posted 05-25-2007 01:35 AM               

Neufeld's book, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), will be published in September, just in time for the 50th anniversary of Sputnik. It will be about 640 pages long and represents the culmination of 20 years of research.

The first authoritative biography of Wernher von Braun, chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich — creator of the infamous V-2 rocket — who became one of the fathers of the U.S. space program. In this meticulously researched and vividly written life, Michael J. Neufeld gives us a man of profound moral complexities, glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, a man whose brilliance and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition.

As one of the leading developers of rocket technology for the German army, von Braun yielded to pressure to join the Nazi Party in 1937 and reluctantly became an SS officer in 1940. During the war, he supervised work on the V-2s, which were assembled by starving slave laborers in a secret underground plant and then fired against London and Antwerp. Thousands of prisoners died — a fact he well knew and kept silent about for as long as possible.

When the Allies overran Germany, von Braun and his team surrendered to the Americans. The U.S. Army immediately recognized his skills and brought him and his colleagues to America to work on the development of guided missiles, in a covert operation that became known as Project Paperclip. He helped launch the first American satellite in 1958 and headed NASA’s launch-vehicle development for the Apollo Moon landing.

Handsome and likable, von Braun dedicated himself to selling the American public on interplanetary travel and became a household name in the 1950s, appearing on Disney TV shows and writing for popular magazines. But he never fully escaped his past, and in later years he faced increasing questions as his wartime actions slowly came to light.

Based on new sources, Von Braun is a brilliantly nuanced portrait of a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.

• Hardcover: 608 pages
  
• Publisher: Knopf (September 25, 2007)
  
• ISBN-10: 0307262928
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0307262929

posted 09-16-2007 03:24 PM               

Neufeld writes with economy and dispatch, and the narrative moves quickly, particularly in the early going. Although von Braun's surviving German colleagues refused to grant interviews, Neufeld's mastery of available German material and memoirs, coupled with the records of post-World War II debriefings and the harrowing recollections of former French prisoners-of-war at the Nordhausen V-2 plant, give von Braun's German period a vivid immediacy.

The book, however, frequently glosses over the engineering challenges faced by early rocketeers and the techniques and hardware developed by von Braun and others to resolve them. Aficionados will immediately notice this shortcoming, and even the uninitiated will occasionally wonder how seemingly intractable problems are suddenly overcome 10 pages later. Also missing are details about von Braun's personal life. The family has never granted interviews, and readers will be curious about his 1947 marriage, almost sight unseen, to his 18-year-old first cousin and his born-again conversion to evangelical Protestantism around the same time.

The American half of von Braun's life will be more familiar to U.S. readers. Neufeld focuses considerable attention on von Braun's career as the U.S. space program's designated visionary, contrasting his public triumphs with continued but sporadic embarrassments about his Nazi past.

posted 09-23-2007 11:32 AM               

Los Angeles Times: 'Von Braun' by Michael J. Neufeld

Neufeld does not portray Von Braun as evil but, rather, as a man like Goethe's Faust, who "uses his infernal powers to build great engineering works for what he believes to be the betterment of mankind." Faust mistreats his workers and inadvertently kills people in his way, but he feels no guilt, because "he cannot accept personal responsibility."

Neufeld likens von Braun to a Faustian figure - not Christopher Marlowe's, who sold his soul to the devil for the possession of earthly powers, but Goethe's Faust, who for the sake of grand engineering accomplishments made himself complicit in the devil's work. He gives von Braun well-merited due, pointing to the managerial talents, including remarkable charm, drive, intellect, and energy, that he brought to the successive projects of long-range rocketry, both in Germany and the United States. He was indispensable to the V-2 effort and a brilliantly effective leader at Huntsville.

posted 10-18-2007 10:58 AM               

Neufeld... acknowledges that "hardly anyone under age forty" knows his subject's name, even though America's moon shots owed a large measure of their success to him. Wernher von Braun (1912-77) had a career that was itself a kind of two-stage rocket, his scientific dreams boosted toward their late American fulfillment by his youthful service to the military apparatus of Nazi Germany. Disgusted and forbearing by turns, Neufeld, the chair of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, offers this patient new biography as a corrective to the scientific and moral shakiness of the more admiring writers who have come before him. Using archival information that they neglected, he has nonetheless faced the same "inaccessibility of [von Braun's] widow, his children, and his American relatives," who seem to regard all biographical study of von Braun as a kind of posthumous deportation hearing, one that always carries the possibility of his being ejected from the American Cold War pantheon and repatriated to the ruins of the Third Reich.

posted 11-11-2007 10:21 AM               

The reader (or is it just me?) realises that the author dislikes his subject but his attempts to be academic about it all only manage to "suck the life" out of Von Braun's personality.

Although I know Neufeld is trying to get away from some of the uncritical biographies of the past - mainly written by pro-Von Braun friends - he hasn't managed to provide any "character" (good or bad) to his subject.

posted 11-11-2007 01:35 PM               

I have only just started reading the book, but I'm already impressed by the fair approach to the personality. Neufeld is very detail oriented and shares even minor events from the childhood years. He is not taking the easy approach of either liking or disliking him, he presents the facts, shares interesting quotes, and comes to a balanced judgment.

His presentation of the political situation in Germany during the time von Braun grew up is not only very informed, it sometimes grants von Braun's family and background in the reactionary world of the 20s more understanding than I - as a German - would normally concede those folks.

Remember that America created its democratic state in 1776, that the French revolution took place in 1789, and in the early 20th century this class of both economically as politically backward regions of Germany were still cultivating a lifestyle and social situations that might have been appropriate in the 13th century when they colonized the pagan East, but not 700 years later.

posted 11-14-2007 12:27 PM               

I recently did some research connected to von Braun and used some of the same primary documents Neufeld studied and I can say that the author is spot-on in his fair interpretation of these archives.

My main disappointment with the finished book is that at a time Ñ as Neufeld himself admits in his introduction Ñ when only people of a certain generation are familiar with Von Braun because he is almost forgotten to younger generations who see the Space Age as irrelevant, the book is too dense with these "facts" to bring out the excitement and adventure that was the "race for space."

I think the book would have been better served if it had been split in two separate volumes with more "human elements" thrown in there between the facts.

But as many members of von Braun's close family/friends refuse to talk to both Neufeld personally and other writers in general this type of study may never happen.

posted 11-15-2007 12:25 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by dom:
But as many members of Von Braun's close family/friends refuse to talk to both Neufeld personally and other writers in general this type of study may never happen...

---

posted 11-15-2007 01:22 PM               

A second set of problems is the inaccessibility of his widow, his children, and his American relatives, who have been unwilling to be interviewed even by his friendly biographers. As the author of "The Rocket and the Reich," a critical history of von Braun's German army rocket program, I had no chance to talk to them. Nor, after the publication of that book, would his former German colleagues speak to me any longer...

posted 11-19-2007 10:49 PM            

Von Braun has been the subject of at least nine previous English-language biographies. But Neufeld's version, exhaustively researched in German and American archives and written in clear, fast-paced prose, offers the most complete, fully documented and critical account that the imperfect documentary record is likely to yield. Neufeld acclaims him "the most influential rocket engineer and spaceflight advocate of the 20th century." This book amply supports that judgment.

Though most previous biographies have been hagiographic celebrations, some have noted his association with Ñ if not his commission of Ñ war crimes in Hitler's Germany. Neufeld also sees him as a modern-day Faust, whose power came from a bargain with the devil. The devil in Neufeld's analogy is Nazi Germany in general and Hitler in particular, from whom von Braun personally received the cherished title of "Professor." Neufeld scours the historical record for evidence of von Braun's crimes, rehearsing his membership in the SS, his development of deadly weapons and, most important, his participation in the notorious slave labor program that built his V-2s at a horrible human cost.

posted 02-03-2008 06:51 PM               

Neufeld, who understands German, was able to research records from von Braun's early life in pre-war Germany and presents a fascinating picture of a young man obssessed with space growing up in an aristocratic East Prussian family.

Neufeld approaches the issue of von Braun's association with the Nazis in a thorough but fair manner (although it is clear Neufeld has a negative view of von Braun's collaboration). While I knew von Braun was pressured into joining the Nazi party, I did not know that he personally briefed Hitler on several occasions, and that it was Hitler himself who conferred the honorific title of "Professor" on von Braun. I also was not aware that von Braun was an SS officer and wore the SS officer's uniform to his advantage when trying to surrender his team to the advancing Americans.

Neufeld also investigates the relationship between von Braun and the concentration camp workers, mainly from France, who were used to construct the V-2 rockets designed by von Braun and his team. von Braun denied ever seeing mistreatment of prisoners after visiting on a couple of occasions. However, Neufeld makes a strong argument that von Braun was more aware of the situation of the slave laborers than he later admitted.

From an early age, von Braun dreamed of space and rockets and was willing to do whatever it took to achieve that goal. von Braun is portrayed as the ultimate opportunist.

The book is extensively documented and goes into great detail, especially about von Braun's upbringing, education, and early efforts in Germany to build rockets. His stay in America is less detailed.

I personally met von Braun only on one occasion-- at the press conference of the NASA center directors before the Apollo 11 launch in July 1969. This was the time when von Braun compared the Apollo 11 launch to the era in which animals left the sea to live on the land. At the time, I thought this was hyperbole, but after reading Neufeld's book I now understand that Apollo 11 was the culmination of all of von Braun's hopes and dreams.

Americans tend to simplify things into black and white. However, this book paints a fascinating picture of a man who was both great and also flawed. He was a fine engineer, but even more so a talented organizer with drive and charisma. However, he was ethically challenged-- the end does not justify the means, because wrong means corrupt the end.

von Braun was passionately devoted to our future in space, yet his life serves as a warning that space enthusiasts need to consider the price in lives that space exploration continues to take.

posted 02-24-2008 09:34 PM               

I guess it has all boiled down to me simply wanting to say that the many thoughtful posts on this thread should adequately prepare the reader for what to expect in this coverage of an immensely interesting and controversial man. Such items in my collection as the "Tomorrowland" DVD series, "The Real Space Cowboys", and von Braun's book "Project Mars: A Technical Tale" will now always elicit a more complex internal response from me in the future than they have in the past.

posted 04-04-2008 09:32 AM               

Michael J. Neufeld was also the editor for the English version of one of the memoirs of a survivor of the Mittelbau Dora concentration camp, Yves Béon.

Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age

• Paperback: 288 pages
  
• Publisher: Westview Press (May 1998)
  
• Language: English
  
• ISBN-10: 0813334926
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0813334929

posted 12-19-2020 07:20 PM               

In 2017, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution David Skorton gave him the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award, the highest research award of the Institution. Dr. Neufeld generously shared his thoughts on the significance of the V-2, Wernher von Braun, and the Nazis’ reliance on forced labor to build rockets.

My interview with him was conducted via email in August 2019.