by Amy Cherrix
Holton, Sean. “U.S. Space Program Arose from Nazi Germany’s Ashes.” Orlando Sentinel, April 30, 1995. www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-04-30-9504300235-story.html.
Lang, Daniel. “A Reporter at Large: White Sands.” The New Yorker, July 24, 1948.
Latson, Jennifer. “The Sad Story of Laika, the First Dog Launched into Orbit.” Time, November 3, 2014. www.time.com/3546215/laika-1957.
Leibson, Art. “118 V-2 Experts Stationed in E.P.” El Paso Times, December 4, 1946. www.newspapers.com.
Leonov, Alexei. “The Nightmare of Voskhod 2.” Air & Space, January 2005. www.airspacemag.com/space/the-nightmare-of-voskhod-2-8655378.
McClendon, Sarah. “German Scientists in El Paso Blasted.” El Paso Times, July 1, 1947. www.newspapers.com.
O’Toole, Thomas, and Mary Thornton. “Road to Departure by Ex-Nazi Engineer.” Washington Post, November 4, 1984. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/11/04/road-to-departure-of-ex-nazi-engineer/729f5dd6-e009-4265-bbc4-21096e5e526f/.
“Protection Shelter for Storms and War.” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, March 5, 1958. www.newspapers.com.
Remme, Tilman. “The Battle for Berlin in World War II.” www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/berlin_01.shtml.
Robinson, Donald R. “The Story behind the Explorers.” This Week Magazine, April 13, 1958, www.newspapersonline.com.
Siddiqi, Asif A. “The First Woman in Earth Orbit.” Spaceflight, Vol. 51, January 2009, 20–21.
———. “The First Woman in Earth Orbit: Transcripts Give New Perspective on Vostok-6 Mission.” https://faculty.fordham.edu/siddiqi/writings/p28a_siddiqi_vostok-6_mission.pdf.
Tedeschi, Diane. “How Much Did von Braun Know, and When Did He Know It?” Air & Space, January 1, 2008. www.airspacemag.com/space/a-amp-s-interview-michael-j-neufeld-23236520.
Von Braun, Werhner. “Man Will Conquer Space Soon.” Collier’s, March 22, 1952.
Von Braun, Wernher, as told to Curtis Mitchell. “Space Man: The Story of My Life.” American Weekly, Vol. 7, Part 1, July 20, 1958; Vol. 10, Part 2, July 27, 1958; Vol. 12, Part 3, August 3, 1958.
Wellerstein, Alex. “Remembering Laika, Space Dog and Soviet Hero.” New Yorker, November 3, 2017. www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/remembering-laika-space-dog-and-soviet-hero.
Zak, Anatoly. “The R-7 Interconinental Ballistic Missile.” Russian Space Web. www.russianspaceweb.com/r7.html.
Documentary Films and Videos
Dog That Orbited the Earth, The. BBC Witness History. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-41901604/the-dog-that-orbited-the-earth.
Equinox, season 2, episode 1, “The Engines That Came in from the Cold.” Written and directed by Dan Clifton, aired 2001, on Channel 4 (UK).
He Conquered Space. Directed by Daniel B. Polin, written by Daniel B. Polin and Perry Wolff, Discovery Channel, 1996.
Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo. Directed by David Fairhead. March 14, 2017.
NASA’s Look at 50 Years of Apollo: “Apollo 8: Around the Moon and Back,” episode 3. NASA. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfd0oC3eFWw.
The Russian Right Stuff, episode 1, “The Invisible Spaceman.” David Dugan, series producer. Aired 1991, NOVA/PBS.
Sputnik Declassified. Written and directed by Rushmore DeNooyer. Aired 2007, NOVA/PBS.
Other Reports, Papers, and Transcripts
Clauser, F. H. “Preliminary Design of a World-Circling Spaceship.” Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, May 2, 1946. www.rand.org/pubs/special_memoranda/SM11827.html.
Feigin, Judy. “The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.” Mark M. Richard, ed. The Office of Special Investigations, December 2008, 333. http://storage.lib.uchicago.edu/pres/2015/pres2015-0270.pdf.
Kezirian, Michael T., Joseph Pelton, and Tommaso Sgobba. “The Russian R-16 Nedelin Disaster: An Historical Analysis of Failed Safety Management.” Journal of Space Safety Engineering, Volume 2, No. 2. December 2015. www.iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/07/JSSE-VOL.-2-NO.-2-DECEMBER-2015-LR-THE-RUSSIAN-R-16-NEDELIN-DISASTER.pdf.
“Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transmission (GOSS NET 1) from the Apollo 11 mission.” www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11transcript_tec.html.
Woods, W. David, Johannes Kemppanen, Alexander Turhanov, and Lennox J. Waugh. Apollo Flight Journal, Apollo 13, Day 3, Part 2: “Houston, We’ve Had a Problem.” www.history.nasa.gov/afj/ap13fj/08day3-problem.html.
Woods, W. David, Robin Wheeler, and Ian Roberts. Apollo Corrected Transcript, Apollo 10, Day 5, Part 19: “We Is Down Among Them.” https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap10fj/as10-day5-pt19.html.
Websites and Blogs
The Berlin Wall: A Multimedia History. “August 13, 1961, Through the Eyes of a Border Guard: Peter Guba.” www.the-berlin-wall.com.videos/berlin-contemporary-witnesses-eyes-of-a-border-guard-808.
“The Count of Pearl Harbor Deaths.” Pearlharbor.org. https://visitpearlharbor.org/how-many-pearl-harbor-deaths-were-there.
“Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution.
Eisenhower Library online archives. www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents.
“Gas Chambers.” www.auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-and-shoah/gas-chambers.
“Gemini: Bridge to the Moon.” NASA.gov. www.nasa.gov/specials/gemini_gallery.
“Heinrich Himmler.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler.
Jenks, Andrew. “The Russian Icarus: How Gagarin Became Cosmonaut #1.” Russian History Blog, February 25, 2011. www.russianhistoryblog.org/2011/02/the-russian-icarus-how-gagarin-became-cosmonaut-1.
“Mittelbau-Dora.” www.holocaust.org.uk/mittelbau-dora.
“Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp.” www.johngalione.com/timberwolf415b003.htm.
“Mittelbau-Dora in the National Socialist Concentration Camp System.” Mittelbau-Dora Memorial. www.buchenwald.de/en/29.
“Mittelbau Main Camp: In Depth.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mittelbau-main-camp-in-depth.
“Redstone and Atlas.” NASA History. www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4201/ch1-5.htm.
“Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II.” www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war.
“Sergei Korolev: Father of the Soviet Union’s Success in Space.” www.esa.int/About_Us/ESA_history/50_years_of_humans_in_space/Sergei_Korolev_Father_of_the_Soviet_Union_s_success_in_space.
“V-2 Missile.” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/missile-surface-surface-v-2-4.
“Work in the Gulag.” www.gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php.
Endnotes
Chapter 1: The Osenberg List
The Polish lab technician’s discovery described: Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America, 41.
Dr. Werner Osenberg described: ibid.
five times the speed of sound: Jacobsen, 7.
This fundamental . . . capitalism: Garret McDonald, correspondence with the author, March 15, 2020.
“carry out all . . . restraint”: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, “The SS,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/ss.
Chapter 2: The Honored Nazi
Description of china place settings: Jacobsen, 7.
The formal affair at the castle: See Jacobsen’s note, 464.
Knight’s Cross of War Service Cross: Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, 187.
“The room . . . exhaust”: Walter Dornberger quoted in Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 49.
“It was like a streak . . . star”: Charles Ostyn’s recollections quoted in Dungan, “Antwerp: City of Sudden Death.”
Some 3,700 civi
lians were killed: ibid.
State of mind of Antwerp’s citizens during V-2 bombings: ibid.
Von Braun describes his plan to surrender to the Americans: von Braun as told to Curtis Mitchell, “Space Man: The Story of My Life,” Vol. 10, Part 2, American Weekly, July 27, 1958.
Himmler was the key . . . Europe: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/heinrich-himmler.
Von Braun’s arrest: Neufeld, Von Braun, 172.
Chapter 3: Rise of the Rocket Fanatic
Von Braun’s childhood and lifelong desire to fly to the moon described in Neufeld, Von Braun, 21.
homemade car: von Braun, “Space Man,” American Weekly, July 20, 1958, 9.
“It swerved this . . . fire”: von Braun, ibid., 8.
“Whenever I tried . . . life”: Emmy von Braun, quoted in Stuhlinger and Ordway, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space, 11.
124 miles southwest of Berlin: Neufeld, Von Braun, 22.
“I was . . . equations”: von Braun, He Conquered Space, documentary film.
“What can I do . . . book”: von Braun, ibid.
“By day I taught . . . lessons”: Wernher von Braun quoted in Neufeld, Von Braun, 35. See also 483, footnote 33.
abandoned munitions dump: Neufeld, Spaceflight, 13.
“astonishing theoretical knowledge”: Dornberger, V-2: The Nazi Rocket Weapon, 33.
“To me, the army’s . . . travel”: von Braun quoted in Neufeld, Von Braun, 54.
local residents . . . land: Bode and Kaiser, Building Hitler’s Missiles, 22.
See Bode and Kaiser for more information about the last days of the Peenemünde village.
Von Braun’s gift of champagne to a Peenemünde engineer described: Neufeld, Von Braun, 94.
“My refusal to join . . . activity”: von Braun quoted in Cadbury, Space Race: The Battle to Rule the Heavens, 53.
Nazis murdered . . . conflict: National World War II Museum, “Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II, www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war.
Groups targeted and persecuted by the Nazis described: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution.
Chapter 4: Camp Dora
felt grateful to have survived the war this far: “Mittelbau Dora Concentration Camp.”
The corpses of . . . buildings: Hoegh, Timberwolf Tracks: The History of the 104th Infantry Division, 1942–1945, 458.
“Stacked like cordwood”: ibid.
“The people were . . . rescued”: John Galione in Garamone, “Remembering the Holocaust,” Armed Forces Press Service, www.archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45049.
sixty thousand people: National Holocaust Centre and Museum, “Mittelbau-Dora.”
Neufeld describes Kammler’s role in building gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, and Belzec, in The Rocket and the Reich, 201.
Detailed Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chamber figures: “Gas Chambers,” Memorial Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, www.auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-and-shoah/gas-chambers.
Origins and nationalities of prisoners at Camp Dora, “Mittelbau-Dora in the National Socialist Concentration Camp System.”
not seeing daylight for months: Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp: In Depth,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/mittelbau-main-camp-in-depth.
“They were crawling . . . anymore”: Albert Van Dijk, Camp Mittelbau-Dora Museum, recorded interview video exhibit, viewed by author, April 5, 2019.
death toll average 160 a day: O’Toole and Thornton, “Road to Departure of Ex-Nazi Engineer,” www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/11/04/road-to-departure-of-ex-nazi-engineer/729f5dd6-e009-4265-bbc4-21096e5e526f/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4c50e46f8ee9.
fifteen times, Neufeld quoted in Tedeschi, “How Much Did Wernher von Braun Know, and When Did He Know It?”
“In view of . . . 2:1”: Von Braun’s memo quoted in Neufeld, Von Braun, 163.
Von Braun’s implict guilt in Mittelwerk attrocities: as discussed with Michael Neufeld, senior curator in the Space History Department, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, telephone interview with the author, October 4, 2019.
he may indeed have been guilty: ibid.
Von Braun’s ambivalence to the plight of the Jews described in Neufeld, Von Braun, 97.
Von Braun did not wear . . . correspondence: Neufeld, Von Braun, 122.
“There was no way around it”: von Braun’s response as recalled by engineer Hartmut Küchen and quoted from Peenemünde: Schatten eines Mythos, M. J. Blockwitz and A. Walter, 1999, in Neufeld, Von Braun, 122.
Chapter 5: Betraying Hitler
Statistics on the number of Red Army tanks, personnel, and artillery in Remme, “The Battle for Berlin in World War II,” www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/berlin_01.shtml.
hundreds of thousands . . . children: Cosgrove, “After the Fall: Photos of Hitler’s Bunker and the Ruins of Berlin.”
“I hopped on . . . story”: Magnus von Braun quoted in Holton, “U.S. Space Program Arose from Nazi Germany’s Ashes.”
Climate and landscape details at the time of the surrender of the von Braun team, see Dornberger, V-2, 235.
“They showed up . . . Camels”: Magnus von Braun, quoted in Holton, Chicago Tribune.
von Braun and approximately 350 members of his team: Neufeld, interview with the author, October 4, 2019.
Failure of US intelligence to question von Braun about his association with Mittelwerk: as discussed with Neufeld, telephone interview with the author, October 4, 2019.
By late afternoon . . . 1945: Neufeld, Von Braun, 213.
Six members . . . departed, ibid.
Chapter 6: An Innocent Traitor
a copy of Pravda: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 177.
a loaf of French bread: ibid.
Location of Natalia Korolev during her father’s arrest: Asif Siddiqi, telephone interview with the author, March 1, 2019.
dressed in dark suits: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 155.
Black Ravens: Asif Siddiqi, telephone interview with the author, March 1, 2019.
listened to music . . . phonograph: ibid.
The doorbell rang: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 155.
Information on NKVD officer weapons per World War II collector Bill Adams: interview with the author, November 26, 2018.
NKVD arrest practices: discussed with Asif Siddiqi, interview with the author, March 1, 2019.
“I naively gave him . . . other.” Ksenia Korolev quoted in The Russian Right Stuff, “The Invisible Spaceman,” episode 1.
“I had golden hair . . . overnight”: ibid.
broke both . . . jaws: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 177.
a fifteen-minute deliberation: ibid.
notorious Gulag . . . Siberia: “Work in the Gulag,” www.gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php.
only 217 miles south . . . Arctic Circle: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 188.
Korolev’s childhood and first experience with flight, Harford, 16–18.
At seventeen . . . glider: “Sergei Korolev: Father of the Soviet Union’s Success in Space.”
a roofer’s apprentice: Romanov, Spacecraft Designer: The Story of Sergei Korolev, 12.
“Going up in . . . engine”: Romanov, 17.
the official center . . . missiles: “Sergei Korolev: Father of the Soviet Union’s Success in Space.”
July 1939 . . . prisoners: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 188.
leaving . . . his head: ibid., 188.
spoiled cabbage . . . fish: soup recipe ingredients as remembered by former Gulag prisoner Galina Levinson, quoted in Applebaum, Gulag: A History, 206.
; Korolev developed . . . teeth: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 188.
Parasite infestations in the Gulag camps: see Applebaum, 202–4.
Gulag prisoner clothing: ibid., 176–78, 221–26, 287.
Fate of prisoners at Camp Kolyma: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 188.
He endured . . . fifteen months.: Korolev’s letter quoted in Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 188.
“I am convicted . . . organization”: Korolev’s letter quoted in Cadbury, 85.
“I am so very tired . . . situation”: ibid., 80.
specialized prison laboratory or workshop: sharashki as described by Garret McDonald, email correspondence with the author, March 15, 2020.
Korolev’s year in Kazan after being released from prison: James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon, 63.
“the absence of medals . . . fight.” Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 1, 328.
“he sank into a deep . . . legs”: ibid., 328.
Korolev thanked . . . departed: ibid., 329.
drove away: ibid., 329.
“He wasn’t yet . . . himself”: ibid., 330.
Chapter 7: Confiscating the Spoils of War
150 former Dora prisoners: James McGovern, Crossbow and Overcast, 150.
350 railcars . . . May 31: McGovern, 152.
they needed to . . . families: Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare, 227.
could be useful . . . Union: Ivan Serov’s speech recalled in Chertok, Rockets and People, Vol. 1, 365.
“would be taken . . . wishes”; Chertok, ibid.
“We will allow . . . wish”; “No action required . . . trauma”; “it was difficult to . . . seized.”: ibid.
reportedly remarked . . . self-respect: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, 42, footnote 74.
Description of Soviet banquet hall: Kurt Magnus quoted in Harford, 76.
