Camp Gagnon - Why America HIRED a Nazi to Reach The Moon | Wernher Von Braun

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at the controversial rocket pioneer, Wernher von Braun. We’ll talk about his V-2 work for the Nazis, his secret transfer to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip, his collaboration with Walt Disney, his pivotal role in creating NASA’s space program and the Saturn V, and the lasting mysteries like Project Blue Beam... Welcome to HISTORY CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: Mars MenFor a limited time, our listeners get 60% off FOR LIFE AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men when you use code 'CAMP' at https://mengotomars.com👕🧢 Use CHRISTMASCAMP at checkout for 17% off when you shop at https://camp-rd.com/collections/chris...🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Wernher Von Brauns Early Life4:45 Building V-2 Rockets For Hitler8:01 Nazi’s Rocket Production Moves Underground12:00 Nazi Scientists Meet U.S. Troops15:29 Operation Paperclip Begins18:40 American’s V-2 Test Flights22:06 Move to Huntsville Alabama23:22 Walt Disney Teams Up w/ Von Braun25:05 The Space Race Begins27:39 Creation of NASA’s Space Program28:20 Saturn V + Communion on The moon30:32 Wernher Von Braun Leaves NASA31:18 Project Blue Beam + Von Brauns Headstone35:38 The Scholarly Thoughts39:30 R.I.P. Albert’s#history #podcast #war #battle #ww2 #mystery #film #camping #interesting #knowledge #education #knowledgeispower

The same guy who helped Hitler build the first ballistic missiles is the same man Americans later call the father of space travel. He designed rockets for Nazi Germany, then came to the United States under Operation Paperclip, eventually leading the team to put the first man on the moon. He wasn't just a scientist. He was a weapon maker for the Third Reich and a hero of the American space age. Two legacies, one man. And his name was Varner von Braun. This is the story of how NASA recruited a Nazi scientist.

scientists to defeat the Russians and push America into the space age. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to History Camp. What's up, people, and welcome back to History Camp. Thank you guys so much for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating controversial stories from all history throughout all time forever. Yes, that is right. That is what we do in this place. We talk about the past every week.

And it wouldn't be possible without you, of course. And it also wouldn't be possible without my dear friend, Christos Pagapodotos. How are you, my friend? What's up, everybody? Wait, are you filming yourself? There's a Christos cam? There's a Christos cam? It's actually very dark.

We're not going to use it. Thank goodness. I mean, this is absurd. You think the people are... Christos. I sense a mutiny happening in the studio. There are some comments asking for it. The people are dying from my mom.

Let's go. Mama Papa Dabados. I love that. Respect. No, thank you, Chrysos, for being here. But unfortunately, we can't afford to give you too much time for side tangents because we have more important business

to get into, all right? And that is a man named Varner von Braun. Now, many people pronounce it, Warner von Braun. I'll probably say Warner von Braun because, you know what? I'm American, dude. I'm American. And I've wrecked this country. Even though our flag is black, and apparently that's controversial.

I didn't know that. It was just a cool-looking flag I saw on Amazon. I was like, oh, yeah, I want to put an American flag in the studio. Let people know what team I'm on. And then I was like, wait a second, this is bad? People aren't happy. I don't know the details. We're probably going to do a little scenery swap in the new year anyway.

So, sorry. But anyway, this is an interesting episode. Okay, this is one of like the very first sort of like low-key conspiracy of theirs I got into as a kid was Operation Paperclip. We gave some type of immunity to a lot of the Nazi scientists, brought them over here and said, hey, build stuff for us. And the story is fascinating. And Warner von Braun is an interesting character. How can one guy do a really bad thing but also a good thing? And we don't know what to do with that.

How can we accept the duality of humankind? How can we accept that one person can do different things for different forces? And where does that leave us morally and emotionally? Well, all that and more will be figured out today. So, just to begin. Also, let me just say, also, I don't speak German. I know Daugnachshund, and that's about it. So if I mess anything up and I incorrectly pronounce this,

just give me a little bit of grace. I'm doing my best. All right? Let's get into it. Okay? Before Warner von Braun was creating the actual, like, Saturn, five rocket. He was just a kid in the old German empire who was obsessed with space. Yes, Vaughn Braun was born in 1912 in a little town in Germany known as Wierzitz. And it's today

technically in Poland. It is Verzisk in Poland now. But regardless, he was born there and from just a young child was just very bright and very excited about the prospect of going to outer space. So as a teenager, he basically finds a book that pushes him on the path to rocketry. And that is a book known as the Rocket into Interplanetary Space by a man named Herman Oberth. Now, according to NASA,

that book just hit him hard in the fields and he was like, you know what, I'm going to teach myself math just to understand the book. That's how dedicated, literally calculus, trig, the whole thing,

he read the book and was like, I don't know what this is saying, but I'm going to figure it out. And from that point on, he just locked in, just legit Sigma Grindset dialed in on figuring out the rockets. And he was like, how are we going to get off this freaking planet? So by the late 1920s, early 1930s,

he joined a rocket club near Berlin. And this is like an actual thing. Like you can still find them today to a certain extent. But these are just clubs of people that are obsessed with, you know, aerospace, rocketry and trying to figure out how to get off of this planet. So this club was doing all sorts of stuff, right? They were exploding things and blowing up test vehicles and, you know, other people were interested in space. And there was just a whole bunch of groups of, it's just a big group of like, you know, explosion nerds that were trying to figure it all out.

So at the same time, if you're familiar with anything about European history, 1920s and 30s, is an interesting time to be a German. Okay. So the political situation in Germany is going pretty crazy, right? There's economic collapse. There's rising extremism. And then there's like this little political party. as the National Socialists that kind of like take over. Some people call him the Nazis, maybe you heard of them. And this is the world that he's growing up in. Okay, he's a brilliant guy that's

fascinated about space living in a country that's basically falling apart in the government that all of a sudden sees rockets not as like a fun little science project to, you know, further humankind, but just as weaponry. And that is where his dream of space gets tied to the worst boss imaginable. And that's a man known as Adolf Hitler. Now, this day, takes us to a place in Germany known as Pea Numunda. Now, in 1932, the German army started quietly funding rocket research in an attempt to make long-range weapons that wouldn't break the old World War I treaties. So, von Braun, in his early 20s, signs on as a civilian engineer working under the army's

supervision. By 1936, the army built a full research and test base in Pena Munda, and von Braun became the technical director of the development team. But rocket development is insanely expensive. So to stay inside that system and to keep his rocket projects funded, he joins the Nazi party in 1937 and then joins the SS in 1940, eventually holding the rank of SS Storm Bonfure, which would be like the equivalent of being like a major in like the U.S. military in a way. Now, I know this sounds convenient, okay, and I am with you.

I don't know all the details of everything Von Braun ever believed, but he later said that this was just paperwork and purely a career advancement. But the bottom line is he chose to work with the regime, not outside of it. And this is ultimately what causes a massive amount of controversy. Right. You have this guy that's a brilliant rocket scientist and he kind of chooses to join in with the bad guys because he's like, yeah, I want to get my projects funded. Is it right?

Is it wrong? that's for you to decide. It's kind of like, I don't know, you can imagine someone like cozying up with a politician that they don't actually like ideologically, but it's going to fund their project and be like, yeah, let's just be tight with this dude so we can get our stuff figured out

because it's just a means to an end. At Pena Mundo, his main project is the A4 rocket, which would later become known as the V2 rocket. And the idea is pretty simple. The rocket launches almost straight up, arcs around the edge of space, and then comes down at SuperSept. sonic speed with a one-ton warhead strap to it. Now, remember, the goal at first was not space travel.

This was weaponry. This was trying to blow people up. Now, what made the V2 so wild wasn't just the size of the explosion. It was that this thing was the world's first ballistic missile. It's a pretty remarkable thing to invent. Now, it steers itself using a gyroscope. It uses turbo pumps to fuel the engine and actually stays stable in flight with these massive fins. Now, for something built in the 1940s, its guidance was so advanced. It was more accurate than some early Cold War missiles that actually came decades later. The test flights in the early 1940s, they blew up a lot of equipment. But by 1942, they're getting full-range flights.

And on June 20th, 1944, a V2 test past the Carmen line. This is about like, you know, something like 70 miles up, like 100 kilometers up, making it the first human-made project to reach what we now call space. Now, on paper, that's a massive milestone for spaceflight. But in reality, these rockets are not going to be used for space. It's going to be something a little different. The Nazis rushed to mass produce it. But in August 1943, the British bombed the area, Pena Munday,

in an attempt to basically get rid of the program before it's actually able to scale out. In response, the Nazis move all this production underground into tunnels in central Germany near the town of Nordhausen. The facility became known as Mithelwerk, but it also became more than just another rocket program. In order to fund this underground program with workers, the SS sets up the Mitzelbao Dora concentration camp, forum, you know, the camp records and from modern historians, we know that around 60,000 prisoners were sent here between 1943 and 1945, and between 16 to 20,000 of them died from starvation or disease or just the brutal working conditions, beatings, hangings. It's just a terrible, basically,

you know, forced, you know, labor force. But here is the strange irony. After the war, those same underground tunnels where prisoners died building V2s were actually taken over by the United States during the Cold War and used as a missile and weapons storage facility. So when people say more people died building the V2 than were killed by it, it's not exactly an exaggeration. Historians estimate that around 3,000 V2s were launched, but only around 8,000 to 9,000 people were actually killed in those attacks, while over 16 to 20,000 prisoners died from actually building the rocket. How crazy is that? Like actually building the rocket legit killed more people than the rocket killed. So,

Von Braun also wasn't some guy who, you know, never saw this. Again, when examining von Braun's like personal agenda and like him as an idyllogue, it seems like at this point he is just fully committed to building rockets. Like that's his thing and he doesn't care where the money comes from. Is that good? Is that bad? Again, so this is a moral quandary. But he understands that these rockets are being built by forced labor. So records showed that he actually visited Mitzelverk multiple times, and he knew that the rockets were being built by these concentration camp prisoners.

And after the war, he even admitted that the conditions were, quote, repulsive. But while it was happening, he kept working. And he kept taking promotions and awards from the Nazi government. Again, on the one hand, you could be like, no, dude, you can't back up the Nazis. But on the other hand, it's like, if you need to build rockets and you need the funding, You're not going to like turn down the awards. Like again, this is a moral issue. I don't know what I would do.

That's tough, right? So regardless, I mean, there's probably people in the U.S. government that's building rockets now that are like, look, dude, I want to, I'm dedicated to this specific thing. And sometimes my ideas are being used in ways that I don't like. Right. So September 1944, the V2 was officially operational. And London, Antwerp, and other allied targets were hit without any warning.

The V2 was so fast that it hit London in under five minutes from launch. Like, think about that. Five minutes this thing's launched and London gets hit with the V2. Militarily, it doesn't win the war, but it proves something very important. It proves that long-range ballistic missiles are real. And it, in a way, changes warfare forever. Right in the middle of this, Von Braun has his own scare. So in March 1944, he's arrested by the Gestapo and accused of,

of defeatist talk and being too open about wanting to use rockets for space travel, not for war. However, he isn't in custody for long. After about two weeks, high-ranking military leaders step in and argue that von Braun is too valuable to lose. And Hitler himself signs off on his release, and he's sent straight back to building rockets. Again, you can see his quandary here. He's like, I want to go to space. If I don't do this, these people will just get rid of me.

If I cooperate, then I'll have some freedom. So by early 1945, he's in deep. He's a Nazi party member, SS officer, technical boss of the V2, and fully aware that these rockets are being built by starving prisoners and underground concentration camps in order to kill people in London. But now, the Reich is collapsing. So by the spring of 1945, the Red Army is coming from the East, and the Americans, the British, and all the other allied powers are closing it on the West.

At this point, everyone knows that Germany is done, especially Von Braun and his team, which, as we can kind of imply from his defeatist talk, he kind of knew the jig was up way before this. So this is now the game theory in the real politic of how these types of things end. Okay. If the Soviets capture Von Braun and his team, all of them will likely end up working from Moscow. If the Nazis start to panic, they might execute them completely from being captured. The safest bet for the Americans is for them to get to him first.

But here's how calculated his surrender was, okay? Von Braun didn't just run away. his team deliberately destroyed key technical documents to control exactly what information the Allies would get. They buried research papers and blueprints in mines and in caves. They created their own, like, sanitized documentation a handover. They literally curated what the Americans would learn about their work. So as the Reich is collapsing, Von Braun and his team go south into Bavaria, another region of Germany. And they go there on purpose.

And the reason is that they are so confident the U.S. Army will arrive before the Soviets. So by that point, surrendering to America isn't really a risk. It's survival. It's their only other way. So on May 2nd, 1945, near Reuters in Austria, von Braun and key members of his team surrendered to U.S. forces. The surrender actually begins when von Braun's brother, Magnus, literally rides out on a bicycle to flag down U.S. troops. When the two groups finally meet each other, the Germans show up with their own interpreter, their own maps, and basically show all the hidden reasons. research sites and a carefully prepared summary of their work. However, the Americans already have a plan forming. And that is something known as Operation Paperclip. But before that, there was another Operation, Operation Backfire. Now, most people have heard of Operation Paperclip, but Operation

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By October of 1945, the British gathered von Braun and his team of engineers in Cookshaven, Germany, on the coast of the North Sea, with basically the goal of making them demonstrate V2 rockets for Allied Intent. And think about how insane this is, right? The same rockets that had been crashing into London and killing thousands of people just months earlier were now being fired from German soil with British permission for the British to study. They launched three working V2 rockets into the North Sea while Von Braun basically explained how it all worked. Some of the British officers standing there had literally survived V2 strikes in London. Like imagine that. Like they're watching the weapon that

destroyed their entire city. And the guy who basically built it and, you know, managed the entire operation is just casually kind of walking around you with the controls being, yes, this is what this button does. And yes, you can see this one. It does this. Like, it's wild. So we can see here that Von Braun is already switching sides and kind of cozying up to the Allies before he ever even sets foot in America. And this moment ultimately brings us to Operation Paperclip. After the war in Europe is more or less getting buttoned up, the U.S. launches Operation Overcast, which would eventually be renamed into what we know now as Operation Paperclip. And this is more or less the secret program to bring German scientists, engineers, and technicians to the U.S. for military and technological work.

Between 1945 up until the late 1950s, Operation Paperclip relocated about 1,600 German specialists to the United States, including von Braun and over 100 men of his personal rocket. But here's the uncomfortable part. Many of these people, like von Braun, were Nazi party or SS members. Now, this creates a massive problem for U.S. immigration. I mean, what are they going to say? Like, who is this person? What's his documentation? Where is he from? What does he do? So, their records got fixed, for lack of a better word. This is where Operation Paperclip gets the name. Immigration officers literally attached paperclips to files that had been cleaned up to remove or downplay their Nazi affiliations. So in order to make Von Braun acceptable to do this American work in

America, he had to go through formal denazification. This process involved a 131 question form called the Frogobogen that basically asked them about every aspect of their Nazi involvement. We want to know party membership, financial contributions, relationships with officials, and even his participation in war crimes. Now, von Braun answers are what a officials called appropriate. He said joining the Nazi party and the SS was just paperwork, something he had to do in order to keep his rocket work going. Again, he's focused on going to the moon or going to space. In order to do that, he's going to have to play ball with whoever's in charge. This is what his explanation is more or less. And even though records show that he

visited Middlewerk and, you know, he allegedly saw what was happening, he claimed that he had no idea what was happening to the prisoners down there. In 1947, he was classified as a follower rather than an offender under the denotification system, which cleared him up for work on American projects. So while Von Braun is being cleared to work for the U.S., some of his former bosses and co-workers are literally sitting on trial at Nuremberg. So while one system is trying to punish the past and basically bring justice for these atrocious war crimes and destroying of Europe. The other is kind of recruiting them and denazifying them. Again, is that good? Is it bad? It just is politics. So by September 1945, von Braun arrived in the U.S. under an army contract

and he and his team were first taken to Fort Strong near Boston, then moved to Fort Bliss in Texas, working for the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. From there, they're driven out to White Sands-Proven Ground in New Mexico to start launching captured V2s for American research. Same guy, same rockets, but a brand new flag, baby. That's what it's all about, right? So at White Sands, the mission is simple. Take the captured V2 hardware and learn everything we can from it. So between 1946 and 1952, the U.S. launched dozens of V2 rockets, basically as sounding rockets, which are unscrewed suborbital rockets that were tests that basically carried instruments into the U.S. upper atmosphere to collect data. And then they came back down with all of that information.

They carried cameras that took the very first photo of Earth from space, showing the curvature of the planet from over 100 miles up. You can actually see the photo here. They carry instruments to measure cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere. They also sent biological experiments, fruit flies, seeds, even monkeys to see how living things handled high acceleration in space-like conditions. Now, here's a fun fact, or maybe it's not fun, but it is a fact. The first monkey launched into space didn't come back alive. This is the OG Harambe. Albert 1 suffocated during takeoff.

Albert 2, this monkey, made it a space, but died when the parachute failed on reentry. R.I.P. pouring out for the dead homie. And then Albert 3 died when his rocket exploded mid-flight. And then Albert 4. Survived the flight. Let's go, baby. but then he died on the landing, which, look, we don't have to talk

about every sad thing, okay? But it wouldn't be until 1959 that we have Albert 6. This is a squirrel monkey named as Yorik. Finally survived both space flight and re-entry.

Now, some of these White Sands V-2s reached over 100 miles in altitude, which is higher than modern space tourism flights. Like you've seen like the like the, what is it, SpaceX, like tourism flights where they'll go up. These V2s are going higher than that. So the same missile that was slamming into London just a few years before is now helping

American science test what space is really like. And all of this is happening in New Mexico, the same place where the nuclear test had happened in 1945 that were eventually dropped. Basically, you know, part of the Manhattan Project, the, you know, the Trinity nuclear test is what we call them. And then also the Roswell crash would occur in the same. region in 1947, which, you know, was it a weather balloon? Who knows? But regardless, the timing overlap is pretty incredible. So while Von Braun is launching, you know, captured Nazi

rockets into space, 100 miles away, people in Roswell are like, dude, there's flying saucers. Same year, same state, which causes a massive conspiracy, okay? And again, there's no, this is where things are interesting, because if you just look at it from one path, you're like, oh, they obviously We were just seeing rockets going up in the air, and this was, you know, a failed rocket mission in the United States didn't want to admit that they were working with former Nazis to send rockets up to space

that accidentally crashed over in Roswell. Or it's that aliens saw that the United States was dealing with going to space and they had to come over and check it out and see what was good. And they were like, oh, these guys are about to get space travel. Let's go spy on them. Now, there's no solid evidence of Von Braun running

like a CIR UFO program or reverse engineering saucers or any of that stuff. But the overlap is pretty interesting. Right, you have German rocket scientists, former Nazi, secret test ranges, high altitude experiments, and then the public is suddenly seeing weird things in the sky. But while all this is going on, Von Braun himself is already thinking bigger than just these little V2 missiles. By the late 1940s, early 1950s, von Braun is writing and talking about crazy ideas. I mean, giant orbital space stations and manned missions to the moon and to Mars and multi-stage rockets that could make all of this possible.

But this is also when there's a little breakout known as the Cold War. And it's just kind of starting to formulate. And the U.S. wasn't ready to fund a massive space program yet. So for now, he's still just the missile guy. However, by 1950, the Army wants its rocket people and its smartest, you know, rocket engineers all under one roof. So Von Braun and his entire team is moved to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where Von Braun becomes chief of the guided missile development division. This is where the Redstone and Jupiter missiles are created. Redstone was America's first operational ballistic missile, basically like an evolved V2, just with better guidance and longer range. While the Jupiter and Jupiter C missiles were medium range missiles

and test vehicles that became the backbone for early U.S. space launches. So at this point, Von Braun is the poster child of rocketry. And in 1955, he becomes a U.S. citizen. But then he does something that changes how Americans see space entirely. He teams up with an unlikely man, a man by the name of Walt Disney. So by the mid-1950s, Disney airs a series of TV specials. So 55, we see Man in Space and Man in Space. and man and the moon, and then by 1957, we see Mars and beyond.

And Von Braun actually appears on these shows as almost like a pop science expert, almost like Bill Nye or something. And he basically explains how multi-stage rockets work, how a space station could actually orbit the Earth, and how we might one day go to the moon and Mars. These Disney specials were seen by millions of Americans and amassed nearly 100 million views. And in a country that only had like 170 million people at the time, Von Braun didn't just

build America's rockets. He's the guy that is teaching Americans about space and getting people inspired for this moment. So, now you've got this picture, okay? To most Americans, he's this smiling rocket professor on Disney and he's teamed up with Walt and, you know, he's

this like educator to get people fired up about this crazy new frontier that humankind is about to undergo. To the army, he's still designing missiles. And to historians, he's a former SS officer tied in with the Nazis whose rockets were built by camp prisoners. You can see how everyone has a different perspective on this guy. Okay, of course, overwhelmingly people in America and regular society just saw him as an educator, but there are other perspectives on the same man that are all kind of bubbling. But all this is

going to change. So on October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launches something called Sputnik 1. This is the first artificial satellite. Sputnik was not actually that big. In my mind, when I was like reading about Sputnik as a kid, I was like, oh, this was like a massive spacecraft. It was only really like the size of like a beach ball. Like it was about like, it was like that big. Like it's not actually that massive, but it scared the hell out of Americans. People could actually see it pass over their homes so often that newspapers publish tracking time so that families could go outside and watch Sputnik pass across the sky. You could even hear its radio beeps if you had a short wave radio.

And the message, not literally, but metaphorically, is pretty clear, all right? If the Soviets could put this over our heads, they could reach anywhere in the United States. And this made people terrified. And this more or less caused what people talk about, a missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union, essentially saying that we are so far behind the technology of Russia. However, Von Braun and his team had been saying for years that they were ready to launch a satellite. But of course, the politics of the time get in the way. The White House wanted a civilian-looking win, not a military one.

So the job was handed to Navy's Vanguard program instead, which fails massively on live TV. You can actually see it. The Vanguard rocket blows up on the launch pad in front of all these reporters, and it actually, like, earned the nickname Caputnik, basically as like a reference on like a pun on Sputnik, which is sad, but also funny. So January 1958, the Army finally gets the green light, okay? Using a modified Redstone and Jupiter C rocket called Juno 1, Von Braun's team launches Explorer 1, the first successful U.S. satellite. Explorer 1 weighed only like 30 pounds compared to the 184 pounds Sputnik that the Soviets launched, but it made the first major discovery of the space age. Attached to it was a Geiger-Muller tube, created by the one and only James Van Allen.

Now, this Geiger Mueller tube basically is a thing that detected radiation trapped in Earth's magnetic field, which would later be known as the Van Allen radiation belts. Now, these radiation belts are very important in order to send human beings to space. You don't want them to get cooked up by radiation before they even get there. So at this point, the U.S. and the USSR are in what people are calling the space race. So the United States decides to do something it's never done before, and they decided to create a space program. So fast forward to 1960.

Von Braun's team at Redstone was transferred to Marshall Space Flight Center, where he was appointed first director under a new program called NASA. He wasn't the first director of NASA. He was the first director of Marshall Space Flight Center, which is a part of NASA. I think probably a good distinction, but kind of nuanced. Regardless, his new mission was to build the giant rockets for the Apollo program, which was ordered by President Kennedy, funded and protected by NASA administrator, James Webb. Have you ever heard the name James Webb before? Yes, you have. It's the same James

Webb that the telescope is named after. And it was made possible because of Von Braun's Saturn 5 rocket. Now, the Saturn 5 is a beast. All right, let's get a picture of the Saturn 5 up here, because it's basically 363 feet tall, 6.2 million pounds, and 7.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. That's more energy than 85 Hoover dams generating a full capacity. All right, this thing is massive. And on July 16th, 1969, Saturn 5 launched Apollo 11 from Kennedy Space Center, and four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Now, fun fact, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Buzz Aldrin took out of his bag, you know, some personal belongings. And each astronaut is allowed, like, a small bag of personal

things that they get to pick. And he pulls out a small chalice, a piece of bread, and a vial of wine. And why did he do all this? Because allegedly, and again, this is rumored, but some people believe it, he performed communion on the moon or in a studio somewhere directed by Stanley Cooper, but who knows, okay? He allegedly, cornered the story, Buzz Aldrin legit did communion on the moon. If you don't know what communion is, we have a whole thing on it in religion camp, check it out there. But I mean, we got space Jesus before GTA-6. How crazy is that, guys? We got legit Jesus. Jesus on space. Now, other people will be like, well, it was a version of community. It wasn't literally. No one exactly knows, okay? Maybe Buzz does. We got to ask him. But this wasn't actually

broadcast on TV. And they say the reason is that NASA had been sued after the Apollo 8 crew read from the book of Genesis on Christmas Eve. Basically, you know, separation of religion, da-da-da. Regardless, this is the peak of Von Braun's public career. Okay? So most people watching on TV, he's now like the icon, the symbol of American space travel. But if you know his whole timeline, there's no real neat

way to put it, right? Within 25 years, this guy went from creating rockets for Hitler himself to standing next to American presidents celebrating the moon landing. And after Apollo, his story takes one final turn. After the success of the Apollo mission,

public interest in space travel kind of faded. And by the early in 1970s, budget cuts actually hit NASA and caused them to cancel already planned moon missions to focus on things like, you know, the space shuttle and lower orbit projects and, you know, things that they considered more practical. Then in 1972, Von Braun leaves NASA and joins Fairchild Industries as a vice president. He still pushes for advancement in space travel like missions to Mars and long-term shuttles, but Washington's focus is now on putting weapons and missile defense systems in space.

old von Braun can't get away from it, huh? He's like, I just want to go to the moon and people are like, you need to kill stuff. You need to create weapons. And he's like, oh, my gosh, I guess, you know? And this is where the UFO fake alien stuff enters into the story. Now, again, let me just put like a big, allegedly,

none of this is confirmed, but I think it is interesting. And oh, gosh, do I love a good conspiracy? So by the mid-1970s, Dr. Carol Rosen says that she worked as Von Braun's spokesperson at Fairchild. years later, starting in the late 1990s, this woman, Carol Rosen, gives interviews and testimonies about what she says von Braun told her near the end of his life. Now, according to Rosen, Von Braun warned her that there was a long-term plan to sell the public on space-based weapons using a series of staged threats that would first come by first the Russians, then general terrorists, then rogue nations and quote

third world countries and then asteroid prevention and then finally the last card drum rule please Christos extraterrestrial threat Christos a death just broke I'm sorry but the last one extraterrestrials yes

aliens so she says he repeated that phrase the last card and made it clear he believed an alien threat could one day be used as a real excuse a fake excuse to support weapons in space. Now, a lot of people consider this to be Project Bluebeam, but of course, there's no solid evidence for this. It's important to note that by the 70s,

UFO culture was exploding. Stephen Spielberg released Close Encounters in 1977. The government admitted to decades of like UFO investigations after Project Blue Book ended in 1969, and public polls showed a massive number of Americans believed that extraterrestrial's aliens had visited Earth. Now, let me just be very clear on this. There's no written proof from Von Braun saying any of this. But Rosen had consistently told the story for years and in a way, it lines up with real Cold War thinking about space weapons and space threats. But then comes the final chapter in Von Braun's life. In 1976, he's diagnosed with kidney cancer. And a year later, on June 16th, 1977, he dies in Alexandria, Virginia, at just 65 years old.

His headstone has the verse Psalm 191, a Bible verse about the heavens that basically reads, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Now, to conspiracy theorists, this wasn't a Bible verse. This is a posthumous message. They argued that Von Braun chose this verse as like a secret. confession you know like if you don't know anything about this this idea of the firmament this is a fascinating thing this is a hint that the firmament is real and that he knows something that the public doesn't know now now just as like a little sidebar the firmament in some conspiracy circles is

referenced in the bible in the book of genesis as we obviously know and basically says that god created the earth and then there's this thing called the firmament and you can't actually get out of the firmament okay and that's like there's water above the earth and there's like basically the like space isn't real, I guess, is sort of the general theory on this. Not something I believe, but in the interest of being, you know, thorough, that is out there. Some even claim that it ties into the supposed warnings about this last card, this alien invasion, either real or fabricated, and that he was basically trying to leave a clue on his way out. Now, obviously, there's no evidence of this, okay? And his family and his colleagues say that it was simply averse about the wonder

of creation and the beauty of space and, you know, like everything in Von Braun's life, the headstone became just a part of the myth. So let's just do like a quick recap, all right? By the end of Von Braun's life, he was a decorated NASA figure in the United States, former Nazi engineer, and for people in like the UFO world, the guy who supposedly warned that one day the alien threat might be a deception or real and be the reason we have space weapons. So, next time you hear Operation Paperclip or footage of the moon landing or alien invasion

remember that there's one person whose life connected all these threads and that man is Vorner von Braun I mean that is that's a trip what a crazy life that guy had right now when it comes to the moral issue like on the one hand I'm like

what were his options like he like if you're living in Germany during Nazi occupation, you're either with them or you're not with them. And if you're not with them, your life sucks. And you kind of got to lay low and he just doesn't do anything. And then the Americans, you know, come in and he has to try, like, he wouldn't ever come to America because he's like former Nazi vibes. So he'd have to be like, or I guess he wouldn't be part of the Nazi party. He would have to come to America as like, I'm, you know, a German refugee or something

post-war and then try to get him with the space program. But again, he's also like a genius engineer. That part is undoubtable. So part of me is like, yeah, I kind of get why he sided with the Nazis in that time. It's not like he was American and went over there being like, I believe in what these guys say. And furthermore, I can't find any documentation on the internet that he was like an ideological Nazi. Now, as it possible he destroyed this stuff? Sure. But again, his, I don't think there was anything that came afterwards.

It's not like, you know, when he came to America, he was still like doing Nazi stuff. He was just like, yeah, I want to build rockets. I want to go to space. That's my vibe. So in that regard, I'm like, I guess the good outweighs the bad, right? Like he got man on the moon, allegedly. No, I think he's like, he got people to space. He built the first rocket to get us off this freaking planet.

That's pretty remarkable. And also just like, his life is so crazy. Like, in one lifetime, he's hanging with Hitler and Kennedy. And just like post up with both of them just like, you all need some rockets. Your boys got 20. You know what I mean? Walt Disney, too. Also Disney broke.

Freaking great point, Christos. And that's why we pay you millions of dollars, okay? Because it's like, yeah, he, like, he's connected to some of the most powerful people of that time period, you know, from like the 1970s from, you know, where he was born, 1918 or whatever. That's a crazy life. He's also an example of being too good at your job. Yes. Which is why I stink. That's smart.

Okay, that is very smart, strategic incompetence. You never get put too close to the sun. Exactly. You've got to stay right in the pocket. I respect that a lot. But it's also, zooming out from Von Braun, there's something else to be said about people that have done bad things. I mean, let me say being a Nazi is a bad thing.

But people that do bad things kind of getting away with it if they're good enough and willing to play ball. Like the end of Inglorious Bastards, right? The Jew Hunter is like on the phone with the American. Americans like, hey, I'm going to end this whole war. I'll kill Hitler if you just give me a deal. And the Americans are like, yeah. And like, is it better to give one Nazi a sweetheart deal to kill all the other Nazis and, you know, unite Europe?

These are the kinds of utilitarian kind of decisions humans have to make all the time. Who told you about that scene? Because I know you don't watch it. I watched it. And I loved it. That's a fire movie. Fair. But to me, I'm like, yeah, that is almost like an allusion to Operation Paperclip.

Like that guy, like making the deal with the Americans like, yo, I'll sell out these people if you guys give me a little bag. And then in Japan, unit 731, all those scientists got immunity because they handed over all their findings. So it's like bad people throughout history, I've always said this, if they're willing to play ball and they know how to play strategically, they can get away with a lot of stuff. Now, I don't want to paint von Braun as like, you know, the worst guy in the world like literally Hitler. but he was a Nazi which is bad. But then he did a lot of good stuff, which is also good. And as human beings, we have to deal with a duality that people that can do bad things can also do good things.

Right. Now, zooming out, it's crazy when you think that the first human made object to reach space is a Nazi weapon. The first photograph from space of the earth was taken by that same weapon. The first American in space rode on a rocket designed by a former Nazi officer that was high ranking in the SS.

And then the first humans to walk on another world, literally getting to the moon, literally got there using technology that started with concentration camp labor that most likely was funded by Hitler. That's insane. There were also five primates killed. It's a shout out to the Alberts.

The squirrel monkeys. And I'm not really, I just want to have a serious moment. for as long as I fucking live I will remember those Alberts and what they did for this nation

these swirl monkeys were plucked out of a jungle somewhere trying to do monkey shit trying to just be like I'm a monkey I'm like trying to vibe and they were like

no no no you're going to space like actually we talk about how crazy Warner Von Braun's life is we gotta talk about how crazy Albert the fourth life was

that he was just doing monkey stuff his whole life and then they strapped him up in a space suit with a helmet and they were like and he just had to go to space.

Let's get a comment for each one of the monkeys from every single. Yeah, for real. That's actually a great point, Chrysos, and that's something that, you know, dead ass on the dead homies, I need you to say that. First off, I need an Albert the fourth t-shirt, okay?

True. I need Albert the, maybe the fifth also. Give me all the Alberts on a T-shirt, okay, in loving memory of RIP that gave their lives for these nations so that you and I can be free. That's a bar. Secondly, I wanted the comments

to just shout it out for the Alvards. Because look, bro, look, bro, the way we've been treating these primates, the way we've been treating monkeys in America has been fucked up, dude. Harambe? Yep.

There was another, do you remember that monkey where the kid fell into the enclosure and he was like, I think it was a girl monkey, I think it was like a gorilla. And she was nice to the kid and was kind of like being chill about it.

Kind of a crazy thing. I'm almost positive this happened. There's like a kid that fell into an enclosure and everyone was like, oh, no. I don't know if they killed that one or not. And then, of course, obviously, all these monkeys be sent into space. You know what's funny is that the Russians sent a dog.

I forget what the name of the dog was. Could you actually find that out? Because that's a sweet dog. I want to say like Lakai or Lakia. I must be close with that. Give it to me. Come on, drum roll, please. Lika.

Laika. I'll take that. that's I think that's close. But yeah, it's just funny that the Russians were like, where are we going to get a monkey? We live in Russia. Go get another one now. Yeah, they just got a dog and just send it up there. But no, shout out to all the Alberts. Those guys are fire and respect for, you know, your service to this great nation. I'm curious, what do you guys think? Varner von Braun. Good guy, bad guy, complicated guy, like most, you know, iconic figures in history. I would love to know. Please write a comment. If there's anything I missed on this,

Please shout it out. Let me know what you're thanking. And yeah, dude, just, you know, shout out to the Alberts. Obviously, if you like this channel, I got great news for you. We have religion camp where we dive into all sorts of crazy religious topics from all time throughout all history, everything under the sun of God. And also we have main camp, Camp Gagnon. You can check it out there. I do all sorts of interviews with interesting, fun people. And yeah, we just try to figure out everything that's ever happened on this big, beautiful planet. And then, of course, history camp. So please subscribe to this channel. And you can see me live, Mark Yachton on live. Please come say what's up to me. Dap me up after the show. Y'all are the best. I'm so grateful for this little community that we're building here.

And I love reading the comments. I'm genuinely, I, let me just have a moment of sincerity. And then I'll go back to being an idiot. Thank you guys truly for making the show possible and for supporting me and my dreams and for giving all of us a job here. And it's not possible without you guys just like supporting the show and telling people and sharing it. So thank you very much. Sorry.

I hate having to be sincere like that. Anyway, thank you guys so much. I appreciate you. God bless you all. And I will see you in the future to talk about the past. Peace. What's up, people?

We're going to take a break because we got new merch. That's right. It is the holiday season and the good folks over at Camp R&D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the Christmas sweaters with the aliens. We got the Christmas sweaters

with the conspiracy vibes. You already know. I mean, this one might be. you my favorite one, a Christmas tree full of aliens, full Christmas sweater energy. And then, of course, if you just want something simple, you know, you bust out the camp logo tea with the little Christmas lights on it. Come on, bro, get cute for Christmas. Okay, it is a holiday season. All right, we're celebrating the birth of the Savior, okay? And what better way to do it than a cop a couple threads for the person in your life that you know that loves a campsite that loves hanging with us every single

week? And right now, we're running a promo through the holidays. That's right. Use the promo code. Christmas camp for 15% off. I just made that up on the spot, but I think we can do it, right? I'll call some people. Christmas camp for 15% off. Sure. 16% off.

Whatever you say, Mark. Should we give them more? One more. 17% off people. I think this is going to work. I'm not positive. We're going to see if we can do it. But I'll, yeah, check it out, guys.

We got all the camp stuff going until the end of the year. Check it out. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. I love you all. God bless and Merry Christmas. What's up, people? We're going to take a break really quick because I have amazing news. I'm coming on the road.

That's right, my very first headlining tour where I'm going to every city that will possibly allow me to go there. I'm going to Salt Lake City. I'm going to Washington, D.C. and Charlotte, North Carolina in February. Those tickets will be announced soon. You can get all the tickets at Mark Yagnon Live, and I'll see you guys there.