Red Moon Rising

by Matthew Brzezinski

  8 “Oh, this German love for details and this exactness”: Ibid., p. 221.

  “We have every right to this”: Ibid., p. 362.

  “The thing that every laboratory needs the most”: Ibid., p. 221.

  “No, we no longer felt the hatred or thirst for revenge”: Ibid.

  9 “Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed”: John Logsdon, ed., Exploring the Unknown: SuDocNAS 1/1.21, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1995), p. 33.

  “The thinking of the scientific directors of this group is 25 years ahead”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 198.

  He was a crack marksman, a recipient of the Knox artillery trophy and the Distinguished Pistol Shot medal: See Toftoy’s official biography at http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/toftoy/memoir.html.

  10 “It is no exaggeration to say that almost everything that [the class of] ’26 has done”: Ibid.

  “Hey Sarge, what do you think that odor could be?”: Mary Nahas, The Journey of Private Galione: How America Became a Superpower (Enumclaw, Wash.: Pleasant Word Publishers, 2004), p. 276.

  11 “They were gray in color, and they looked like skeletons”: Ibid., p. 284.

  “From where I was standing, I could see a hidden tunnel”: Ibid.

  The only unit that remotely fit that bill was the 144th Motor Vehicle Assembly Company: http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/mittel.html.

  The Americans had hauled away one hundred intact rockets and had filled sixteen Liberty Ships with 360 metric tons: Ibid.

  12 “The problem is this”: Quoted in Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 221.

  nearly five hundred Russians, Poles, and Hungarian Jews: Nahas, The Journey of Private Galione, p. 286.

  “Most of their bodies have lost both trousers and shoes”: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 262.

  5,789 V-2s produced at Mittelwerk: Ibid., p. 263.

  13 “I know places where the SS hid the most secret V-2 equipment”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 278.

  One of the biggest windfalls was dug out of a sand quarry in Lehesten: Ibid., p. 339.

  had been counterintuitively shortened and flared, creating a larger opening: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/EvolutionofTechnology/V-2/Tech26.htm.

  14 twenty thousand separate parts went into each V-2: Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick I. Ordway, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space (Malabar, Fla.: Kreiger, 1994), p. 48.

  “down to the last screw”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 282.

  “These documents were of inestimable value”: Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral, p. 151.

  15 “My sister goes to university wearing men’s boots”: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 303.

  “We’d even hatched a plan to kidnap von Braun”: Ibid.

  “One day, a group of men in American Army uniforms entered the school-house in Witzenhausen”: Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, p. 202.

  16 “It would be an effective straitjacket for that noisy shopkeeper, Harry Truman”: Michael Stoiko, Soviet Rocketry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 73.

  1: The Request

  18 Red banners hailing the Twentieth Party Congress: To re-create the Presidium visit to NII-88, I relied on author interviews and e-mail exchanges with Sergei Khrushchev, as well as his memoir, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 2000). in the lane reserved exclusively for party high-ups, rode the three other Presidium members… Nikolai Bulganin, Lazar Kaganovich, and Vyacheslav Molotov: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

  pinned little notes with the Russian word prick: William Taubman, Khrushchev: A Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 232.

  19 twenty-six-horsepower knockoffs of the 1938 Opel Kadett: http://www.autogallery.org.ru/m400.htm.

  row after row after row of mind-numbingly identical five-story apartment buildings: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, vol. 2, The Last Testament, edited by Strobe Talbott (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977), p. 141.

  20 “little man with fat paws”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 352.

  “After a year or two of school, I had learnt how to count to thirty”: Ibid., p. 24.

  21 “We weren’t gentlemen… sense”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, edited by Strobe Talbott, 2nd edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), p. 88.

  “He could barely hold a pencil in his calloused hand”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 56.

  “My father felt this was the best, most honorable profession a man could have”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

  21 “He wanted me to see the theories”: Ibid.

  22 “You see, I was studying to become a rocket scientist”: Ibid.

  “Every villager dreamed of owning a pair of boots”: Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, edited by Strobe Talbott, 1st edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 266.

  23 Khrushchev was unsettled by the rise to power of the Republican Party: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

  “the Soviets sought not a place in the sun”: Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 461.

  National Intelligence Estimate of September 15, 1954: Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1990: A Documentary Collection (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), p. 49.

  “agonizing re-appraisal”: Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network (New York: Dial Press, 1978), p. 307.

  24 “liberate captive peoples” and “roll back”: Ibid.

  prepare for “total war”: Herman S. Wolk, “The New Look,” Air Force Magazine, August 2003, http://www.afa.org/magazine/Aug2003/08031ook.asp.

  “to create sufficient fear”: Ibid.

  “We shall never be the aggressor”: Ibid.

  2,280 atomic and thermonuclear bombs: David Alan Rosenberg, Constraining Overkill: Contending Approaches to Nuclear Strategy, 1955-1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 2003), at http://www.history.navy.mil/colloquia/cch9b.html.

  the Strategic Air Command kept a third of its 1,200 B-47 long-range bombers: http://www.vectorsite.net/avb47_2.html.

  25 Operation Power House: Ibid.

  Operation Home Run: James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), p. 36.

  “With a bit of luck, we could have started World War III”: Thomas Coffey, Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay (New York: Random House, 1986), p. 245.

  “Soviet leaders may have become convinced”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1999, p. 27.

  obliterating 118 of the 134 largest population and industrial centers: Rosenberg, Constraining Overkill, p. 8.

  The giant plane could carry 70,000 pounds of thermonuclear ordnance over a distance of 8,800 miles: http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=83. an aging knockoff of the propeller-driven Boeing B-29 with a 2,900-mile range: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/tu-4.htm.

  26 to get there visitors had to take a series of right turns: James Harford, Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), p. 238.

  27 only three people in the entire country would get one: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev. An Inside Account of the Man and His Era (New York: Little, Brown, 1990), p. 166.

  “it was always in a whisper”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

  28 the president’s advisers had spent much of that summit trying to figure out who was really running the show: Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p.
392.

  built in 1926 by the German firm of Rhein-Metall Borsig: Harford, Korolev, p. 78.

  “This is our past”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 103.

  29 “Father was no longer a novice when it came to missiles”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 22, 2005.

  Beria, much like Hitler’s secret police chief, Heinrich Himmler: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, p. 214.

  “We gawked as if we were a bunch of sheep”: Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 2nd edition, p. 46.

  except that it was nine feet longer, and of a slightly wider girth, which allowed it to carry extra fuel, doubling its range to nearly 400 miles: Asif A. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2000), pp. 62-63.

  30 despite all the 15,000-ruble bonuses offered to captive German engineers: Chertok, Rockets and People, p. 366.

  31 They had hovered over his deathbed like ghouls: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 238.

  “If now, at the fountain of communist wisdom”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1941-1990, p. 50.

  7 million Soviet citizens: Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev, Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 15.

  “Don’t you see what will happen?”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 95. and engulfed 18 million lives: Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), p. 580.

  32 “They had to be isolated”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 216.

  “All it took was an instant”: Ibid., p. 202.

  33 “A change from violence to diplomacy”: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1990, p. 52.

  1,548,366 arrested: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 98.

  nearly always ended in death: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 20.

  “He was taken to Lefortovo prison, interrogated, beaten”: Harford, Korolev, P-52.

  34 This time it flew 390 miles: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 98-99.

  “The construction looked utterly incapable of flight”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 103.

  The engine, an RD-103 designed by Glushko: Ibid., pp. 100-101.

  35 “Korolev walked over to a map of Europe”: Ibid., pp. 103-4.

  37 Khrushchev had approved the cinematic thaw: Pavel Loungine, director, The Moscow Skyscraper, British-French documentary film (Paris: Roche Productions, 2004).

  Yields were so low that in 1953 per capita grain production: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 58.

  38 which required relocating three hundred thousand farmworkers: Ibid. 14 and 20 percent of the Soviet economy, compared to 9 percent for the United States: Haines and Leggett, eds., CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1990, p. 175.

  39 “the striking re-allocation of expenditures”: Ibid., p. 187.

  39 “I was amazed”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

  40 where the thermonuclear warhead would sit: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 128-29.

  41 “small-time cattle dealer”: Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 267.

  “Their relations had become tense”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

  42 “Comrade Khrushchev carries out his work… intensively, steadfastly, actively and enterprisingly”: Ibid., p. 269.

  “led us to a stand occupying a modest place in the corner”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 110.

  43 Decrees had been signed advocating the “artificial moon”: Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge, pp. 145, 149.

  “You needed the constant support of power”: Author telephone interview with Sergei Khrushchev, November 27, 2005.

  44 “The Americans have taken a wrong turn”: Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev, p. 111.

  “It seemed as if he was still debating the matter”: Ibid.

  “If the main task doesn’t suffer, do it”: Matt Bille and Erika Lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), p. 63.

  2: Jet Power

  46 “politeness is nice”: Gordon Harris, A New Command: The Story of a General Who Became a Priest (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1976), p. 116.

  “Didn’t you see the speed limit sign back there?”: Ibid., p. 146.

  47 so strongly favored the young air force that it now swallowed forty-six cents: Colonel Mike Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air University Press, 1998), p. 89. Also at http://aupress.au.af.mil/Books/Worden/Worden.pdf.

  “You are aggressive. Some would say to a fault”: Harris, A New Command, p. 127. did not enjoy “a great reputation”: John B. Medaris, Countdown for Decision (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960), p. 104.

  49 Of the 7,920,000 automobiles sold by Detroit in 1955: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 386.

  his salary was diminishing from $566,200 to $22,500: Time, December 1, 1952, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,817434,00.html.

  “what was good for the country was good for General Motors”: http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/wilson.htm.

  50 “kennel dogs” and “worry about what makes the grass green”: Time, October 6, 1961, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,827790,00.html.

  “Damn it, how in the hell did a man as shallow”: William Bragg Ewald Jr., Eisenhower: The President (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981), p. 192.

  “In his field, he is a competent man”: Robert H. Ferrel, ed., The Eisenhower Diaries (New York: Norton, 1981), p. 237.

  military spending still ate up more than half the federal budget: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/amh/AMH-26.htm.

  50 the New Look Defense Policy: Herman S. Wolk, “The New Look,” Air Force Magazine, August 2003, http://www.afa.org/magazine/aug2002/08031ook.asp.

  51 “ambassadors to unfriendly nations”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 104.

  The Redstone was a heavy-lift tactical missile capable of flinging a 3,500-pound nuclear warhead 200 miles: http://www.redstone.army.mil/cron2a.html; also http://www.boeing.com/history/bna/redstone.htm.

  52 “to inflict very great, even decisive, damage”: Ferrel, ed., Eisenhower Diaries, p. 324.

  “The world in arms is not spending money alone”: Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 114.

  the air force had spent a mere $14 million developing its ICBM by 1954: Ibid., p. 104.

  53 increased missile spending to $550 million in 1955: Ambrose, Eisenhower, p. 41.

  far below the $7.5 billion earmarked for beefing up the bomber fleet: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 187.

  Did the accelerated spending “go far enough?”: “Discussion of the 258th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, September 8, 1955,” 15 September 1955, NSC series, box 7, Eisenhower Papers, 1953-1961 (Ann Whitman file), Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.

  “I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top”: Christopher Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 79.

  54 “his lack of maturity”: Ibid., p. 105.

  “You’re my boy”: Andrew J. Dunar, America in the Fifties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 97.

  “Mr. Wilson started to ask some odd questions”: Medaris, Countdown for Decision, p. 107.

  “it was the first of many shocks to come”: Ibid.55 John Foster Dulles, it was decided, would speak for the administration: Ambrose, Eisenhower, pp. 396-97.

  56 “I will never answer another question on this subject”: Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon, p. 104.

  “Every piece of scientific evidence that we have indicates”: Ibid., p. 113.

  57 “You said something about ‘being afraid’”: Wal
ter J. Boyne, “Stuart Symington,” Air Force Magazine, February 1999, http://www.afa.org/magazine/feb1999/0299symington.asp.

  “He is a formidable-looking figure”: Time, January 19, 1948, at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,779517,00.html.

  “We feel, with deep conviction”: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 42.

  The USSR would have four hundred Bisons and three hundred Bears: John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength (New York: Dial Press, 1982), p. 45.

  “We believe that in the future”: Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, p. 87.

  58 It revealed a high numeric series, which implied a vast production line: Grose, Gentleman Spy, p. 402.

  “unconstitutionally contradicting patriots”: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 44.

  only 85 of the 700 new bombers projected by air force intelligence: http://www.thebulletin.org/articles.php?art_ofn=ja01staff.

  “You’ll never get court-martialed”: Christopher Simpson. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), p. 64.

  58 many of the air force officers who provided the testimony and information for the hearings were promoted: Prados, The Soviet Estimate, p. 50.

  59 “frequent changes of scene and recreation”: Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 8.

  “the much publicized golfing trips, the working vacations, and even the Wild West stories”: Ibid., p. 39.

  3: Trials and Errors

  60 the continuous blaring of car horns: To re-create the Georgian uprising, I relied on Sergei Stanikov’s eyewitness account, which was published in the Russian journal Istochnik, no. 6, 1995. An English translation by Tahir Asghar is available at http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv5n2/Georgia.htm.

  one of the first nations on earth to have adopted Christianity in A.D. 337: http://www.parliament.ge/pages/archive_en/history/his2.html.

  61 “Great Son of the Georgian People” had been denigrated: Medvedev and Medvedev, Khrushchev, p. 70.