‘Smash the Myth of the Fascist Rocket Baron’: East German Attacks on Wernher von Braun in the 1960s

Abstract

Late in 1962, a West Berlin correspondent of Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), the world-famous Director of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, sent him a series of hostile articles that had just appeared in East Germany. They turned out to be excerpts from the forthcoming book Geheimnis von Huntsville: Die wahre Karriere des Raketenbarons Wernher von Braun (Secret of Huntsville: The True Career of Rocket Baron Wernher von Braun).¹ Written by a popular East-German author of non-fiction spy books, Julius Mader (1928–2000), Geheimnis heralded a Soviet-bloc attempt to destroy von Braun’s reputation by unmasking the depths of his involvement with the Nazi regime, the SS and its concentration camps. Von Braun had certainly been a tempting target for communist press attacks — the United States’ leading rocket specialist was an ex-Nazi who led the development of one of Hitler’s terror weapons, the V-2 ballistic missile, before changing sides literally overnight at the end of the war. But little effort had been expended in the Warsaw Pact in uncovering and propagating the details of his service to the National Socialist regime. Mader threatened to change all that.²