Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Hardcover)

by Michael J. Neufeld (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Neufeld, chair of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, offers what is likely to be the definitive biography of Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), the man behind both Nazi Germany's V-1 and V-2 rockets and America's postwar rocket program. Spearheading America's first satellite launch in 1958, which brought the U.S. up to par with the Soviet Union in space, von Braun was celebrated on the covers of Time and Life. Neufeld has a deep understanding of the technical and human challenges von Braun faced in leading the U.S. space program and lucidly explains his role in navigating the personal and public politics, management challenges and engineering problems that had to be solved before landing men on the moon. Neufield doesn't discount von Braun's past as an SS member and Nazi scientist (which was downplayed by NASA), but concludes nonjudgmentally that von Braun's lifelong obsession with becoming the Columbus of space, not Nazi sympathies, led him to his Faustian bargain to accept resources to build rockets regardless of their source or purpose. A wide range of readers (not only science and space buffs) will find this illuminating and rewarding. 16 pages of photos. (Sept. 26)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Guy Gugliotta

Very early during his career in Hitler's Germany, Wernher von Braun understood the essential dilemma that confronted -- and in many ways still confronts -- almost anyone bewitched by the possibilities of rocketry and space: "I had no illusions whatsoever as to the tremendous amount of money necessary to convert the liquid-fuel rocket from [an] exciting toy . . . to a serious machine," he wrote. "To me, the Army's money was the only hope for big progress toward space travel." Von Braun from his youth dreamed of spaceships, but first he had to make a weapon, and he willingly built one, even knowing that he was using slave labor to do it.

This Faustian bargain lies at the heart of space historian Michael J. Neufeld's carefully researched biography of von Braun, the Third Reich wunderkind who built the V-2, the world's first ballistic missile, then emigrated to the United States to design weapons and eventually to develop the epic Saturn V rocket that sent six sets of Apollo astronauts to the moon. In between, he managed, through charm, wit and undeniable genius, to become the charismatic spokesman for space travel in America -- a role that earned him admiration from young baby boomers who saw him on Walt Disney's "Tomorrowland" TV show and ridicule from such counterculture icons as singer Tom Lehrer:

Don't say that he's hypocritical

Say rather that he's apolitical.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Today, 35 years after his death from cancer at a relatively young 65, von Braun remains as difficult to pigeonhole as ever -- at once the most influential rocket engineer of the 20th century and an ambitious charmer whose detractors dismiss him as an opportunist and war criminal. Neufeld, chair of space history at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, navigates this minefield in an unusually measured fashion. Rather than picking a side and marshaling arguments, his journalistic approach lays out the evidence on both sides and invites readers to make their own judgments. Neufeld clearly is less than enamored of von Braun, yet gives due respect to his accomplishments. The reader who seeks closure will come away disappointed, but Neufeld intended it that way.

Von Braun loved engineering and space from childhood. Also, he came from Germany's landowning aristocracy and had little difficulty offering unquestioning loyalty to an authoritarian government, even the Third Reich. Neufeld concedes that the precocious von Braun -- he was effectively in charge of rocket development at the age of 25 -- probably thought little at first about the pitfalls of serving Hitler, but if he had, it would not have bothered him. At certain points, von Braun could have dragged his feet, "but that would have required strong, unspoken moral and political convictions and a willingness to damage his career," Neufeld says. "Those were manifestly lacking."

Neufeld writes with economy and dispatch, and the narrative moves quickly, particularly in the early going. Although von Braun's surviving German colleagues refused to grant interviews, Neufeld's mastery of available German material and memoirs, coupled with the records of post-World War II debriefings and the harrowing recollections of former French prisoners-of-war at the Nordhausen V-2 plant, give von Braun's German period a vivid immediacy.

The book, however, frequently glosses over the engineering challenges faced by early rocketeers and the techniques and hardware developed by von Braun and others to resolve them. Aficionados will immediately notice this shortcoming, and even the uninitiated will occasionally wonder how seemingly intractable problems are suddenly overcome 10 pages later. Also missing are details about von Braun's personal life. The family has never granted interviews, and readers will be curious about his 1947 marriage, almost sight unseen, to his 18-year-old first cousin and his born-again conversion to evangelical Protestantism around the same time.

The American half of von Braun's life will be more familiar to U.S. readers. Neufeld focuses considerable attention on von Braun's career as the U.S. space program's designated visionary, contrasting his public triumphs with continued but sporadic embarrassments about his Nazi past.

Yet despite his career as a space pitchman, von Braun was no charlatan, and Neufeld shows clearly that his achievements as a rocketman are unsurpassed. He was able to put the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, in orbit in the panicked aftermath of the Soviet Union's 1957 Sputnik launch, and he delivered the Saturn V in time to fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 promise of putting a man on the Moon "before this decade is out." Von Braun may have been a flawed hero, as Neufeld elegantly shows, but he delivered the goods.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (September 25, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307262928
• ISBN-13: 978-0307262929
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,706 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive book about Von Braun, October 1, 2007

By	Tal Inbar (Kadima - Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I first learn about this book I thought to myself:"What else can be written about Von Braun that I don't know"? After reading everything that was published during the years on the topic, it must be an immense undertaking, to create yet another Von Braun book, but, as I got the book, I saw immediately that this is by no means "another Von Braun book".

There are many revelations, new stories and new interpretations on the deeds of Von Braun, especially in his NASA career. The amount of work and details is just stager ring, and the result is breathtaking. You can almost feel that you are in the meeting rooms at Marshal space flight center at the height of discussions on various Apollo and Saturn alternatives.

This book is with no doubt the best book ever to be published on the life and work of Wherner Von Braun, and will serve the space historians community as the definitive source for years to come.

The author does not make Von Braun any discounts, and when he has criticism on him or on his decisions at NASA (and of course on the WW2 period) we get to see a balanced account of the events.

A must have book and important addition to the history of spaceflight, on this jubilee year of the Sputnik launch.

Tal Inbar
Head
Space Research Center
Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Truly Outstanding Biography of a Truly Outstanding Rocketeer, January 18, 2008

By	Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The career of Wernher von Braun has been a subject of investigation, and not a little controversy, almost from the time that the German rocketeer came to the United States after World War II. There is no question in my mind that "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" will be recognized as a seminal addition to the literature of space history and biography. In this book Michael J. Neufeld, the chair of the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum and a longtime friend and colleague of mine (so I confess that I am not totally unbiased in my assessment), traces the career of one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration during the period between the 1930s and the 1970s. He went on to a stellar career (pun intended) in rocketry and spaceflight. Neufeld argues that von Braun should be remembered for four major accomplishments:
(1) Developing the world's first ballistic missile, the V-2, for Germany during World War II.
(2) Popularizing space exploration in the U.S. in the 1950s through a succession of articles, speeches, public appearances, and television broadcasts. The most important of these were the famed "Collier's" series of articles and the three Disney TV programs.
(3) Launching the first U.S. satellite to orbit the Earth, Explorer 1, in January 1958, a significant rejoinder to the Sputnik launches of the fall of 1957.
(4) Leading the technical development of the largest successful rocket ever built, the Saturn V launcher that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

Neufeld's core thesis revolves around what he refers to as a "Faustian bargain" for von Braun; he was consumed with exploring space but to enable that goal he spent the majority of his career building sophisticated weapons of destruction. Not until 1960 did he work for NASA, an organization dedicated to the peaceful exploration of space. Previously, military organizations had employed von Braun to build missiles.

This thesis gets to the heart of a longstanding controversy over von Braun's motivations and a belief in his basic opportunism. Because he was willing to build a ballistic missile for Hitler's Germany, with all of connotations that implied in the devastation and terror of World War II, many of his ideals have been questioned and criticized. For some he was a visionary who foresaw the potential of human spaceflight, but for others he was little more than an arms merchant who developed brutal weapons of mass destruction. As Neufeld shows, in what will be viewed as a major benchmark in this historiographical debate, von Braun seems to have been something of both. The subtleties of this analysis are path breaking and will be significant for all interested in exploring seriously the history of spaceflight. This biography will be the starting point for all future investigation of the life and career of this fascinating, perplexing, and complex individual.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Faustian Bargain, December 7, 2007

By	Joel M. Kauffman (Berwyn, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A mob followed Dr. Wernher von Braun into the armored test chamber of the M. I. T. Rocket Research Society some time in 1962. We shook hands, and he picked up a static test rocket motor we had made for liquid propellants with an innovative plug nozzle. He said, having missed the words "static test": "You got to get some of ze meat off here, here and here!", pointing. He was one of those rare people with an aura that just radiated -- highly charismatic in manner. Then I understood how engineers and others could work for him in the foul conditions at Peenemünde that prevailed after the bombing of 17 Aug 43 (p153). And at Nordhausen.

Anyhow, the RRS visit was followed by a talk on Saturn booster development in M. I. T.'s Kresge Auditorium, which would have impressed any U. S. congresspeople who saw it. But neither author Neufeld nor I have any illusions about the V-2 program. As was quoted several times from Mort Sahl imitating von Braun: "Ve shoot for ze moon, but zometimes ve hit London." So Neufeld does not indulge in hero worship.

Neufeld's exhaustive research, backed up by 120 pages of notes, uses letters sent by von Braun, other letters, interviews with relatives, and any other imaginable sources, has helped produce what must be the definitive biography of von Braun. Good index. Two groups of black & white photos are provided. And it is a biography, contrary to another Amazon reviewer, who called this book a history of rocketry, which it certainly is not. The author stated he was able to read German, which surely helped.

So von Braun's ancestors, schooling, early work in the German Society for Space Travel, movement to work for the Wehrmacht before Hitler was in power, and remaining afterwards is all there. Coerced membership in the Nazi Party and the SS was duly noted. Von Braun's brilliant escape to the US Army is given in great detail, then his debriefing, slow years near White Sands, NM, then productive years at what became the Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, AL, which I have toured, then 2 years with NASA HQ near DC, and finally some years with Fairchild Aircraft are all there.

Von Braun was a major contributor to the US Army's IRBM Redstone, the version called the Jupiter C which orbited the first US satellite, the Saturn series of boosters, including the V, without which there would not have been an Apollo program and men landing on the moon. Von Braun also helped with the Space Shuttle, and then with some of the first communication satellites. Neufeld is careful to write, many times, that von Braun was not an especially inventive engineer, but had one of the greatest talents ever to manage complex engineering programs, while also being great at public relations. And sticking with government work almost all of his career to carry out his dream of manned space travel.

My only disappointments were some vague technical details of certain rockets, and little effort to explain how fast fuel pumps or how the guidance systems worked.

Very highly recommended.