Breaking the Chains of Gravity

by Amy Shira Teitel

  Von Braun, meanwhile, did not know that imaginary lines were being drawn through his country that might prevent his men from reaching American forces. And Hitler’s scorched earth policy complicated things for both parties. On March 19, the Führer ordered that all military, industrial, transportation, and communications facilities be destroyed by the retreating Home Guard. He wanted nothing, from documents to hardware to personnel, to fall into Allied hands. Better the Allies inherit a completely destroyed nation than learn the Reich’s technological secrets.

  News that Allied troops were closing in on Berlin spooked Kammler. He canceled all V-2 field operations effective April 1 and ordered the rocket team to move from their temporary lodging at Bad Sachsa and Bleicherode near the Mittlewerk factory toward Oberammergau, a picturesque village in the Bavarian Alps near the Austrian border. Still bedridden, von Braun began to wonder whether he and his men were pawns in Kammler’s game, whether he planned to use them as a bargaining chip, handing the rocket team to captors in exchange for his own life. It was a frightening idea, though not impossible. Most of the team traveled south by train. Von Braun, whose large cast would prevent him from diving off a train and hiding in the event of an airstrike, traveled by car with Dornberger.

  Two other men from the team also traveled toward the Alps separately. Dieter Huzel, an electrical engineer and von Braun’s special assistant from Peenemünde, was at the wheel of a truck. Seated beside him was Bernhard Tessmann, a test facility designer. Several hours after sundown, the men stopped the truck at an abandoned mine in the Harz Mountains near the village of Doernten. In the back of the truck sat a group of men who could honestly say under interrogation that they did not know where they were. Packed in with the men were fourteen tons of documents. Huzel let the men out, and they all began loading the boxes onto a flatcar parked on a short track that ran into the mine. When the truck was empty, Huzel drove away and recovered a second truck of materials. When that one was emptied, he drove a third truck to the mine.

  By eleven o’clock the following morning, the contents of all three trucks were behind a heavy iron door in a room twenty-five feet wide and twenty-five feet deep with twelve-foot-high ceilings one thousand feet inside the mountain. Huzel and Tessmann alone returned the following day to see that the mine’s caretaker had dynamited the tunnel closed, blocking the path to the vault with a jumble of rock and debris. The former Peenemünders left before the caretaker detonated a second stick of dynamite for good measure. They were the only three men in the world who knew that anything lay buried deep in the abandoned mine.

  Von Braun and Dornberger arrived at Oberammergau to find the rocketeers living amid stunning scenery in army barracks surrounded by a wall of SS guards and barbed wire. The same day, the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry took Nordhausen in central Germany. A week later, the Soviets began their assault on Berlin. The Reich was fast collapsing, and the rocket team was sitting idly in Oberammergau, effectively being held as prisoners. A delirious Kammler arrived on April 11 and announced to von Braun in all seriousness that he intended to singlehandedly win the war for Germany. He unceremoniously transferred command of the rocket engineers to one of his men, Major Kummer, then left brandishing a pistol. It was the last time von Braun, or anyone, saw the man alive.

  Kammler’s last act of haphazardly transferring control to Major Kummer gave von Braun an opportunity to leverage one man’s fear into his men’s freedom. He approached their new keeper with Ernst Steinhoff, the former head of Peenemünde’s guidance and control lab, and the pair explained the severity of their current situation. Allied air forces were flying over Germany all the time, crushing Germany’s industrial war manufacturing capability and its will to fight. With the whole of the Peenemünde team, their work, and their materials in one place, a single well-aimed strike could wipe the A-4 program off the face of the Earth. And if Kummer managed to survive, von Braun told the major, responsibility for the loss of Germany’s greatest technology and scientific elite would be squarely on his shoulders.

  The scientists paused for a moment and watched the soldier’s face as he pictured the scenario, before presenting him with an alternative. Von Braun suggested the major could split the rocketeers up and send them to different villages around Oberammergau so the Allies couldn’t kill them all off with one attack. As von Braun paused again to let Kummer think, the sound of an Allied plane roaring overhead filled the air, fortuitous timing that helped Kummer make a decision. He consented to split up the engineers on the condition that each group travel and live under the watchful eyes of SS guards. It wasn’t ideal, but the arrangement suited von Braun. His team scattered, waiting to be overrun by American troops.

  Von Braun’s brother Magnus moved with one group from Peenemünde to Weilheim, a town closer to Munich, while Wernher was transferred to a private hospital specializing in sports medicine about thirty miles away in Sonthofen for further treatment of his broken arm. At some point during his rushed departure from Bad Sachsa and rough drive down to Oberammergau, his arm had slipped in its cast, preventing the fracture from healing. A surgeon in Sonthofen reset the broken bones and encased von Braun’s arm and shoulder in a new cast. He also offered the engineer large doses of morphine to numb the pain.

  Lying in bed drifting in and out of an opiate haze, von Braun often woke from uneasy sleep to hallucinations of SS officers bursting into his room with guns aimed to kill. The continuous sound of distant explosions and battle did little to soothe his addled nerves. On his third day of morphine unrest, he was shaken awake by a very real armed man in a uniform. His initial panic vanished when he recognized the uniform as a friendly one worn by a messenger sent by Dornberger, who was staying in a nearby hotel. The French Army was just a few hours away, the man said, and the Peenemünde team was leaving. Von Braun’s surgeon reluctantly made his patient a hard cast designed to keep his arm bent in a crook while raised at shoulder height so the joint would stay in a straight line. It was cumbersome but allowed the engineer to travel. By nightfall, von Braun had arrived at Haus Ingeburg.

  Haus Ingeburg was like an oasis of calm in the frantic final stages of the war, a ski resort nestled high in the mountains above the countryside on the old German-Austrian border. There was little for the rocket team to do but sit on the terrace overlooking the strikingly snowcapped peaks of the Alps against the clear blue spring skies while hotel staff catered to their every desire. The men dined on gourmet meals expertly prepared by the hotel chefs and drank from the stocked wine cellar. They tracked the war’s denouement on the radio. They learned that French troops were to the west of them and American troops were to the south, that food supplies were dwindling nationwide, and that liberated concentration camp prisoners and those sent on death marches alike were dying by the thousands, some at the hands of the Nazis and others from starvation.

  The final battles were being fought all around the rocket men who remained protected by virtue of their isolated mountain hiding spot. They were safe but stagnant, which frustrated von Braun. He had survived the explosions that came with developing the operational A-4, had endured arrest and imprisonment at the hands of the Gestapo, had survived the raid on Peenemünde, had kept himself alive under the thumb of the fanatic Kammler and walked away from a nearly fatal car crash with only a broken arm. Now, it felt like extreme isolation could be his undoing. All access points into Germany were effectively blocked by Allied soldiers, and American and Soviet troops had met at the bank of the Elbe River near Torgaun, just seventy-five miles south of Berlin. As soon as advancing armies reached Berlin the war would be over. With attention focused on the German capital, it was unlikely American troops would stumble upon his hiding spot in a secluded mountain resort. If American soldiers weren’t going to find him, von Braun would have to go find American soldiers.

  The rocket team was still ensconced in their mountain retreat at Haus Ingeburg on April 28 when the Army Air Force’s Science Advisory Group arrived in Europe. Under Operation LUSTY (for Luf
twaffe Secret Technology), the small cohort of seven scientists dressed in military uniforms arrived in London on a C-54 transport plane. The uniforms were little more than costumes to camouflage the scientists and expedite their entrance into Europe. Von Kármán wore a general’s uniform while Dryden and the other members bore the rank of colonel. But because the war was still raging in the European Theater, the American scientists were put into a holding pattern, traveling to Paris where they would wait for the war to come to a resolution before embarking on their journey through Germany.

  They didn’t have to wait long. On April 30, 1945, Hitler took his own life in his bunker in Berlin. The Peenemünde team didn’t learn of Hitler’s death until May 1, when a propagandist radio broadcast reported that the Führer died valiantly in combat against the Russian Army. Hitler’s death freed Germany’s soldiers from his grasp, though this wasn’t necessarily a positive development for many. Men like Dornberger, whose allegiance to Germany had forced their allegiance to Hitler, were free to fight for their own lives without being labeled as traitors to the Reich. But now they faced the potential of being labeled war criminals for having worked within Hitler’s war machine.

  The day he learned of Hitler’s death, von Braun approached Dornberger and proposed they send someone out to look for American soldiers. Their hiding place, he had learned, was in an area soon to be occupied by French troops, a group they didn’t want finding them. Dornberger agreed, and the rocket men staying at the mountain resort convened after breakfast to concoct a plan. They elected Magnus von Braun as their emissary because he was the youngest of the group, spoke the most English, and was the most expendable. The next morning, May 2, the Second World War was declared over in Europe, and Magnus left Haus Ingeburg on a bicycle. He rode down the snow-covered mountain roads toward Austria where reports said American troops had last been seen. He’d gone less than two miles when he found an American antitank platoon of the Forty-Fourth Infantry Division. The Americans had no reason to shoot the young German scientist who was dressed in civilian clothes. It took Magnus more than half an hour of German and broken English to convince the Americans that he wasn’t insane, that he wasn’t trying to sell his own brother for money, there really were 120 of the scientists behind the V-2 rocket camped out in a nearby resort. He asked the soldier to check with his intelligence people, who would surely know rumors of the science team’s whereabouts.

  From there, everything changed. The Americans recognized the bounty that had fallen into their hands and became quite friendly to Magnus. He was escorted sixteen miles west to Reutte where the Forty-Fourth Infantry had set up a command post. Magnus repeated his story to First Lieutenant Charles Stewart of the Counter Intelligence Corps. The rocket team wanted to surrender right away, he said, before the trigger-happy SS soldiers shot them. And they wanted to start building rockets for America. Stewart listened to Magnus’s story and after conferring with his soldiers and intelligence officers, gave him passes that would let him safely cross through the American-occupied countryside back to Haus Ingeburg with orders to return with Wernher and a sampling of the other scientists in tow.

  The anxious tension that had permeated Haus Ingeburg throughout the day was broken when Magnus returned slightly after two o’clock in the afternoon. After he breathlessly shared his story, the men decided who among them would go to meet the Americans. Magnus topped the list followed by Wernher and Dornberger, two of the most sought after scientists in Germany. Dornberger’s chief of staff, Hebert Axster, and a specialist from the A-4’s engine production program, Hans Lindenberg, were also included. Rounding out the group were Wernher’s special assistant, Dieter Huzel, and test facilities director, Bernhard Tessmann, the two men who had buried the bounty of documents from Peenemünde in the Harz Mountains. It was a powerful selection of rocket men, a group that could go a long way toward proving to the Americans that they were in fact the famous scientists they claimed to be. The seven men packed into three cars with their luggage and started down the mountain pass around four o’clock that same day. As sleet began falling, darkening the already gray afternoon skies, the men hoped it wasn’t an omen. The Americans had received Magnus fairly well, but no one could be sure how they would react with the seven scientists in their midst.

  It was dark when the convoy of rocketeers arrived in Reutte. They were greeted by American guards who accepted Magnus’s passes and let the rocketeers through. From there the scientists were escorted to Lieutenant Stewart, who greeted them warmly with a meal of eggs, white bread, butter, and the first real coffee they had had in months. Despite the ski resort’s gourmet kitchen, the Peenemünders had been drinking ersatz, a sort of coffee substitute, for weeks. The Germans stayed the night in the Americans’ site and shared another meal of eggs and real coffee in the morning.

  Von Braun was pleased yet unsurprised by the friendly reception by the Americans. He knew that his team and their A-4 technology together was a coveted prize at the end of the war, and if the Americans wanted this technology, which he was sure they did, then it was in their best interests to keep the Germans happy and healthy. Von Braun knew he was far more valuable alive and cooperative than jailed or dead. For their part, the Americans could hardly make sense of the apparent hierarchy among the Germans. Dornberger, the oldest and highest ranking officer in the group, was so reserved he was nearly silent. He struck the American soldiers as a defeated general who had fought on the losing side of two world wars and had a potential lifetime in prison for war crimes to look forward to. Von Braun, meanwhile, Dornberger’s thirty-three-year-old subordinate, seemed to be the group’s leader. Jovial and heavy after the combination of rich hotel food and forced inactivity due to his broken arm, he just didn’t seem like the brilliant leader of the V-2 program that he claimed to be. They couldn’t decide whether von Braun was the Reich’s top scientist or its most accomplished liar. He was outgoing, excited, and eager to share his knowledge of rockets with the Allies, and happy to pose for pictures. Celebrity, it seemed, suited von Braun, bringing out a natural salesman-like quality in his demeanor. But his outward ebullience masked a private worry that he would be seen only as a war criminal and weapons builder. He impressed upon the Americans the pride he had in his design, and his hope to use it to explore space.

  The next day, Hugh Dryden and Theodore von Kármán traveled into Germany. Their first stop was a lab in the north near Braunschweig. The complex, consisting of fifty-six buildings disguised as farmhouses and camouflaged by the surrounding forest, had been largely destroyed by incoming American troops. But what remained deeply impressed the scientists. It was clear that this had once been a burgeoning laboratory that had taken great strides in ballistics, aerodynamics, and jet propulsion. Dryden pored over what documentation he could find and interviewed a number of the remaining scientists about their work, paying special attention to the Germans’ technical data on swept-wing aerodynamics and the human physiology of high-speed flight. It was clearly the first stages of study into high altitude manned flight. But it wasn’t the V-2 program or scientists the Americans were after, neither was it the prize of Peenemünde. That site was taken by the Soviets on May 5, who found the labs cleaned out.

  Less than an hour from Reutte was the Bavarian ski resort at Garmisch-Partenkirchen where the 1936 Olympics were held. The U.S. Army had turned the site into a makeshift administration building and housing for the more than two hundred Peenemünders who had already been rounded up from their nearby hiding places. Von Braun and the cohort from Reutte joined them on May 7 for the inevitable waiting period that precedes an interrogation. Garmisch-Partenkirchen turned out to be a very busy site buzzing with various intelligence officers all hoping to learn the secrets of the V-2 for their respective organizations. Representatives from the Naval Technical Mission in Europe were there, as were men from the Army Air Force’s Operation LUSTY and the British-American Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee, all tasked with evaluating Nazi technology.

  And e
veryone wanted to talk to von Braun, who stuck close to Dornberger. Together they formed an irresistible pair, their combined knowledge more than enough to trade for their safety. Von Braun did all the talking but Dornberger called the shots, a remnant of the hierarchy that had marked their lives working together for the German Army. The pair focused their energies on appealing to the Americans. In his interviews, von Braun often referenced an imminent war between the United States and the Soviet Union, two countries whose opposing ideologies had been put on hold to vanquish the common German enemy. The best thing the United States could do, von Braun said, was arm itself with his rockets.

  It wasn’t until his interrogation by the Anglo-American Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee that von Braun showed the allies what he really wanted to do with his rockets. In a memorandum he wrote for British investigators called “Survey of Development of Liquid Rockets in Germany and Their Future Prospects,” von Braun detailed a fantastic future where rocket travel was the norm. He imagined winged gliders launching on top of missiles, carrying civilians and soldiers alike around the world in just hours, landing like airplanes on traditional landing gear. And this vision wasn’t limited to gliders landing on the Earth. His rockets would be powerful enough to land men on the Moon.

  Though Britain had its share of rocket and space enthusiasts, the country on the whole was not interested in a spacefaring future; their focus remained on understanding the technical minutia of the V-2 rockets. But von Braun’s futuristic fantasy did strike a chord with his American interrogators. They weren’t interested in spaceflight, per se, but they were interested in the rockets that could launch people into space. It was clear to American military leaders that the future of combat lay in advanced technology, and they recognized the value in importing von Braun and his dreams of long-range rockets for a military end.