February 16, 2024 • 38 mins
In the 1920s, Germany’s Society for Spaceship Travel boasted some of the sharpest scientific minds – like the incandescently brilliant young Wernher von Braun. But it had very little money, and progress was slow.
Then, in 1932, the army made a proposal: it would fund more serious research if the enthusiasts at the Society would develop a rocket weapon.
Despite a string of failures to launch, von Braun was able to convince key powerbrokers in Nazi Germany that they couldn’t afford to ignore rocket technology. How did he do it? And what happened when the murderous Heinrich Himmler made a play for the rocket program?
For a full list of sources for this episode, visit timharford.com.
Do you have a question for Tim? Send it to tales@pushkin.fm and we'll do our best to answer it in a Q&A episode.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is the second episode of a series. You
can appreciate it on a standalone basis, but if you've
not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen to
that first. The movie theaters in Germany in nineteen twenty
(00:36):
nine are all showing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Frau in wond The Woman in the Moon.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Germany is giddy about rocket ships and space travel. There's
even a Society for Spaceship Travel, which aims to promote
the exploration of space. The society is led by a
science writer named Villy Lay. It received a letter from
a young man keen to join the Society for Spaceship Travel.
He replied instructing the aspiring applicant to present himself at
(01:05):
the Lay household on the appointed day. Filly Lee d
was running a little late. As he arrived on his
own doorstep, he could hear the moonlight sonata emerging from within.
His visitor had seated himself at vide Lay's piano and
was entertaining himself with typical self assurance. Vidi Lay could
(01:27):
have been forgiven for asking himself who on earth was
this guy? I doubt the young pianist presented a resume,
but it would have been quite a document. He was
then only seventeen years old. His musical gifts also encompassed
the cello and amateur composition. He was an enthusiastic hunter
(01:48):
and a crack shot. It struggled with maths and physics
at school until he found out that maths and physics
might get him to the Moon, at which point he
focused his formidable intellect and became incandescently brilliant at both
His father had been a senior civil servant and then
a well connected banker. His mother traced her ancestry back
(02:11):
to the kings of four different countries. With bright blue
eyes and light blonde hair, he looked like a movie star,
and he knew it. He was charming, He was driven,
He was brilliant. He was Baron Werner von Brown. Von
(02:32):
Brown flourished at the Society for Spaceship Travel, but the
society faced formidable obstacles. In the first episode of this series,
we heard how rocket pioneers lost their eyes or their
lives trying to develop the basics of rocketry. The only
reason the Society for Spaceship Travel didn't suffer more serious
(02:53):
accidents is that it barely had enough funds to do
anything It was a ragtag collection of students and enthusiasts,
woefully under resourced. They did have permission to use a
scrap of wasteland near Berlin. They called it the Rakaton
Flugplats or rocket port. It was a grandiose name, a
(03:15):
statement of bravado when they were begging or bartering for gasoline,
welding gear, even food. It wasn't easy to build a
rocket at the best of times, but without money it
was almost impossible. Progress was slow, But then, in nineteen
thirty two, a black sedan slowly rolled up to the
(03:36):
rocket port and outstepped three officers of the German Army.
They had a proposal for the Society for Spaceship Travel.
They'd fund more serious rocket research if the enthusiasts of
the Society would devote their efforts to the challenge of
using rockets as weapons. To reach the Moon would require
(03:59):
an almost unlimited budget. The Army was a ready source
of cash. Verna von Brown later remarked.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use
of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring outer space.
It was simply a question with us of how the
Golden Cow could be milked most successfully.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Of
(04:55):
the three men who stepped out of the army car
in nineteen thirty two, The most senior was Valta Dornberger.
As we heard in the previous episode, Captain Dornberger was
in charge of the German armies fledgling efforts to build
a ballistic missile weapon, and he took an instant liking
to Von Brown.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I was struck by the energy and shrewdness with which
this tall, fair young student with the broad, massive chin
went to work, and by his astonishing theoretical knowledge.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Drnberger would become Von Brown's boss. Together, the two of
them would prove highly effective at milking the golden cow.
The basic sales pitch was straightforward. After the First World War,
Germany had been banned from developing artillery weapons under the
Treaty of Versailles. Ballistic missiles were attempting alternative. But while
(05:54):
the German Army's accountants had been instructed to furnish Drnberger
and Von Brown with money for experimental apparatus, they kept
a tight grip on the purse strings. This was just
a research program after all, Yet they were easily blinded
by science. When the accountants approved the research team's request for.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Appliance for cutting wooden rods up to ten millimeters in diameter.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
They didn't realize they'd just agreed to pay for a
mechanical pencil sharpener. Similarly, when releasing funds for instrument.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
For recording test data with rotating roller.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
They would have been astonished to learn that they had
just bought Dornberger's secretary a typewriter. Of course, this is
trivial stuff, and there should never have been any question
of refusing to pay for simple office supplies, but it
underlines the fact that nobody really seemed to understand what
Dornberger and von Brown were up to, and if you
(06:56):
didn't understand it, it was hard to stop them. In
one exchange, a bureaucrat questioned some expenses, What was this
money for for experiments? What kind of experiments? Asked the
bureaucrats eight weeks.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Later, secret experiments.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They got the money, but no wonder they wanted to
keep those experiments secret. It wasn't just about mischievous obfuscation.
Had the top brass of the German army taken a
closer look at those secret experiments, they would not have
instilled confidence. In their first work together, Von Brown and
(07:36):
Drnberger had tested a stationary rocket engine fixed to a
new outdoor test stand. The day was bitterly cold, four
days before Christmas nineteen thirty two. Dornberger was eleven meters away,
peeping from behind a tree as fn Brown approached the
rocket engine with a long flame tip rod and lit
(07:59):
the cloud of alcohol fumes seeping out from below the engine.
There was a swoosh, a hiss, and an explosion. Shrap
filled the air. Fragments of wooden panels, metal sheeting, and
cables rained down all around them. Dornberger and von Brown
looked at each other in disbelief. They were incredibly unharmed.
(08:24):
Their new tests stand had been obliterated when the Nazis
took over in nineteen thirty three. Dornberger and von Brown
realized that the game had changed. Hitler wanted to turn
Germany back into a military superpower. If the rocket enthusiasts
(08:44):
told the right story, it might be possible to get
much more funding, but they weren't going to get it
if their test program teetered between slapstick and tragedy. They
needed to create a compelling vision of the weapon of
the future in the minds of the leaders of the Reich.
Captain Dornberger reminded the Nazi authorities of the Paris Gun,
(09:08):
which at the end of the First World War had
fired four hundred and fifty pound shells a distance of
eighty miles to strike at Paris itself. Fon Brown's rockets
could do far better than that, he said. They would
fly twice as far and carry one hundred times the payload.
They'd be more accurate than the Paris Gun, and they'd
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be portable, carried by road or rail, launched from anywhere.
What would those authorities have thought if they'd seen the
underwhelming reality. The first rocket fon Brown designed for the
army was called the A one. It was tiny, It
stood less than five feet high, and it couldn't have
(09:49):
delivered much more than a hand grenade as a payload.
But that was theoretical because the A one never got anywhere. Privately,
fon Brown joked.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
It took us half a year to build and half
a second to blow up.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Publicly, he and Dornberger continued to boast about the amazing
potential of rocket weapons. The next effort, the A two,
was barely bigger than the A one, but did fly
to a height of one point five miles in front
of senior army officers. The A three was a step
forward in ambition, over twenty feet long, but it was erratic,
(10:28):
flying off at unpredictable angles. Luckily for Ron Brown, that
wasn't obvious to observers. They saw a long, sleek missile
blast upwards into the sky amid a deafening roar and
a blinding flame. The fact that it wabbled off at
random was something few people noticed. Dornberger and von Brown
(10:50):
were magnificent salesmen for the rocket. Despite this string of disappointments,
they convinced many Nazi power brokers that Germany couldn't afford
to ignore rocket technology. The Third Reich was full of
competing power structures. Adolf Hitler seemed to like it that
wayaps because such infighting made his own position unassailable, or
(11:13):
perhaps out of some conviction that the best man with
the best ideas would triumph. Whatever the reason, this brutal
internal politics was about to give Dornberger and von Brown
the chance to divide and rule. Cautionary tales will return
after the break. In nineteen thirty six, senior figures in
(11:46):
the Luftwaffer the German Air Force, were unnerved that a
supposedly spectacular rocket weapon might be left in the hands
of the army. Some also wondered whether rockets might be
used to power airplanes, perhaps to give a bit of
extra lift to help the heaviest aircraft take off from
short runways. So the lutfuffer approached Werner von Brown directly
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by passing his Army boss Dornberger. They made a staggering offer,
the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money,
to spend on a new rocket research center where he
would build the next generation rocket, the A four, the
rocket that would finally serve as a futuristic super weapon.
(12:31):
Vohn Brown must have been delighted, no more blowing up
test stands while Dornberger peeked from behind a tree. Eh
But instead of simply accepting the money, he took news
of the offer back to the Army, which had been
funding the rocket research up to that point. Imagine the
astonishment of General Carl Becker when a twenty four year
(12:54):
old civilian strolled into his office to ask if the
Army had a better offer, and on reflection, General Becker
decided that the Army did have a better offer.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I'm not going to let Luftwaffer run the wheel of
this business. I'm going to be the majority stockholder in
this enterprise.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
The General agreed that the Army would provide twenty percent
more funding than the Luftwaffer had proposed. Von Brown accepted
both offers. The Luftwaffer wouldn't be at the wheel of
developing the A four rocket, it seemed, but neither would
the Army. Then A von Brown would. He was now
(13:37):
in charge of a Nazi mega project. Von Brown and
Drnberger used their new funds to build a vast facility
at Panamunda, about one hundred and fifty miles north of
Berlin on the coast of the Baltic Sea. There was
a supersonic wind tunnel, one of the first ever closed
(13:59):
circuit TV systems, so the rocket engineers could monitor test
launches from a safe distance. The biggest factory in Europe,
a coal fired our station, housing for thousands of scientists
and workers, and it was here that von Brown's talents
really started to shine. Still just in his mid twenties.
(14:21):
He proved to be a masterful technical director, marshaling and
focusing the talents of the scientists and engineers who worked
for him. The powerbrokers of the Nazi state gazed on
Painnamunda with a variety of emotions. Some were enthusiastic backers,
giddy with excitement at this wonderland of technological advancement. Others
(14:44):
were cynics, convinced that the money was being squandered. Still
others were predators, looking for an opportunity to close in
and seize the spoils. But all of them were curious,
when would the mysterious genius von Brown get round to
producing this much vaunted A four rocket? What was he
(15:08):
really up to? Verna von Brown had come to the
Army from the Society for Spaceship Travel. They really should
have been able to guess. Verna von Brown's proposed A
four rocket was as tall as a five story building.
(15:31):
It needed a mixture of super cooled liquid oxygen and
alcohol to power it, and clever pipework to make sure
the oxygen didn't freeze the alcohol. It needed gyroscopes to
stabilize it, and sophisticated fuses to ensure the warhead exploded
at just the right moment. It needed to be triggered
(15:51):
by impact at any angle, yet fullproof against accidental detonation.
The rocket needed aerodynamics that would allow for the change
in air pressure as it reached the stratosphere, and it
would have to withstand temperatures of twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit
six hundred and fifty celsius as it arcd down to
(16:12):
re enter thicker atmosphere. All of this added up to
an astonishing technological challenge. It took the engineers into uncharted territory.
There was absolutely no room for error in design, manufacture,
or deployment. The first test launch in February nineteen forty
(16:33):
two was not a success. The rocket slipped while being
mounted on the launch pad, crushing its fins. This was
a distinctly undignified way to lose a rocket, and after
some attempts at repair, it was scrapped. Fron Brown's team
slunk back to the factory to build another. Three months
(16:56):
later they were ready to try again. Some powerful Nazi
figures came to pay Amunda to watch the test under
gloomy low clouds. Hitler's personal friend Albert Speer recalled the occasion.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
At first with a faltering motion, but then with the
roar of an unleashed giant. The rocket rose slowly from
its bed, seemed to stand upon its jettle flame for
a fraction of a second, then vanished with a howl
into the low clouds. Fairer fon Pound was beaming.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Spier didn't know it, but that beaming smile was masking
some alarm. Von Brown, with his expert eye, could see
that the rocket had been unstable. It reached supersonic speeds
and a height of thirty miles, but after fifty four
seconds the rocket cut out and it began to spin
(17:49):
and fall right back down towards the launch pad. The
roaring noise of the falling rocket grew louder and louder.
Were they about to be struck by their own rocket.
In the end, it spun into the Baltic Sea less
than a mile away. Von Brown had gotten away with it.
The zimble launch had been spectacular, and the dramatic failure
(18:12):
had been concealed by the cloud cover. Another launch in
August nineteen forty two was another failure. This time the
warhead fell off and the rocket itself disintegrated. But it
too had reached supersonic speeds, and that was enough for
von Brown to spin it as he always did. The
firing was one hundred percent successful. This dashing young man
(18:38):
seemed so confident and assured it spent colossal sums of
money that the Reich could scarcely afford. Surely he knew
what he was doing. Large ambitious projects have a certain
reputation these days, over time, overbudget, over and over again.
(19:02):
That reputation is perfectly accurate. According to the world's most
prominent expert on large projects, Bent Flubia, a management professor
at Oxford University, Flubia has accumulated a large database on
what he calls mega projects, and his data did not
tell a pretty story. Nine out of ten of these
(19:25):
huge projects have cost overruns, benefits often fall short of
what's been promised. This is true all over the world,
and it's true for public and private sector projects alike.
But why There are two explanations. One is that we
fool ourselves. Whatever we do always takes longer and costs
(19:47):
more than we expected. One classic study of this phenomenon
was conducted by a young doctoral student named Roger Bueler
in the early nineteen nineties, Bula asked a group of
undergraduates to predict how long it would take to submit
their honors thesis, and to consider upside and downside scenarios
(20:07):
if everything went as well as it possibly could, and
if everything went as poorly as it possibly could. The
student's optimistic estimate was twenty eight days, and their baseline
guests not much longer, thirty four days. Their worst case
scenario estimate was forty nine days. In reality, the average
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thesis took fifty six days, twice the optimistic estimate, but
also even worse than the worst case scenario. I hardly
need to cite this research. We all know it's true. Surely,
there's no more reliable source of disappointment anywhere in the
world than looking at all the incomplete tasks on yesterday's
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to do list. Then of von Brown was as guilty
of this wishful thinking as anyone. His biographer, Michael Neufeld
says that von Brown was always an enthusiast, always an optimist,
that this was one of the traits which made him
such an inspiring leader. But like Roger Bueler's experimental subjects,
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he was perfectly capable of being optimistic to the point
of delusion. Von Brown was far more interested in conquering
space than in conquering the British or the Soviets. Not
only that, but he was obsessed with the idea that
he personally would one day travel into space. Needless to say,
he never did.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like all the.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Undergraduates who answered Roger Bueller's survey, he was surprised at
how long everything seemed to take. Von Brown struggled to
see that by the time there was such a thing
as an astronaut, he'd be far too old to be one.
But there's a second explanation for why mega projects are
so often over time and over budget. It isn't delusion,
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its deception. The promoters of large projects almost always exaggerate
their benefits and understate their costs. Ron Brown had been
happily doing this for years, making ambitious claims about the range, payload,
and accuracy his rockets would achieve. And the more the
(22:17):
difficulties became evident of VN. Brown, the bolder his claims became.
But would his unachievable promises eventually catch up with him?
When the Second World War began, Von Brown recalled.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
The army told us in very clear terms that either
we had to produce something of promise as a weapon
in the very near future, or we must go out
of business.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
And by the time of the next test in October
nineteen forty two, the war was not going well for Germany.
Ron Brown really needed to put on a show. The
luxurious facilities in Paina Munda had been sucking in resources
for more than half a decade. Where were the results?
Ron Brown's boss felt A. Doorn Berger later recalled how
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anxious he felt, had.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
We really discovered the cause of failure of the last
two attempts.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
A great deal depended on this launching.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
We all knew that Drnberger saw one of his officers
pale with worry and tried to say something encouraging.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Keep your fingers crossed. It must come off this time.
There's so much at stick.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
The roar of the engine was so spectacular that witnesses
felt they were inside a thunderstorm. And this time the
sleek fuselage remained stable even as it accelerated through the
sound barrier.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
It was an unforgettable sight. In the full glare of
the sunlight, the rocket rose higher and higher, the flame
darting from the stern was almost as long as the
rocket itself.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
The rocket reached an altitude of around fifty miles, flew
for four minutes and fifty six seconds, and plunged into
the Baltic Sea, one hundred and twenty miles away. At last,
at last, the A four rocket might actually be usable
as a weapon. It would soon gain a new name,
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the V two. The V stood for Vengeance, and Painna
Munda would soon quite suddenly be crawling with Nazi power players.
Vron Brown had finally started to succeed, and that perhaps
was much more dangerous than continuing to fail. Hartionary tales
(24:41):
will be back in a moment. As soon as it
looked like enn of von Brown's V two weapon might
actually be going somewhere, senior officers from the Army, the SS,
and the Loftwaffer started to appear at Painna Munda, handing
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out orders and setting delusionally optimistic targets. At the start
of nineteen forty three, Dornberger agreed an ambition of building
one hundred rockets each month by the end of the year.
That target was soon revised upwards to three hundred, then
changed again to eight hundred, then finally set at an
(25:25):
absurd two thousand a month. Even von Brown was unsettled
by this. As Dornberger recalled.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Professor von Brown was giving the imploring and despairing looks,
shaking his head again and again in incredulous astonishment.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
VN Brown's concern was that there was no way that
he could build two thousand V two rockets a month.
But even if he could, what about the fuel? Even
if every tank of liquid oxygen in Germany were sent
to the V two program, that wouldn't be enough for
half those rockets. The other key fuel component was alcohol,
(26:04):
which was distilled from potatoes. Food in wartime Germany was
becoming scarce, while in areas attacked or occupied by German forces,
four million people starved to death as the Germans seized
food supplies. Each V two rocket needed thirty tons of
potatoes to supply its fuel. Where would those potatoes come from?
(26:30):
Who would starve? As a result? The goal of building
so many V twos was simply impossible. That anyone who
objected was threatened with dismissal or worse, The mega project
had acquired its own momentum, as mega projects do. The
(26:50):
problem was magnified by the derangements of the man at
the top, Adolf Hitler, sometimes viciously insightful, but often unhinged.
Sometimes he had been an enthusiast for the rocket program.
Sometimes he'd dismissed the rocket engineers as dreamers. He made
absurd suggestions, like firing the rockets out of a gigantic cannon.
(27:15):
In July nineteen forty three, Hitler summoned Valter Doornberger and
Werner von Brown. Together, they watched the film of the
latest successful test launch, with von Brown providing the commentary.
The Fura could barely contain his enthusiasm.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Why was it I could not believe in the success
of your work.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
He asked. Dornberger later proudly recalled Hitler's words.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I have had to apologize only to two men in
my whole life. The first was Field Marshal von Prauschitch.
I did not listen to him when he told me
again and again how important your research was. The second
man is yourself. I never believed that your work would
be successful.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
With Hitler now fully on board, the V two megaproject
and the Pain and Munder complex became prizes to fight
over for the Nazi barons. In the Third Rune. But
just a few weeks later, in August nineteen forty three,
the British bombed Painamunda. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the
(28:20):
ss happened to be with Adolf Hitler when news of
the raid reached them. As head of the s S,
Himmler was one of the architects of the Holocaust, the
systematic murder of six million Jews, which was already well underway.
He was one of the most evil and dangerous men
in the Third Reich. Himmler immediately proposed that missile production
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be moved underground to a disused mine or freshly blasted tunnels.
Hitler agreed. The move underground from Painamunda to a mine
near the city of Nordhausen, right in the center of Germany,
began with punishing speed. The human cost, as we'll soon see,
(29:07):
was appalling. Himmler also suggested to Hitler that the ESSs
should now take the lead on the rocket program. Hitler
said no, he liked to divide and rule. He kept
the army in charge for now, but Himmler didn't give
up on his ambition. In February nineteen forty four, he
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ordered Werner Vron Brown to fly over to his field
headquarters near the Eastern Front. Himmler's command center had the
nickname the Black Lair. At first a few concrete bunkers
hidden from air assault by the Polish forests, it had
grown low. Wooden buildings were scattered through the trees, heavily camouflaged.
(29:53):
There was even a command train parked up on a ramp.
SS guards were everywhere. It was the kind of place
people were summoned to, never to return. Even the self
assured Vron Brown was unnerved by the prospect of meeting
the most sinister man in the Third Reich. Himmler received
(30:15):
Vron Brown behind a simple wooden table.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I must confess that I felt a bit jittery when
I was shown into his office. But he greeted me
politely and conveyed rather the impression of a country grammar
school teacher than that horrible man who was said to
weighe knee deep in blood.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
I trust you realize that your V two rocket has
ceased to be an engineer's toy, and that the German
people are eagerly waiting for it. Why don't you come
to us. You know that the fuel's door is open
to me at any time, don't you. I shall be
in a much better position to help you lick the
remaining difficulties than that clumsy army machine.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Heinra. Himmler was making his play. The SS was launching
a hostile takeover of Paina Munda and the entire rocket program.
Vron Brown pushed back.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
General Donberger is the best chief I could wish to have,
rex Fura. It is technical trouble and not red tape
that is holding things up.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
The feed to is like a.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Little flower that needs sunshine, fertile soil, and some gardener's tending.
If you pour a big jet of liquid manure on
that little flower in order to have it grow faster,
it might kill it.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
You have to laugh. Ron Brown, speaking to the head
of the SS, compared the SS to a jet of
liquid excrement. It was bold, very bold. If he ever
said it, we only have Von Brown's account of the conversation,
but in any case, Himmler apparently smiled or laughed, and
(31:52):
the conversation with one of the most powerful and murderous
men in Germany ended on pleasant terms. Von Brown flew
back to the rapidly shrinking team and Pain Amunda. One
month later, the day before his thirty second birthday, Verna
(32:12):
von Brown was visited at three o'clock in the morning
by the Gestapo. They were there to invite Von Brown
to make a witness statement at the nearby police headquarters.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
He wished to arrest me. There must be a misunderstanding.
By no means are we talking about arrest. We have
the express order to take you into protective custody.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Protective custody was worse than arrest. It might mean torture,
it might mean death. There would certainly be no trial
and no judicial oversight. People would simply vanish, but von
Brown was so indispensable to the rocket program even Himmler
hesitated to simply have him disappear. Instead, Von Brown was
(33:04):
held in good conditions, allowed to receive birthday flowers and gifts,
but he knew he was in mortal danger. Von Brown's biographer,
Michael Neufeld, is sure that he would never have been
arrested if Himmler hadn't seen some advantage in doing so.
(33:24):
Himmler was simply waiting to see what the fallout might be,
to discover how powerful vn Brown's protectors were. The Gestapo
had an excuse for bringing von Brown into custody. Of course,
Ostensibly they wanted to investigate the report of a drunken
conversation at a party at which Von Brown had apparently
(33:45):
been rather indiscreet about his milking of the Golden Cow.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
The war will not end well, It's clear enough where
this is all going for Germany. But what of your weapon,
Professor von Brown? Surely it is a source of hope
for the German people. My feeling about the weapon is
that it is aimed at the wrong planet. Rockets are
not designed to conquer Britain or Russia. They are designed
(34:11):
to conquer space.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Did he ever say such things in an unguarded moment
at a party? Perhaps perhaps not, But it rings true.
Thener von Brown had come a long way since playing
Moonlight Sonata at Ville Lais Piano. Had he only ever
thought of the Nazi war effort as a handy source
(34:36):
of funds for the Society for Spaceship Travel? Perhaps so.
Von Brown, like most promoters of mega projects, systematically exaggerated
the benefits and understated the costs of his ambitions. The
Gestapo began to question Von Brown. He found the process.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Grotesque and had a macabrun reality. As an engineer, I
dealt constantly with tangible facts and comprehensible problems. Here everything
appeared as if in a hallucination. Quite obviously, they wanted
to inject fear into me. If the Gestapo wanted to
convict me, how was I supposed to prove my innocence?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
He wasn't and he couldn't, and luckily for von Brown,
he didn't need to. The second day of questioning was
interrupted by his longtime boss, General Walter Dornberger, resplendently clad
in full dress uniform, who marched in, shot Von Brown
(35:39):
a genial glance, and without a word, placed a document
in front of the chief interrogator. It was an order
to release Von Brown, signed and stamped at Hitler's office.
It had been a narrow escape, which Von Brown and
Dornburger celebrated with a large bottle of brandy, then returned
(36:03):
to working on the V two rocket program. A few
months later, the third Reich would be collapsing and Von
Brown would be plotting his next move. He didn't know
it then, but his unnerving arrest had been the most
extraordinary piece of good luck. In our next episode, Cautionary Tales,
(36:29):
will return with this story's final shocking installment. Michael Neufeld's
(36:51):
definitive account of Germany's V two program is The Rocket
and the Reich. For a full list of our sources,
see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales
(37:16):
is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's
produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The
sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and
Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
(37:39):
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Ditel Millard,
John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at
Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate and review and
(38:03):
tell your friends and if you want to hear the
show ad free sign up for Pushkin Plus on the
show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot FM,
slash Plus,
Pushkin. This is the second episode of a series. You
can appreciate it on a standalone basis, but if you've
not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen to
that first. The movie theaters in Germany in nineteen twenty
(00:36):
nine are all showing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Frau in wond The Woman in the Moon.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Germany is giddy about rocket ships and space travel. There's
even a Society for Spaceship Travel, which aims to promote
the exploration of space. The society is led by a
science writer named Villy Lay. It received a letter from
a young man keen to join the Society for Spaceship Travel.
He replied instructing the aspiring applicant to present himself at
(01:05):
the Lay household on the appointed day. Filly Lee d
was running a little late. As he arrived on his
own doorstep, he could hear the moonlight sonata emerging from within.
His visitor had seated himself at vide Lay's piano and
was entertaining himself with typical self assurance. Vidi Lay could
(01:27):
have been forgiven for asking himself who on earth was
this guy? I doubt the young pianist presented a resume,
but it would have been quite a document. He was
then only seventeen years old. His musical gifts also encompassed
the cello and amateur composition. He was an enthusiastic hunter
(01:48):
and a crack shot. It struggled with maths and physics
at school until he found out that maths and physics
might get him to the Moon, at which point he
focused his formidable intellect and became incandescently brilliant at both
His father had been a senior civil servant and then
a well connected banker. His mother traced her ancestry back
(02:11):
to the kings of four different countries. With bright blue
eyes and light blonde hair, he looked like a movie star,
and he knew it. He was charming, He was driven,
He was brilliant. He was Baron Werner von Brown. Von
(02:32):
Brown flourished at the Society for Spaceship Travel, but the
society faced formidable obstacles. In the first episode of this series,
we heard how rocket pioneers lost their eyes or their
lives trying to develop the basics of rocketry. The only
reason the Society for Spaceship Travel didn't suffer more serious
(02:53):
accidents is that it barely had enough funds to do
anything It was a ragtag collection of students and enthusiasts,
woefully under resourced. They did have permission to use a
scrap of wasteland near Berlin. They called it the Rakaton
Flugplats or rocket port. It was a grandiose name, a
(03:15):
statement of bravado when they were begging or bartering for gasoline,
welding gear, even food. It wasn't easy to build a
rocket at the best of times, but without money it
was almost impossible. Progress was slow, But then, in nineteen
thirty two, a black sedan slowly rolled up to the
(03:36):
rocket port and outstepped three officers of the German Army.
They had a proposal for the Society for Spaceship Travel.
They'd fund more serious rocket research if the enthusiasts of
the Society would devote their efforts to the challenge of
using rockets as weapons. To reach the Moon would require
(03:59):
an almost unlimited budget. The Army was a ready source
of cash. Verna von Brown later remarked.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use
of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring outer space.
It was simply a question with us of how the
Golden Cow could be milked most successfully.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Of
(04:55):
the three men who stepped out of the army car
in nineteen thirty two, The most senior was Valta Dornberger.
As we heard in the previous episode, Captain Dornberger was
in charge of the German armies fledgling efforts to build
a ballistic missile weapon, and he took an instant liking
to Von Brown.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I was struck by the energy and shrewdness with which
this tall, fair young student with the broad, massive chin
went to work, and by his astonishing theoretical knowledge.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Drnberger would become Von Brown's boss. Together, the two of
them would prove highly effective at milking the golden cow.
The basic sales pitch was straightforward. After the First World War,
Germany had been banned from developing artillery weapons under the
Treaty of Versailles. Ballistic missiles were attempting alternative. But while
(05:54):
the German Army's accountants had been instructed to furnish Drnberger
and Von Brown with money for experimental apparatus, they kept
a tight grip on the purse strings. This was just
a research program after all, Yet they were easily blinded
by science. When the accountants approved the research team's request for.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Appliance for cutting wooden rods up to ten millimeters in diameter.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
They didn't realize they'd just agreed to pay for a
mechanical pencil sharpener. Similarly, when releasing funds for instrument.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
For recording test data with rotating roller.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
They would have been astonished to learn that they had
just bought Dornberger's secretary a typewriter. Of course, this is
trivial stuff, and there should never have been any question
of refusing to pay for simple office supplies, but it
underlines the fact that nobody really seemed to understand what
Dornberger and von Brown were up to, and if you
(06:56):
didn't understand it, it was hard to stop them. In
one exchange, a bureaucrat questioned some expenses, What was this
money for for experiments? What kind of experiments? Asked the
bureaucrats eight weeks.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Later, secret experiments.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
They got the money, but no wonder they wanted to
keep those experiments secret. It wasn't just about mischievous obfuscation.
Had the top brass of the German army taken a
closer look at those secret experiments, they would not have
instilled confidence. In their first work together, Von Brown and
(07:36):
Drnberger had tested a stationary rocket engine fixed to a
new outdoor test stand. The day was bitterly cold, four
days before Christmas nineteen thirty two. Dornberger was eleven meters away,
peeping from behind a tree as fn Brown approached the
rocket engine with a long flame tip rod and lit
(07:59):
the cloud of alcohol fumes seeping out from below the engine.
There was a swoosh, a hiss, and an explosion. Shrap
filled the air. Fragments of wooden panels, metal sheeting, and
cables rained down all around them. Dornberger and von Brown
looked at each other in disbelief. They were incredibly unharmed.
(08:24):
Their new tests stand had been obliterated when the Nazis
took over in nineteen thirty three. Dornberger and von Brown
realized that the game had changed. Hitler wanted to turn
Germany back into a military superpower. If the rocket enthusiasts
(08:44):
told the right story, it might be possible to get
much more funding, but they weren't going to get it
if their test program teetered between slapstick and tragedy. They
needed to create a compelling vision of the weapon of
the future in the minds of the leaders of the Reich.
Captain Dornberger reminded the Nazi authorities of the Paris Gun,
(09:08):
which at the end of the First World War had
fired four hundred and fifty pound shells a distance of
eighty miles to strike at Paris itself. Fon Brown's rockets
could do far better than that, he said. They would
fly twice as far and carry one hundred times the payload.
They'd be more accurate than the Paris Gun, and they'd
(09:28):
be portable, carried by road or rail, launched from anywhere.
What would those authorities have thought if they'd seen the
underwhelming reality. The first rocket fon Brown designed for the
army was called the A one. It was tiny, It
stood less than five feet high, and it couldn't have
(09:49):
delivered much more than a hand grenade as a payload.
But that was theoretical because the A one never got anywhere. Privately,
fon Brown joked.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
It took us half a year to build and half
a second to blow up.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Publicly, he and Dornberger continued to boast about the amazing
potential of rocket weapons. The next effort, the A two,
was barely bigger than the A one, but did fly
to a height of one point five miles in front
of senior army officers. The A three was a step
forward in ambition, over twenty feet long, but it was erratic,
(10:28):
flying off at unpredictable angles. Luckily for Ron Brown, that
wasn't obvious to observers. They saw a long, sleek missile
blast upwards into the sky amid a deafening roar and
a blinding flame. The fact that it wabbled off at
random was something few people noticed. Dornberger and von Brown
(10:50):
were magnificent salesmen for the rocket. Despite this string of disappointments,
they convinced many Nazi power brokers that Germany couldn't afford
to ignore rocket technology. The Third Reich was full of
competing power structures. Adolf Hitler seemed to like it that
wayaps because such infighting made his own position unassailable, or
(11:13):
perhaps out of some conviction that the best man with
the best ideas would triumph. Whatever the reason, this brutal
internal politics was about to give Dornberger and von Brown
the chance to divide and rule. Cautionary tales will return
after the break. In nineteen thirty six, senior figures in
(11:46):
the Luftwaffer the German Air Force, were unnerved that a
supposedly spectacular rocket weapon might be left in the hands
of the army. Some also wondered whether rockets might be
used to power airplanes, perhaps to give a bit of
extra lift to help the heaviest aircraft take off from
short runways. So the lutfuffer approached Werner von Brown directly
(12:10):
by passing his Army boss Dornberger. They made a staggering offer,
the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money,
to spend on a new rocket research center where he
would build the next generation rocket, the A four, the
rocket that would finally serve as a futuristic super weapon.
(12:31):
Vohn Brown must have been delighted, no more blowing up
test stands while Dornberger peeked from behind a tree. Eh
But instead of simply accepting the money, he took news
of the offer back to the Army, which had been
funding the rocket research up to that point. Imagine the
astonishment of General Carl Becker when a twenty four year
(12:54):
old civilian strolled into his office to ask if the
Army had a better offer, and on reflection, General Becker
decided that the Army did have a better offer.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
I'm not going to let Luftwaffer run the wheel of
this business. I'm going to be the majority stockholder in
this enterprise.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
The General agreed that the Army would provide twenty percent
more funding than the Luftwaffer had proposed. Von Brown accepted
both offers. The Luftwaffer wouldn't be at the wheel of
developing the A four rocket, it seemed, but neither would
the Army. Then A von Brown would. He was now
(13:37):
in charge of a Nazi mega project. Von Brown and
Drnberger used their new funds to build a vast facility
at Panamunda, about one hundred and fifty miles north of
Berlin on the coast of the Baltic Sea. There was
a supersonic wind tunnel, one of the first ever closed
(13:59):
circuit TV systems, so the rocket engineers could monitor test
launches from a safe distance. The biggest factory in Europe,
a coal fired our station, housing for thousands of scientists
and workers, and it was here that von Brown's talents
really started to shine. Still just in his mid twenties.
(14:21):
He proved to be a masterful technical director, marshaling and
focusing the talents of the scientists and engineers who worked
for him. The powerbrokers of the Nazi state gazed on
Painnamunda with a variety of emotions. Some were enthusiastic backers,
giddy with excitement at this wonderland of technological advancement. Others
(14:44):
were cynics, convinced that the money was being squandered. Still
others were predators, looking for an opportunity to close in
and seize the spoils. But all of them were curious,
when would the mysterious genius von Brown get round to
producing this much vaunted A four rocket? What was he
(15:08):
really up to? Verna von Brown had come to the
Army from the Society for Spaceship Travel. They really should
have been able to guess. Verna von Brown's proposed A
four rocket was as tall as a five story building.
(15:31):
It needed a mixture of super cooled liquid oxygen and
alcohol to power it, and clever pipework to make sure
the oxygen didn't freeze the alcohol. It needed gyroscopes to
stabilize it, and sophisticated fuses to ensure the warhead exploded
at just the right moment. It needed to be triggered
(15:51):
by impact at any angle, yet fullproof against accidental detonation.
The rocket needed aerodynamics that would allow for the change
in air pressure as it reached the stratosphere, and it
would have to withstand temperatures of twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit
six hundred and fifty celsius as it arcd down to
(16:12):
re enter thicker atmosphere. All of this added up to
an astonishing technological challenge. It took the engineers into uncharted territory.
There was absolutely no room for error in design, manufacture,
or deployment. The first test launch in February nineteen forty
(16:33):
two was not a success. The rocket slipped while being
mounted on the launch pad, crushing its fins. This was
a distinctly undignified way to lose a rocket, and after
some attempts at repair, it was scrapped. Fron Brown's team
slunk back to the factory to build another. Three months
(16:56):
later they were ready to try again. Some powerful Nazi
figures came to pay Amunda to watch the test under
gloomy low clouds. Hitler's personal friend Albert Speer recalled the occasion.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
At first with a faltering motion, but then with the
roar of an unleashed giant. The rocket rose slowly from
its bed, seemed to stand upon its jettle flame for
a fraction of a second, then vanished with a howl
into the low clouds. Fairer fon Pound was beaming.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Spier didn't know it, but that beaming smile was masking
some alarm. Von Brown, with his expert eye, could see
that the rocket had been unstable. It reached supersonic speeds
and a height of thirty miles, but after fifty four
seconds the rocket cut out and it began to spin
(17:49):
and fall right back down towards the launch pad. The
roaring noise of the falling rocket grew louder and louder.
Were they about to be struck by their own rocket.
In the end, it spun into the Baltic Sea less
than a mile away. Von Brown had gotten away with it.
The zimble launch had been spectacular, and the dramatic failure
(18:12):
had been concealed by the cloud cover. Another launch in
August nineteen forty two was another failure. This time the
warhead fell off and the rocket itself disintegrated. But it
too had reached supersonic speeds, and that was enough for
von Brown to spin it as he always did. The
firing was one hundred percent successful. This dashing young man
(18:38):
seemed so confident and assured it spent colossal sums of
money that the Reich could scarcely afford. Surely he knew
what he was doing. Large ambitious projects have a certain
reputation these days, over time, overbudget, over and over again.
(19:02):
That reputation is perfectly accurate. According to the world's most
prominent expert on large projects, Bent Flubia, a management professor
at Oxford University, Flubia has accumulated a large database on
what he calls mega projects, and his data did not
tell a pretty story. Nine out of ten of these
(19:25):
huge projects have cost overruns, benefits often fall short of
what's been promised. This is true all over the world,
and it's true for public and private sector projects alike.
But why There are two explanations. One is that we
fool ourselves. Whatever we do always takes longer and costs
(19:47):
more than we expected. One classic study of this phenomenon
was conducted by a young doctoral student named Roger Bueler
in the early nineteen nineties, Bula asked a group of
undergraduates to predict how long it would take to submit
their honors thesis, and to consider upside and downside scenarios
(20:07):
if everything went as well as it possibly could, and
if everything went as poorly as it possibly could. The
student's optimistic estimate was twenty eight days, and their baseline
guests not much longer, thirty four days. Their worst case
scenario estimate was forty nine days. In reality, the average
(20:27):
thesis took fifty six days, twice the optimistic estimate, but
also even worse than the worst case scenario. I hardly
need to cite this research. We all know it's true. Surely,
there's no more reliable source of disappointment anywhere in the
world than looking at all the incomplete tasks on yesterday's
(20:49):
to do list. Then of von Brown was as guilty
of this wishful thinking as anyone. His biographer, Michael Neufeld
says that von Brown was always an enthusiast, always an optimist,
that this was one of the traits which made him
such an inspiring leader. But like Roger Bueler's experimental subjects,
(21:10):
he was perfectly capable of being optimistic to the point
of delusion. Von Brown was far more interested in conquering
space than in conquering the British or the Soviets. Not
only that, but he was obsessed with the idea that
he personally would one day travel into space. Needless to say,
he never did.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Like all the.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Undergraduates who answered Roger Bueller's survey, he was surprised at
how long everything seemed to take. Von Brown struggled to
see that by the time there was such a thing
as an astronaut, he'd be far too old to be one.
But there's a second explanation for why mega projects are
so often over time and over budget. It isn't delusion,
(21:57):
its deception. The promoters of large projects almost always exaggerate
their benefits and understate their costs. Ron Brown had been
happily doing this for years, making ambitious claims about the range, payload,
and accuracy his rockets would achieve. And the more the
(22:17):
difficulties became evident of VN. Brown, the bolder his claims became.
But would his unachievable promises eventually catch up with him?
When the Second World War began, Von Brown recalled.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
The army told us in very clear terms that either
we had to produce something of promise as a weapon
in the very near future, or we must go out
of business.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
And by the time of the next test in October
nineteen forty two, the war was not going well for Germany.
Ron Brown really needed to put on a show. The
luxurious facilities in Paina Munda had been sucking in resources
for more than half a decade. Where were the results?
Ron Brown's boss felt A. Doorn Berger later recalled how
(23:04):
anxious he felt, had.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
We really discovered the cause of failure of the last
two attempts.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
A great deal depended on this launching.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
We all knew that Drnberger saw one of his officers
pale with worry and tried to say something encouraging.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Keep your fingers crossed. It must come off this time.
There's so much at stick.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
The roar of the engine was so spectacular that witnesses
felt they were inside a thunderstorm. And this time the
sleek fuselage remained stable even as it accelerated through the
sound barrier.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
It was an unforgettable sight. In the full glare of
the sunlight, the rocket rose higher and higher, the flame
darting from the stern was almost as long as the
rocket itself.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
The rocket reached an altitude of around fifty miles, flew
for four minutes and fifty six seconds, and plunged into
the Baltic Sea, one hundred and twenty miles away. At last,
at last, the A four rocket might actually be usable
as a weapon. It would soon gain a new name,
(24:16):
the V two. The V stood for Vengeance, and Painna
Munda would soon quite suddenly be crawling with Nazi power players.
Vron Brown had finally started to succeed, and that perhaps
was much more dangerous than continuing to fail. Hartionary tales
(24:41):
will be back in a moment. As soon as it
looked like enn of von Brown's V two weapon might
actually be going somewhere, senior officers from the Army, the SS,
and the Loftwaffer started to appear at Painna Munda, handing
(25:04):
out orders and setting delusionally optimistic targets. At the start
of nineteen forty three, Dornberger agreed an ambition of building
one hundred rockets each month by the end of the year.
That target was soon revised upwards to three hundred, then
changed again to eight hundred, then finally set at an
(25:25):
absurd two thousand a month. Even von Brown was unsettled
by this. As Dornberger recalled.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Professor von Brown was giving the imploring and despairing looks,
shaking his head again and again in incredulous astonishment.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
VN Brown's concern was that there was no way that
he could build two thousand V two rockets a month.
But even if he could, what about the fuel? Even
if every tank of liquid oxygen in Germany were sent
to the V two program, that wouldn't be enough for
half those rockets. The other key fuel component was alcohol,
(26:04):
which was distilled from potatoes. Food in wartime Germany was
becoming scarce, while in areas attacked or occupied by German forces,
four million people starved to death as the Germans seized
food supplies. Each V two rocket needed thirty tons of
potatoes to supply its fuel. Where would those potatoes come from?
(26:30):
Who would starve? As a result? The goal of building
so many V twos was simply impossible. That anyone who
objected was threatened with dismissal or worse, The mega project
had acquired its own momentum, as mega projects do. The
(26:50):
problem was magnified by the derangements of the man at
the top, Adolf Hitler, sometimes viciously insightful, but often unhinged.
Sometimes he had been an enthusiast for the rocket program.
Sometimes he'd dismissed the rocket engineers as dreamers. He made
absurd suggestions, like firing the rockets out of a gigantic cannon.
(27:15):
In July nineteen forty three, Hitler summoned Valter Doornberger and
Werner von Brown. Together, they watched the film of the
latest successful test launch, with von Brown providing the commentary.
The Fura could barely contain his enthusiasm.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Why was it I could not believe in the success
of your work.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
He asked. Dornberger later proudly recalled Hitler's words.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I have had to apologize only to two men in
my whole life. The first was Field Marshal von Prauschitch.
I did not listen to him when he told me
again and again how important your research was. The second
man is yourself. I never believed that your work would
be successful.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
With Hitler now fully on board, the V two megaproject
and the Pain and Munder complex became prizes to fight
over for the Nazi barons. In the Third Rune. But
just a few weeks later, in August nineteen forty three,
the British bombed Painamunda. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the
(28:20):
ss happened to be with Adolf Hitler when news of
the raid reached them. As head of the s S,
Himmler was one of the architects of the Holocaust, the
systematic murder of six million Jews, which was already well underway.
He was one of the most evil and dangerous men
in the Third Reich. Himmler immediately proposed that missile production
(28:45):
be moved underground to a disused mine or freshly blasted tunnels.
Hitler agreed. The move underground from Painamunda to a mine
near the city of Nordhausen, right in the center of Germany,
began with punishing speed. The human cost, as we'll soon see,
(29:07):
was appalling. Himmler also suggested to Hitler that the ESSs
should now take the lead on the rocket program. Hitler
said no, he liked to divide and rule. He kept
the army in charge for now, but Himmler didn't give
up on his ambition. In February nineteen forty four, he
(29:29):
ordered Werner Vron Brown to fly over to his field
headquarters near the Eastern Front. Himmler's command center had the
nickname the Black Lair. At first a few concrete bunkers
hidden from air assault by the Polish forests, it had
grown low. Wooden buildings were scattered through the trees, heavily camouflaged.
(29:53):
There was even a command train parked up on a ramp.
SS guards were everywhere. It was the kind of place
people were summoned to, never to return. Even the self
assured Vron Brown was unnerved by the prospect of meeting
the most sinister man in the Third Reich. Himmler received
(30:15):
Vron Brown behind a simple wooden table.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
I must confess that I felt a bit jittery when
I was shown into his office. But he greeted me
politely and conveyed rather the impression of a country grammar
school teacher than that horrible man who was said to
weighe knee deep in blood.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
I trust you realize that your V two rocket has
ceased to be an engineer's toy, and that the German
people are eagerly waiting for it. Why don't you come
to us. You know that the fuel's door is open
to me at any time, don't you. I shall be
in a much better position to help you lick the
remaining difficulties than that clumsy army machine.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Heinra. Himmler was making his play. The SS was launching
a hostile takeover of Paina Munda and the entire rocket program.
Vron Brown pushed back.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
General Donberger is the best chief I could wish to have,
rex Fura. It is technical trouble and not red tape
that is holding things up.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
The feed to is like a.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Little flower that needs sunshine, fertile soil, and some gardener's tending.
If you pour a big jet of liquid manure on
that little flower in order to have it grow faster,
it might kill it.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
You have to laugh. Ron Brown, speaking to the head
of the SS, compared the SS to a jet of
liquid excrement. It was bold, very bold. If he ever
said it, we only have Von Brown's account of the conversation,
but in any case, Himmler apparently smiled or laughed, and
(31:52):
the conversation with one of the most powerful and murderous
men in Germany ended on pleasant terms. Von Brown flew
back to the rapidly shrinking team and Pain Amunda. One
month later, the day before his thirty second birthday, Verna
(32:12):
von Brown was visited at three o'clock in the morning
by the Gestapo. They were there to invite Von Brown
to make a witness statement at the nearby police headquarters.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
He wished to arrest me. There must be a misunderstanding.
By no means are we talking about arrest. We have
the express order to take you into protective custody.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Protective custody was worse than arrest. It might mean torture,
it might mean death. There would certainly be no trial
and no judicial oversight. People would simply vanish, but von
Brown was so indispensable to the rocket program even Himmler
hesitated to simply have him disappear. Instead, Von Brown was
(33:04):
held in good conditions, allowed to receive birthday flowers and gifts,
but he knew he was in mortal danger. Von Brown's biographer,
Michael Neufeld, is sure that he would never have been
arrested if Himmler hadn't seen some advantage in doing so.
(33:24):
Himmler was simply waiting to see what the fallout might be,
to discover how powerful vn Brown's protectors were. The Gestapo
had an excuse for bringing von Brown into custody. Of course,
Ostensibly they wanted to investigate the report of a drunken
conversation at a party at which Von Brown had apparently
(33:45):
been rather indiscreet about his milking of the Golden Cow.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
The war will not end well, It's clear enough where
this is all going for Germany. But what of your weapon,
Professor von Brown? Surely it is a source of hope
for the German people. My feeling about the weapon is
that it is aimed at the wrong planet. Rockets are
not designed to conquer Britain or Russia. They are designed
(34:11):
to conquer space.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Did he ever say such things in an unguarded moment
at a party? Perhaps perhaps not, But it rings true.
Thener von Brown had come a long way since playing
Moonlight Sonata at Ville Lais Piano. Had he only ever
thought of the Nazi war effort as a handy source
(34:36):
of funds for the Society for Spaceship Travel? Perhaps so.
Von Brown, like most promoters of mega projects, systematically exaggerated
the benefits and understated the costs of his ambitions. The
Gestapo began to question Von Brown. He found the process.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Grotesque and had a macabrun reality. As an engineer, I
dealt constantly with tangible facts and comprehensible problems. Here everything
appeared as if in a hallucination. Quite obviously, they wanted
to inject fear into me. If the Gestapo wanted to
convict me, how was I supposed to prove my innocence?
Speaker 1 (35:19):
He wasn't and he couldn't, and luckily for von Brown,
he didn't need to. The second day of questioning was
interrupted by his longtime boss, General Walter Dornberger, resplendently clad
in full dress uniform, who marched in, shot Von Brown
(35:39):
a genial glance, and without a word, placed a document
in front of the chief interrogator. It was an order
to release Von Brown, signed and stamped at Hitler's office.
It had been a narrow escape, which Von Brown and
Dornburger celebrated with a large bottle of brandy, then returned
(36:03):
to working on the V two rocket program. A few
months later, the third Reich would be collapsing and Von
Brown would be plotting his next move. He didn't know
it then, but his unnerving arrest had been the most
extraordinary piece of good luck. In our next episode, Cautionary Tales,
(36:29):
will return with this story's final shocking installment. Michael Neufeld's
(36:51):
definitive account of Germany's V two program is The Rocket
and the Reich. For a full list of our sources,
see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales
(37:16):
is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's
produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The
sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and
Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
(37:39):
the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Ditel Millard,
John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at
Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
the show, please remember to share, rate and review and
(38:03):
tell your friends and if you want to hear the
show ad free sign up for Pushkin Plus on the
show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot FM,
slash Plus,
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