Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
A stunning investigation of the roots of the first moon landing forty years ago.
This illuminating story of the dawn of the space age reaches back to the reactionary modernism of the Third Reich, using the life of “rocket scientist” Wernher von Braun as its narrative path through the crumbling of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazi regime. Von Braun, a blinkered opportunist who could apply only tunnel vision to his meteoric career, stands as an archetype of myriad twentieth century technologists who thrived under regimes of military secrecy and unlimited money. His seamless transformation from developer of the deadly V-2 ballistic missile for Hitler to an American celebrity as the supposed genius behind the golden years of the U.S. space program in the 1950s and 1960s raises haunting questions about the culture of the Cold War, the shared values of technology in totalitarian and democratic societies, and the imperatives of material progress.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biddle, a former New York Times reporter with a Pulitzer Prize to his credit, intertwines the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany with scientist Wernher von Braun and his role in the creation of Germany's deadly V-1 and V-2 rockets, and his postwar apotheosis as a leader of the United States space program. Biddle's primary purpose is to debunk the view created at least in part, Biddle believes, by von Braun himself that he was merely a pawn in the Nazi regime whose work on the V-2 weaponry was secondary in his own mind to his goal of building rockets to send humankind into space. While much of von Braun's role in the Nazi Party is shrouded in darkness, the facts and circumstantial inferences that Biddle finds convincingly contradict von Braun's self-exoneration regarding his wartime work. Biddle offers damning evidence including testimony by slave laborers that puts von Braun inside the V-2 factory and well aware of, and participating in, the brutal treatment of the workers. Biddle also criticizes the U.S. space program for its embrace of von Braun despite his documented membership in Hitler's SS corps. 12 illus.
