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In "V2" page 179 Dornberger writes: "Do you know that your closest colleagues (including von Braun) have stated in company at Zinnowitz that it had never been

In "V2" page 179 Dornberger writes: "Do you know that your closest colleagues (including von Braun) have stated in company at Zinnowitz that it had never been their intention to make a weapon of war out of he rocket? That they had worked, under pressure from yourself (Dornberger) at the whole business of development and only in order to obtain money for their experiments and the confirmation of their theories? That their object all along has been space travel?" The men had been arrested by the Gestapo and were going to be executed. Dornberger was also threatened with arrest, but he managed to get von Braun and the other released.

486sx33 3mo ago
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pudgywalsh 3mo ago
Good info Walter, but I wasn't trying to get too deep. Point is to not judge a book by its cover.
GolfPopper 3mo ago
From by Tom Lehrer's "Wernher von Braun"[1], 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 1. https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14 https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14
WalterBright 3mo ago
Another interesting factoid about the V2 program is it accelerated the collapse of the Reich. How can that be, you might ask? The V2 program was an incredibly expensive program, and sucked up enormous resources. But the V2 proved to be an inconsequential weapon, and did very little damage, because its guidance system was primitive. The V1, ironically, was effective. Not because it wreaked critical damage on Britain, but because it was cheap to build and deploy, and the British spent a great deal of resources trying to stop it. It reminds me of the current drone warfare. Hitler also demanded that it be used to attack London, blowing up civilian homes, when it would have been much more effective attacking the staging areas for D-Day.
- wat10000 3mo ago
  The V2 cost more to develop than the atomic bomb! And Germany was far less able to absorb the cost than the US.
- Breza 3mo ago
  I sometimes wonder about the V2, atomic bomb, bomb sight, and other massively expensive WWII research programs. It seems like they all could have been replaced with much more boring uses of the same money for much greater effect.
Teever 3mo ago
You've mentioned Dornberger's book to me in a previous conversation regarding Von Braun, and though I haven't yet had a chance to read it I just did some research on it. From what I can tell it looks like like an amazing source for technical details of the V2 rocket but there are many problems with it that make it unsuitable for the kind of argument that you're attempting to make here. First of all, the book wasn't written by Dornberger -- it was ghostwritten by a Nazi propagandist and aerospace enthusiast named Franz Ludwig Neher[0]. Neher is an interesting fellow, having been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for 18 months in the early 1930s and later enjoyed a career writing numerous Nazi propaganda biographies for 'Unsere Jagdflieger', a pulp booklet series issued on Hermann Göring's authority. Looking at Neher's biography page on the German wikipedia we see that from 1951-1962 Neher was the press officer for the 'Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung' or 'the German spaceflight society' in English, and even served for a time on its board. In 1952 Von Braun commissioned Neher to work on a Mars-project novel named 'Menschen zwischen den Planeten' which was published in 1953 apparently with poor reception by the public. Some reprints have a pretty cool looking cover though.[1] I don't have time right now to dissect the actual claims made in V2 by Dornberger/Neher regarding von Braun but it's safe to say from everything I found that this is a very unreliable source for the argument that you're making as the man writing Dornberger's memoir was simultaneously the paid publicist of the German spaceflight lobby and von Braun's hired novelist. Even in a first year history course essay assignment there's absolutely no way that this book would be considered an acceptable source to reference for non-technical details. Any instructor who was knowledgeable about the subject or who actually researched the sources would underline that passage in the essay with fat red lines and would scrawl the same kind of criticisms that I just made above in the margins in red pen. If your argument was the central thesis of the paper and this source was the evidentiary corner stone of that thesis you'd at best receive a C, but more likely a D grade. In reciting this Werhner Von Braun apologia you have fallen for Nazi propaganda. Don't feel bad about it though -- we've all bought the big lie at one point or another. It's hard not to -- as the Nazis were pretty much the Wayne Gretzky of propaganda. I'd like make this a teachable moment by introducing you to the concept of historiography[2] and one particularly important (and coincidentally German) author in the field: Leopold von Ranke.[3] It isn't always easy but proper analysis of sources is critical for making accurate claims and analysis of historical events. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ludwig_Neher https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ludwig_Neher [1] https://www.amazon.ca/Menschen-zwischen-den-Planeten/dp/3453310152 https://www.amazon.ca/Menschen-zwischen-den-Planeten/dp/3453... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke

486sx33 3mo ago

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pudgywalsh 3mo ago

Good info Walter, but I wasn't trying to get too deep. Point is to not judge a book by its cover.

GolfPopper 3mo ago

From by Tom Lehrer's "Wernher von Braun"[1], 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 1. https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14 https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?t=14

WalterBright 3mo ago

Another interesting factoid about the V2 program is it accelerated the collapse of the Reich. How can that be, you might ask? The V2 program was an incredibly expensive program, and sucked up enormous resources. But the V2 proved to be an inconsequential weapon, and did very little damage, because its guidance system was primitive. The V1, ironically, was effective. Not because it wreaked critical damage on Britain, but because it was cheap to build and deploy, and the British spent a great deal of resources trying to stop it. It reminds me of the current drone warfare. Hitler also demanded that it be used to attack London, blowing up civilian homes, when it would have been much more effective attacking the staging areas for D-Day.

wat10000 3mo ago
The V2 cost more to develop than the atomic bomb! And Germany was far less able to absorb the cost than the US.
Breza 3mo ago
I sometimes wonder about the V2, atomic bomb, bomb sight, and other massively expensive WWII research programs. It seems like they all could have been replaced with much more boring uses of the same money for much greater effect.

Teever 3mo ago

You've mentioned Dornberger's book to me in a previous conversation regarding Von Braun, and though I haven't yet had a chance to read it I just did some research on it. From what I can tell it looks like like an amazing source for technical details of the V2 rocket but there are many problems with it that make it unsuitable for the kind of argument that you're attempting to make here. First of all, the book wasn't written by Dornberger -- it was ghostwritten by a Nazi propagandist and aerospace enthusiast named Franz Ludwig Neher[0]. Neher is an interesting fellow, having been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp for 18 months in the early 1930s and later enjoyed a career writing numerous Nazi propaganda biographies for 'Unsere Jagdflieger', a pulp booklet series issued on Hermann Göring's authority. Looking at Neher's biography page on the German wikipedia we see that from 1951-1962 Neher was the press officer for the 'Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung' or 'the German spaceflight society' in English, and even served for a time on its board. In 1952 Von Braun commissioned Neher to work on a Mars-project novel named 'Menschen zwischen den Planeten' which was published in 1953 apparently with poor reception by the public. Some reprints have a pretty cool looking cover though.[1] I don't have time right now to dissect the actual claims made in V2 by Dornberger/Neher regarding von Braun but it's safe to say from everything I found that this is a very unreliable source for the argument that you're making as the man writing Dornberger's memoir was simultaneously the paid publicist of the German spaceflight lobby and von Braun's hired novelist. Even in a first year history course essay assignment there's absolutely no way that this book would be considered an acceptable source to reference for non-technical details. Any instructor who was knowledgeable about the subject or who actually researched the sources would underline that passage in the essay with fat red lines and would scrawl the same kind of criticisms that I just made above in the margins in red pen. If your argument was the central thesis of the paper and this source was the evidentiary corner stone of that thesis you'd at best receive a C, but more likely a D grade. In reciting this Werhner Von Braun apologia you have fallen for Nazi propaganda. Don't feel bad about it though -- we've all bought the big lie at one point or another. It's hard not to -- as the Nazis were pretty much the Wayne Gretzky of propaganda. I'd like make this a teachable moment by introducing you to the concept of historiography[2] and one particularly important (and coincidentally German) author in the field: Leopold von Ranke.[3] It isn't always easy but proper analysis of sources is critical for making accurate claims and analysis of historical events. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ludwig_Neher https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ludwig_Neher [1] https://www.amazon.ca/Menschen-zwischen-den-Planeten/dp/3453310152 https://www.amazon.ca/Menschen-zwischen-den-Planeten/dp/3453... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke