Incredibly precocious and driven towards his goals, Wernher von Braun was a headstrong and unruly child with a predilection for thrill seeking and testing the rules. Whilst he always displayed a strong intellectualism, he only really began to apply himself to his studies, especially Maths that he initially disliked, when he became obsessed with rockets and the idea of travelling to space. The idea of space travel has now entered the popular consciousness to such a degree that it is now probably impossible to imagine how radical this idea was for young, aristocratic German schoolboy. Appreciation of Von Braun’s technological abilities are largely too technical for a layperson to comprehend; however, his status as a visionary regarding space travel is plain to see.
A voracious reader and polymath, von Braun was convinced of the incomparable philosophical and scientific value of space travel. Initially, most thought it an ill-conceived, and even sacrilegious, fantasy. Latterly, some criticised the spending of billions of dollars on a project with little immediate tangible benefit to society, suggesting the money might be better spent on alleviating poverty or other problems closer to home. Von Braun emphasised the longer term benefits such a project might bring. First, scientific innovation; for example, satellite technology allowing data to be shared worldwide in an age before the internet. The applications were myriad; monitoring crops, tracking shoals of fish, beaming lesson plans to classrooms in Indian villages without electricity and many more. Of course, many other scientific innovations were derived from the space program too. Secondly, von Braun also championed the philosophical value of space travel. Not primarily as a means of demonstrating America’s cultural and intellectual superiority to the USSR, which was probably the government’s major motivation, but rather as the source of mankind’s ultimate salvation. Building a ‘bridge to the stars’ could allow us to outlive the burning out of our sun and escape our evolutionary destiny. He was also clearly captivated by the magical inspiration of space travel and man’s ability to leave his own planet. There’s no simple answer to this question and I didn’t feel like this book was the right place for an exhaustive discussion, which it, rightly, doesn’t attempt and I’m sure could occupy several thousand pages! However, the testimony of von Braun and the author should clearly be taken with a pinch of salt given their extreme passion, and subsequent bias, about the subject!!
Von Braun was a magnetic, good-looking and extremely charming individual with exceptional talents for leadership. He was a very hands-on manager, with a high level of technical ability and a tireless learner and reader who always asked pertinent questions of his subordinates. He seems to have been very adept at building relationships, motivating teams and making those under him feel valued and important. He seems to have been extremely loquacious and enjoyed talking to anyone really! As Ward summarises in the Epilogue, “he was a leader, with the versatility that leaders of genius must possess. Because he worked with rockets, I would call him a rocket man, but that is a cold term, and he was anything but cold. He was warm and friendly man, interested in everyone around him, no matter who they were. He had a marvelous knack for explaining his machines in simple, understandable, human language. And he never seemed to busy to share his ideas - and he was full of them - with others” (p309).
Despite his personal charisma, the question remains: Did he really care about anything except progress in rocket technology? Clearly this was his guiding principle and he used multitudinous means towards this end; like most single minded activities, this has positive and negative aspects. His achievements seem to bear testimony to the practical efficacy of this myopia. However, he arguably had little loyalty to anything except his work; switching sides from Germany to the US and then later from NASA in Maryville to Washington without taking any of his staff, who had been with him since WW2. Personal traits detailed in the book, such as never carrying any cash and never returning borrowed items, could support a hypothesis of a man who didn’t really care about anyone, or anything, else but himself and his project. To me, the magnitude of what he achieved make it almost certain he was this type of man. The allusions made to his enjoyment of the company of women could be interpreted as evidence of a similar attitude regarding adultery although the author dismisses this idea without really providing any evidence for this decision. This tendency to see the best in Von Braun recurs throughout the book whenever tricky questions arise.
Arguably the most pressing moral questions in the book relate to WW2 and his role as the head of the V2 rocket program under Hitler. First, was von Braun moral responsible for the casualties caused by the rockets he designed? Here we find him responding eloquently and persuasively in a letter, “‘When your country is at war, when friends are dying, when your family is in constant danger, when the bombs are bursting around you and you lose your own home, the concept of a just war becomes very vague and remote and you strive to inflict on the enemy as much or more than you and your relatives have suffered.’ (p69). Nonetheless, it seems odd that he immediately forgot these concerns when he surrendered to the USA at the end of the war, something someone who prioritised loyalty to one’s countrymen would probably never consider. Against this, one could argue that the mentality described in his letter is one that only exists in times of war and once the brutality of conflict ceases, this mindset ends too. Secondly, the rockets he designed were built by POW in atrocious conditions in an underground mine to avoid bombing by Allied planes. Again, the circumstances of war and the emotional and psychological states it produces make this a highly complicated moral question. However, claims that he was unaware of these conditions should surely be considered false given his obsession with detail and intricate knowledge of all other parts of the project. The ultimate decision to adopt this form of manufacturing wasn’t his and he was, in all likelihood, powerless to alter it but could he have absented himself from the project without risking harm to himself or his family? I suspect only a very few people would have sufficient knowledge of the circumstances and political climate at the time to give an accurate assessment of these risks so I won’t attempt to answer this question. However, I suspect that von Braun’s single mindedness about rocket science was the deciding factor; I can’t envisage him wanting to stop work regardless of the obstacle placed in his way. He would have always found a way to rationalise things to himself, such was his dedication to his passion. The author himself, perhaps in thrall to von Braun’s personal charms, is keen to absolve him of any wrong doing to the extent that he includes this passage: “Ironically, a number of US and Allied military experts, including Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, came to the conclusion that because Berlin spent millions of Reichsmarks and precious labour and material on Dornberger and von Braun’s rocketry efforts, instead of building more warplanes and tanks, thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives were probably saved.” (p70). While this may be a highly charitable interpretation of his role, this does not necessarily prevent it from also being correct. I feel it is probably an impossible question to answer objectively.
Von Braun’s membership of the SS has some similar characteristics. Ward draws von Braun as fairly apolitical, albeit with liberal leanings, and certainly not as a supporter of either Hitler or the SS. However, he ends up joining the institution out of political necessity given his high status within the German Army. Again, it’s not possible to tell how avoidable this was but I suspect it was close to mandatory in a Fascist state during a war when one would doubtless suffer extreme paranoia and anxiety about the safety of oneself and one’s family. In the end, his membership proved crucial in allowing him to forge orders on SS stationary allowing him and his team to escape Peenemunde and eventually surrender to the Americans at the end of the war. As to whether one actions justifies the other, these are precisely the kind of unanswerable questions that the conditions of war throw up in abundance and to which I claim no special ability to be able to answer. The author, clearly a fan of both von Braun and space travel more generally, seems to think the ends justify, or at least excuse, the means. What I can say is that I’m not sure I would have acted any better, and perhaps I would have done considerably worse, if I were placed in his von Braun’s shoes.
Von Braun’s time in America is considerably less problematic in moral and ethical terms. Initially bored in the US as him and his team were treated with suspicion by their new bosses; much of their work was limited to explaining the superior rocket technology they had developed at Peenemunde. However, von Braun took the opportunity to travel widely dispersing his ideas about space travel, which he had been unable to do in Germany. A natural salesman he soon had considerable success to this end and received good funding from the US army and a move to the leafy NASA centre at Huntsville, Alabama from the hot monotony of the desert at Fort Bliss in Texas, which seems to have been anything but blissful! What followed was a meteoric rise up the NASA hierarchy hindered only by anti-German sentiments and internal politics. He made huge and wide-ranging contributions to the Apollo space programs and his team’s Saturn V rockets were instrumental in taking the first man to the moon. Some part of this is due to the concatenation of circumstances; namely, the huge importance, and equally large funding, given to the project by JFK owing to its importance in the context of the Cold War. As mentioned earlier, his switch to Washington, an apparent attempt to drive further missions to Mars, were disastrous and he ended up working for Fairchild Industries for the latter part of his career in a role that seems to have been a mixture of engineer, project manager and space superstar turned salesman with the emphasis on the latter!
Biographies are inevitably written by people who have a passion for the person whose life they detail. As such, most biographical authors will possess a level of knowledge and detail that far surpasses the scope of single book and the appetites of the lay reader. Balancing completeness against the need to create a narrative simple and engaging enough for the lay person to enjoy is a ubiquitous challenge. Bob Ward includes some excellent chapters on von Braun’s personal shortcomings and habits (e.g. 12 - ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ & 15 - ‘En route to Victory’). They’re full of quirky, idiosyncratic details and create a vivid and evocative portrait of a complex, multifaceted and flawed genius. Other chapters, for example chapter 1, are less good, lapse into hagiography and reveal very little about von Braun’s character. Some of the anecdotes are so hackneyed that it doesn’t matter if von Braun was their originator, which I strongly suspect he wasn’t, they are simply too cliched for inclusion. In fairness, with the exception of the first chapter, there are probably only two or three really jarring instances of this fault. Another shortcoming, which is far less gratuitous and annoying than the banal anecdotes but more common, is a tendency to focus too heavily on the machinations within NASA. The author clearly followed his career so closely while he was resident at Huntsville, Alabama that he seems to have lost some critical perception as to what level of detail is appropriate for the audience. Clearly, this judgement is objective and there will surely be readers who are especially interested in this period; for example, those from Alabama or with a specific interest in NASA. However, for me it was all a bit esoteric.
On the whole, I found this to be an average account of what was clearly an exceptional life. It is very thoroughly researched and this turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. There are some truly excellent sections and some rather underwhelming ones and I felt like the book would have benefitted from more sagacious selection of material given that the author clearly had so much to chose from. It provided an interesting biographical sketch of von Braun, raised some demanding moral and ethical questions about his career and described the post-war development of NASA’s space programs from an interesting perspective. At its best it’s provocative and insightful but in its weaker passages it slips into platitudes and sycophancy. Other passages are overly detailed and a bit dull.
