- 04/06/2025
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00:00The 8th of September 1944, the first ballistic missile in history streaked towards London at MAC-2.
00:08There is no advance warning with a ballistic missile. It's just coming.
00:12In seconds, an entire part of the city was obliterated.
00:15An ominous warning from the Third Reich's most brilliant engineer.
00:19Wernher von Braun was possibly the most dangerous man in the world.
00:23Von Braun was the man who made the V-2 rocket, one of the most terrifying machines ever invented.
00:28It was revolutionary. It pushed the frontiers in every dimension of its development.
00:34If the V-2 worked as intended, it would usher in a new era in warfare.
00:43In the history of man, there are critical chapters that forge together a daring individual,
00:48a crucial situation, and an innovative technology.
00:54Man, moment, machine.
00:58Europe, June 1944.
01:04Adolf Hitler's iron grip on the continent was weakening.
01:08As the D-Day forces of the Allies swept eastward, the Germans began to retreat along two fronts.
01:13The Allied armies have broken out of the Normandy beachheads, they've gone straight across France, they've liberated Paris, they're on the borders of Belgium, they're about to thrust into the Reich.
01:24Finally, the war in Europe appeared to be approaching its end.
01:27But Hitler had one last ace to play.
01:30It was a top-secret weapon intended to wreak his revenge on Great Britain.
01:34It was literally a wonder weapon.
01:38It was the type of weapon that you looked at and you were in awe of.
01:42This was a weapon that could literally hit something almost 250 miles away.
01:48Hi, I'm Hunter Ellis.
01:53With Hitler on the run and the Allies gaining ground in Europe, it will take a miracle to turn the war in favor of the Nazis.
02:00For Hitler, that miracle comes in the form of a single man with a nearly impossible goal.
02:05Well, Werner von Braun has promised him the world's first ballistic missile.
02:11No one up until this time had had any success whatsoever by building a rocket of this size and stature and capability.
02:20So it is an enormous benchmark in the history of rocketry.
02:25The story of the V-2, the V standing for vengeance, began several years earlier in 1937.
02:32Werner von Braun and an elite team of rocket scientists started work at a secret Nazi base on the Baltic island of Usdom.
02:41The research station was called Pinamunde.
02:44Pinamunde was extremely secret.
02:46It really was a black program, to use modern American military parlance.
02:50I mean, the budget was disguised, the purpose was disguised.
02:55No one who worked there could discuss it with anybody on the outside.
02:59At Pinamunde, ten rocket test stands were constructed, including test stand number seven,
03:07a colossal concrete launch pad capable of withstanding a hundred tons of thrust.
03:15From the outset, the design challenges were daunting.
03:20The difficulties were greater than expected.
03:23It was very hard to develop an engine of that size of thrust that did not burn itself out or did not explode.
03:44Rocket after rocket failed disastrously, and the outlook for Pinamunde appeared bleak.
03:59How do you control what amounts to a bomb and bring these things together in a way
04:24that you can actually achieve a thrust and a power of release without blowing the thing up?
04:34By autumn 1942, America had entered the war.
04:39It became global.
04:40In order for Hitler's vicious plan for Britain to succeed, von Braun understood he needed to demonstrate a working rocket immediately.
04:47He and the military commander of Pinamunde, Walter Dornberger, scheduled an October demonstration for senior Nazi officials.
04:55Well, October 3rd, 1942 was an extremely important day because they had to demonstrate that this rocket worked.
05:03So, Dornberger, von Braun and others felt very tense about the outcome.
05:07We are ready to start!
05:09We are ready!
05:09We are ready!
05:09We are ready!
05:10We are ready!
05:11We are ready!
05:12We are ready!
05:13Von Braun and Dornberger scheduled three test firings.
05:16From the start, the launches went badly.
05:21The first two hadn't gone that well.
05:24They both failed partway through the launch phase.
05:27So, demonstrating the success was crucial.
05:29The future of the German ballistic rocket program, and perhaps the outcome of the war itself, rested on the third launch attempt.
05:39Yeah, yeah.
05:42I, I, I.
05:59But feeling after it worked, of course, it was enormous euphoria.
06:04It just was such a relief that the thing worked.
06:07Dornberger made the statement that today the spaceship was born.
06:14It wasn't when we went to the moon or when we put a rocket into orbit.
06:18This was the start of the rocket age.
06:21of the rocket age.
06:26Because of Werner von Braun, the Nazis were the first men
06:29to cross the border into space.
06:32But conquering space wasn't what Hitler had in mind.
06:35His sights were firmly fixed on London.
06:40British intelligence received a tip-off about the rocket program
06:43from an anonymous source.
06:45Someone mysteriously dropped off a package
06:48at the British Embassy in Oslo.
06:51The Oslo letter contained a basically indication
06:57that there was some kind of guided projector development,
07:00perhaps rocket development.
07:02But it was very imprecise.
07:06By 1942, British intelligence had gathered enough information
07:10to suspect that a new type of weapon was being developed
07:13on Germany's northern coast.
07:15They started sending photo-reconnaissance aircraft
07:18to photograph the Panamunda area and other interesting sites.
07:32Photo interpreters, known as the Backroom Girls,
07:35painstakingly scrutinized tens of thousands
07:38of aerial reconnaissance photographs.
07:40Ava, come and have a look at this.
07:48Look.
07:49Constance Bamington Smith spotted an object on the ground
07:56at what was actually Kestan 7, the V-2 launch site.
08:00That looks ominous.
08:02And it appeared to be some kind
08:04of torpedo-like projectile with fins.
08:06You better go and get the chief inspector.
08:10The rocket, which was lying on its side, was 46 feet long.
08:13Guessing it could carry a one-ton payload,
08:16British intelligence began to understand
08:18how devastating the device might prove.
08:20What is it?
08:22It appears to be a cylindrical object about 46 feet in length.
08:31With this terrifying vision in mind,
08:33British intelligence demands that immediate action
08:35be taken against Panamunda,
08:37and more importantly, against the one man
08:39who holds the future of London in his hands,
08:42Werner Von Braun.
08:46Shortly before midnight on the 17th of August, 1943,
08:50the RAF launched Operation Hydra.
08:52600 heavy bombers approached Pinamunda
08:55and the pilots were instructed to fly
08:57at a very low altitude to maximize accuracy.
09:00It was a hugely risky operation,
09:03but it represented the Allies' best chance
09:05to kill Von Braun's team
09:07and stop the V-2 forever.
09:16The 17th of August, 1943.
09:18Great Britain launched a massive moonlight air raid
09:22on the ultra-secret Pinamunda weapons base.
09:25The objective was to destroy the German rocket program
09:28and kill Hitler's mercurial rocket scientist.
09:35The man was Werner Von Braun,
09:37and he was on the brink of perfecting
09:39the Nazis' most potent secret weapon.
09:41Ah, good morning, Ms. Hudson.
09:42Good morning, Mr. Woodruff.
09:43The moment was Hitler's intended destruction
09:46of London using a silent, unstoppable device.
09:51The machine, the V-2 rocket,
09:53was the world's first supersonic ballistic missile,
09:56and it was almost ready to be unleashed.
10:00Unaware that their secret is out,
10:02the British air assault known as Operation Hydra
10:05catches the Pinamunda scientists by surprise.
10:1017th of August, 1943.
10:16Shortly before midnight, Von Braun and his team
10:18were caught off-guard by the RAF bombers.
10:20With incandescent phosphorous fires raging below them,
10:27the British wing commanders believed
10:29they'd killed Von Braun and his team.
10:31Their optimism, however, was short-lived.
10:34Unfortunately, it was a very hard thing
10:37to launch a precise raid at night,
10:40even in moonlight.
10:42And the initial aim point was two miles off
10:46to the south,
10:47which killed something like 600 foreign workers.
10:52The air raids did serious damage
10:53to many of Pinamunda's facilities
10:55and killed hundreds of the forced laborers.
10:58But Von Braun and all but one of his senior staff survived.
11:04It did throw off Pinamunda's operation
11:06such that something like two or three months
11:09of development time was lost.
11:12But it wasn't the devastating blow
11:14that it appeared to be.
11:17As Von Braun was still alive
11:19and the V2 design intact,
11:21Hitler pressed him to embark on mass production
11:24of his Vengeance rocket.
11:26Werner Von Braun has now passed the point
11:28of no return on his personal trajectory.
11:30A theoretical rocket pioneer,
11:32suddenly he's in charge of manufacturing
11:35Hitler's death machine.
11:36This is not at all the role
11:38the young Von Braun imagined
11:39he would play in history.
11:44Werner Von Braun was born
11:45born on the 23rd of March 1912
11:47in Wiersitz in Prussia.
11:48He was the son of an aristocrat,
11:50Baron Magnus Von Braun,
11:52founder of the German Savings Bank.
11:54Emmy, his mother,
11:55was a musician and amateur astronomer.
11:57When he was just a child,
11:59he started reading
12:00science fiction literature
12:01and became enraptured
12:05with this idea
12:06of traveling to the moon
12:07and to Mars.
12:08When I was 12 years of age,
12:11I tried my first
12:12practical rocket experiment.
12:16I chose a coaster wagon.
12:18Selecting half a dozen
12:20of the biggest sky rockets
12:21I could find,
12:22I strapped them to the wagon.
12:23I lighted the rockets myself.
12:28It performed beyond
12:29my wildest dreams.
12:35Highly motivated as he was,
12:37Von Braun nevertheless
12:38experienced difficulties
12:39at school.
12:40He excelled in languages
12:41but failed physics and maths.
12:43Then in 1926,
12:45something happened.
12:47That's when he discovered
12:48the work of Hermann Obert
12:50who was a German-Romanian
12:52space pioneer.
12:53And he became
12:53a space enthusiast.
12:56On leaving school,
12:57Von Braun joined the VFR,
12:59the German Society
13:00for Space Travel.
13:01He assisted his hero,
13:03Hermann Obert,
13:04in his attempts
13:05to prove that volatile
13:06liquid fuels
13:07were the future
13:08of viable spacecraft.
13:13The VFR started to
13:15undertake a systematic
13:17effort to build
13:19an ever more sophisticated
13:20rocket.
13:24In October 1931,
13:25Von Braun assisted
13:26at the first
13:27public firing
13:28of the VFR's
13:29minimum rocket.
13:30Several local
13:31businessmen paid
13:32for admission
13:33to see the demonstration.
13:34of the VFR's
13:46It was a complete failure.
14:07Von Braun knew then that he had never reached space without substantial sponsorship.
14:11And then in 1932, the army came to Von Braun and said, you know, we'll finance your doctoral dissertation on rocket development.
14:23But the condition for that is a dissertation will be secret.
14:26This is military research. We don't want this out in public.
14:41For that fatherland will be very grateful.
14:48That is wonderful.
14:50That is wonderful.
14:54Within a year of commencing work for army ordinance, Von Braun and his boss Walter Dornberger staged a secret demonstration for the commander-in-chief of the German army.
15:04They decided to launch two A-2 rockets, which were scaled-down prototypes of the V-2.
15:10In order to shoot, you actually needed to go somewhere where you could get a rocket up and downrange and not do it secretly, A.
15:18B. Not endanger any population.
15:20So they had to take those two rockets up to Borkum, which is an island up in the North Sea.
15:30The demonstration worked like a dream.
15:33Both rockets reached a height of over one mile, exactly as planned.
15:36It was the first time they could get rockets up to that altitude.
15:42This was a breakpoint.
15:43This was achieving a real benchmark.
15:45And that's what convinced Hitler that more money would then be released.
15:50By 1943, six years later.
16:18Von Braun was technical director of the V-2 project at the secret Pina Munda test site on the Baltic Sea.
16:25His dreams of space travel had turned into a life-and-death struggle to build Germany's most powerful weapon.
16:31Hitler had an obsession with the English people.
16:36He wanted to launch thousands of rockets a day onto the English, destroying their cities, wrecking their infrastructure, killing as many people as he possibly could, because he was convinced that a constant bombardment would drive them into the sea and force them to stop their attacks on Germany.
16:53As von Braun's team completed the V-2 design, mass production had already begun.
17:00At that point, von Braun had to accept his role and responsibility in the coming devastation of cities.
17:06But he couldn't hide his disappointment.
17:09He wanted desperately to go to the moon and Mars, explore the cosmos.
17:13And he spent much of his career building ballistic missiles for other purposes.
17:19In March 1944, von Braun gave vent to his frustration.
17:24At a cocktail party, he let slip that his only true interest in rockets was space travel.
17:29Von Braun remarked to his colleagues that, yes, the rocket was successful, but it landed on the wrong planet.
17:37Von Braun, by saying that, showed that his whole goal was to get into space.
17:42This seemingly innocent comment triggered a chain of events that threatened the entire V-2 project and also von Braun's life.
17:52The Nazis were convinced that anyone who said anything remotely contrary to the goals of the Nazi party were traitors.
18:00So for von Braun not to praise the destructive effects of his rockets, in their eyes, was traitorous.
18:12Von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo on March 22nd.
18:18At three in the morning on the 22nd of March 1944, von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo.
18:27If he were to be executed, the lives of thousands of innocent people might be saved.
18:33But the dream of space exploration might also die with him.
18:37Von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo on March 22nd, 1944.
18:45And that moment was very dangerous for him and for the others who were arrested because they were accused by the Gestapo of having spoken at a party that the spaceship was more important than the weapon and that they didn't really want to build weapons.
19:02There was a real danger that von Braun could have been executed.
19:04Walter Dornberger approached the Minister of Munitions, Albert Speer, who well understood how vital von Braun was to the V-2 project.
19:16Dornberger and Albert Speer influenced the Nazi party to release him because they knew he was the man that ran the program.
19:23Fresh from his brush with death, von Braun returns to Penemunde and puts V-2 development back into high gear.
19:36With the Nazis retreating on every front, Hitler's last hopes rest with his top-secret weapon, the world's first ballistic missile.
19:44The 46-foot, 14-tonned V-2 rocket that von Braun was assembling was unlike any weapon ever built.
19:55Virtually every technical element of it, including propulsion, navigation and control mechanisms, had been developed from scratch.
20:02It was revolutionary. It was cutting-edge technology. It pushed the frontiers in every dimension of its development.
20:14At the V-2's base was its massive engine, with a combustion chamber leading to a bell-shaped exhaust.
20:24Over the engine's injectors were turbo pumps, which pushed fuel from the alcohol and liquid Oxloon tanks.
20:31The guidance platform, with its gyroscopes and accelerometers, sat directly on top of the tanks.
20:37The rocket's simplest component was perched at the very top. This was the one-ton warhead.
20:47The most complex design challenge was the engine itself.
20:53The basic problem was to scale up the engines massively.
20:57They started in the early 1930s with engines of a few hundred pounds of thrust.
21:07To build the V-2, they had to develop an engine of 55,000 pounds of thrust.
21:16In Pienermunde, von Braun and his propulsion specialist, Walter Thiele, looked for ways to increase thrust without increasing size.
21:24Thiele discovered that a more rotund combustion chamber generated greater thrust and occupied less of the rocket's overall length.
21:31But greater thrust was of little use if the rocket exploded on the launch pad.
21:38We found out later that in that case, the main reason for this explosion was the fact that you had too many propellants in your combustion chamber.
21:49You had to be able to build an engine that would cool itself sufficiently, such that it did not melt or burn through or explode.
21:56The team worked patiently through thousands of tests, analyzing each failure and making incremental improvements.
22:05Von Braun himself supervised every modification.
22:10By autumn 1944, they had a machine that generated the target thrust, controlled its own trajectory, and proved it could travel thousands of miles to hit a target.
22:20The V-2 was ready to fulfill its deadly purpose.
22:23This really is one of the first mass terror weapons.
22:29This is a suicide bomber launched from orbit.
22:33But the V-2 had weak points.
22:35With accuracy within a range of roughly 10 miles, Vanne von Braun's superweapon was not capable of precision strikes.
22:43However, merely hitting the target city could be considered a success.
22:47This is a strike at any moment, hit anywhere, hit anything weapon that could come at any time.
22:54To carry that in the back of your mind as you go about your daily business is horrible.
23:01This wasn't a strategic weapon.
23:03It wasn't a tactical weapon.
23:05It truly was a terror weapon.
23:06August 1944, unsuspecting Londoners were going about their business.
23:18After six years of war, with Hitler in retreat, the mood in the streets was optimistic.
23:23People were happy to be out on the streets.
23:28There was a return to what some people have used the term normalcy to talk about expectations for the relatively near future.
23:38Whatever war weariness might have existed was more or less a mask by this sense that victory is at hand.
23:44British intelligence even believed it had stamped out the V-2 threat by destroying all the reinforced concrete launch pads.
23:54In fact, British photo reconnaissance teams had found almost every German V-2 launch site.
24:01On RAF raids, many using 22,000-pound tallboy bunker-busting bombs had succeeded in destroying them.
24:07So if the hard sites are gone and the bunkers are gone, which had been bombed very heavily, maybe they had no place to launch the V-2.
24:16And so, you know, there was this sense inside the British government that the danger has passed.
24:21The V-2 will not happen.
24:26Senior British officials declared the end of the V-2 threat and announced the battle for Britain was as good as over.
24:32But the Allies had underestimated the tenacity of Hitler and the brilliance of Werner von Braun.
24:40170 miles from London, an odd-looking flatbed truck with a tarpaulin covering its deadly cargo
24:47trundled down a dirt road in Wassenaar in Holland.
24:51It was traveling a course that would change modern history.
24:54By the late autumn of 1944, British intelligence believed it had finally knocked out all of the launch pads of Hitler's terrifying V-2 rocket.
25:09But Hitler's chief rocket scientist still had one ace to play.
25:13The man, brilliant engineer Werner von Braun, had created a silent and insidious secret weapon.
25:20The moment the attempted destruction of London was about to begin.
25:24The machine, the V-2 rocket, the first guided missile, was finally ready to rain terror down on the Allies.
25:34As the end of 1944 approaches, British intelligence is convinced that they've stopped Hitler's secret superweapon in its tracks.
25:42But once again, Werner von Braun's rocket team has a plan.
25:46Knowing that launch pads are easily destroyed or left behind in a retreat, the Rocketeers have come up with the world's first mobile missile launcher.
25:54The Myler von Braun was an elegant solution to a pretty complex problem.
26:04It was about a 50-foot long, customized, low-boy trailer that you put a V-2 rocket on.
26:10Then you had to have a prime mover to tow the trailer.
26:13And along with that went trucks for fuel.
26:16It took about three hours to set it up and fire it.
26:18But then you could break it down pretty quickly and then get away.
26:28From this platform, the ballistic age was about to be launched.
26:36200 miles away, British families were sitting down to dinner.
26:40The V-2 was supersonic, so there would be no warning of its approach.
26:52It was like being under the threat of constant asteroid strike.
26:56There was nothing you could do about it.
26:57It was utterly silent and utterly destructive.
27:00Tom's sending his family to the States next week.
27:13It's good.
27:14They'll be safer there.
27:17Thought I might send you two off to Africa.
27:20How's about that, then?
27:23Good.
27:23I bet there's not so much beans in Africa.
27:25Yeah.
27:30The first V-2 fired at London hit Chiswick just minutes after it was launched.
27:50In an instant, it demolished six houses, killing three people and injuring 22.
27:55This was the moment on that day in 1944 when rockets became part of the war machine.
28:04From that point onward in history, you will always find rockets now in the arsenal of any type of moderate fighting force.
28:12Throughout the autumn of 1944, between four and six V-2s hit London every day.
28:18One V-2 killed 160 of her citizens.
28:29By the end of November, over 100 V-2s had struck the capital.
28:34No one was safe from the silent killer.
28:37There is no advance warning with a ballistic missile.
28:39It's just coming.
28:40It comes down on your head at an enormous rate of speed with no warning whatsoever.
28:47And unless you're just going to live in an air raid shelter, it's going to catch whatever's out there.
28:54Thanks to von Braun's mobile launcher, London remained easily within Hitler's reach.
28:59But on the continent, the Nazi land campaign was falling apart.
29:03Hitler realized that terrorizing the Allies might be his only hope, and the V-2 was his most terror-inducing weapon.
29:11To turn the tide of war in his favor, tens of thousands of V-2s would be needed.
29:17That, of course, was what the German government was seeking.
29:20They were wanting to terrify the Allies, that they would rain these massive weapons down on them all the time.
29:27Materially, you had to pour a lot of labor into this.
29:32You had to pour technicians, you had to pour electronics, you had to have the fuel, you had to have the warhead.
29:37It was a pretty expensive weapon to produce.
29:42The assembly plant Mittelwerk was hidden in a cave system deep beneath the Hartz Mountains.
29:48Using slave labor from the surrounding concentration camps, the Mittelwerk-Dora facility provided the location and the expendable manpower to feed the insatiable Nazi rocket machine.
30:01When you were lined up, the first day he said, he says, you came here, you're going to work here until you die.
30:07Those are his words.
30:10I saw actual V-2s.
30:12They were lined up on racks there that nobody talked about, and you were not allowed to talk about it.
30:18When I was liberated, I weighed 68 pounds.
30:25To what degree ambition blinded von Braun to the cruelties of Mittelwerk is still a subject of debate.
30:32It was a means to his end, so he accepted the fact that he was a cog in a machine that got him to where he wanted to go, and it got his technology to where he wanted to go.
30:43As the Nazi endgame drew near, von Braun was pressed to manufacture as many V-2s as possible.
30:54Even at full stretch, the Germans were never able to produce more than 700 V-2s a month.
30:59That, along with the V-2's high failure rate, prevented Hitler from realizing his dream of leveling London.
31:06Clearly, it was rushed into production.
31:09As a weapon, extravagant promises were made that it would change the course of the war, would demoralize Britain, and, of course, it was a complete failure.
31:21Nevertheless, V-2s continued to rain down on the capital.
31:25Between September 1944 and March 1945, almost 3,200 V-2s were launched, killing over 5,000 British civilians.
31:46But an even greater human price was paid by the European slave laborers forced to build the V-2.
31:52The total death toll for Middlebao-Dora camp system was in the order of 20,000 to 25,000.
32:00I don't know of any other weapons system where the ratio was so extreme or even more than one to one.
32:07As 1944 drew to a close, Allied troops reached the Rhine.
32:12It was abundantly clear to Werner von Braun and most of the Peenemünde scientists that the war was lost.
32:17The Nazi hierarchy couldn't agree on what to do with von Braun.
32:23One faction suggested that he should be evacuated south to continue work on the V-2.
32:28Others demanded he be killed before his knowledge fell into Allied hands.
32:33Von Braun, after the war, said that he had 10 orders on his desk.
32:37Five of them threatened to shoot him if he didn't evacuate, and five threatened to shoot him if he did evacuate.
32:43And he chose the orders that said he could evacuate.
32:47Von Braun decided to quit Peenemünde.
32:50He daringly instructed a small group of engineers to load all 14 tons of V-2 technical documents
32:56into boxes labeled with a false military acronym.
33:02So they created an entirely false organization.
33:05They color-coded all the equipment that they were about to ship.
33:07They plastered all the boxes and stenciled them with the initials V-A-B-V.
33:13The cover acronym stood for a project for special disposition.
33:18In other words, something completely vague and ill-defined.
33:23Von Braun's team loaded the hundreds of boxes into lorries in preparation for a planned exodus southwards.
33:29Their eventual destination was a secret known only to him.
33:32Of course, they were hoping to create a bargaining chip.
33:36And if they held this bargaining chip in their hands,
33:38they had a much better chance of making a deal with the Allies.
33:44The 27th of February, 1945, the convoy set out.
33:49Werner von Braun knew that there were orders to shoot him on sight.
33:52His future and the future of rocket technology would be decided in the next few tense hours.
33:59Spring 1945.
34:07The end of the war was fast approaching,
34:09and the scientist who created Hitler's most secret weapon
34:11was trying to escape with 14 tons of some of the most important engineering documents ever compiled.
34:19The man, Werner von Braun, would go to any lengths to salvage his life's work.
34:23The moment, the destruction of London using ballistic missiles,
34:27was now Hitler's most serious missed opportunity.
34:31The machine, the supersonic V2 rocket, was up for grabs,
34:34and with it, the rocket technology that would engender the space age.
34:39Having made the decision to run the gauntlet of SS checkpoints,
34:45Werner von Braun's life is on the line.
34:48If the SS guards don't buy a story, this will be the end,
34:51for him and his dreams of space.
34:54The future of the world's most advanced rocket technology
34:57will be decided in the next few moments.
34:59Von Braun, who was an SS officer,
35:15used his SS rank, which he didn't do otherwise,
35:19to write orders for evacuate.
35:21Were the documents to be discovered,
35:25von Braun would have no chance of escaping Nazi retribution.
35:29I have no idea.
35:30This is, uh, commandante.
35:45Having run the SS gauntlet,
35:47von Braun made another audacious move
35:49in order to save his life's work.
35:52He and Dornberger ordered that the documents
35:56from the archive of Payneman
35:57to be planted in a mine somewhere, underground.
36:01Two of von Braun's assistants
36:02sealed all 14 tons of classified V2 documents
36:06deep in the heart of an abandoned iron mine
36:08in the isolated village of Dorton.
36:11This would turn out to be von Braun's trump card.
36:14Even though this machine was used
36:15in such a terrifying way, in a horrible way,
36:18other countries, instead of saying,
36:20man, that thing is awful, we've got to stop it,
36:23said, we want it.
36:25There is this, uh, gold rush attitude
36:27that almost exists among the British,
36:29the Russians, and the Americans
36:31to get to the high technology centers
36:33where they've been developing these new weapons.
36:36From the American perspective,
36:37they viewed this rocket technology in the V2
36:39as kind of the gold standard for this technology
36:42that had been pursued in Germany under Hitler.
36:45And they wanted it.
36:47There's no question about that.
36:50But Werner von Braun remained firmly in control
36:53of the V2 archive.
36:55He was quite certain about where he
36:57and his knowledge should go.
37:00Von Braun knew that America
37:01was the industrial mind of the world,
37:03and America was where the biggest checkbook was.
37:05So von Braun saw America as his cash cow.
37:08April 1945.
37:12Von Braun and his senior scientists
37:14were staying quietly in the luxurious alpine resort
37:17of Haus Ingerbord on the Austrian border.
37:20They rested and waited for their chance
37:22to link up with the Americans.
37:24There he was on the 1st of May 1945,
37:28and the radio announced that Hitler was dead.
37:30They knew the French were to the north
37:33and the U.S. Army was to the south.
37:35So they sent Magnus von Braun,
37:38von Braun's younger brother,
37:39down the mountain on a bicycle.
37:43Stop! Stop! Drop the bike!
37:45Minutes later,
37:46Magnus von Braun encountered
37:47American private first class Fred Schneiker.
37:50Magnus von Braun, Mike.
37:51Magnus said, go, take us to Ike.
37:53We want to...
37:54The inventors of the V2, as he put it,
37:56were on top of the mountain,
37:58and they want to surrender.
37:59With the entire team of Nazi rocket scientists
38:04safely in American hands,
38:06the Allied race to find the rest of the V2 secrets
38:08is now officially on.
38:10For American forces,
38:12recovering all of the Nazi rocket technology
38:14becomes a top priority.
38:17After the 10th of April 1945,
38:20the Allies captured the underground Mittelwerk factory.
38:24Following information from von Braun,
38:26American troops also found
38:28the 14 tons of hidden V2 documents,
38:31securing them just hours before the arrival
38:33of the British Army.
38:36There were literally tons of papers
38:38that were captured and brought back
38:40to the United States,
38:40translated and used by our technical people.
38:44Mr. von Braun,
38:44I'm a representative of the United States government.
38:46It's a great honor.
38:47It's a great pleasure, sir.
38:49Good to meet you.
38:50Having broken his arm in an earlier car accident,
38:53von Braun was relieved and overjoyed
38:55that his plan to join up with the Americans had succeeded.
38:59The translated documents
39:01offered American scientists the key
39:03to German rocket technology,
39:04and they carried a bonus.
39:07Von Braun,
39:07his entire team,
39:09and enough parts
39:09was to build 200 V2s.
39:13Eventually,
39:13about 150 of his key people
39:16came to America and worked here.
39:18I, myself,
39:19and everybody you see here
39:21have decided to go west.
39:23We knew that
39:24we had created
39:26a new means of warfare,
39:28and the question
39:29as to what victorious nation
39:31we were willing to entrust
39:32this brainchild of ours
39:34was a moral decision
39:36more than anything else.
39:37Von Braun's entire team
39:40and the captured V2s
39:41were all shipped
39:42to Fort Bliss in Texas.
39:44The United States had,
39:45at a stroke,
39:46acquired a fully-fledged rocket program.
39:48Afraid that the scientists would flee,
39:50the Army refused
39:51to let any of them off the base
39:52without a military escort
39:53for over a year.
39:55Von Braun called himself
39:56a prisoner of peace
39:57and considered it his job
39:59and his duty
40:00to go on perfecting the V2.
40:02We tested the terror weapon in America,
40:05over 200 of them.
40:06We refined it.
40:07And we rode it to the moon.
40:09We dominated space.
40:10We beat the Soviets with it.
40:13Von Braun and the V2
40:14failed to turn the tide of war
40:16for Hitler.
40:17But at the dawn of the nuclear age,
40:19they offered new
40:19and even more appalling
40:21prospects for mankind.
40:23I think fundamentally
40:23the V2 did not come too late.
40:26It came too early.
40:27It came too early
40:28for it to have a warhead
40:30that was effective.
40:31Without the A-bomb,
40:32a ballistic missile
40:33is not an effective weapon.
40:35The atomic bomb
40:37securely within U.S. control,
40:39the value of V2 technology
40:41shot through the roof.
40:42In 1950,
40:43Von Braun's team
40:44was moved to the Redstone
40:46missile arsenal
40:46in Huntsville, Alabama.
40:49Once again,
40:49the would-be space pioneer
40:51found himself
40:52working for the Army.
40:53From 1945
40:55until the late 1950s,
40:57his job was not
40:58going into space.
40:59His job was to develop
41:00ballistic missiles
41:01and ramjet cruise missiles
41:03for the United States Army.
41:05On the 4th of October, 1957,
41:08the Soviet Union
41:09successfully launched Sputnik,
41:11the world's first satellite,
41:12into orbit.
41:14American determination
41:15not to be outdone
41:16offered Von Braun
41:17a final opportunity
41:18to pursue his lifelong ideal.
41:20At the Marshall Space Flight Center
41:23in Huntsville, Alabama,
41:25Von Braun steps once more
41:26onto the international stage,
41:28becoming America's
41:29most tireless spaceflight promoter.
41:31And in 1960,
41:32he's even appointed
41:33as the first director
41:34of a new government agency.
41:36It's called NASA.
41:39Von Braun becomes
41:40the quintessential salesman
41:43for spaceflight,
41:43no question about that.
41:45And they try to sell
41:46the idea of spaceflight
41:47as something that we must do
41:49because it's our human destiny
41:50to get off this planet.
41:52This was a man
41:53who was a major
41:54in the SS.
41:56And yet he became
41:57one of Time's
41:58100 best men
42:00of the century.
42:02Von Braun's
42:03highest ambition in life
42:04finally became a reality
42:05on the 20th of July, 1969.
42:09Four days after its launch
42:10from Pad A
42:11at the Kennedy Space Center,
42:13Neil Armstrong
42:13took the first step
42:14onto the lunar surface.
42:15That's one small step
42:18for man,
42:21one giant leap
42:22for mankind.
42:24If we had not
42:25gotten Von Braun,
42:26it would have set us back
42:27light years
42:28in the race
42:29with the Soviets.
42:30Von Braun was the man
42:32that drove
42:33the rocket program.
42:34Without him,
42:35we would not have
42:36gone to the moon
42:36when we did.
42:38It feels so hard.
42:40It isn't.
42:40Even as von Braun's
42:42career reached
42:42its glittering zenith
42:44and his highest hopes
42:45were achieved,
42:46the skeletons
42:46of the Nazi past
42:48continued to dog him.
42:49But before his own conduct
42:51during the war
42:51came under scrutiny,
42:53he died of colon cancer.
42:55It was 1977
42:56and he was 65 years old.
42:59Anything that flies
43:00today with a rocket engine,
43:02be it the missiles
43:03that launch our ICBMs,
43:05be it the rockets
43:07that carry the space shuttle
43:08to orbit,
43:08be it the Tomahawk
43:10cruise missiles,
43:11you can attribute
43:11to Von Braun.
43:12Driven by a childhood obsession,
43:19Werner von Braun
43:19dedicates his entire life
43:21to a single goal.
43:22This one man's passion
43:24for space travel
43:24sets in motion
43:25a complex chain of events
43:27that yields both
43:28horrifying devastation
43:29and incredible
43:31human accomplishment.
43:32Once again,
43:33the M3 factor
43:34is a volatile phenomenon
43:36throughout history.
43:36One we'll continue
43:38to explore
43:39on Man,
43:40Moment,
43:40Machine.
43:42Machine.
43:43Machine.
43:44Machine.
43:45Machine.
43:46Machine.
43:47Machine.
43:48Machine.
43:49Machine.
43:50Machine.
43:51Machine.
43:52Machine.
43:53Machine.
43:54Machine.
43:55Machine.
43:56Machine.
43:57Machine.
43:58Machine.
43:59Machine.
44:00Machine.
44:01Machine.
44:02Machine.
44:03Machine.
44:04Machine.
44:05Machine.
44:06Machine.
44:07Machine.
44:08Machine.
44:09Machine.
44:10Machine.
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