Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War | 
| Author: Michael J. Neufeld
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 108991
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 608
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.6 x 1.9
ISBN: 0307262928
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.4092
EAN: 9780307262929
ASIN: 0307262928
Publication Date: September 25, 2007
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Product Description
The first authoritative biography of Wernher von Braun, chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich—creator of the infamous V-2 rocket—who became one of the fathers of the U.S. space program. In this meticulously researched and vividly written life, Michael J. Neufeld gives us a man of profound moral complexities, glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, a man whose brilliance and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition.
As one of the leading developers of rocket technology for the German army, von Braun yielded to pressure to join the Nazi Party in 1937 and reluctantly became an SS officer in 1940. During the war, he supervised work on the V-2s, which were assembled by starving slave laborers in a secret underground plant and then fired against London and Antwerp. Thousands of prisoners died—a fact he well knew and kept silent about for as long as possible.
When the Allies overran Germany, von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans. The U.S. Army immediately recognized his skills and brought him and his colleagues to America to work on the development of guided missiles, in a covert operation that became known as Project Paperclip. He helped launch the first American satellite in 1958 and headed NASA’s launch-vehicle development for the Apollo Moon landing.
Handsome and likable, von Braun dedicated himself to selling the American public on interplanetary travel and became a household name in the 1950s, appearing on Disney TV shows and writing for popular magazines. But he never fully escaped his past, and in later years he faced increasing questions as his wartime actions slowly came to light.
Based on new sources, Von Braun is a brilliantly nuanced portrait of a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Good but not for the reason you think May 24, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
Neufeld inadvertently provides evidence that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax. Chapter 15 describes an absurdly misorganized, disorganized and impossible schedule that reduces the actual time to build and test hardware to a mere five years. Piled atop the emerging anomalies of impossible moon footprints absent moisture binder, suicidal moon rover wheelbase for 1/6th gravity, persistent lack of information regarding the workings of nickel porous plate water sublimators, ridiculously small fuel tank for the 10,000 lb. LM ascent vehicle required to climb 60 miles to 4000mph, silence and absence of ESA SMART-1 lunar survey photos that don't reveal Apollo landing sites, etc., Neufeld's book would be better if it honestly explored Von Braun's masterful ability to lie both to Hitler and the American people while ironically serving them thus to fulfill their eager delusions.
 More shabby "research" . Don't waste your money April 23, 2008
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
Sadly this is the same old BS against the German people, written I would guess, by a Jew or a self-hating German. Don't take my word for it, look for yourself. Here we have a book that purports to be a definitive work but is just full of unsubstantiated speculation from the author. Just look at page 145 for example: "Recent research has demonstrated that the mass shootings of Jews in the East were widely known among the German populace." Now, I'm no Holocaust denier, but to say this kind of thing is just irresponsible. What "research" is he talking about? He doesn't say. Does the author really believe that the average citizen had access to this kind of information? He admits that listening to foreign radio was "dangerous" but what he should have said that if you were caught you could be killed. And who have believed BBC radio anyway? Did any of our guys believe Tokyo Rose? How many average citizens went to check up on their local Japanese concentration camp during WW2? No one who wanted stay out of a camp themselves, that's who! Do I know what is going on right now in Cuba? Or in CIA camps in Poland? No I don't, and neither do you. The same was true with the German people, and I'm tired shabby "research" from people like this guy. I want my money back!
 Von Braun: Dreamer of Space/Engineer of War March 2, 2008
For a period ranging from about 1950 until 1970, Werhner von Braun was the face of space exploration, an articulate spokesman who also brilliantly orchestrated the huge Saturn rocket program.
Yet the Von Braun who occupies the pages of Michael Neufeld's book is an often passive figure. A space dreamer who grasped the opportunity to work for the nascent Nazi war machine as a way to advance his hopes for rocket research. The man who managed to bring the V-2 rocket from nothing to full production, yet acquiesced in the use of concentration camp workers to bring that production about. Even as a driving force in the U.S. space program, von Braun rarely issued commands, preferring to arrive at a consensus among his Huntsville colleagues.
Neufeld does not shy from tying von Braun to the attrocities at the Dora Mittleworks yet leaves you convinced he was not actively involved in them. Instead, he turned a blind eye to the practices while he focused on his overarching goal -- to produce a rocket and fly to the stars.
Though hardly soft of von Braun, Neufeld stops short of labelling von Braun a war criminal. "He only wanted to go into space," he writes, quoting the common refrains. And Neufeld wisely notes that the United States entered its own Faustian bargain by embracing the Peenemunde team to advance its own "amoral concepts of the national good". So for that matter, did the Soviets. As the old saying goes: Our Germans were better than their Germans.
This is Neufeld's second book on the V-2 and the Peenemunde team, following his earlier "The Rocket and The Reich," which focused more on German motivations for staring and pursuing the V-2 program and the internal politics that surrounded that program. This shows in the writing. The parts dealing with Germany and the V-2 program are very strong but Neufeld slips at times on some aspects of the U.S. space program. He has von Braun bidding on the Hubble Space Telescope in 1963. At best, that was only a paper study, the central thesis of which evolved into Hubble 20 years later. Ironically, the Hubble contract was eventually won by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the very center von Braun was competing with in 1963.
There are still questions worth exploring on this period of space history.Were the Paperclip scientists purged in 1973 due to emerging reports about their Nazi involvement? Neufeld doesn't think so; Huntsville had developed an aging workforce as von Braun attempted to preserve his team. NASA eventually remedied this through massive retrenchments. Yet the timing still seems suspicious.
And study is needed of ongoing American space work prior to the arrival of von Braun's rocket team and how these diverse concepts eventually coalesced. The U.S. began studying the concept of reconnaissance satellites in the lates 1940s and U.S. rocket designers in California often derided the Huntsville team's products as "bridge construction." The Californian' light, cutting edge design have primacy in today's space arena yet the Germans' sturdy designs got us to the Moon and rarely failed. Von Braun, it turns out, was not a fan of the space shuttle.
 Not Quite A Hit Piece, But... February 20, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Mr Neufeld has written a voluminous account of Dr. von Braun's life. However, it is less a biography than an exercise in supporting the author's poetic conception that "Dr. Space" gave away his soul in a Faustian bargain. The title makes it clear that Mr. Neufeld thinks that, when all is said, his subject was just an "Engineer of War." Rather than giving a balanced portrayal of WvB's decisions in difficult times, he consistently (and often snidely) gives the reader his considered political opinion and conjecture as to what WvB's innermost thoughts were. While there is much welcome factual information in this book, the reader (if he doesn't already agree politically and culturally with the author) will have to overlook the author's attempts at calumny. In sum, if you agree with the author's contention that 'the discovery of global warming' ranks with the invention of the computer, the nuclear bomb, and the landing on the moon, you will be in good company. If you don't buy into the politically-correct environmental alarmism common today, you may have a bit of a slog ahead of you. (Also, if the reader was looking for any insight into WvB's religious beliefs and life, he will be disappointed.)
 A Truly Outstanding Biography of a Truly Outstanding Rocketeer January 19, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
The career of Wernher von Braun has been a subject of investigation, and not a little controversy, almost from the time that the German rocketeer came to the United States after World War II. There is no question in my mind that "Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War" will be recognized as a seminal addition to the literature of space history and biography. In this book Michael J. Neufeld, the chair of the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum and a longtime friend and colleague of mine (so I confess that I am not totally unbiased in my assessment), traces the career of one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration during the period between the 1930s and the 1970s. He went on to a stellar career (pun intended) in rocketry and spaceflight. Neufeld argues that von Braun should be remembered for four major accomplishments:
(1) Developing the world's first ballistic missile, the V-2, for Germany during World War II.
(2) Popularizing space exploration in the U.S. in the 1950s through a succession of articles, speeches, public appearances, and television broadcasts. The most important of these were the famed "Collier's" series of articles and the three Disney TV programs.
(3) Launching the first U.S. satellite to orbit the Earth, Explorer 1, in January 1958, a significant rejoinder to the Sputnik launches of the fall of 1957.
(4) Leading the technical development of the largest successful rocket ever built, the Saturn V launcher that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.
Neufeld's core thesis revolves around what he refers to as a "Faustian bargain" for von Braun; he was consumed with exploring space but to enable that goal he spent the majority of his career building sophisticated weapons of destruction. Not until 1960 did he work for NASA, an organization dedicated to the peaceful exploration of space. Previously, military organizations had employed von Braun to build missiles.
This thesis gets to the heart of a longstanding controversy over von Braun's motivations and a belief in his basic opportunism. Because he was willing to build a ballistic missile for Hitler's Germany, with all of connotations that implied in the devastation and terror of World War II, many of his ideals have been questioned and criticized. For some he was a visionary who foresaw the potential of human spaceflight, but for others he was little more than an arms merchant who developed brutal weapons of mass destruction. As Neufeld shows, in what will be viewed as a major benchmark in this historiographical debate, von Braun seems to have been something of both. The subtleties of this analysis are path breaking and will be significant for all interested in exploring seriously the history of spaceflight. This biography will be the starting point for all future investigation of the life and career of this fascinating, perplexing, and complex individual.
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