war, and when my country is at war, my duty is to help win that war."{{r|Space Engineer|p=351}}

{{quote box
| width = 25%
| align = left
| quote = The engineer who designed the V2, Wernher von Braun, came to be feted as a hero of the [[space age]]. The Allies realised that the V-2 was a machine, unlike anything they had developed themselves.
| source = —''V-2: The Nazi rocket that launched the space age'', BBC, September 2014.<ref name="Space age launch" >{{cite news |last=Hollingham |first=Richard |title=V-2: The Nazi rocket that launched the space age |publisher=BBC |date=8 September 2014 |url=https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140905-the-nazis-space-age-rocket |access-date=25 February 2023}}</ref>}}

In response to Goddard's statements, von Braun said "at no time in Germany did I or any of my associates ever see a Goddard patent". This was independently confirmed. He wrote that statements that he had lifted Goddard's work were the furthest from the truth, noting that Goddard's paper "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes", which was studied by von Braun and Oberth, lacked the specificity of liquid-fuel experimentation with rockets. It was also confirmed that he was responsible for an estimated 20 patentable innovations related to rocketry, as well as receiving U.S. patents after the war concerning the advancement of rocketry. Documented accounts also stated he provided solutions to a host of aerospace engineering problems in the 1950s and 1960s.<ref>{{cite book |title=Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun |last=Ward |first=Bob |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-1612514048 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pQCEqGZ5KHwC |access-date=6 March 2017}}</ref>

[[File:V-2 rocket diagram (with English labels).svg|thumb|Schematic of the [[V-2 rocket|A4/V2]]]]

On 22 December 1942, [[Adolf Hitler]] ordered the production of the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon", and the Peenemünde group developed it to target London. Following von Braun's 7 July 1943 presentation of a color movie showing an A-4 taking off, Hitler was so enthusiastic that he personally made von Braun a professor shortly thereafter.<ref>Speer, Albert (1969). ''Erinnerungen'', p. 377. Verlag Ullstein GmbH, Frankfurt a.M. and Berlin, {{ISBN|3550060742}}.</ref>

By that time, the British and [[Soviet intelligence]] agencies were aware of the rocket program and von Braun's team at Peenemünde, based on the intelligence provided by the Polish underground [[Home Army]]. Over the nights of 17–18 August 1943, [[RAF Bomber Command]]'s [[Operation Hydra (1943)|Operation Hydra]] dispatched raids on the Peenemünde camp consisting of 596 aircraft, and dropped 1,800 tons of explosives.<ref name="RAF">{{cite web |title=Peenemünde, 17 and 18 August 1943 |website=RAF History – Bomber Command |publisher=Royal Air Force |url=http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/peenemunde.html |access-date=15 November 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061101001350/http://www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/peenemunde.html |archive-date=1 November 2006}}</ref> The facility was salvaged and most of the engineering team remained unharmed; however, the raids killed von Braun's engine designer [[Walter Thiel]] and Chief Engineer Walther, and the rocket program was delayed.<ref>{{cite book |last=Middlebrook |first=Martin |title=The Peenemünde Raid: The Night of 17–18 August 1943 |publisher=Bobbs-Merrill |location=New York |date=1982 |page=222 |isbn=978-0672527593}}</ref><ref name="Dornberger">{{cite book |last=Dornberger |first=Walter |author-link=Walter Dornberger |title=V2 – Der Schuss ins Weltall |publisher=Bechtle Verlag (US translation V-2 Viking Press: New York, 1954) |location=Esslingan |date=1952 |page=164}}</ref>

{{See also|Bombing of Peenemünde in World War II}}

The V-2 became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the [[Kármán line]] with the vertical launch of [[MW 18014]] on 20 June 1944.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era |last=Neufeld |first=Michael J. |publisher=The Free Press |year=1995 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780029228951/page/158 158], 160–162, 190 |isbn=9780029228951 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780029228951 |access-date=15 November 2019 |url-access=registration |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191028112702/https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780029228951 |archive-date=28 October 2019}}</ref>

The first combat A-4, renamed the V-2 (''Vergeltungswaffe 2'' "Retaliation/Vengeance Weapon 2") for propaganda purposes, was launched toward England on 7 September 1944, only 21 months after the project had been officially commissioned.{{r|Space Engineer|p=184}} Doug Millard of the [[Science Museum, London]] states:

{{blockquote|The V-2 was a quantum leap of technological change. We got to the Moon using V-2 technology but this was technology that was developed with massive resources, including some particularly grim ones. The V-2 programme was hugely expensive in terms of lives, with the Nazis using slave labour to manufacture these rockets.<ref name="Space age launch"/>}}

===Experiments with rocket aircraft===
In 1936, von Braun's rocketry team working at Kummersdorf investigated installing liquid-fuelled rockets in aircraft. [[Ernst Heinkel]] enthusiastically supported their efforts, supplying a [[Heinkel He 72|He-72]] and later two [[Heinkel He 112|He-112s]] for the experiments. Later in 1936, [[Erich Warsitz]] was seconded by the [[Reich Air Ministry|RLM]] to von Braun and Heinkel, because he had been recognized as one of the most experienced test pilots of the time, and because he also had an extraordinary fund of technical knowledge.<ref name="warsitz">{{cite book |last=Warsitz |first=Lutz |title=The First Jet Pilot: The Story of German Test Pilot Erich Warsitz |publisher=Pen and Sword Books Ltd. |date=2009 |isbn=978-1844158188}}</ref>{{rp|30}} After he familiarized Warsitz with a test-stand run, showing him the corresponding apparatus in the aircraft, he asked: "Are you with us and will you test the rocket in the air? Then, Warsitz, you will be a famous man. And later we will fly to the Moon – with you at the helm!"<ref name="warsitz"/>{{rp|35}}

[[File:He112FARR.jpg|thumb|A regular He 112]]

In June 1937, at [[Neuhardenberg]] (a large field about {{convert|70|km|0|abbr=on}} east of Berlin, listed as a reserve airfield in the event of war), one of these latter aircraft was flown with its [[piston engine]] shut down during flight by Warsitz, at which time it was propelled by von Braun's rocket power alone. Despite a [[wheels-up landing]] and the fuselage having been on fire, it proved to official circles that an aircraft could be flown satisfactorily with a back-thrust system through the rear.<ref name="warsitz"/>{{rp|51}}

At the same time, [[Hellmuth Walter]]'s experiments into [[hydrogen peroxide]] based rockets were leading toward light and simple rockets that appeared well-suited for aircraft installation. Also, the firm of Hellmuth Walter at Kiel had been commissioned by the RLM to build a rocket engine for the He-112, so there were two different new rocket motor designs at Neuhardenberg: whereas von Braun's engines were powered by alcohol and liquid oxygen, Walter engines had hydrogen peroxide and [[calcium permanganate]] as a [[catalyst]]. Von Braun's engines used direct combustion and created fire, while the Walter devices used hot vapors from a chemical reaction, but both created thrust and provided high speed.<ref name="warsitz"/>{{rp|41}} The subsequent flights with the He-112 used the Walter-rocket instead of von Braun's; it was more reliable, simpler to operate, and safer for the test pilot, Warsitz.<ref name="warsitz"/>{{rp|55}}

===Slave labor===
SS General [[Hans Kammler]], who as an engineer had constructed several [[concentration camp]]s, including [[Auschwitz]], had a reputation for brutality and had conceived the idea of using [[forced labor in Germany during World War II|concentration camp prisoners as slave laborers]] in the rocket program. [[Arthur Rudolph]], chief engineer of the V-2 rocket factory at Peenemünde, endorsed this idea in April 1943 when a labor shortage developed. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.<ref>{{cite web |author=Tracy Dungan |title=Mittelbau Overview |publisher=V2rocket.com |url=http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/mittel.html |access-date=15 August 2013}}</ref> Von Braun admitted visiting the plant at [[Mittelwerk]] on many occasions,<ref name="AmerExp"/> and called conditions at the plant "repulsive", but stated that he had never personally witnessed any deaths or beatings, although it had become clear to him by 1944 that deaths had occurred.<ref name="power2">{{cite web |title=Excerpts from 'Power to Explore' |website=MSFC History Office |publisher=NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |url=http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/excerpts.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020526221151/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/excerpts.html |archive-date=26 May 2002}}</ref> He denied ever having visited the [[Mittelbau-Dora]] concentration camp, where 20,000 died from illness, beatings, hangings, and intolerable working conditions.<ref name="TimeD">{{cite news |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |title=The Rocket Man's Dark Side |last=Jaroff |first=Leon |date=26 March 2002 |url=https://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,220201,00.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120527011940/http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,220201,00.html |archive-date=27 May 2012}}</ref>

Some prisoners state that von Braun engaged in brutal treatment or approved of it. Guy Morand, a French resistance fighter who was a prisoner in Dora, testified in 1995 that, after an apparent sabotage attempt, von Braun ordered a prisoner to be flogged,<ref name="bid">{{cite book |last=Biddle |first=Wayne |title=Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |date=2009 |isbn=978-0393072648 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yjiPpJOwYXoC&q=flogged+}}{{rp|124–125}}</ref> while Robert Cazabonne, another French prisoner, stated that von Braun stood by as prisoners were hanged by chains suspended by cranes.<ref name=bid/>{{rp|123–124}} However, these accounts may have been a case of mistaken identity.<ref>[[Michael J. Neufeld]] (February 2002) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1433245 "Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility"], ''[[German Studies Review]]'', Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 57–78</ref> Former [[Buchenwald]] inmate Adam Cabala stated that von Braun went to the concentration camp to pick slave laborers:

{{blockquote|... also the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun were aware of everything daily. As they went along the corridors, they saw the exhaustion of the inmates, their arduous work and their pain. Not one single time did Prof. Wernher von Braun protest against this cruelty during his frequent stays at Dora. Even the aspect of corpses did not touch him: On a small area near the ambulance shed, inmates tortured to death by slave labor and the terror of the overseers were piling up daily. But, Prof. Wernher von Braun passed them so close that he was almost touching the corpses.<ref>Fiedermann, Heß, and Jaeger (1993) ''Das KZ Mittelbau Dora. Ein historischer Abriss'', p. 100, Westkreuz Verlag, Berlin {{ISBN|978-3922131946}}</ref>}}

Von Braun later stated that he was aware of the treatment of prisoners, but felt helpless to change the situation.<ref name="StuhlingerOrdway1994">{{cite book |author1=Ernst Stuhlinger |author2=Frederick Ira Ordway |title=Wernher von Braun, crusader for space: a biographical memoir |date=1994 |publisher=Krieger Pub. |page=42 |isbn=978-0894648427 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7pZTAAAAMAAJ |access-date=18 December 2011}}</ref> When asked if von Braun could have protested against the brutal treatment of the slave laborers, von Braun team member [[Konrad Dannenberg]] (a member of the Nazi party since 1932) told ''The Huntsville Times'': "If he had done it, in my opinion, he would have been shot on the spot."<ref>{{cite news |work=The Huntsville Times |title=Aide says von Braun wasn't able to stop slave horrors; Objection would have gotten rocket pioneer shot, Dannenberg says |last=Roop |first=Lee |date=4 October 2002 |url=http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/1033754724262943.xml |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021026180521/http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/index.ssf?%2Fxml%2Fstory.ssf%2Fhtml_standard.xsl%3F%2Fbase%2Fnews%2F1033754724262943.xml |archive-date=26 October 2002}}</ref>

===Arrest and release by the Nazi regime===
According to André Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, [[Heinrich Himmler]] had von Braun come to his Feldkommandostelle Hochwald HQ in [[East Prussia]] in February 1944.<ref name="sellier">{{cite book |last1=Sellier |first1=André |title=A History of the Dora Camp: The Untold Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp That Secretly Manufactured V-2 Rockets |place=Chicago |publisher=Ivan R Dee |date=2003 |isbn=978-1566635110}}</ref> To increase his power-base within the Nazi regime, Himmler was conspiring to use Kammler to gain control of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde.<ref name="Ward 2005"/>{{rp|38–40}} He therefore recommended that von Braun work more closely with Kammler to solve the problems of the V-2. Von Braun stated that he replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Army Air Forces in World War II: Europe, argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945 |publisher=Office of Air Force History |date=1948 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QVWBlcBvMcYC&dq=dornberger+von+braun&pg=PA818 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Von Braun had been under [[Sicherheitsdienst|SD]] surveillance since October 1943. A secret report stated that he and his colleagues [[Klaus Riedel]] and [[Helmut Gröttrup]] were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening in early March 1944 that they were not working on a spaceship<ref name="AmerExp"/> and that they felt the war was not going well; this was considered a "defeatist" attitude. A young female dentist who was an SS spy reported their comments. Himmler's unfounded allegations branding von Braun and his colleagues as communist sympathizers and accusing them of sabotaging the V-2 program, coupled with von Braun's regular piloting of a government-provided airplane that could facilitate an escape to Britain, led to their arrest by the [[Gestapo]].<ref name="Ward 2005"/>{{rp|38–40}}

The unsuspecting von Braun was detained on 14 March (or 15 March),<ref name="grdev">{{cite web |title=Highlights in German Rocket Development from 1927–1945 |website=MSFC History Office |publisher=NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |url=http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/highlights.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051028233719/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/highlights.html |archive-date=28 October 2005}}</ref> 1944, and was taken to a Gestapo cell in [[Szczecin|Stettin]] (now Szczecin, Poland).<ref name="Ward 2005"/>{{rp|38–40}} where he was held for two weeks without knowing the charges against him.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bilstein |first1=Roger E. |title=Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicle |publisher=Diane Publishing |date=1999 |page=12 |isbn=978-0788181863 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JnoZTbVLx0MC&dq=von+braun+charged+two+weeks&pg=PA12 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Through Major [[Hans Georg Klamroth]], in charge of the [[Abwehr]] for Peenemünde, Dornberger obtained von Braun's conditional release and [[Albert Speer]], Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, persuaded Hitler to reinstate von Braun so that the V-2 program could continue<ref name="AmerExp"/><ref name="Ward 2005"/>{{rp|38–40}}<ref name=walter>{{cite book |last1=Dornberger |first1=Walter |title=V-2 |publisher=The Viking Press, Inc. |location=New York |date=1954 |pages=178–184}}</ref> or turn into a "V-4 program" (the [[Rheinbote]] as a short-range ballistic rocket) which in their view would be impossible without von Braun's leadership.<ref name="Ward">Ward, Bob. 2013. ''Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun''. Naval Institute Press. Ch. 5</ref> In his memoirs, Speer states Hitler had finally conceded that von Braun was to be "protected from all prosecution as long as he is indispensable, difficult though the general consequences arising from the situation."<ref name="Speer">{{cite book |last1=Speer |first1=Albert |title=Inside the Third Reich |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location=London |date=1995 |pages=501–502 |isbn=978-1842127353}}</ref>

Upon investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation on 1 May 1961 advised that "there was no record of an arrest in their respective files"<ref name=":1">{{cite web |title=Wernher VonBraun Part 1 of 7 |website=FBI Records: The Vault |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |date=18 April 1961 |url=https://vault.fbi.gov/Wernher%20VonBraun/Wernher%20VonBraun%20Part%201%20of%207/view |access-date=26 November 2022}}</ref> suggesting that Von Braun's imprisonment was wiped from German prison records at a point after his conditional release or after the Nazi regime had fallen.

===Surrender to the Americans===
[[File:Major General Walther Dornberger, Commander of the V-2 laboratory at Peenemnde, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Axter... - NARA - 531328.tif|thumb|Von Braun, with his arm in a cast, [[Walter Dornberger]] (on the left) and [[Bernhard Tessmann]] (on the right) surrendered to the Americans just before this 3 May 1945 photo.]]

The [[Soviet Army]] was about {{convert|160|km|-1|abbr=on}} from [[Peenemünde]] in early 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Unwilling to go to the Soviets, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Kammler had ordered the relocation of his team to central Germany; however, a conflicting order from an army chief ordered them to join the army and fight. Deciding that Kammler's order was their best bet to defect to the Americans, von Braun fabricated documents and transported 500 of his affiliates to the area around Mittelwerk, where they resumed their work in [[Bleicherode]] and surrounding towns after the middle of February 1945. For fear of their documents being destroyed by the SS, von Braun ordered the blueprints to be hidden in an abandoned iron mine in the [[Harz]] mountain range near [[Goslar]].<ref name="Cadbury">{{cite book |last=Cadbury |first=Deborah |author-link=Deborah Cadbury |title=Space Race |publisher=[[BBC Worldwide]] |date=2005 |isbn=978-0007212996}}</ref> The U.S. Army [[Counter Intelligence Corps]] managed to unveil the location after lengthy interrogations of von Braun, Walter Dornberger, [[Bernhard Tessmann]] and Dieter Huzel and recovered 14 tons of V-2 documents by 15 May 1945, from the [[British Occupation Zone]].<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/><ref>{{cite book |title=From Peenemünde To Canaveral |last=Huzel |first=Dieter K. |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=1962 |asin=B0021SD22M}}</ref>

While on an official trip in March, von Braun suffered a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder in a car accident after his driver fell asleep at the wheel. His injuries were serious, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so that he could leave the hospital. Due to this neglect of the injury, he had to be hospitalized again a month later when his bones had to be rebroken and realigned.<ref name="Cadbury"/>

In early April, as the Allied forces advanced deeper into Germany, Kammler ordered the engineering team, around 450 specialists, to be moved by train into the town of [[Oberammergau]] in the [[Bavarian Alps]], where they were closely guarded by the SS with orders to execute the team if they were about to fall into enemy hands. However, von Braun managed to convince SS Major Kummer to order the dispersal of the group into nearby villages so that they would not be an easy target for U.S. bombers.<ref name="Cadbury"/> On 29 April 1945, Oberammergau was captured by the Allied forces who seized the majority of the engineering team.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dunar |first1=Andrew J. |last2=Administration |first2=U. S. National Aeronautics and Space |title=Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990 |publisher=National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans |isbn=978-0160589928 |date=1999 |page=8 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=15NYG6C9GaUC&dq=Oberammergau+was+captured+by+the+Allied+forces+von+braun&pg=PA8 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Nearing the end of the war, Hitler instructed SS troops to gas all technical men concerned with rocket development.<ref name=":1"/> Upon hearing this, von Braun commandeered a train and fled with other "technical men" to a location in the mountains of South Germany. After some time, von Braun and many of the others who made it to the mountains left their location to flee to advancing American lines in Austria.<ref name=":0"/>

Von Braun and several members of the engineering team, including Dornberger, made it to [[Alpine and Danube Reichsgaue|Austria]].<ref>{{cite web |title=vonBraun |url=http://efour4ever.com/44thdivision/vonbrauncapture.html |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150428051040/http://efour4ever.com/44thdivision/vonbrauncapture.html |archive-date=28 April 2015}} Capture of Wernher von Braun by the 324th Regiment Anti-tank Company</ref> On 2 May 1945, upon finding an American private from the U.S. [[44th Infantry Division (United States)|44th Infantry Division]], von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, approached the soldier on a bicycle, calling out in broken English: "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender."<ref name="mag8">{{cite news |work=The Huntsville Times |title=Von Braun's brother dies; aided surrender |last=Spires |first=Shelby G. |date=27 June 2003 |page=1A |quote=Magnus von Braun, the brother of rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun who worked in Huntsville from 1950–1955, died Saturday in Phoenix, Ariz. He was 84. Though not as famous as his older brother, who died in 1977, Magnus von Braun made the first contact with U.S. Army troops to arrange the German rocket team's surrender at the end of World War II.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=McDougall |first=Walter A. |title=...The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age |date=1985 |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/heavensearth00walt_0/page/44 44] |isbn=978-0465028870 |url=https://archive.org/details/heavensearth00walt_0/page/44}}</ref> After the surrender, Wernher von Braun spoke to the press:

{{blockquote|I myself and everybody you see here decided to go west. And I think our decision was not one of expediency, but a moral decision. We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured.<ref>Arts & Entertainment, Biography (1959–1961 series). Mike Wallace, television biography of Wernher von Braun, video clip of the press statement.</ref>}}

The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the ''Black List'', the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On 9 June 1945, two days before the originally scheduled handover of the [[Nordhausen (district)|Nordhausen]] and Bleicherode area in [[Thuringia]] to the Soviets, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the [[United States Army Ordnance Corps|U.S. Army Ordnance Corps]] in London, and Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by Jeep from Garmisch to Munich, from where they were flown to Nordhausen. In the following days, a larger group of rocket engineers, among them Helmut Gröttrup, was evacuated from Bleicherode {{convert|40|mi}} southwest to [[Witzenhausen]], a small town in the [[American Zone]].<ref name="McGovern">{{cite book |last=McGovern |first=J |title=Crossbow and Overcast |publisher=W. Morrow |location=New York |date=1964 |page=182}}{{ISBN missing}}</ref>

According to Dornberger, there the Soviets tried to kidnap von Braun at night using English uniforms: Americans recognized this and did not let them in.<ref>Helen Fry, "'The Walls Have Ears, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-23860-0, 2019, p. 262</ref>

Von Braun was briefly detained at the "Dustbin" interrogation center at [[Kransberg Castle]], where the elite of Nazi Germany's economic, scientific, and technological sectors were debriefed by U.S. and British intelligence officials.<ref>{{cite book |last=Speer |first=Albert |editor=Schlie, Ulrich |title=Alles, was ich weiß |publisher=F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung |date=2001 |page=12 |isbn=978-3776620924}}</ref> Initially, he was recruited to the U.S. under a program called [[Operation Overcast]], subsequently known as [[Operation Paperclip]]. There is evidence, however, that British intelligence and scientists were the first to interview him in depth, eager to gain information that they knew U.S. officials would deny them.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Fauzia |first1=Miriam |title=Fact check: Nazi scientists were brought to work for U.S. through Operation Paperclip |work=USA Today |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/16/fact-check-nazi-scientists-brought-u-s-operation-paperclip/5690870002/ |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael J. |title=Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim – Looting and the Transfer of German Military Technology |journal=The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook: Volume 1: 1945–1968 |volume=1 |date=2004 |pages=197–203 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/united-states-and-germany-in-the-era-of-the-cold-war-19451990/overcast-paperclip-osoaviakhim-looting-and-the-transfer-of-german-military-technology/534FC32DC234091C24BA984F1681E68B}}</ref> The team included the young L.S. Snell, then the leading British rocket engineer, later chief designer of [[Rolls-Royce Limited]] and inventor of the [[Concorde]]'s engines. The specific information the British gleaned remained top secret, both from the Americans and from the other allies.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Pretty German Seaside Resort with a Dark Past |website=Start Travel |url=https://www.starttravel.co.uk/blog/The-Pretty-German-Seaside-Resort-with-a-Dark-Past |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

==American career==

===U.S. Army career===
[[File:NACA's Special Committee on Space Technology.jpg|thumb|Wernher von Braun at a meeting of [[NACA]]'s Special Committee on Space Technology, 1958]]
On 20 June 1945, [[United States Secretary of State|U.S. Secretary of State]] [[Edward Stettinius Jr.]] approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to the United States as one of his last acts in office. This was announced to the public on 1 October 1945.<ref name="paper">{{cite web |title=Outstanding German Scientists Being Brought to U.S |website=War Department press release |publisher=V2Rocket.com |date=1 October 1945 |url=http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/paperclip.gif |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100301144423/http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/paperclip.gif |archive-date=1 March 2010}}</ref>

In September 1945, von Braun and other members of the Peenemünde team signed a work contract with the [[United States Army Ordnance Corps]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Saurma |first1=Ruth G. von |last2=Wiesman |first2=Walter |title=The German Rocket Team |journal=Huntsville Historical Review |date=1996 |volume=23 |issue=1 |page=22 |url=https://louis.uah.edu/huntsville-historical-review/vol23/iss1/5 |access-date=14 February 2024 |publisher=University of Alabama in Huntsville |location=Huntsville, Alabama |language=English}}</ref> On 20 September 1945, the first seven technicians arrived in the United States at [[New Castle Army Air Field]], just south of Wilmington, Delaware. They were then flown to Boston, Massachusetts, and taken by boat to the [[United States Army Military Intelligence|Army Intelligence]] Service post at [[Fort Strong]] in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to [[Aberdeen Proving Ground]] in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents, enabling the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.<ref name="Dunar">{{cite book |last1=Dunar |first1=Andrew J |last2=Waring |first2=Stephen P |title=Power to Explore |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |date=1999 |page=12 |isbn=0160589924}}</ref>

Finally, von Braun and his remaining Peenemünde staff (see [[List of German rocket scientists in the United States]]) were transferred to their new home at [[Fort Bliss]], a large Army installation just north of El Paso, Texas. Von Braun later wrote that he found it hard to develop a "genuine emotional attachment" to his new surroundings.<ref name="RM">Matthew Brzezinski (2007) [https://books.google.com/books?id=sfzMcwF5DC4C ''Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age''], pp. 84–92, Henry Holt, New York {{ISBN|978-0805081473}}</ref> His chief design engineer Walther Reidel became the subject of a December 1946 article, "German Scientist Says American Cooking Tasteless; Dislikes Rubberized Chicken", exposing the presence of von Braun's team in the country and drawing criticism from [[Albert Einstein]] and [[John D. Dingell Sr.|John Dingell]].<ref name=RM/> Requests to improve their living conditions such as laying linoleum over their cracked wood flooring were rejected.<ref name=RM/> Von Braun was hypercritical of the slowness of the United States' development of guided missiles. His lab was never able to get sufficient funds to go on with their programs.'''<ref name=":0"/>''' Von Braun remarked "at Peenemünde we had been coddled, here you were counting pennies".<ref name=RM/> Whereas von Braun had thousands of engineers who answered to him at Peenemünde, he was now subordinate to "pimply" 26-year-old Jim Hamill, an Army major who possessed only an undergraduate degree in engineering.<ref name=RM/> His loyal Germans still addressed him as "Herr Professor", but Hamill addressed him as "Wernher" and never responded to von Braun's request for more materials. Every proposal for new rocket ideas was dismissed.<ref name=RM/>

[[File:Wernher von Braun - ABMA Badge.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Von Braun's badge at ABMA (1957)]]
While at Fort Bliss, they trained military, industrial, and university personnel in the intricacies of rockets and guided missiles. As part of the [[Hermes project]], they helped refurbish, assemble, and launch a number of V-2s that had been shipped from [[Allied-occupied Germany]] to the [[White Sands Proving Ground]] in [[New Mexico]]. They also continued to study the future potential of rockets for military and research applications. Since they were not permitted to leave Fort Bliss without military escort, von Braun and his colleagues began to refer to themselves only half-jokingly as "PoPs" – "Prisoners of Peace".{{r|Space Engineer|p=218}}

In 1950, at the start of the [[Korean War]], von Braun and his team were transferred to [[Huntsville, Alabama]], his home for the next 20 years. From 1952 to 1956,<ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun |website=Encyclopedia of Alabama |url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2349 |access-date=27 March 2016}}</ref> von Braun led the Army's rocket development team at [[Redstone Arsenal]], resulting in the [[Redstone (rocket)|Redstone rocket]], which was used for the first live [[ballistic missile|nuclear ballistic missile]] tests conducted by the United States. He personally witnessed this historic launch and detonation.<ref>{{YouTube|OLbyY76zt9w|Redstone Rocket, Hardtack-Teak Test, August 1958}}</ref> Work on the Redstone led to the development of the first high-precision inertial guidance system on the Redstone rocket.<ref name="NTRS">{{cite journal |author=Bucher, G. C. |author2=Mc Call, J. C. |author3=Ordway, F. I. III |author4=Stuhlinger, E. |title=From Peenemuende to Outer Space. Commemorating the Fiftieth Birthday of Wernher von Braun |journal=NASA Technical Reports Server |date=23 March 1962 |hdl=2060/19630006100}}</ref> By 1953 von Braun's title was, "Chief, Guided Missiles Development Division, Redstone Arsenal."<ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=[[Collier's]] |date=June 27, 1953 |first1=Wernher |last1=von Braun |first2=Cornelius |last2=Ryan |title=Baby Space Station |pages=33–35}}</ref>

As director of the Development Operations Division of the [[Army Ballistic Missile Agency]], von Braun, with his team, then developed the [[Jupiter-C]], a modified Redstone rocket.<ref name="time58">{{cite news |work=TIME Magazine |title=Reach for the Stars |date=17 February 1958 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862899-1,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071221064235/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862899-1,00.html |archive-date=21 December 2007}}</ref> The Jupiter-C was the basis for the [[Juno I]] rocket that successfully launched the West's first satellite, [[Explorer 1]], on 31 January 1958. This event signaled the birth of America's space program.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ritchie |first1=Eleanor H. |title=Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1977: A Chronology |publisher=Scientific and Technical Information Branch, National Aeronautics and Space Administration |date=1986 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rkMCAAAAIAAJ&dq=Explorer+1+jupiter-c+von+braun&pg=PA115 |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

===Popular concepts for a human presence in space===
Repeating the pattern he had established during his earlier career in Germany, von Braun – while directing military rocket development in the real world – continued to entertain his engineer-scientist's dream of a future in which rockets would be used for [[space exploration]]. However, he was no longer at risk of being fired. As American public opinion of Germans began to recover, von Braun found himself increasingly in a position to popularize his ideas. The 14 May 1950 headline of ''The Huntsville Times'' ("Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon") might have marked the beginning of these efforts. Von Braun's ideas rode a publicity wave that was created by science fiction movies and stories.<ref name=DisneyVonBraun/>

[[File:President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dr. von Braun and Others.jpg|thumb|Von Braun with President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], 1960; following the [[Sputnik crisis]] in 1957, the American leadership agreed to von Braun's main role in the design of space rockets]]
In 1952, von Braun first published his concept of a crewed [[space station]] in a ''[[Collier's Weekly]]'' magazine series of articles titled "[[Man Will Conquer Space Soon!]]". These articles were illustrated by the space artist [[Chesley Bonestell]] and were influential in spreading his ideas. Frequently, von Braun worked with fellow German-born space advocate and science writer [[Willy Ley]] to publish his concepts, which, unsurprisingly, were heavy on the engineering side and anticipated many technical aspects of space flight that later became reality.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gohd |first1=Chelsea |title=Yes, the 'Von Braun' Space Hotel Idea Is Wild. But Could We Build It by 2025? |work=Space.com |date=6 November 2019 |url=https://www.space.com/gateway-foundation-von-braun-space-station.html |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

The space station (to be constructed using rockets with recoverable and reusable ascent stages) was a [[Stanford torus|toroid]] structure, with a diameter of {{convert|250|ft|m}}; this built on the concept of a [[rotating wheel space station|rotating wheel-shaped station]] introduced in 1929 by [[Herman Potočnik]] in his book ''The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor''. The space station spun around a central docking nave to provide [[artificial gravity]], and was assembled in a {{convert|1,075|mi|km|adj=on}} two-hour, high-inclination [[geocentric orbit|Earth orbit]] allowing observation of essentially every point on Earth on at least a daily basis. The ultimate purpose of the space station was to provide an assembly platform for crewed [[Moon|lunar]] expeditions. More than a decade later, the movie version of [[2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|''2001: A Space Odyssey'']] drew heavily on the design concept in its visualization of an orbital space station.<ref>{{cite news |title=What Kubrick did with the man from Nasa |work=The Telegraph |date=7 December 2015 |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/2001-a-space-odyssey/stanley-kubrick-nasa-art-storyboards-sketches/ |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

Von Braun envisioned these expeditions as very large-scale undertakings, with a total of 50&nbsp;astronauts traveling in three huge spacecraft (two for crew, one primarily for cargo), each {{convert|49|m|2|abbr=on}} long and {{convert|33|m|2|abbr=on}} in diameter and driven by a rectangular array of 30&nbsp;rocket propulsion engines.<ref name="seh1">{{cite web |title=Gallery of Wernher von Braun Moonship Sketches |website=The Space Educator's Handbook |publisher=NASA Johnson Space Center |last=Woodfill |first=Jerry |date=30 November 2004 |url=http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/lunarlan.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100530062400/http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/lunarlan.html |archive-date=30 May 2010}}</ref> Upon arrival, astronauts would establish a [[colonization of the Moon|permanent lunar base]] in the [[Sinus Roris]] region by using the emptied cargo holds of their craft as shelters, and would explore their surroundings for eight weeks. This would include a {{convert|400|km|0|adj=on|abbr=on}} expedition in pressurized rovers to the crater [[Harpalus (crater)|Harpalus]] and the [[Mare Imbrium]] foothills.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Braun |first1=Wernher Von |last2=Whipple |first2=Fred Lawrence |last3=Ley |first3=Willy |title=Conquest of the Moon |publisher=Viking Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0598825162 |pages=107, 109–110 |orig-year=1953 |year=2009|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OzjbAAAAMAAJ&q=Mare+Imbrium+von+braun |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>

[[File:Walt Disney and Dr. Wernher von Braun - GPN-2000-000060.jpg|thumb|upright|left|[[Walt Disney]] and von Braun, seen in 1954 holding a model of his passenger ship, collaborated on a series of three educational films; among other things, this suggests that von Braun had enough free time to popularize astronautics due to the fact that priority in the design of a space rocket was given to other people.<ref name=DisneyVonBraun/>]]
At this time, von Braun also worked out preliminary concepts for a [[human mission to Mars]] that used the space station as a staging point. His initial plans, published in ''[[The Mars Project]]'' (1952), had envisaged a fleet of 10 spacecraft (each with a mass of 3,720 metric tonnes), three of them uncrewed and each carrying one 200-tonne winged lander<ref name="seh1"/> in addition to cargo, and nine crew vehicles transporting a total of 70&nbsp;astronauts. The engineering and astronautical parameters of this gigantic mission were thoroughly calculated. A later project was much more modest, using only one purely orbital cargo ship and one crewed craft. In each case, the expedition used minimum-energy [[Hohmann transfer orbit]]s for its trips to Mars and back to Earth.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/19690804_manned_mars_landing_presentation_to_the_space_task_group_by_dr._wernher_von_braun.pdf |title=Braun, Wernher von (1969). ''Manned Mars landing presentation to the Space Task Group''. |access-date=10 January 2022 |archive-date=12 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210812025304/https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/19690804_manned_mars_landing_presentation_to_the_space_task_group_by_dr._wernher_von_braun.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Before technically formalizing his thoughts on human [[spaceflight]] to Mars, von Braun had written a science fiction novel on the subject, set in the year 1980. However, 18&nbsp;publishers rejected the manuscript.<ref name="bergaust">{{cite book |last1=Bergaust |first1=Erik |title=Wernher Von Braun: The Authoritative and Definitive Biographical Profile of the Father of Modern Space Flight |publisher=National Space Institute |date=1976 |isbn=978-0917680014 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-hQKAQAAMAAJ&q=Max+and+Moritz+von+braun |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref> Von Braun later published small portions of this opus in magazines, to illustrate selected aspects of his Mars project popularizations. The complete manuscript, titled ''[[Project Mars: A Technical Tale]]'', did not appear as a printed book until December 2006.<ref>Wernher von Braun (2006) ''Project Mars: a technical tale'', Apogee Books, Burlington, Ontario {{ISBN|978-0973820331}} {{page needed|date=June 2023}}</ref>

In the hope that its involvement would bring about greater public interest in the future of the space program, von Braun also began working with [[Walt Disney]] and the [[Walt Disney Pictures|Disney studios]] as a technical director, initially for three television films about space exploration. The initial broadcast devoted to space exploration was ''[[Man in Space]]'', which first went on air on 9 March 1955, drawing 40 million viewers.<ref name=RM/><ref name="ley195510">{{cite news |title=For Your Information |work=Galaxy |author=Ley, Willy |date=October 1955 |page=60 |url=https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1955-10/Galaxy_1955_10#page/n61/mode/2up |access-date=16 December 2013}}</ref><ref>Pat Williams, Jim Denney (2004) [https://books.google.com/books?id=lSJIngvkCsAC ''How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life'']{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}, p. 237, Health Communications Inc. {{ISBN|978-0757302312}}</ref>

Later (in 1959) von Braun published a short booklet, condensed from episodes that had appeared in ''[[This Week Magazine]]'' before{{snd}}describing his updated concept of the first crewed lunar landing.<ref>Wernher von Braun (2000) ''[[First Men to the Moon]]''. Reprint by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. {{ISBN|978-0030302954}}{{page needed|date=June 2023}}</ref> The scenario included only a single and relatively small spacecraft{{snd}}a winged lander with a crew of only two experienced pilots who had already circumnavigated the Moon on an earlier mission. The brute-force [[direct ascent]] flight schedule used a rocket design with five sequential stages, loosely based on the [[Nova (rocket)|Nova]] designs that were under discussion at this time. After a night launch from a Pacific island, the first three stages brought the spacecraft (with the two remaining upper stages attached) to terrestrial [[escape velocity]], with each burn creating an acceleration of 8–9 times [[standard gravity]]. The residual propellant in the third stage was used for the deceleration intended to commence only a few hundred kilometers above the landing site in a crater near the lunar north pole. The fourth stage provided acceleration to lunar escape velocity, and the fifth stage was responsible for a deceleration during return to the Earth to a residual speed that allows [[aerocapture]] of the spacecraft ending in a runway landing, much in the way of the [[Space Shuttle]]. One remarkable feature of this technical tale is that the engineer von Braun anticipated a medical phenomenon that became apparent only years later: being a veteran astronaut with no history of serious adverse reactions to [[weightlessness]] offers no protection against becoming unexpectedly and violently [[spacesick]].{{check quotation}}{{citation needed|date=November 2021}}

===Religious conversion===
In the first half of his life, von Braun was a nonpracticing, perfunctory [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]].{{r|Space Engineer|p=4}}{{rp|230}} As described by [[Ernst Stuhlinger]] and [[Frederick I. Ordway III]]: "Throughout his younger years, von Braun did not show signs of religious devotion, or even an interest in things related to the church or to biblical teachings. In fact, he was known to his friends as a 'merry heathen' (''fröhlicher Heide'')."<ref>Stuhlinger, Ernst & Ira Ordway, Frederick. 1994. ''Wernher von Braun, crusader for space: a biographical memoir''. Krieger Pub, p. 270 {{ISBN missing}}</ref> Nevertheless, in 1945 he explained his decision to surrender to the Western Allies, rather than Russians, as being influenced by a desire to share rocket technology with people whom he felt followed the Bible. In 1946,<ref name="Space Engineer"/>{{rp|469}} he attended church in [[El Paso, Texas|El Paso]], El Paso County, Texas, and underwent a religious conversion to Evangelical Christianity.<ref name="Rocket Man">Mallon, Thomas (22 October 2007) [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/10/22/rocket-man "Rocket Man"], ''[[The New Yorker]]'', Access date: 8 January 2015.</ref> In an unnamed religious magazine he stated:

{{blockquote|One day in Fort Bliss, a neighbor called and asked if I would like to go to church with him. I accepted, because I wanted to see if the American church was just a country club as I'd been led to expect. Instead, I found a small, white frame building... in the hot Texas sun on a browned-grass lot... Together, these people make a live, vibrant community. This was the first time I really understood that religion was not a cathedral inherited from the past, or a quick prayer at the last minute. To be effective, a religion has to be backed up by discipline and effort.<ref name="Space Engineer"/>{{rp|229–230}}}}

On the motives behind this conversion, Michael J. Neufeld is of the opinion that he turned to religion "to pacify his own conscience",<ref>Walker, Mark (2008) [http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-20th-century-faust "A 20th-Century Faust"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402160146/http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-20th-century-faust |date=2 April 2015}}, ''[[American Scientist]]'', Access: 8 January 2015</ref> and University of Southampton scholar Kendrick Oliver said that von Braun was presumably moved "by a desire to find a new direction for his life after the moral chaos of his service for the Third Reich".<ref>Oliver, Kendrick (2012) [https://books.google.com/books?id=tCPrLX8KOeAC ''To Touch the Face of God: The Sacred, the Profane, and the American Space Program, 1957–1975''], p. 23, Johns Hopkins University Press {{ISBN|978-1421407883}}</ref> Having "concluded one bad bargain with the Devil, perhaps now he felt a need to have God securely at his side".<ref>Oliver, 2012, p. 24</ref>

At a [[The Gideons International|Gideons]] conference in 2004, W. Albert Wilson, a former pilot and NASA employee, stated that he had talked with von Braun about the Christian faith while von Braun was working for NASA, and believed that conversation had been instrumental in von Braun's conversion.<ref>{{cite web |title=God Touches the Heart of a Scientist through Gideons' Bible Ministry |date=28 May 2004 |website=christiantoday.com |url=https://www.christiantoday.com/article/god.touches.the.heart.of.a.scientist.through.gideons.bible.ministry./913.htm |access-date=13 October 2021}}</ref>

Later in life, he joined an [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]] congregation,<ref name="Rocket Man"/> and became increasingly religious.<ref>Stuhlinger, Ernst & Ira Ordway, Frederick. 1994. ''Wernher von Braun, crusader for space: a biographical memoir''. Krieger Pub, p. 270: "Those who knew him through the 1960s and 1970s noticed during these years that a new element began to surface in his conversations, and also in his speeches and his writings: a growing interest in religious thought."</ref> He publicly spoke and wrote about the complementarity of science and religion, the afterlife of the soul, and his belief in God.<ref>von Braun, Wernher (1963) "My Faith: A Space-Age Scientist Tells Why He Must Believe in God", (10 February 1963) ''[[The American Weekly]]'', p. 2, New York: The Hearst Corporation.</ref><ref>See von Braun's speeches in ''The voice of Dr. Wernher Von Brain: An Anthology''. Apogee Books Publication; ed. by Irene E. Powell-Willhite: These touch "a variety of topics, including education, the cold war, religion, and the space program".</ref> He stated, "Through science man strives to learn more of the mysteries of creation. Through religion he seeks to know the Creator."<ref>See the same article by von Braun, Wernher, published as "Science and religion", in ''[[Rome Daily American]]'', 13 September 1966. Available in ''[http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Publications/naf/NAF-1966-10-00.pdf New Age Frontiersn]'' (Oct. 1966) ''United Family'', Volume II, Number 10.</ref> He was interviewed by the [[Assemblies of God]] pastor C. M. Ward and stated that "The farther we probe into space, the greater my faith."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Braun |first=Wernher Von |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3pa5HwAACAAJ |title="The Farther We Probe Into Space, the Greater My Faith ...": C.M. Ward's Account of His Interview with Dr. Wernher Von Braun |date=1966 |publisher=Assemblies of God |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404221819/https://books.google.com/books?id=3pa5HwAACAAJ |archive-date=4 April 2023 |access-date=16 March 2023 |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref> In addition, he met privately with evangelist [[Billy Graham]] and with the civil rights leader [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]<ref>Ward, Bob (2013) ''Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun'', Ch. 1: "The Accursed Blessing", Naval Institute Press {{OCLC|857079205}}</ref>

===Concepts for orbital warfare===
Von Braun developed and published his space station concept during the time of the [[Cold War]] when the U.S. government put the containment of the Soviet Union above everything else. The fact that his space station – if armed with missiles that could be easily adapted from those already available at this time – would give the United States space superiority in both orbital and [[orbital bombardment|orbit-to-ground]] warfare did not escape him. In his popular writings, von Braun elaborated on them in several of his books and articles, but he took care to qualify such military applications as "particularly dreadful". This much-less-peaceful aspect of von Braun's "drive for space" has been reviewed by Michael J. Neufeld from the Space History Division of the [[National Air and Space Museum]] in Washington.<ref>[[Michael J. Neufeld|Neufeld MJ]]: "Space superiority: Wernher von Braun's campaign for a nuclear-armed space station, 1946–1956". ''Space Policy'' 2006; 22:52–62.</ref>

===NASA career===
[[File:Wernher von Braun.jpg|thumb|Wernher von Braun in his office.]]
The U.S. Navy had been tasked with building a rocket to lift satellites into orbit, but the resulting [[Vanguard rocket]] launch system was unreliable. In 1957, with the launch of [[Sputnik 1]], a belief grew within the United States that it lagged behind the Soviet Union in the emerging [[Space Race]]. American authorities then chose to use von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle. Von Braun had originally proposed such an idea in 1954, but it was denied at the time.<ref name=RM/>

NASA was established by law on 29 July 1958. One day later, the 50th Redstone rocket was successfully launched from [[Johnston Atoll]] in the south Pacific as part of [[Operation Hardtack I]]. Two years later, NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) development team led by von Braun was transferred to NASA. In a face-to-face meeting with [[Herb York]] at the Pentagon, von Braun made it clear he would go to NASA only if development of the Saturn were allowed to continue.<ref name="abma1">{{cite web |title=Stages to Saturn – The Saturn Building Blocks – The ABMA Transfer |publisher=NASA |url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/ch2.htm}}</ref> Von Braun became the center's first director on 1 July 1960 and held the position until 27 January 1970.<ref>{{cite web |title=Photos: Wernher von Braun, Space Pioneer Remembered |website=Space.com |date=2012 |url=https://www.space.com/15000-photos-wernher-von-braun-space-pioneer.html |access-date=15 February 2019}}</ref>
[[File:Wernher von Braun in front of Saturn V engines.jpg|alt=Von Braun in front of the five F-1 Saturn V test engines.|thumb|Von Braun in front of the five F-1 Saturn V test engines. The engines were 19 ft. tall and burned 15 tons of liquid oxygen and kerosene per second. ]]
Von Braun's early years at NASA included a failed "[[Mercury-Redstone 1|4 inch mission]]." On 21 November 1960 during which the first uncrewed [[Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle|Mercury-Redstone rocket]], the rocket only rose up a mere 4 inches before settling back down onto the launch pad. The unfortunate and untimely failure of the rocket launch created a "nadir of morale in Project Mercury." The launch failure was later determined to be the result of a "power plug with one prong shorter than the other because a worker failed it to make it fit."{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}} Because of the difference in the length of one prong, the launch system detected the difference in the power disconnection as a "cut-off signal to the engine." The safety system in fact stopped the launch.<ref>{{cite web |title=MR-1: The Four-Inch Flight – This New Ocean |website=NASA |last1=Swenson |first1=Loyd S. Jr. |last2=Grimwood |first2=James M. |last3=Alexander |first3=Charles C. |url=https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch9-7.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010509060939/http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch9-7.htm |archive-date=9 May 2001}}</ref>

After the success of the [[Mercury-Redstone 2]] mission in January 1961, a mere 2 months after the failed "4 inch mission," NASA morale was improved.  Still, a new string of problems emerged. Von Braun insisted on one more test before the Redstone could be deemed man-rated. His overly cautious nature brought about clashes with other people involved in the program, who argued that MR-2's technical issues were simple and had been resolved shortly after the flight. He overruled them, so a test mission involving a Redstone on a boilerplate capsule was flown successfully in March. Von Braun's stubbornness was blamed for the inability of the U.S. to launch a crewed space mission before the Soviet Union, which ended up putting the first man in space the following month.<ref>{{cite book |title=Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 |publisher=NASA |last=Siddiqi |first=Asif A |year=2000 |isbn=978-1780393018 |location=Washington, DC |id=SP-2000-4408 |lccn=00038684 |oclc=48909645 |page=283}}</ref> Three weeks later on 5 May, von Braun's team successfully launched [[Alan Shepard]] into space. He named his [[Mercury-Redstone 3]] Freedom 7.{{sfn|West|2017|p=36}}

The Marshall Center's first major program was the development of [[Saturn rocket]]s to carry heavy [[payload (air and space craft)|payloads]] into and beyond Earth orbit. From this, the [[Apollo program]] for crewed Moon flights was developed. Von Braun initially pushed for a flight engineering concept that called for an [[Earth orbit rendezvous]] technique (the approach he had argued for building his space station), but in 1962, he converted to the [[lunar orbit rendezvous]] concept that was subsequently realized.{{sfn|West|2017|p=39}}<ref name="apmon">{{cite web |title=Concluding Remarks by Dr. Wernher von Braun about Mode Selection for the Lunar Landing Program |website=Lunar Orbit Rendezvous File |publisher=NASA Historical Reference Collection |date=7 June 1962 |url=https://history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/apollo6.pdf}}</ref> During Apollo, he worked closely with former Peenemünde teammate, [[Kurt H. Debus]], the first director of the [[Kennedy Space Center]]. His dream to help mankind set foot on the Moon became a reality on 16 July 1969, when a Marshall-developed [[Saturn V]] rocket launched the crew of [[Apollo 11]] on its historic eight-day mission. Over the course of the program, Saturn V rockets enabled six teams of astronauts to reach the surface of the Moon.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Apollo Program: How NASA sent astronauts to the moon |last=Mann |first=Adam |date=June 25, 2020 |website=space.com |url=https://www.space.com/apollo-program-overview.html |access-date=February 11, 2023}}</ref>

During the late 1960s, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the [[U.S. Space and Rocket Center]] in Huntsville. The desk from which he guided America's entry into the Space Race remains on display there. He also was instrumental in the launching of the experimental [[Applications Technology Satellite]]. He traveled to India and hoped that the program would be helpful in bringing a massive educational television project to help the poorest people in that country.<ref>Spangenburg & Moser. 2009. ''Wernher von Braun, Revised Edition.'' Infobase Publishing. pp. 129–130</ref>

During the local summer of 1966–67, von Braun participated in a field trip to Antarctica, organized for him and several other members of top NASA management.<ref>"Space Man's Look at Antarctica". ''Popular Science'', Vol. 190, No. 5, May 1967, pp. 114–116.</ref> The goal of the field trip was to determine whether the experience gained by the U.S. scientific and technological community during the exploration of Antarctic wastelands would be useful for the crewed exploration of space. Von Braun was mainly interested in the management of the scientific effort on Antarctic research stations, logistics, habitation, and life support, and in using the barren Antarctic terrain like the glacial dry valleys to test the equipment that one day was used to look for signs of life on Mars and other worlds.{{sfn|West|2017|p=40}}

In an internal memo dated 16 January 1969,<ref name="intan">{{cite web |title=Adjustment to Marshall Organization, Announcement No. 4 |website=MSFC History Office |publisher=NASA Marshall Space Flight Center |last=von Braun |first=Wernher |date=16 January 1969 |url=http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/announcement_4.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070621130244/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/announcement_4.pdf |archive-date=21 June 2007}}</ref> von Braun had confirmed to his staff that he would stay on as a center director at Huntsville to head the [[Apollo Applications Program]]. He referred to this time as a moment in his life when he felt the strong need to pray, stating "I certainly prayed a lot before and during the crucial Apollo flights".<ref>Bergaust, Erik. 1976. ''Wernher von Braun: The Authoritative and Definitive Biographical Profile of the Father of Modern Space Flight''. National Space Institute. p. 117</ref> A few months later, on the occasion of the first Moon landing, he publicly expressed his optimism that the Saturn V carrier system would continue to be developed, advocating human missions to Mars in the 1980s.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Next, Mars and Beyond |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=25 July 1969 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901107,00.html |access-date=21 June 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070320200436/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901107,00.html |archive-date=20 March 2007}}</ref>
[[File:Kennedy vonbraun 19may63 02.jpg|thumb|left|Von Braun with [[John F. Kennedy|President Kennedy]] at Redstone Arsenal in 1963; President Kennedy was the initiator of the American lunar program in 1961, and von Braun was appointed its technical director.]]
Nonetheless, on 1 March 1970, von Braun and his family relocated to [[Washington, D.C.]], when he was assigned the post of NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters. After a series of conflicts associated with the truncation of the Apollo program, and facing severe budget constraints, von Braun retired from NASA on 26 May 1972. Not only had it become evident by this time that NASA and his visions for future U.S. space flight projects were incompatible, but also it was perhaps even more frustrating for him to see popular support for a continued presence of man in space wane dramatically once the goal to reach the Moon had been accomplished.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Times |first1=Harold M. Schmeck Jr Special to The New York |title=Von Braun to Go to Washington To Direct Space Mission Plans |work=The New York Times |date=28 January 1970 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/28/archives/von-braun-to-go-to-washington-to-direct-space-mission-plans.html |access-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>

Von Braun also developed the idea of a [[United States Space Camp|Space Camp]] that would train children in fields of science and space technologies, as well as help their mental development much the same way sports camps aim at improving physical development.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|354–355}}{{sfn|West|2017|p=43}}
[[File:VonBraun office.gif|thumb|Von Braun in his office at Marshall Space Flight Center.]]

===Career after NASA===
After leaving NASA, von Braun moved to the Washington, D.C. area and became vice president for Engineering and Development at the aerospace company [[Fairchild (aircraft manufacturer)|Fairchild Industries]] in Germantown, Maryland on 1 July 1972.{{sfn|West|2017|p=43}}

In 1973, during a routine physical examination, von Braun was diagnosed with [[renal cell carcinoma|kidney cancer]], which could not be controlled with the medical techniques available at the time.<ref>German sources mostly specify the cancer as renal, while American biographies unanimously just mention cancer. The time when von Braun learned about the disease is generally given as from 1973 to 1976. The characteristics of renal cell carcinoma, which has a bad prognosis even today, do not rule out either time limit.</ref>

Von Braun helped establish and promote the [[National Space Institute]], a precursor of the present-day [[National Space Society]], in 1975, and became its first president and chairman. In 1976, he became a scientific consultant to [[Lutz Kayser]], the CEO of [[OTRAG]], and a member of the [[Daimler-Benz]] board of directors. However, his deteriorating health forced him to retire from Fairchild on 31 December 1976. When the 1975 [[National Medal of Science]] was awarded to him in early 1977, he had been hospitalized, and was unable to attend the White House ceremony.<ref>{{cite web |title=The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details &#124; NSF - National Science Foundation |website=nsf.gov |url=https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.jsp?recip_id=374}}</ref>

==Engineering philosophy==
Von Braun's insistence on more tests after Mercury-Redstone 2 flew higher than planned has been identified as contributing to the Soviet Union's success in launching the first human in space.<ref>{{cite book |last=Launius |first=Roger |title=To Reach the Higher Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles |publisher=University of Kentucky |date=2002 |isbn=978-0813122458}}</ref> The successful [[Mercury-Redstone BD]] flight took the launch slot that might have put Alan Shepard into space, three weeks ahead of [[Yuri Gagarin]]. His Soviet counterpart [[Sergei Korolev]] insisted on two successful flights with dogs before risking Gagarin's life on a crewed attempt. The second test flight took place one day after the Mercury-Redstone BD mission.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>

Von Braun took a conservative approach to engineering, designing with ample [[factor of safety|safety factors]] and [[redundancy (engineering)|redundant structure]]. This became a point of contention with other engineers, who struggled to keep vehicle weight down so that payload could be maximized. As noted above, his caution likely led to the U.S. losing the race to put a man into space before the Soviets. [[Krafft Arnold Ehricke|Krafft Ehricke]] likened von Braun's approach to building the [[Brooklyn Bridge]].<ref name="NASA SP-4404">{{cite book |last=Sloop |first=John L. |title=Liquid hydrogen as a propulsion fuel, 1945–1959 |series=The NASA history series |volume=SP-4404 |date=1978 |url=https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19790008823.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|208}} Many at NASA headquarters jokingly referred to [[Marshall Space Flight Center|Marshall]] as the "[[Chicago Bridge & Iron Company|Chicago Bridge and Iron Works]]", but acknowledged that the designs worked.<ref name="NOVA 1999">{{cite episode |title=To the Moon |series=NOVA |date=13 July 1999 |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2610tothemoon.html}}</ref> The conservative approach paid off when a fifth engine was added to the [[Saturn C-4]], producing the Saturn V. The C-4 design had a large crossbeam that could easily absorb the thrust of an additional engine.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|371}}

Von Braun did not indicate interest in politics or political philosophy during his onboarding working for the U.S. Army. He was primarily focused on his work in guided missiles for the purpose of advancing science and technology. According to FBI background checks, "any political activity he may have engaged in was a means to an end to provide him with the necessary freedom to conduct his experiments."<ref name=":0"/> This included time spent in the Nazi party during World War 2.

During his time in NASA, he opposed racial segregation which brought him into conflict with [[George Wallace]], who advocated racial discrimination in [[Alabama]] and wanted to continue segregation.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun's Record on Civil Rights {{!}} American Experience {{!}} PBS |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-von-braun-record-on-civil-rights/ |website=www.pbs.org |access-date=1 October 2023 |language=en}}</ref> Von Braun accused segregationist policies as obstructing the development of Alabama. His statements were considered "unusual for a space scientist, particularly in the south, but well within agency and national policy.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Franklin |first1=Ben A. |title=VON BRAUN FIGHTS ALABAMA RACISM; Scientist Warns State U.S. Might Close Space Center |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/06/14/archives/von-braun-fights-alabama-racism-scientist-warns-state-us-might.html |access-date=1 October 2023 |work=The New York Times |date=14 June 1965}}</ref>

==Personal life==
[[File:Maria von Braun 6330121 edited.jpg|thumb|Maria von Braun, ca. 1963]]

Von Braun had a charismatic personality and was known as a ladies' man. As a student in Berlin, he often was seen in the evenings in the company of two girlfriends at once.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|63}} He later had a succession of affairs within the secretarial and computer pool at Peenemünde.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|92–94}}

In January 1943, von Braun became engaged to Dorothee Brill, a physical education teacher in Berlin, and he sought permission to marry from the [[SS Race and Settlement Main Office]]. However, the engagement was broken due to his mother's opposition.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|146–147}} Later in 1943, he had an affair with a French woman while in Paris preparing V-2 launch sites in northeastern France. She was imprisoned for collaboration after the war and became destitute.<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|147–148}}

During his stay at Fort Bliss, von Braun proposed marriage to Maria Luise von Quistorp (10 June 1928{{spaced en dash}}20 January 2025),<ref>{{Cite news |date=2025-02-10 |title=Maria von Braun, wife of Dr. Wernher von Braun, has passed away |url=https://huntsvillebusinessjournal.com/news/2025/02/10/maria-von-braun-wife-of-dr-wernher-von-braun-has-passed-away/ |access-date=2025-03-20 |work=Huntsville Business Journal}}</ref> his maternal [[cousin marriage|first cousin]], in a letter to his father. He married her in a Lutheran church in [[Landshut]], Bavaria, on 1 March 1947, having received permission to go back to Germany and return with his wife. He was 35, and his new bride was 18.{{sfn|West|2017|p=46}} Shortly after, he converted to Evangelicalism.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Darrin J. Rodgers |title=This Week in AG History -- June 26, 1966 |url=https://news.ag.org/en/articles/news/2022/06/this%20week%20in%20ag%20history%20june%2026%201966 |website=news.ag.org |publisher=[[Assemblies of God USA]] |access-date=15 May 2024 |date=June 30, 2022}}</ref> He returned to Manhattan on 26 March 1947, with his wife, father, and mother. On 8 December 1948, the von Brauns' first daughter together, Iris Careen, was born at Fort Bliss Army Hospital.{{sfn|West|2017|p=50}} The couple had two more children: [[Margrit von Braun|Margrit Cécile]], born in 1952,{{sfn|West|2017|p=51}} and Peter Constantine, born in 1960.{{sfn|West|2017|p=51}}

On 15 April 1955, von Braun became a naturalized citizen of the United States.<ref>{{cite web |last=Redd |first=Nola Taylor |title=Wernher von Braun, Rocket Pioneer: Biography & Quotes |date=7 March 2013 |website=Space.com |url=https://www.space.com/20122-wernher-von-braun.html |access-date=12 October 2021}}</ref>

==Death==
[[File:Von Braun Wernher grave.jpg|thumb|Grave of Wernher von Braun in [[Ivy Hill Cemetery (Alexandria, Virginia)|Ivy Hill Cemetery]] (Alexandria, Virginia), 2008]]

In 1973, von Braun was diagnosed with kidney cancer during a routine medical examination. However, he continued to work unrestrained for a number of years. In 1975, President [[Gerald Ford|Gerald R. Ford]] awarded him the country's highest science honor, the National Medal of Science in Engineering. He was too ill to attend the [[White House]] ceremony.{{sfn|West|2017|p=48}} In January 1977, then very ill, he resigned from Fairchild Industries. 

Von Braun died on 16 June 1977 of pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia, at age 65.<ref>{{cite news |work=Los Angeles Times |title=Von Braun, Who Helped Put Men on Moon, Dies at 65: German-Born Scientist Succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer; Was Pioneer in Space Rocket Technology |date=17 June 1977 |page=A2}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Wernher von Braun, Rocket Pioneer, Dies; Wernher von Braun, Pioneer in Space Travel and Rocketry, Dies at 65 |work=The New York Times |date=18 June 1977}}</ref> He is buried on Valley Road at the [[Ivy Hill Cemetery (Alexandria, Virginia)|Ivy Hill Cemetery]] in Alexandria. His gravestone cites Psalm 19:1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork" ([[King James Version|KJV]]).<ref>{{cite web |title=Psalm 19:1 |website=Bible Gateway |url=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+19%3A1&version=KJV}}</ref>

==Recognition and critique==
[[File:VonBraunFamily.jpg|thumb|In 1970, Huntsville, Alabama, honored von Braun's years of service with a series of events including the unveiling of a plaque in his honor. Pictured (l–r), his daughter Iris, wife [[Maria Luise von Quistorp|Maria]], U.S. Sen. [[John Sparkman]], Alabama Gov. [[Albert Brewer]], von Braun, son Peter, and daughter Margrit.]]
* [[Apollo program]] director [[Samuel C. Phillips|Sam Phillips]] was quoted as saying he did not think that the United States would have reached the Moon as quickly as it did without von Braun's help. Later, after discussing it with colleagues, he amended this to say he did not believe the United States would have reached the Moon at all.<ref name="Ward 2005"/>{{rp|167}}
* In a TV interview on the occasion of the U.S. Moon landing in July 1969, [[Helmut Gröttrup]], a staff member in Peenemünde and later head of the German collective in the [[Soviet rocketry]] program, set up the thesis that automatic space probes can get the same amount of scientific data with an effort of only 10 or 20 percent of the costs, and that the money should be better spent on other purposes. Von Braun justified the expenses for crewed operations with the following argument: "I think somehow space flights for the first time give mankind a chance to become immortal. Once this earth will no longer be able to support life we can emigrate to other places which are better suited for our life."<ref>{{cite web |title=Ex-German Rocket Scientists. U.S. rocket programme 1969 |publisher=[[Thames Television]] |type=video |date=17 July 1969 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXLPlIzyGlY |access-date=1 February 2020 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208020425/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXLPlIzyGlY |archive-date=2019-12-08}}</ref>
* Scrutiny of von Braun's use of forced labor at [[Mittelwerk]] intensified again in 1984 when [[Arthur Rudolph]], one of his top affiliates from the A-4/V2 through the Apollo projects, agreed to renounce his U.S. citizenship and emigrate in exchange for not being tried for war crimes.<ref name="AmerExp"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Winterstein |first=William E. Sr. |title=Secrets Of The Space Age |publisher=Robert D. Reed Publishers |year=2005 |isbn=978-1931741491}}</ref>
* A science- and engineering-oriented [[Gymnasium (Germany)|gymnasium]] in Friedberg, Bavaria was named after von Braun in 1979. In response to rising criticism, a school committee decided in 1995, after lengthy deliberations, to keep the name but "to address von Braun's ambiguity in the advanced history classes". In 2012, [[Nazi concentration camp]] survivor David Salz gave a speech in Friedberg, calling out to the public to "Do everything to make this name disappear from this school!".<ref>{{cite news |title=Gymnasium Friedberg: Ein Ort, der das Herz zittern lässt |trans-title=Friedberg Gymnasium: A place that can make the heart tremble |language=de |last=Rother |first=Marcel |newspaper=Augsburger Allgemeine |publisher=Presse-Druck- und Verlags-GmbH |location=Augsburg |date=22 March 2012 |url=http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/friedberg/Ein-Ort-der-das-Herz-zittern-laesst-id19317211.html |access-date=1 December 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Streit um Wernher-von-Braun-Gymnasium "Tut alles, damit dieser Name verschwindet" |trans-title=Dispute over the Wernher von Braun Gymnasium "Do everything to make this name disappear" |language=de |last=Mayr |first=Stefan |newspaper=Süddeutschen Zeitung |publisher=Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH |location=Munich |date=23 March 2012 |url=http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/-geburtstag-von-wernher-von-braun-tut-alles-damit-dieser-name-verschwindet-1.1315946 |access-date=1 December 2015}}</ref> The gymnasium was renamed "[[:de:Staatliches Gymnasium Friedberg|Staatliches Gymnasium Friedberg]]" in February 2014.<ref>{{cite web |title=SCHULCHRONIK AM SGF |url=https://gym-friedberg.de/das-sgf/schulchronik/ |access-date=12 July 2024}}</ref>
* An arena and entertainment complex in [[Huntsville, Alabama]], is named the [[Von Braun Center]] in his honor. The complex opened in 1975.<ref>{{Cite web |title=History |url=https://www.vonbrauncenter.com/history/ |access-date=2023-10-26 |website=www.vonbrauncenter.com |language=en-us}}</ref>

==Summary of SS career==
* SS number: 185,068
* Nazi Party number: 5,738,692<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|96}}

===Dates of rank===
* SS-[[Anwärter]]: 1 November 1933 (''Candidate; received rank upon joining SS Riding School'')
* SS-[[Mann (military rank)|Mann]]: July 1934 ([[Private (military)|Private]])

(''left SS after graduation from the school; commissioned in 1940 with date of entry backdated to 1934'')
* SS-''[[Untersturmführer]]'': 1 May 1940 (Second Lieutenant)
* SS-''[[Obersturmführer]]'': 9 November 1941 (First Lieutenant)
* SS-''[[Hauptsturmführer]]'': 9 November 1942 (Captain)
* SS-''[[Sturmbannführer]]'': 28 June 1943 (Major)<ref name="astronautix"/>

==Honors==
{{Div col}}
* Elected Honorary Fellow of the [[British Interplanetary Society]] in 1949<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Journal of the British Interplanetary Society |number=2 |volume=9 |title=Prof Dr Wernher von Braun |date=March 1950}}</ref>
* [[Elliott Cresson Medal]] in 1962<ref>{{Citation |title=Astronautical and Aeronautical Events of 1962 – Report of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives |page=217 |date=12 June 1963 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |url=https://history.nasa.gov/AAchronologies/1962.pdf |access-date=14 July 2014 |archive-date=4 March 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130304111806/http://history.nasa.gov/AAchronologies/1962.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* Inducted into the [[International Air & Space Hall of Fame]] in 1965<ref>Sprekelmeyer, Linda, editor. ''These We Honor: The International Aerospace Hall of Fame''. Donning Co. Publishers, 2006.</ref>
* [[Langley Gold Medal]] in 1967<ref>{{cite news |title=Dr von Braun Honoured |publisher=Iliffe Transport Publications |work=Flight International |page=1030 |format=PDF |date=22 July 1967 |url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1967/1967%20-%201054.html |access-date=16 April 2009}}</ref>
* [[Wilhelm Exner Medal]] in 1969<ref name="Editor 2015"/>
* Golden Plate Award of the [[Academy of Achievement|American Academy of Achievement]] in 1975<ref>{{cite web |title=Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement |website=achievement.org |publisher=[[American Academy of Achievement]] |url=https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration}}</ref>
* National Medal of Science [[National Medal of Science]] in 1975<ref>{{cite web |title=The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details |publisher=[[National Science Foundation]] |url=https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.jsp?recip_id=374}}</ref>
* [[Civitan International]] World Citizenship Award in 1970<ref>{{cite book |last=Armbrester |first=Margaret E. |title=The Civitan Story |publisher=Ebsco Media |location=Birmingham, AL |date=1992 |pages=95, 105}}</ref>
* [[National Aviation Hall of Fame]] (1982)<ref>{{cite news |title=Hall of Famer |agency=Associated Press |newspaper=Beatrice Daily Sun |location=Beatrice, Nebraska |date=26 July 1982 |page=3 |via=Newspapers.com |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/35552939/beatrice_daily_sun/}}</ref>
{{Div col end}}

==In popular culture==
{{More citations needed|section|date=April 2017}}

Von Braun has been featured in a number of films and television shows or series:
* "[[Man in Space]]", "[[Man and the Moon]]" and "[[Mars and Beyond]]" – episodes of ''[[Disney anthology television series|Disneyland]]'' which originally aired on 9 March 1955, 28 December 1955 and 4 December 1957 respectively.<ref>{{cite web |title=Disney-Land S1.E20 - Man in Space |website=IMDB.com |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049473/ |access-date=30 August 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Disney-Land S2.E14 - Man and the Moon |website=IMDB.com |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351298/ |access-date=30 August 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Disney-Land S4.E12 - Mars and Beyond |website=IMDB.com |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151498/ |access-date=30 August 2022}}</ref>
* ''[[I Aim at the Stars]]'' (1960) – also titled ''Wernher von Braun'' and ''Ich greife nach den Sternen'' ("I Reach for the Stars"); von Braun played by [[Curd Jürgens]], his wife Maria played by [[Victoria Shaw (actress)|Victoria Shaw]].<ref>{{cite web |publisher=Turner Classic Movies |title=I Aim at the Stars (1960) |url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/27789/i-aim-at-the-stars |access-date=10 August 2010}}</ref> Although it was said that satirist [[Mort Sahl]] suggested the subtitle "But Sometimes I Hit London", the line appears in the film, spoken by actor [[James Daly (actor)|James Daly]] who plays the cynical American press officer.
* "The Search for Truth" (1962) – a film produced by Brigham Young University and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints includes a clip of von Braun discussing the relationship between science and a divine creator.
* ''[[Frozen Flashes]]'' (1967) – based on [[Julius Mader]]'s documentary report "The Secret of Huntsville"; von Braun (only referred to as the "rocket baron") played by Dietrich Körner.<ref>{{cite web |title=Die gefrorenen Blitze |website=Staatkircheforschunsgamt |url=http://www.staat-kirche-forschung.de/Dokumente/Die%20gefrorenen%20Blitze.pdf |access-date=February 10, 2023 |archive-date=6 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230306050538/http://www.staat-kirche-forschung.de/Dokumente/Die%20gefrorenen%20Blitze.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* ''[[Perfumed Nightmare]]'' (1977) – the main character, a Filipino who dreams of spaceflight, established a Wernher von Braun fan club in Laguna, Philippines.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Perfumed Nightmare |website=Kidlat Tahimik |date=2016 |url=http://kidlattahimik.de/en/the-films/the-perfumed-nightmare/ |access-date=16 May 2020}}</ref>
* ''[[From the Earth to the Moon (miniseries)|From the Earth to the Moon]]'' (TV, 1998) – von Braun played by [[Norbert Weisser]].
* ''[[October Sky]]'' – a 1999 biographical film on the life of Homer Hickam and his fascination with rockets, who is inspired by von Braun (played by Joe Digaetran)
* ''[[Planetes]]'' (a 2003-made 26-episode anime series): his name was used as a spacecraft name, which has a [[fusion rocket|"tandem mirror fusion engine"]] and aims to reach [[Jupiter]] with crew.
* ''[[Space Race (TV series)|Space Race]]'' (TV, BBC co-production with [[Norddeutscher Rundfunk|NDR]] (Germany), Channel One TV (Russia) and [[National Geographic Society|National Geographic]] TV (USA), 2005) – von Braun played by [[Richard Dillane]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Space Race TV Series, 2005 |website=imdb.com |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461887/ |access-date=February 11, 2023}}</ref>
* ''The Lost Von Braun'' – a documentary by Aron Ranen. Interviews with Ernst Stuhlinger, Konrad Dannenberg, Karl Sendler, Alex Baum, Eli Rosenbaum (DOJ) and von Braun's NASA secretary Bonnie Holmes.
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20080628074648/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/episode/0,2144,2617731,00.html Wernher von Braun – Rocket Man for War and Peace]'' - A three-part ([https://web.archive.org/web/20080628074648/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/episode/0,2144,2617731,00.html part1], [https://web.archive.org/web/20080628100312/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/episode/0,2144,2617732,00.html part 2], [https://web.archive.org/web/20080628170558/http://www.dw-world.de/dw/episode/0,2144,2617733,00.html part 3]) documentary – in English – from the German International channel [[DW-TV]].<ref>{{cite web |title=DW-TV |publisher=Dw-world.de |date=25 June 2011 |url=http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,266,00.html |access-date=15 August 2013}}</ref> Original German version [http://www.mdr.de/doku/archiv/geschichte/109389.html ''Wernher von Braun – Der Mann für die Wunderwaffen''] by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk. Played by [[Ludwig Blochberger]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Ortmanns |first1=Nadine |title=Interview mit Schauspieler Ludwig Blochberger – kontinente |work=kontinente.org |url=https://www.kontinente.org/de/interview_mit_schauspieler_ludwig_blochberger.html |access-date=21 February 2019}}</ref>
* ''[[American Genius]]'' television series (2015): ''Space Race'' (Season 1, episode 5) - von Braun played by Corey Maher.
* ''[[Timeless (TV series)|Timeless]]'' television series (2016): ''Party at Castle Varlar'' (Season 1, episode 4) – von Braun played by [[Christian Oliver]].
* ''[[Project Blue Book (TV series)|Project Blue Book]]'' television series (2019): "Operation Paperclip" (Season 1, episode 4) – von Braun played by [[Thomas Kretschmann]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Project Blue Book: Operation Paperclip |website=imdb.com |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7620512/ |access-date=February 12, 2023}}</ref>
* ''[[For All Mankind (TV series)|For All Mankind]]'' television series (2019): "Red Moon" (Season 1, episode 1), "He Built the Saturn V" (Season 1, episode 2), "Home Again" (Season 1, episode 6) – von Braun played by [[Colm Feore]].
* [[Hunters (2020 TV series)|''Hunters'']] (fictional web television series on Amazon Prime Video, 2020): "The Jewish Question" (Season 1, episode 8) – von Braun played by [[Victor Slezak]].

Several fictional characters have been modeled on von Braun:
* ''[[Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb]]'' (1964): Dr Strangelove is usually held to be based at least partly on von Braun.<ref>Neufield, ''Von Braun'', p. 406. Dr Strangelove was widely held to be a composite of [[Edward Teller]], [[Herman Kahn]], and von Braun; but only von Braun shared Strangelove's Nazi past.</ref>
* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny]]'' (2023): Dr. Jürgen Voller, the film's main antagonist, is inspired partly on von Braun according to his performer [[Mads Mikkelsen]].<ref name="EmpireExclusiveM&H">{{cite web |title=Indiana Jones 5 Will Pit Indy Against Nazis Again, In 1969 – Exclusive |website=[[Empire (magazine)|Empire]] |url=https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/indiana-jones-5-nazis-1969-exclusive/ |access-date=2022-11-19}}</ref>

In print media:
* In [[Warren Ellis]]'s graphic novel ''[[Ministry of Space]]'', von Braun is a supporting character, settling in Britain after World War II, and being essential for the realization of the British space program.
* In [[Jonathan Hickman]]'s comic book series ''[[The Manhattan Projects]]'', von Braun is a major character.
* Satirist [[Mort Sahl]] has been credited with mocking von Braun by suggesting Braun's book "I aim at the stars", needed a subtitle: "But sometimes I hit London."<ref name="sahl">{{cite news |last=Morrow |first=Lance |title=The Moon and the Clones |magazine=Time |date=3 August 1998 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988837,00.html |access-date=30 August 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080621115914/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988837,00.html |archive-date=21 June 2008}}</ref>

In literature:
* ''[[The Good German]]'' by Joseph Kanon. Von Braun and other scientists are said to have been implicated in the use of slave labor at Peenemünde; their transfer to the U.S. forms part of the narrative.
* ''[[Space (Michener novel)|Space]]'' by [[James Michener]]. Von Braun and other German scientists are brought to the U.S. and form a vital part of the U.S. efforts to reach space.<ref>{{cite news |title=A Novel of Very High Adventure (SPACE By James A. Michener) |last=Wilford |first=John Noble |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=September 19, 1982 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/19/books/a-novel-of-very-high-adventure.html |access-date=February 12, 2023}}</ref>
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' by Thomas Pynchon. The novel involves British intelligence attempting to predict and avert V-2 rocket attacks. The work even includes a gyroscopic equation for the V2. The first portion of the novel, "Beyond The Zero", begins with a quotation from von Braun: "Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death."
* ''[[V-S Day]]'' by [[Allen Steele]] is a 2014 [[alternate history]] novel in which the [[Space Race]] occurs during World War II between teams led by [[Robert H. Goddard]] and von Braun.
* ''[[Moonglow: A Novel|Moonglow]]'' by [[Michael Chabon]] (2016) includes a fictionalized description of the search for and capture of von Braun by the U.S. Army, and his role in the Nazi V-2 program and subsequently in the U.S. space program.
* ''[[V2 (novel)|V2]]'' by [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]] (2019) covers 5 days of von Braun's group in Peenemünde in November 1944.<ref>{{cite news |title=Review: V2 by Robert Harris review – fears of a rocket man |work=The Guardian |last=Preston |first=Alex |date=20 September 2020 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/20/v2-by-robert-harris-review-fears-of-a-rocket-man |access-date=February 12, 2023}}</ref>

In theatre:
* ''Rocket City, Alabam<nowiki>'</nowiki>'', a stage play by [[Mark Saltzman#Theater|Mark Saltzman]], weaves von Braun's real life with a fictional plot in which a young Jewish woman in [[Huntsville, Alabama]] becomes aware of his Nazi past and tries to inspire awareness and outrage. Von Braun is a character in the play.<ref>{{cite web |title=MadKap Productions presents Rocket City, Alabam' |publisher=[[Skokie, Illinois|Skokie]] [Illinois] Theatre and MadKap Productions |year=2017 |url=http://www.skokietheater.org/rocket-city-alabam.html |access-date=29 November 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201031445/http://www.skokietheater.org/rocket-city-alabam.html |archive-date=1 December 2017}}</ref>

In music:
* [[Infinite Journey (LP album)|''Infinite Journey'']] (1962), [[Johann Sebastian Bach]] and Apollo program rocket sounds album by various artists including [[Henry Mazer]], which features von Braun as a narrator.<ref>{{cite web |title=Florida Symphony Orchestra And Bach Festival Choir – Journey To Infinity |website=Discogs |year=1962 |url=https://www.discogs.com/Florida-Symphony-Orchestra-And-Bach-Festival-Choir-Journey-To-Infinity-/release/3812613 |access-date=21 May 2017}}</ref>
* "Wernher von Braun" (1965):<ref>{{cite web |title=Wernher von Braun |author=Tom Lehrer |publisher=YouTube |date=1 December 2008 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs |access-date=15 August 2013 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/kTKn1aSOyOs |archive-date=2021-12-11}}{{cbignore}}</ref> A song written and performed by [[Tom Lehrer]] for an episode of NBC's American version of the BBC TV show ''[[That Was The Week That Was]]''; the song was later included in Lehrer's albums ''[[That Was The Year That Was]]'' and ''[[The Remains of Tom Lehrer]]''. It was a satire on what Lehrer saw as von Braun's cavalier attitude toward the consequences of his work in Nazi Germany.<ref name=":3">{{cite news |title=Stop clapping, this is serious |newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]] |date=1 March 2003 |url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/stop-clapping-this-is-serious-20030301-gdgcoz.html |access-date=7 October 2013}}</ref> For example, one line in the song states: "A man whose allegiance/ Is ruled by expedience/ Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown/ 'Nazi, Schmazi!' says Wernher von Braun."<ref>{{cite web |title=Tom Lehrer – Wernher von Braun |via=genius.com |url=https://genius.com/Tom-lehrer-wernher-von-braun-lyrics}}</ref> There was a widespread rumour that von Braun had sued Lehrer for the song, but this is untrue.<ref name=":3"/><ref>{{cite web |last=McKay |first=Ron |title=Spotlight: 1960s satirist Tom Lehrer resurfaces |website=[[The Herald (Glasgow)|The Herald]] |date=1 November 2020 |url=https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18835086.spotlight-1960s-satirist-tom-lehrer-resurfaces/ |access-date=2023-05-03}}</ref>
* ''The Last Days of Pompeii'' (1991): A rock opera by [[Grant Hart]]'s post-[[Hüsker Dü]] alternative rock group [[Nova Mob]], in which von Braun features as a character. The album includes a song called "Wernher von Braun".

In video games:
* A starship in ''[[System Shock 2]]'' was named the Von Braun<ref>{{cite web |title=The making of System Shock 2's best level |last=Lane |first=Rick |website=[[Eurogamer]] |date=3 September 2017|url=https://www.eurogamer.net/the-making-of-system-shock-2s-best-level|access-date=10 February 2023}}</ref>
* One of the characters in the tutorial of ''[[Kerbal Space Program]]'' is named "Wernher von Kerman".

==Published works==
* ''Constructive, theoretical and experimental contributions to the problem of liquid rockets'', July 27, 1934. PhD Thesis at the Univserity of Berlin. Title in German is ''Konstruktive, theoretische und experimentelle Beiträge zu dem Problem der Flüssigkeitsrakete''<ref>Zaganescu, N. F., Zaganescu, R., & Gheorghe, C. M. (2022). Wernher Von Braun's Pioneering Work in Modelling and Testing Liquid-Propellant Rockets. INCAS Bulletin, 14(2), 153-161.</ref>{{rp|161}}
* {{cite book |title=Proposal for a Workable Fighter with Rocket Drive |date=6 July 1939}}
** The proposed vertical take-off interceptor<ref name="Klee">{{cite book |last=Klee |first=Ernst |author2=Merk, Otto |title=The Birth of the Missile: The Secrets of Peenemünde |publisher=Gerhard Stalling Verlag (English translation 1965) |location=Hamburg |date=1963 |pages=89, 95}}</ref> for climbing to 35,000&nbsp;ft in 60 seconds was rejected by the Luftwaffe in the autumn of 1941<ref name=Dornberger/>{{Rp|258}} for the [[Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet]]<ref name="Neufeld 2007"/>{{rp|151}} and never produced. (The differing [[Bachem Ba 349]] was produced during the 1944 [[Emergency Fighter Program]].)
* {{cite book |title='Survey' of Previous Liquid Rocket Development in Germany and Future Prospects |date=May 1945}}<ref name="Ordway">{{cite book |last=Ordway |first=Frederick I III |author-link=Frederick I. Ordway III |author2=Sharpe, Mitchell R |title=The Rocket Team |series=Apogee Books Space Series 36 |publisher=Thomas Y. Crowell |location=New York |isbn=978-1894959001 |pages=308, 425, 509 |date=1979}}</ref>
* Wernher von Braun, Willey Ley, Fred Whipple, Joseph Kaplan, Heinz Haber, Oscar Schachter. Edited by Cornelius Ryan, [https://archive.org/details/acrossspacefront0000jose/page/n5/mode/2up ''Across the Space Frontier''], Viking Press, 1952.<ref name=Jackson>Jackson, A. A. "[https://www.aiaahouston.org/Horizons/Pages_by_Al_Jackson_from_Volume_52_AAS_History_Series_Digital_for_IAC_2019.pdf#page=12.63 The Mars Project 1948 to 1956.]"Fifty-Third Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics,
October 21–25, 2019, Washington, DC, United States. Paper IAC-19-E4.2.03.</ref>
* {{cite book |title=A Minimum Satellite Vehicle Based on Components Available from Developments of the Army Ordnance Corps |date=15 September 1954 |quote=It would be a blow to U.S. prestige if we did not [launch a satellite] first.}}<ref name=Ordway/>
* ''[[The Mars Project]]'', Urbana, University of Illinois Press, (1953). With Henry J. White, translator.
* {{cite book|title=The Exploration of Mars|date=1956|publisher=Viking|author1= Willy Ley |author2=Wernher Von Braun| author3=Chesley Bonestell }}
* ''Saturn Rockets for Space Exploration'', New Mexico 1963
* {{cite book |editor=Arthur C. Clarke |editor-link=Arthur C. Clarke |title=German Rocketry, The Coming of the Space Age |location=New York |publisher=Meredith Press |ref=none |date=1967}}
* ''[[First Men to the Moon]]'', Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York (1960). Portions of work first appeared in ''[[This Week (magazine)|This Week]]'' Magazine.
* {{cite book |title=Daily Journals of Wernher von Braun, May 1958 – March 1970 |date=March 1970}}<ref name=Ordway/>
* ''History of Rocketry & Space Travel'', New York, Crowell (1975). With Frederick I. Ordway III.
** {{cite book |edition=2nd |author=Estate of Wernher von Braun |author2=Ordway III, Frederick I |author2-link=Frederick I. Ordway III |author3=Dooling, David Jr. |name-list-style=amp |title=Space Travel: A History |orig-year=1975 |date=1985 |publisher=Harper & Row |location=New York |isbn=978-0061818981 |ref=none}}
* ''The Rocket's Red Glare'', Garden City, New York: Anchor Press, (1976). With Frederick I. Ordway III.
* ''New Worlds, Discoveries From Our Solar System'', Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, (1979). With Frederick I. Ordway III. Von Braun's final work, completed posthumously.
* ''[[Project Mars: A Technical Tale]]'', Apogee Books, Toronto (2006). A previously unpublished science fiction story by von Braun. Accompanied by paintings from [[Chesley Bonestell]] and von Braun's own technical papers on the proposed project.<ref>{{cite book |title=Project Mars, A Technical Tale |last=Von Braun |first=Wernher |publisher=Apogee Books |date=2006 |isbn=978-0973820331 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WEklAAAACAAJ |access-date=February 11, 2023}}</ref>
* {{cite book |last=Willhite |first=Irene E. |title=The Voice of Dr. Wernher von Braun: An Anthology |series=Apogee Books Space Series |publisher=Collector's Guide Publishing |year=2007 |isbn=978-1894959643 |ref=none}} A collection of speeches delivered by von Braun over the course of his career.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Voice of Dr. Wernher Von Braun An Anthology |last=Von Braun |first=Wernher |publisher=Apogee Books |isbn=978-1894959643 |date=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4ndGAAAAYAAJ |access-date=February 10, 2023}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|Biography|Physics|Spaceflight|Science|United States}}
* [[Robert Esnault-Pelterie]]
* [[List of German inventors and discoverers]]
* [[List of coupled cousins]]
* [[List of Nazis]]
* [[Konstantin Tsiolkovsky]]
* [[Von Braun Interceptor]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

===Sources===
* {{cite book |last=West |first=Doug |title=Dr Wernher von Braun: A Short Biography |year=2017 |publisher=CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform |isbn=978-1977927910}}

==Additional reading==
* {{cite book
 |last=Bilstein
 |first=Roger
 |title=Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles
 |publisher=University Press of Florida
 |date=2003
 |isbn=978-0813026916
 |url-access=registration
 |url=https://archive.org/details/stagestosaturnte0000bils|ref=none
}}
* {{cite book |last1=Dunar |first1=Andrew J. |surname2=Waring |given2=Stephen P |title=Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990 |place=Washington, DC |publisher=[[United States Government Printing Office]] |date=1999 |isbn=978-0160589928 |ref=none |url=http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/toc.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000901224139/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/toc.html |archive-date=1 September 2000}}
* {{cite book |last1=Freeman |first1=Marsha |title=How we got to the Moon: The Story of the German Space Pioneers (Paperback) |publisher=21st Century Science Associates |date=1993 |isbn=978-0962813412 |ref=none}}
* {{cite book |last1=Lasby |first1=Clarence G |title=Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War |place=New York |publisher=Atheneum |asin=B0006CKBHY |ref=none |date=1971}}
* {{cite book |last1=Neufeld |first1=Michael J |author-link=Michael J. Neufeld |title=The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era |place=New York |publisher=Free Press |date=1994 |isbn=978-0029228951 |ref=none |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780029228951}}
* {{cite book |last=Petersen |first=Michael B.
 |title=Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemuende, National Socialism and the V-2 missile
 |series=Cambridge Centennial of Flight
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |location=New York
 |date=2009
 |isbn=978-0521882705
 |oclc=644940362|ref=none
}}
* {{cite book |last=Tompkins |first=Phillip K.
 |title=Organizational Communication Imperatives: Lessons of the Space Program
 |publisher=Oxford University Press
 |date=1993
 |isbn=978-0195329667|ref=none
}}

==External links==
{{Commons}}
{{Wikiquote}}
* [https://astrotalkuk.org/episode-61-reg-turnill-on-wernher-von-braun/ Audiopodcast on Astrotalkuk.org] BBC journalist Reg Turnill talking in 2011 about his personal memories of and interviews with Dr Wernher von Braun.
* {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20150428051040/http://efour4ever.com/44thdivision/vonbrauncapture.html The capture of von Braun and his men]}} – At the U.S. 44th Infantry Division website (archived)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060904183514/http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/ Wernher von Braun page] – Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) History Office (archived)
* [https://www.pbs.org/video/alabama-public-television-documentaries-missile-to-moon/ Missile to Moon: PBS documentary about evolution of Huntsville to "Rocket City" and Werhner von Braun]
* {{cite web |title=The Disney-Von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration |last=Wright |first=Mike |editor-last=Harbaugh |editor-first=Jennifer |date=18 February 2016 |website=NASA |url=https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/disney_article.html |access-date=10 January 2022 |archive-date=2 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221102180858/https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/disney_article.html |url-status=dead }}
* [https://www.numericana.com/arms/vonbraun.htm Coat-of-arms of Wernher von Braun]
* [https://www.thespacereview.com/article/656/1 Remembering Von Braun] – by Anthony Young – The Space Review, Monday 10 July 2006
* [http://www.dora.de/index_cten.html The Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110929074840/http://www.dora.de/index_cten.html |date=29 September 2011}}
* [https://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/vonbraun.html V2rocket.com]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20180401075213/http://www.aiaahouston.org/newsletter/ 60th anniversary digital reprinting of Colliers Space Series], Houston Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (archived)
* [[iarchive:BraunWernherVon|CIA documents on Wernher von Braun]] at the Internet Archive
* [https://vault.fbi.gov/Wernher%20VonBraun FBI Records: The Vault – Wernher VonBraun files] at vault.fbi.gov
* {{ISFDB name|37768}}
* [http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/160 Wernher von Braun Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections]
* [http://libarchstor.uah.edu:8081/repositories/2/resources/133 Dorette Schlidt Collection, The University of Alabama in Huntsville Archives and Special Collections] Files of Dorette Schlidt, Wernher von Braun's first secretary.

{{NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center}}
{{Systems engineering}}
{{National Medal of Science|engineering}}
{{NASA space program}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braun, Wernher von}}
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[[Category:Französisches Gymnasium Berlin alumni]]
[[Category:German aerospace engineers]]
[[Category:German rocket scientists]]
[[Category:Humboldt University of Berlin alumni]]
[[Category:Knights Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany]]
[[Category:Members of the American Rocket Society]]
[[Category:National Medal of Science laureates]]
[[Category:Operation Paperclip]]
[[Category:Peenemünde Army Research Center and Airfield]]
[[Category:People from Huntsville, Alabama]]
[[Category:People from Piła County]]
[[Category:People from the Province of Posen]]
[[Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States]]
[[Category:American people imprisoned in Germany]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross]]
[[Category:Recipients of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal]]
[[Category:Recipients of the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service]]
[[Category:Research and development in Nazi Germany]]
[[Category:Space advocates]]
[[Category:SS-Sturmbannführer]]
[[Category:Technische Universität Berlin alumni]]
[[Category:V-weapons people]]
[[Category:Werner von Siemens Ring laureates]]