As I understand it, the claim is that basically if they let von Braun loose they could have easily beat the Soviets (and he badly wanted to do just that) but on

As I understand it, the claim is that basically if they let von Braun loose they could have easily beat the Soviets (and he badly wanted to do just that) but one of the major reasons they didn't is that leadership wanted that milestone to be achieved by a U.S. rocket, not a nazi rocket. https://www.nasa.gov/history/sputnik/begin.html https://www.nasa.gov/history/sputnik/begin.html "Wernher von Braun showed me one of his mock-ups and told me of his plans for orbiting a satellite. He had been unable to obtain the authorizations and funds required to put an actual satellite in orbit; but according to his estimates, he could have done so many months before Russia's Sputnik I was launched-at a minute cost as measured by present-day space expenditures." "Why was the Redstone-von Braun satellite project not supported? Answers vary with the person talked to: The Navy's brilliant developments in satellite instrumentation had tipped the choice to Vanguard, and budgetary restrictions had prevented a paralleling project. The name Redstone was too closely associated with military missiles. Vanguard offered lower costs, more growth potential, longer duration of orbiting. We would eventually gain more scientific information through Vanguard than through Redstone. To these observations, l can add from my own experience that inter-service rivalry exerted strong influence; also, that any conclusion drawn would be incomplete without taking into account the antagonism still existing toward von Braun and his co-workers because of their service on the German side of World War II."