Secrets of War TV - Secrets of World War II TV - True Evil: The Making of a Nazi TV - Chris Everard - The Reich Underground: Terror from Below TV - The Hunt for Hitler’s Scientists TV - What Happened on the Moon? - Nazi Hunters TV - Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun - Fiedermann & Jaeger - Dark Side of the Moon 2002 - Jim Al-Khalili TV - Camp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis 2021 -
Eventually Von Braun created a masterpiece: the world’s first ballistic missile. Secrets of War s1e11: Secret Weapons of the Third Reich
The real winner in the story of the V weapons may have been Wernher von Braun. He surrendered to the Americans with his entire research team. Secrets of World War II: The RAF versus the V2 ep17
News report rarely mention that Wernher von Braun is a former Nazi. And Von Braun was no Nazi foot soldier. He was a senior officer in the SS close to Heinrich Himmler. True Evil: The Making of a Nazi: Wernher von Braun, Yesterday 2019
Guilty of shocking acts for which he is never held to account. ibid.
Wernher von Braun was an SS Officer and rocket scientist. His team at Peenemunde designed the first cruise missile – the VI doodlebug. The V2 rocket was the forerunner to the Saturn V rocket which would supposedly take man to the moon. At the end of World War II the American government were desperate to get hold of the Nazi rocket weapons which had wrought havoc on the innocent people of Britain. The American government launched Project Paperclip which secretly changed the war criminal files on Wernher von Braun and his colleagues. Files which described these SS officers as an ardent Nazi were changed to read not an ardent Nazi. Chris Everard, Secret Space
The newest missile model – the twenty-six-metre tall A9 was supposed to have a strike range that would reach the USA, according to the ambitious plans of the Nazis ... The A9 rocket didn’t reach the testing stage – its inventor Wernher von Braun was taken to the United States after the war where he continued his missile research for his new military and political masters. The precise number of the victims of his work in Hitler’s service is unknown. The Reich Underground: Terror From Below, History 2004
In the final months of the Second World War elite groups of allied agents and commandos infiltrated Germany. Their top-secret missions: to hunt down Hitler’s so-called wonder-weapons and the scientists who built them. The Hunt for Hitler’s Scientists, 2005
Britain, America and Russia had nothing like this in their own armouries and they were all desperate to get their hands on the rocket and the man who built it – Wernher von Braun. ibid.
The hardened commandos of 30AU sped into Northern France; they were carrying a black book – a list of hundreds of targets compiled by British Intelligence. ibid.
Intelligence reports suggested that Wernher von Braun had moved his V2 rocket factory into the centre of Germany. The trail was leading to the small town of Nordhausen. On the morning of 11th April 1945 an American team arrived at these hills where they made a breathtaking discovery. Hidden underground was Von Braun’s secret factory where thousands of V2 rockets were being built. The scale was immense ... It was the world’s largest underground factory. ibid.
Their number one target – Wernher von Braun – had disappeared with over a hundred members of his rocket team ... Several hundred miles away agents chasing the German atomic bomb project continued their hunt for Werner Heisenberg. ibid.
Behind the scenes massive shipments of German scientific materials, technology and research were boxed up and taken to Britain, America and Russia. ibid.
Wernher von Braun considered manned space flight the goal of his life. His launch vehicle would become key to the means by which mankind would attempt to reach out into space. But for the Third Reich it was just a transporter of explosives. What Happened on the Moon?
After various interrogations or rather meetings Von Braun and his chosen band of racketeers were escorted to America, where they were to become the backbone of the space program for several decades. bid.
In 1944 the Nazis unveiled a deadly new weapon – a supersonic rocket capable of massive destruction – the V2 ballistic missile. But it hid a dark secret. Thousands of slave labourers were worked to death in the hellish conditions to make Hitler’s ultimate vengeance weapon … Behind the V2 was one man – Wernher von Braun, gifted figurehead of the Nazi rocket programme … The Americans, the Russians and even the British would hunt Wernher von Braun. Nazi Hunters s1e1: Hunting the Nazi Rocket Scientists
It set a template for many modern rockets. ibid.
‘Once the rockets are up
Who cares where they come down;
That’s not my department,’
Says Wernher von Braun. Tom Lehrer
Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him? Wernher von Braun
I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution. Wernher von Braun
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. Wernher von Braun
It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. Wernher von Braun
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. Wernher von Braun
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 not by the laws of materialism but by Christianity and humanity could such an assurance to the world be best secured. Wernher von Braun
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. Wernher von Braun
The German scientists led by Professor 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 Professor 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 Professor Wernher von Braun passed them so close that he was almost touching the corpses. Fiedermann & Jaeger, 1993
It was Wernher von Braun who first realised the race to the moon must be entertaining. A show. After several meetings with Walt Disney an idea took shape. Only Hollywood, the dream factory itself, could transform a dull rocket launch that no-one took any notice of into a mega-production. And Stanley Kubrick was about to convince the last doubters. The famous director, working closely with NASA, had started to shoot 2001 A Space Odyssey. Dark Side of the Moon, 2002
In 1930 a young engineer joins a Berlin science club – the Society for Space Travel – His name is Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun. Jim Al-Khalili, Revolutions III: Rocket, BBC 2019
We had to swear, Don’t tell anybody where you are or what you are doing, not even your wife or your parents. The life of nation depended on you holding on to that secrecy. Camp Confidential: America’s Secret Nazis, young Jewish narrator, Netflix 2021
During World War II, the United States operated a secret military camp near Washington DC. It was kept classified for over 50 years. In 2006, the National Park Service conducted interviews with its veterans … ibid. captions
They called it PO Box 1142. It took quite a few weeks for us to be told that all these people that were gonna be there were Nazis. ibid. narrator
We were told to use our German to interrogate the German prisoners. ibid.
I’d been given $1,000 and we were driving to Lansburgh Brothers … I knew it was Jewish but it gave me a nasty pleasure … Four German guys ordering panties for their lives. ibid.
Wernher von Braun: They treated him like a hero … He knew what was going on. ibid.
They were sons of bitches and I wanted them dead. ibid.
We were not only interested in what the Germans were able to do, but we were also interested in knowing about our ally at the time, the Soviet Union. And that became an important element. ibid.