INVENTORS / SCIENTISTS — VON BRAUN

The life of Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), is marked by two strikingly opposite phases that carried him from serving the Nazi regime to embodying the American dream of space exploration. As a brilliant rocket engineer in Nazi Germany, von Braun was a key figure in the development of the V‑2 ballistic missile, a technological breakthrough that also became a weapon of terror produced through the exploitation of forced labor. After the end of World War II, he was transferred to the United States under Operation Paperclip, where his expertise was redirected toward military and scientific programs that would define the Cold War era. In the United States, von Braun reinvented himself as a visionary of space exploration. As a leading figure at NASA and chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, he played a decisive role in the Apollo program, which culminated in the first human landing on the Moon. His career thus embodies the profound moral ambiguity of modern technological progress: the same knowledge that enabled unprecedented destruction also made possible one of humanity’s most celebrated achievements. Von Braun remains a deeply controversial figure, suspended between scientific ambition and ethical compromise, illustrating how technological innovation is often inseparable from the political systems it serves. David said: “Von Braun’s story is the opposite of Oppenheimer’s. The Americans had to learn how to work with him. (…) They came to collect him at Peenemunde Island, which was a secret facility for the development of German rockets. Von Braun was a passionate physicist and design engineer whose sole interest was getting into space. Back then the Americans told him and his colleagues, “You’ve got an hour to decide: “either the Russians will come here, or you’ll come with us”. The employees pulled themselves together, boarded the ship with their families and left. The Russians got the prototypes and documentation, but they didn’t get what was most important, the people”.