Newspaper Article

Science, Morality and the V-2

Wayne, Biddle

1992

Overview

When they met again four years later at Wolfsschanze, [Hitler]'s headquarters, the Third Reich required a wonder weapon. [Wernher von Braun] brought along a movie of a missile he was perfecting that could carry one ton of TNT across the English Channel. Hitler ordered 12,000 of them. Around 6,000 V-2's were eventually built, at an average cost of about $18,000 each (some 20,000 slaves died to make this bargain rate possible). More than 500 hit London, killing more than 2,700 civilians. They did not save Hitler's hide, but they later guaranteed von Braun's safe passage across the Atlantic, where he found wonder-weapon work again under the auspices of the U.S. Army. From then on, the moon's unblemished days were numbered. Von Braun always maintained that the Wehrmacht was just a \"golden cow\" he had milked for the sake of scientific advancement, an evidently acceptable excuse to his American colleagues. He was also fond of quoting Oswald Spengler, the Weimar-era reactionary modernist who preached that \"history knows only the success which turns the law of the stronger into the law of all.\"

• Publisher: New York Times Company
• Subject: Biddle, Wayne / BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION / HITLER, ADOLF (1889-1945) / MISSILES / NAZI ERA / SPACE / V-2 ROCKET / von Braun, Wernher / WORLD WAR II (1939-45)