# The Father of Space Travel

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 28 Jul 2023, 27 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/f2a89b9f-13cf-4af9-a414-b04a015e0046/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Cautionary Conversation: Did a Nazi put America on the moon? To celebrate the launch of his mini-series on the V-2 rocket, Tim Harford sits down with Pushkin’s resident V-2 expert, Ryan Dilley. They discuss the so-called “Father of Space Travel”, Wernher von Braun, and satirist Tom Lehrer’s musical lampooning of him. A three-part mini series on the V-2 rocket is available now for Pushkin+ subscribers. We’ll be back again on August 4th with a brand new episode of Cautionary Tales on the main feed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the final months of the Second World War,
[0:21] Speaker 1: the Nazis began to use a dreadful rocket powered bomb.
[0:25] Speaker 1: It traveled faster than the speed of sound, which meant
[0:28] Speaker 1: that you couldn't hear it coming. One moment you were
[0:31] Speaker 1: queuing up at a store or enjoying a pint at
[0:34] Speaker 1: the pub, and the next moment, well, there was no
[0:37] Speaker 1: next moment. It was a cruel, spiteful weapon. Technologically it
[0:42] Speaker 1: was a miracle, but economically and militarily, the V two
[0:47] Speaker 1: rocket was a total disaster for Nazi Germany. How did
[0:52] Speaker 1: this terrible weapon come into existence? Why were so many
[0:55] Speaker 1: of the people it hurt not the people you might expect,
[0:59] Speaker 1: And what lessons can we learn from the V two
[1:02] Speaker 1: Rocket even today? I'm very excited to introduce my new
[1:06] Speaker 1: three part series on the V two Rocket, in which
[1:09] Speaker 1: I investigate the answers to those questions. All the episodes
[1:13] Speaker 1: are available now ad free for Pushkin Plus subscribers. But
[1:18] Speaker 1: the mini series was inspired by former and founding Cautionary
[1:23] Speaker 1: Tales producer Ryan Dilly, the og producer of Cautionary Tales,
[1:28] Speaker 1: Ryan is also our resident V two expert, and while
[1:31] Speaker 1: I've been able to cover the rocket weapon in depth.
[1:34] Speaker 1: I haven't yet had the chance to geek out with
[1:36] Speaker 1: Ryan on the topic, and today Ryan Dilly joins me.
[1:39] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cautionary Tales, right.
[1:41] Speaker 2: It's so lovely back on the other side of the
[1:43] Speaker 2: glass in the studio part, rather than the cubicle directing you.
[1:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, just because you're no longer the boss of Cautionary Tales,
[1:48] Speaker 1: we can actually get you in front of the mic.
[1:50] Speaker 1: While you were in charge, this was never going to happen.
[1:52] Speaker 1: We can talk about how you got me into the
[1:54] Speaker 1: V two, but how did your interest first start?
[1:58] Speaker 2: There are surviving versions of the V two. There were
[2:01] Speaker 2: rockets that they were collected after the war and it's
[2:03] Speaker 2: one of the Imperial Museum. So when I was a kid,
[2:05] Speaker 2: I would go there and I'd see this huge black
[2:07] Speaker 2: and white rocket, amazing thing, and they cut it out
[2:09] Speaker 2: so you can see what's going on inside.
[2:11] Speaker 1: And I mean it's tall as a house, isn't It's forty.
[2:13] Speaker 2: Five feet tall, about five feet wide, and it takes
[2:15] Speaker 2: up the whole atrium of the museum, three floors up.
[2:19] Speaker 2: But I didn't realize this until quite later, that one
[2:21] Speaker 2: of the V two bombs landed very close to where
[2:24] Speaker 2: my great grandmother actually worked March eighth, nineteen forty five.
[2:28] Speaker 2: She was a kitchen hand in a cafe next to
[2:31] Speaker 2: London's main meat market, Smithfield Market, which is a very
[2:34] Speaker 2: kind of grand, beautiful Victorian building, an ancient market which
[2:38] Speaker 2: was built on the original land outside the city walls
[2:41] Speaker 2: the Romans had built where animals were slaughtered and it
[2:43] Speaker 2: still operates as a meat.
[2:44] Speaker 1: Market to this day. It's an amazing place. Yeah, on this.
[2:47] Speaker 2: Day, on with the real tail end of the war.
[2:50] Speaker 2: This is, you know, a month or two before the
[2:51] Speaker 2: end of the war, lots of people had heard a
[2:53] Speaker 2: rumor that there were all good rabbits on sale, so
[2:56] Speaker 2: they went to the market very early to line up
[2:58] Speaker 2: because I was obviously rationing and food shortages. And just
[3:01] Speaker 2: as they were doing that, one of these fearsome V
[3:04] Speaker 2: twos landed no warning, as you said, supersonic speed. The
[3:08] Speaker 2: speed and the weight of the rocket caused it to
[3:10] Speaker 2: break through the building through the ground and there's an
[3:12] Speaker 2: underground railway which used to serve the market, and that
[3:16] Speaker 2: collapsed and many people were flung into that hole. There
[3:19] Speaker 2: were one hundred and ten deaths, many of them women
[3:21] Speaker 2: and children, just regular shops waiting. My family ever talked
[3:25] Speaker 2: about this, and I'm sure my great grandmother was there,
[3:27] Speaker 2: probably about sixty seventy yards beyond the blast zone, so
[3:31] Speaker 2: not injured, but it was definitely something that came very
[3:34] Speaker 2: very close to change in my family history.
[3:36] Speaker 1: It is absolutely extraordinary, and one of the things that
[3:38] Speaker 1: we discussed in the series is the way that this
[3:41] Speaker 1: thing would just come from nowhere and hit almost always
[3:44] Speaker 1: civilian targets because it wasn't accurate enough to really be
[3:47] Speaker 1: of any military value, and because it was so random,
[3:50] Speaker 1: there wasn't anything they could do about it. They couldn't
[3:52] Speaker 1: go to a bombs shelter. It wasn't like in the
[3:53] Speaker 1: blitz earlier, which killed many more people. You knew, you
[3:57] Speaker 1: had some warning the bombers were coming. You could go
[3:59] Speaker 1: and hide, you get somewhere safe. But this would just, yeah,
[4:01] Speaker 1: you're queuing for rabbits.
[4:03] Speaker 2: This is why particularly it's an interesting weapon. So when
[4:07] Speaker 2: it was developed it was called the A series weapon.
[4:09] Speaker 2: It was the A rocket. The V comes from German,
[4:12] Speaker 2: the geltungs buffer, so that's kind of retaliation vengeance, and
[4:17] Speaker 2: the idea is it's a weapon to terrorize people.
[4:20] Speaker 1: Because German is losing the wall badly by then. Yes,
[4:23] Speaker 1: so this is their revenge.
[4:25] Speaker 2: But actually military is not a great weapon in military values.
[4:28] Speaker 2: Do you mention that the bombers. Bombers would come over,
[4:31] Speaker 2: the air aid sign would go and all the workers
[4:33] Speaker 2: have to get out of their beds, so that you
[4:35] Speaker 2: disrupt their sleep and you disrupt production. The next day,
[4:37] Speaker 2: maybe you hit their factory and you maybe knock out
[4:39] Speaker 2: the railway line. The i thing that the Germans would
[4:40] Speaker 2: do would sdrop timed bombs, so a whole street would
[4:43] Speaker 2: be closed down while they're waiting for this time bomb
[4:45] Speaker 2: to be diffused, and you would kill anyone trying and
[4:47] Speaker 2: diffuse it or it would go off. So that was
[4:49] Speaker 2: a way of disrupting huge amounts of the city over
[4:52] Speaker 2: days from one rate. The VTA didn't do any of that.
[4:55] Speaker 2: It came along. It had huge destructive power. It would
[4:58] Speaker 2: burrow itself into the ground and with one tonne explosion
[5:00] Speaker 2: quite deep down, would cause huge damage to the foundations,
[5:03] Speaker 2: absolute destroy buildings in a way that conventional bombs didn't do.
[5:07] Speaker 1: And that this is something that we explore in the series.
[5:09] Speaker 1: And one of the things we also explore is how
[5:11] Speaker 1: Germany came to build this thing in the first place.
[5:15] Speaker 1: Why did anybody ever think that this was a good
[5:18] Speaker 1: investment of resources rather than building more tanks and planes.
[5:21] Speaker 1: And one of the reasons is because the senior engineer
[5:25] Speaker 1: on the V two program was this incredibly charismatic man.
[5:29] Speaker 2: Fair enough on Brown, Yes, thinking about him, I find
[5:32] Speaker 2: him deeply distasteful. I've become very angry about him. Actually,
[5:37] Speaker 2: he was born in about nineteen twelve into an aristocratic family.
[5:41] Speaker 2: They were prushan aristocracy, So he was kind of the
[5:43] Speaker 2: blonde haired, blue eyed kind of perfect German that people
[5:46] Speaker 2: then revered from the yunkers class, this kind of political
[5:51] Speaker 2: and military elite of Germany, the people who really pushed
[5:54] Speaker 2: what we think of as being as being classic Germans,
[5:56] Speaker 2: the kind of heel clicking, militaristic Germans. Yeah, he came
[5:59] Speaker 2: from that background.
[6:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, and that slightly somewhat sneering at the Nazis as
[6:03] Speaker 1: a bit ridiculous upstarts, but at the same time very
[6:07] Speaker 1: interested in the Nazi agenda of military domination of German nationalism.
[6:12] Speaker 1: That kind of thing would sit very well with von
[6:14] Speaker 1: Brown's background. Ye.
[6:16] Speaker 2: For Brown's father, as I understand it, was a government
[6:19] Speaker 2: minister served in the Vinmark public. We think of the
[6:22] Speaker 2: Wimark Republic as being of progressive lefty, but in many
[6:26] Speaker 2: ways that there was a respectrum of people, and he
[6:29] Speaker 2: was more conservative.
[6:30] Speaker 1: It wasn't all cabarets, it wasn't.
[6:31] Speaker 2: All it wasn't all lives in la. He was a
[6:34] Speaker 2: more kind of conservative figure. The Prussians would have shared
[6:37] Speaker 2: many of the views that the Nazis had, perhaps not
[6:40] Speaker 2: the kind of street fighting ways of the essay or
[6:44] Speaker 2: the SS, but certainly they would have shared many of
[6:46] Speaker 2: the racist views, many of the economic views. Would have
[6:49] Speaker 2: shared a fear of Bolshevism, that have shared a fear
[6:52] Speaker 2: of kind of international jury, that have shared a fear
[6:54] Speaker 2: of Western decadence. So there are many overlaps between their worldview.
[7:00] Speaker 1: And the series is one of the things that we
[7:02] Speaker 1: do is follow von Brown along with following the Rocket
[7:06] Speaker 1: and talk about his journey and his decisions and his
[7:11] Speaker 1: moral responsibility for what happened. So I don't want to
[7:15] Speaker 1: go into too much detail about that, but he does
[7:17] Speaker 1: end up in an extraordinary place, which is, among other things,
[7:21] Speaker 1: working for Disney.
[7:23] Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I find that that transformation slightly obscene.
[7:26] Speaker 1: It's undoubtedly obscene, yes, but I was.
[7:28] Speaker 2: Looking through the archives. It's quite rare to find people
[7:31] Speaker 2: criticizing that. I found a really interesting article written by
[7:34] Speaker 2: British major newspapers, the Daily Mirror, just after the war,
[7:37] Speaker 2: which looked at his situation going to live in America,
[7:40] Speaker 2: and it's very, very critical of it and makes many
[7:42] Speaker 2: of the points that I would make today. And these
[7:44] Speaker 2: someone were swept under the carpet in the fifties.
[7:46] Speaker 1: I mean, in a nutshell, this guy is a Nazi
[7:48] Speaker 1: war criminal. We can debate to what extent he's a
[7:52] Speaker 1: Nazi war criminal, but he was a major part of
[7:54] Speaker 1: the German war effort. And now he's making a TV
[7:58] Speaker 1: series for Walt Disney about how We're going to go
[8:00] Speaker 1: to space. He's suddenly a kind of popular science commentator.
[8:04] Speaker 1: It is astonishing.
[8:06] Speaker 2: And via Walt Disney and via those appearances and the public,
[8:09] Speaker 2: he hobnobbed with politicians. He became friends with JFK to
[8:12] Speaker 2: an extent. I mean, his daughter says that when JFK
[8:14] Speaker 2: was killed, it was the most upset she'd ever seen
[8:17] Speaker 2: her father. Yeah, he went off to his den and
[8:19] Speaker 2: just stayed there, and she was told not to go
[8:20] Speaker 2: nowhere near him. He had a link with him, and
[8:23] Speaker 2: JFK was instrumental in giving the funds it needed to
[8:26] Speaker 2: get to the moon.
[8:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, the moonshot was JFK's vision and Von Brown was
[8:30] Speaker 1: intimately involved in making that happen. He said that that
[8:34] Speaker 1: wasn't much criticized at the time. There was a debaate
[8:37] Speaker 1: as to what was going to happen to these people.
[8:39] Speaker 1: Who would they go to work for or maybe they
[8:41] Speaker 1: should all just be shot. There is an argument that
[8:44] Speaker 1: they should have been executed for war crimes. But fine,
[8:47] Speaker 1: instead they go to build rockets. But they could have
[8:49] Speaker 1: built rockets for the Soviet Union, for the French, for
[8:52] Speaker 1: the British. It could have worked out differently. Do you
[8:54] Speaker 1: think he would have been treated differently by these different
[8:56] Speaker 1: post war powers.
[8:58] Speaker 2: I almost certainly think he would have been treated very differently.
[9:00] Speaker 2: I doubt he would have been celebrated in the way
[9:02] Speaker 2: that he was. He would never been called a hero
[9:04] Speaker 2: by the Soviets if they'd have captured him. I believe
[9:06] Speaker 2: some German scientists did defect the Rush, and particularly I
[9:09] Speaker 2: think the communy sympathis.
[9:10] Speaker 1: And there was this joke when America got to the
[9:13] Speaker 1: Moon that that's because our Germans are better than their Germans.
[9:15] Speaker 1: That's the joke the Americans told.
[9:16] Speaker 2: Yes at the end of the war. And this is
[9:18] Speaker 2: one of the things I find annoying about Ferdo von Brown.
[9:21] Speaker 2: At the end of the war, he sought out the Americans.
[9:25] Speaker 2: He had a choice, and I think that the pragmatic
[9:27] Speaker 2: choices the Soviets probably wouldn't tread him very well. He'd
[9:30] Speaker 2: have ended up in Siberia, living in a goolag, perhaps
[9:32] Speaker 2: still doing the same research, but it wouldn't have been
[9:34] Speaker 2: a comfortable lifestyle. So the French, I'm guessing after the war,
[9:38] Speaker 2: wouldn't have been all that welcoming to him or accommodating
[9:41] Speaker 2: to him. They would have certainly taken him on. So
[9:43] Speaker 2: there's another kind of Nazi scientist engineer in parallel, who's
[9:47] Speaker 2: Ferdinand Porsche, so of famous Porsche carmakers. He was very
[9:50] Speaker 2: good friends with Hitler. He joined the Nazi Party about
[9:53] Speaker 2: the same time as Von Brown joined the Nazi Party. Equally,
[9:56] Speaker 2: Von Brown was in the SS and on Porsch in
[9:59] Speaker 2: the SS. They both came up with kind of slightly grandiose,
[10:02] Speaker 2: hair brained technical scheme. So he made perfectly usable military kit.
[10:07] Speaker 2: Cooper of argons and other jeep type things. But he
[10:09] Speaker 2: also wanted to make a massive one hundred ton mouse tank.
[10:13] Speaker 1: A mouse tank is a tank for mice.
[10:15] Speaker 2: Oh, I guess it's a joke. The idea is his
[10:16] Speaker 2: massive tank.
[10:17] Speaker 1: Like Little John and Robin Hood. It's the mouse tank
[10:19] Speaker 1: because it's enormous.
[10:20] Speaker 2: Like a castle on wheels that would trundle along and
[10:22] Speaker 2: win the war. And obviously it was a complete disaster,
[10:25] Speaker 2: and so both of his characters were very, very entwined
[10:27] Speaker 2: in the Nazi wharf. In the Hitler's grandiose schemes. Ferdinand
[10:30] Speaker 2: Porsche fell into the hands of the French and was
[10:32] Speaker 2: basically imprisoned by them. They seemed his war criminals, all
[10:35] Speaker 2: of the same things that he did for Hitler. You
[10:38] Speaker 2: could argue that ron Brown did for Hitler. The French
[10:40] Speaker 2: imprisoned portion. They wanted him to work for them, But
[10:43] Speaker 2: they certainly were rolling out of the red carpet.
[10:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't putting him on Disney.
[10:46] Speaker 2: Yes, Well, when ernevon Brown's ranted the Americans, he also
[10:49] Speaker 2: was interrogated by the British. There was a little bit
[10:51] Speaker 2: of cooperation between the Anglo American allies. He said he
[10:54] Speaker 2: had a moral duty to give the technology, the terrible
[10:59] Speaker 2: weapon that he developed, moral duty to give that to
[11:02] Speaker 2: a nation. And I think the quote is something like
[11:04] Speaker 2: a nation that lives by the Bible, the Americans, obviously,
[11:08] Speaker 2: that's compared to the godless Communists. The idea is he
[11:11] Speaker 2: suddenly think it's very convenient, or maybe he's a wonderful Christian.
[11:14] Speaker 2: And then his daughter once asked about what was his
[11:16] Speaker 2: what were his views of Christianity?
[11:17] Speaker 1: So he wasn't.
[11:18] Speaker 2: Really We'd go water skiing every Sunday morning, so we
[11:20] Speaker 2: ever went to church and didn't really talk about God.
[11:22] Speaker 2: He was kind of spiritual, but he wasn't. So I
[11:24] Speaker 2: think there's a real kind of sense that he claimed
[11:26] Speaker 2: to have a more responsibility to deliver this weapon to
[11:28] Speaker 2: the Americans. It was okay when he was giving to
[11:31] Speaker 2: the Nazis and dropping bombs on all in Sundry or
[11:34] Speaker 2: doing whatever he did in the factories that made the bombs,
[11:37] Speaker 2: but he suddenly it had a great mold duty. So
[11:38] Speaker 2: I think he was very good at telling the Americans
[11:41] Speaker 2: what they wanted to hear and making out that he
[11:44] Speaker 2: was a good fellow.
[11:46] Speaker 1: One of the things that we explore in the Three
[11:50] Speaker 1: part series is early on we're hearing a lot of
[11:52] Speaker 1: von Brown's descriptions of himself, and then later we start
[11:55] Speaker 1: to hear a more objective viewpoint and you'd start to
[11:59] Speaker 1: see what's going on in a different way. And when
[12:01] Speaker 1: he did go to talk to the Brits, there is
[12:04] Speaker 1: this extraordinary moment where he's been driven through southeast London
[12:08] Speaker 1: and there's a sign that has basically been flattened by
[12:11] Speaker 1: one of the V two rockets, and he's a bit
[12:13] Speaker 1: irritated because they've cleared all the rubble away and what
[12:16] Speaker 1: he really wanted to do was examine the site fresh
[12:19] Speaker 1: and he could understand what the V two had actually done.
[12:23] Speaker 1: So there's something very cold there. It's like a scientist
[12:25] Speaker 1: examining of a rat in a laboratory.
[12:28] Speaker 2: Which goes against lots of the other defenses he has
[12:30] Speaker 2: is I wanted to make it a spaceship. I always
[12:32] Speaker 2: wanted to go to the Moon. I didn't really want
[12:34] Speaker 2: to make a weapon. And then that anecdote tells another story.
[12:37] Speaker 2: I do have a quote from him which I find
[12:39] Speaker 2: interesting because I was saying that he never really expressed
[12:43] Speaker 2: regret about what he'd done, and actually I was wrong,
[12:44] Speaker 2: So I found this quote. I very deep and sincere
[12:47] Speaker 2: regret for the victims of the V two rockets. But
[12:50] Speaker 2: there were victims on both sides, and I find how
[12:55] Speaker 2: well I find that A mean who does he mean
[12:57] Speaker 2: by victims? The victims are manifold. It's not just people
[13:01] Speaker 2: like the shoppers at Smithfield Market and my great grandmother.
[13:04] Speaker 2: I mean the destruction of housing stock in the last
[13:06] Speaker 2: few weeks of the war. I think one of the
[13:08] Speaker 2: figures I've seen this six hundred thousand houses in the
[13:10] Speaker 2: southeast either damaged or destroyed by V two's Yeah. Yeah,
[13:14] Speaker 2: my grandparents found it very difficult to find housing after
[13:17] Speaker 2: the war, so unfortunately, my grandparents had to live in
[13:20] Speaker 2: a kind of a dilapidated hut that was formerly a
[13:22] Speaker 2: kind of barracks through which disease spread overcrowded, uncentry conditions,
[13:27] Speaker 2: and those health problems had huge impacts on my family
[13:29] Speaker 2: for decades afterwards. So there are kind of a number
[13:32] Speaker 2: of victims. It wasn't just the necessary of the people
[13:34] Speaker 2: who are killed. There are bigger ripples that go through
[13:37] Speaker 2: British society. And also these bombs landed in Holland, in
[13:40] Speaker 2: Antwerp Liege areas in Belgium. But also there were a
[13:43] Speaker 2: number of other victims. The people who made the bombs
[13:45] Speaker 2: and people who were involved in constructing the factories and
[13:48] Speaker 2: constructing the railway lines and constructing the other machinery that
[13:51] Speaker 2: made this weapon possible were often slave laborers.
[13:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Ryan. We will hear more about Vanda
[13:58] Speaker 1: von Brown. A little bit from the satirist Tom Lera.
[14:02] Speaker 1: After the break, we're back. I'm Tim Harford. I'm with
[14:13] Speaker 1: the founding producer of Caution Retales, Ryan Dilley, and we're
[14:16] Speaker 1: talking about fan of Von Brown and the V two rocket.
[14:20] Speaker 1: One thing that we didn't get to include in the
[14:23] Speaker 1: series was Tom Larra's famous song about Von Brown. Tom Larra,
[14:29] Speaker 1: many people will know, still with us in his nineties,
[14:33] Speaker 1: a great satirist of the post war era, and he
[14:39] Speaker 1: I think reflected some of the controversy about should this
[14:43] Speaker 1: guy who built this super weapon be working for NASA.
[14:47] Speaker 1: Let's have a little listen to the Von Brown song?
[14:49] Speaker 3: And what is it that put America in the forefront
[14:51] Speaker 3: of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will
[14:54] Speaker 3: make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your
[14:56] Speaker 3: money to put some clown on the moon. Well it
[15:03] Speaker 3: was good old American know how. That's why as provided
[15:07] Speaker 3: by good old Americans like doctor Werner von Brown. Gather
[15:21] Speaker 3: around while I sing, you are Verner van Brown a
[15:25] Speaker 3: man whose allegiance is ruled by expigence. Call him a Nazi.
[15:30] Speaker 3: He was even from a Nazish Nazi, says Werner van Brown.
[15:39] Speaker 1: We shall hear a little more of that in a moment.
[15:41] Speaker 1: So this was originally recorded live in nineteen sixty five
[15:46] Speaker 1: for the album that was the year that was.
[15:49] Speaker 2: So was he a Nazi when I immediate want to
[15:51] Speaker 2: say yes. I think he was certainly very culpable in
[15:55] Speaker 2: Nazi crimes. I think he was culpable in developing this weapon.
[15:59] Speaker 2: I think he began to develop a weapon before the
[16:02] Speaker 2: Nazis came to power. As a teenager, he was making rockets, Yeah,
[16:06] Speaker 2: the larger kind of glorified fireworks. They'd be packed with
[16:09] Speaker 2: kind of explosive, not hugely powerful rockets. He was apparently
[16:12] Speaker 2: not a good student, but he performed really well at
[16:15] Speaker 2: the university, so he got multiple degrees. He got degrees
[16:17] Speaker 2: in engineering or degrees in physics. So he was kind
[16:20] Speaker 2: of like a underkind in the perfect sense. And his
[16:23] Speaker 2: work was spotted by the army. They said they would
[16:26] Speaker 2: fund his PhD project, which is to make a rocket.
[16:28] Speaker 1: And about a few months after that, Hitler comes to
[16:32] Speaker 1: power and then he's got a choice.
[16:33] Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason that the Army were funding him wasn't
[16:36] Speaker 2: because they were interested in getting to the moon. They
[16:38] Speaker 2: were interested in weaponry, and that this was a time
[16:40] Speaker 2: when the German state had been disarmed by the First
[16:44] Speaker 2: or War allies.
[16:44] Speaker 1: The rockets were an alternative to artillery because artillery was banned.
[16:47] Speaker 2: Yes, and also it was very difficult to have an
[16:49] Speaker 2: air force, so the lots of thes rictions they were
[16:50] Speaker 2: trying to get round the idea that a twenty five
[16:52] Speaker 2: year old would suddenly become the darling of the German army.
[16:56] Speaker 2: I presume his father, who was a minister in the
[16:58] Speaker 2: government at the time, probably would have had a role
[17:00] Speaker 2: in introducing to people and advising him. So Vernavon Brown
[17:03] Speaker 2: was not an innocent in this, a kind of hair
[17:05] Speaker 2: brained dreamer. Certainly, his behavior throughout his career it shows
[17:09] Speaker 2: he had political nous. He wasn't just wandering into things.
[17:13] Speaker 1: And by the end of the war he was a
[17:14] Speaker 1: senior SS officer. This is one of the most evil
[17:18] Speaker 1: organizations in the history of human civilization. Now we can argue,
[17:23] Speaker 1: and we discuss it in the series why he joined
[17:26] Speaker 1: the SS, whether it was because he was absolutely committed
[17:29] Speaker 1: to the genocidal goals of the SS, or because he
[17:32] Speaker 1: wanted to build rockets and he didn't much care about
[17:34] Speaker 1: the genocidal goals of the SS. If it helped him
[17:36] Speaker 1: build rockets, that that was fine by him. There's seem
[17:39] Speaker 1: a little bit more from Tom Larra.
[17:43] Speaker 3: Don't say that he's hippocritical, say rather that he's a
[17:48] Speaker 3: political Once a rockets up, who cares where's they calm downs?
[17:54] Speaker 3: That's not my department says.
[17:58] Speaker 1: Do you think he could have washed his hands where
[18:00] Speaker 1: the rockets came down? He knew where they were going.
[18:03] Speaker 2: But he knew their weapons. I've been mulling this over
[18:05] Speaker 2: a lot, so that part of me thinks that could
[18:07] Speaker 2: he not have slowed the ProRes of the rocket program down?
[18:10] Speaker 2: Could he not have essentially sabotaged it? He was the
[18:13] Speaker 2: kind of lynch pin. I think people have described him
[18:15] Speaker 2: as being a kind of organizer.
[18:17] Speaker 1: He was a brilliant technical director.
[18:19] Speaker 2: He had a great breadth of knowledge, but not a
[18:20] Speaker 2: great depth of knowledge. It's what one of the people
[18:22] Speaker 2: who worked with him and NASA said, And I think
[18:24] Speaker 2: the idea was, if he'd really wanted to, he could
[18:27] Speaker 2: have stopped. He could have maybe slowed down the progress
[18:30] Speaker 2: of the bomb. Lots of programs in Nazi Germany, lots
[18:33] Speaker 2: of hair brain schemes failed. Huge amounts of money were
[18:36] Speaker 2: being pumped into the V two. It's a huge effort,
[18:38] Speaker 2: apparently comparable to the American effort to create the atomic bomb.
[18:41] Speaker 2: Huge amounts of money being essentially wasted on this project.
[18:44] Speaker 2: But there were other projects were equally expensive, which just
[18:47] Speaker 2: failed and they didn't take the scientists out, or they
[18:49] Speaker 2: didn't take the rex out and shoot them against the wall.
[18:53] Speaker 2: They were just, you know, fair enough didn't work. I
[18:55] Speaker 2: wonder possibly if Ernavon Brown could have slowed it down.
[18:59] Speaker 2: He knew what was happening in Nazi Germany, he knew
[19:02] Speaker 2: what the rasion was doing. He also knew that the
[19:05] Speaker 2: writing was on the wall and it was all going
[19:06] Speaker 2: to be over quite soon. And yet plowed on.
[19:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, to the extent that he was nearly killed
[19:11] Speaker 1: in a car crash because he and his chauffeur were
[19:14] Speaker 1: working so hard. This is in the final weeks of
[19:16] Speaker 1: the war, they're driving all over the place trying to
[19:18] Speaker 1: get stuff done, and the chauffeur falls asleep at the
[19:20] Speaker 1: wheel and von Brown is asleep in the back and
[19:24] Speaker 1: nearly killed him. And that was overwork.
[19:26] Speaker 2: But the other part of me is actually, despite the
[19:29] Speaker 2: deaths of all of the people who worked on the project,
[19:31] Speaker 2: and despite the deaths in London and other cities in Europe,
[19:35] Speaker 2: the money that was draining out of the Nazi regime
[19:37] Speaker 2: because of the V two project was actually quite useful.
[19:40] Speaker 2: If they've spent it wisely, they maybe could have kept
[19:43] Speaker 2: the war going slightly longer. They could have chewed up
[19:44] Speaker 2: more lives to kick out more people. At the same time,
[19:48] Speaker 2: the launch sites of the V two were mainly in
[19:50] Speaker 2: Holland because that was where you could basically reach London
[19:52] Speaker 2: from the Hague. So the Germs were based themselves down.
[19:54] Speaker 2: They weren't withdrawing partly because of the V two sites there,
[19:57] Speaker 2: and they were starving the population, which is awful. The
[19:59] Speaker 2: VTA did more damage to the German war effort than
[20:02] Speaker 2: the cruelty inflicted on many one hundreds of thousands, if
[20:04] Speaker 2: not a million people.
[20:05] Speaker 1: I didn enormous enormous damage to the German war effort.
[20:08] Speaker 1: There's one physic I quote who said we were very
[20:11] Speaker 1: grateful to Von Brown because it was as though they
[20:14] Speaker 1: had pursued a policy of unilateral disarmament. So much money
[20:18] Speaker 1: that could have been spent on planes, fighter planes or
[20:21] Speaker 1: tanks was going on this v too. But I mean
[20:23] Speaker 1: it did cause mass starvation purely because of the all
[20:27] Speaker 1: the potatoes. That sounds absurd, the potatoes required to make
[20:32] Speaker 1: the alcohol which was an important part of fueling this rocket,
[20:37] Speaker 1: and millions of people, literally millions of people were starving
[20:40] Speaker 1: to death in Eastern Europe at the time. Let's listen
[20:43] Speaker 1: to the end of the Tom Lera song.
[20:48] Speaker 3: Some have harsh words for this man of renown, but
[20:51] Speaker 3: some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like
[20:55] Speaker 3: the widows and cripples in old London town who owe
[20:59] Speaker 3: there are large pensions to Werner von Brown. You two
[21:03] Speaker 3: maybe a big hero. Once you've learned to count backwards
[21:08] Speaker 3: to zero in German or English. I know how to
[21:12] Speaker 3: count it down, and I'm learning Chinese, says Werner.
[21:17] Speaker 1: Fun what's the China reference about?
[21:27] Speaker 2: So Tom Lair's argument was that he would sell himself
[21:29] Speaker 2: to the high spidder. I think it was an open
[21:31] Speaker 2: question who he'd work for. I doubt he would have
[21:33] Speaker 2: been the Chinese, but there were other people interested in
[21:35] Speaker 2: his services. So in the immediate aftermath of the collapse
[21:37] Speaker 2: of Germany, the allosis, you'll find Japan. It was quite
[21:40] Speaker 2: a good idea to grab hold of these rockets. Scientists
[21:42] Speaker 2: in these rockets, and maybe you could reversion these rockets
[21:45] Speaker 2: to work for the invasion.
[21:46] Speaker 1: Of Japan five V twos on Tokyo or something.
[21:48] Speaker 2: Kill Japanese, save American and British lives. That I guess
[21:51] Speaker 2: was the plan. There's a slight hiatus, so when bernardvon
[21:55] Speaker 2: Brown went to America, initially he complained about lack of funding,
[21:59] Speaker 2: but actually between nineteen forty five and nineteen fifty there
[22:02] Speaker 2: wasn't a huge amount of interest in those rockets. It
[22:05] Speaker 2: wasn't until the Cold War really started to ramp up
[22:07] Speaker 2: with the Berlin Blockade, and then of course in the
[22:10] Speaker 2: Korean War there's a sense that maybe we need to
[22:14] Speaker 2: arm ourselves against the communist threat, and that's when the
[22:16] Speaker 2: money started to flow. And for most of his career
[22:19] Speaker 2: he was actually a weapons scientistic. Only towards the end.
[22:22] Speaker 2: Did he then turn to working for Nassa The thing
[22:25] Speaker 2: that he often claimed was his ultimate goal, which was
[22:27] Speaker 2: getting to the Mood or getting to Mars. Veron von Brown.
[22:29] Speaker 2: When he was made into an American citizen, apparently his
[22:32] Speaker 2: sough of says, it was the proudest day of his life.
[22:34] Speaker 2: So for being a man who says like, no, I
[22:36] Speaker 2: needed to fight for Germany, I need to fight for
[22:37] Speaker 2: my homeland, I need to make weapons for Hitler because
[22:40] Speaker 2: I love Germany. Within two or three months of arriving
[22:43] Speaker 2: in America, he's very very keen to be American.
[22:45] Speaker 1: Yes, a political as Tom Larra says.
[22:48] Speaker 2: He found it very difficult to speak up and try
[22:50] Speaker 2: and help the workers in this factory, try and help
[22:52] Speaker 2: people who were persecuted by the Nazis. Felt it wasn't safe,
[22:55] Speaker 2: he shouldn't do it. But when he was an America
[22:57] Speaker 2: he played a very very high stakes game of criticizing
[23:01] Speaker 2: the American government, his employer for not giving enough resources.
[23:04] Speaker 2: And there's one point where he even accepted an offer
[23:07] Speaker 2: to speak in Russia and there was a really worried
[23:09] Speaker 2: that he might not come back. Yeah, So there was
[23:11] Speaker 2: a sense in the nineteen six of Tom leahra that
[23:13] Speaker 2: this man who preached morality, who preached being a loyal American,
[23:17] Speaker 2: was actually up for the high spidder, and anyone who
[23:19] Speaker 2: financed his dream would win his loyalty.
[23:22] Speaker 1: And that was certainly a fear that both sides had
[23:26] Speaker 1: at the end of the Second World War. I say
[23:28] Speaker 1: both sides, both sides of the Cold War, So the
[23:29] Speaker 1: Soviet Bloc and the America and its allies were both
[23:32] Speaker 1: worried that these German scientists would go off and join
[23:34] Speaker 1: the other lot. Whether that was actually true or not,
[23:37] Speaker 1: that was certainly what people were afraid of, and clearly
[23:40] Speaker 1: was something that von Brown was willing to exploit.
[23:43] Speaker 2: But certainly, to return to your question about about how
[23:46] Speaker 2: we've been treated differently, I think this article and from
[23:48] Speaker 2: the Daily Mirror, which is from nineteen forty seven, actually
[23:52] Speaker 2: writes very angrily about the conditions that the German scientists
[23:56] Speaker 2: kept him with.
[23:57] Speaker 1: So this is a British newspaper.
[23:58] Speaker 2: This is yeah, this is the British newspaper. Most notorious
[24:01] Speaker 2: among the scientists is Professor Erna von Brown thirty five,
[24:04] Speaker 2: principal inventor of the V two rocket, which brought death
[24:06] Speaker 2: to many British men. Women and children. Although nats is
[24:09] Speaker 2: guilty of much milder crimes have been executed or imprisoned.
[24:13] Speaker 2: Von Brown and his bride are being entertained and made
[24:15] Speaker 2: a fuss off.
[24:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, so he should have been shot, is what they're saying. Well,
[24:20] Speaker 1: what did this way? That the Americans certainly did not
[24:22] Speaker 1: come close to shooting him. They put him on Disney.
[24:25] Speaker 2: Even in the next paragraph. There is a campaign to
[24:27] Speaker 2: whitewash them. Some US Army officials insist they were merely
[24:30] Speaker 2: nominal Nazis and now they are one hundred percent pro
[24:34] Speaker 2: United Nations, so pro ally. Many Americans shocked point out
[24:37] Speaker 2: that the usefulness of a criminal is no excuse for
[24:39] Speaker 2: not punishing them for their misdeeds.
[24:42] Speaker 1: Fascinating, fascinating, And there is a reason in the end
[24:46] Speaker 1: that we didn't use the Tom Lehrer song in the series.
[24:51] Speaker 1: Much as I love Tom Lehrer, and that's I think uncharacteristically,
[24:55] Speaker 1: Tom Lehrer missed the point. He missed the most important
[24:59] Speaker 1: fact about the V two weapons program, And if people
[25:03] Speaker 1: want to find out what that fact is, they can
[25:05] Speaker 1: listen to the V two trilogy. Ryan Dilley asked in
[25:09] Speaker 1: front of the microphone, thank you for joining us.
[25:11] Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure for me, if not for the listeners.
[25:15] Speaker 1: All three episodes are available now add free exclusively for
[25:19] Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus subscribers. You can join on the Cautionary Tales
[25:23] Speaker 1: Apple show page or at Pushkin dot fm slash plus.
[25:28] Speaker 1: That is it from me and from Ryan today. But
[25:30] Speaker 1: I'll be back again next week on Friday, the fourth
[25:32] Speaker 1: of August with another brand new episode of Cautionary Tales
[25:36] Speaker 1: on our main ad supported feed. Cautionary Tales is written
[25:47] Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by
[25:50] Speaker 1: Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound design
[25:55] Speaker 1: and original music as the work La scale Wise. Julia
[25:59] Speaker 1: Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of
[26:03] Speaker 1: Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The
[26:07] Speaker 1: show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
[26:11] Speaker 1: Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, let Al Millard, John Schnaz, Carlie
[26:16] Speaker 1: mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production of
[26:23] Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in London
[26:28] Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, Please remember
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