Throughline - The Dark Side Of The Moon

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

50 years ago the world watched as man first landed on the moon, an incredible accomplishment by the engineers and scientists of NASA. But what if some of those same engineers and scientists had a secret history that the U.S. government tried to hide? This week, the story of how the U.S. space program was made possible by former Nazis.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. The moon rose above the horizon. Millions of hurrahs hailed her appearance as her pale beams shone gracefully in the clear heavens. One set regarded her disc as a polished mirror by means of which people could see each other from different points of the earth and interchange their thoughts. As for the Yankees, they had no other ambition than to take possession of this new continent of the sky and to plant

upon the summit of its highest elevation the star-spangled banner of the United States of America. T-minus 97 seconds to stand counting. All systems are go. We've got a priority. A terrible silence weighed upon the entire scene. Not a breath of wind upon the earth. Not a sound of breathing from the countless chests of the spectators.

Their hearts seemed afraid to beat. T-minus 60 seconds to stand counting. At the 20th, there was a general shudder, as it occurred to the minds of that vast assemblage that the bold travelers shut up within the projectile were also counting those terrible seconds. 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 52, 53, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 51, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 59, 52, 53, 56, 57, 52, 53, 56, 57, 53, 56, 57, 53, 56, 57, 53, 57, 53, 56, 57, 53, 57, 53, 56, 57, 53, 57, 53, 56, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, 57, 53, of the earth as from a crater. The earth heaved up, and with great difficulty, some few spectators obtained a momentary glimpse of the projectile victoriously cleaving the air in the midst of the fiery vapors. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR.

Music 50 years since man landed and walked on the moon. Will we go back in time? The milestone that will stand in the big history of humanity. To understand the present. Hey, I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui. And on today's show, the secret operation that shaped the space race and made the moon landing possible. So these days, we're hearing a lot about how humans have to go back to space and reach the next frontier, Mars.

Private companies are getting into the game of space travel. Some even have plans to bring tourists to the moon. And it feels like a new kind of space race is emerging. But for most of human history, the thought of people flying into space, not to mention landing on the moon, was pure fantasy if they thought about it at all. And even then, it was usually confined to the realm of science fiction. The reading at the top is an excerpt from Jules Verne's 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon,

describing what he imagined a moon expedition might look like. It was written when the Civil War was just coming to an end. At that time, people still got around by horse and buggy, and most people lived on farms or in small towns. Many didn't travel far from where they were born. So space travel was a wild, far-fetched idea. But just about a century later, the idea became a reality. Here is what you probably know about the moon landing. The Cold War was raging. The Americans and the Soviets had been engaged in a

space race for years. And then on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon. There's that iconic image of Armstrong stepping off the lunar module. And then planting the American flag on the moon's surface. It was a triumphant moment for the U.S. We beat the Soviets to the moon, reached a new frontier, made the seemingly impossible possible. But like the moon, there's a dark side to this story. Because it turns out, that moment probably wouldn't have happened

without the help of a group of former Nazi scientists and engineers. And in particular, one engineer whose lifelong dream of space travel guided the mission to the moon. Hi, this is Shannon from Monona, Wisconsin, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. On March 23rd, 1925, a teenager living in Germany named Wernher von Braun got a telescope for his 13th birthday. The moment he peered through its lens up at the planets and the stars and the moon,

it was love at first sight. Every night he looked at the sky, imagining what it was like up there. He began reading Jules Verne and other sci-fi writers who dreamed of space travel, getting lost in the fantasy. Around this time, some astronomers and scientists began publishing articles. Saying space travel was possible. It wasn't just a crazy science fiction idea. If you build a rocket of sufficient power, probably based on liquid propellants, you could propel something into orbit. You could go to the moon, maybe even eventually go to the planets. When Von Braun came across these ideas, he was floored. He said he had read an article in an astronomy magazine about an imaginary trip to the moon.

And he said, it filled me with a romantic urge, not just to stare at the moon and planets, but to actually explore the mysterious universe. I knew how Columbus had felt, he said. Von Braun became obsessed with space travel. In fact, it became his dream to lead an expedition to the moon, to go to the moon himself, to land on the moon. This is Michael Neufeld. I'm a senior curator of the National Air and Space Museum here in Washington, D.C. It's part of the Smithsonian. And he wrote a biography of Wernher von Braun. He was raised in a very traditional aristocratic family, largely in Berlin. Von Braun graduated high school in 1930, enrolled in college, and decided to major in engineering.

And he linked up with a very new rocket group that was in Berlin. And this rocket group was part of this sort of enthusiasm for space travel that had arisen in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was the government of Germany from 1919 to 1933, until the Nazi party took power. Von Braun got involved with this rocket group, which his father found kind of baffling. He ended up going off into this area, which his father thought was basically crazy. You know, why was he interested in this crazy rocket technology, which just seemed so far-fetched at the time? Before long, though, the Army started getting interested in rocket technology, too, pumping more and more money into it. Although, unlike Von Braun, they didn't have space travel in mind. The Army is building up this rocket program because it believes that you could attack

an enemy almost without warning. This missile would come supersonically and impact in the city. And so they had visions of creating this surprise secret weapon. They recruited rocket scientists and engineers, including von Braun. And then, just a few months later, the world completely changed. At the end of January 1933, Hitler came to power.

He consolidated power very quickly. And von Braun at this point was just a student who was working for the army. So he was a very minor person at this point. And like a lot of people, he sort of observed the Nazi seizure of power. At this point, von Braun wasn't very interested in politics or anything other than rockets. But in time, there were some things about the Nazi ideology that von Braun would get behind. His upbringing was very conservative nationalist. So there were parts of the Nazi appeal which he liked,

the nationalistic dimension of Hitler's rule. And I have many indications that he became a believer in Hitler. But then so did almost the entire German population. You know, Hitler had this string of remarkable success. Hitler was reasserting Germany's power in the region, which for many Germans, including von Braun, was a good thing. As the 1930s went on, the Nazi party solidified its hold over the country. Von Braun eventually joined the party, became an SS officer,

and despite the fact that he was still in his 20s, he quickly climbed the ranks of the rocket program to become one of its leaders. Von Braun was this kind of wunderkind scientist, adored by everyone who he came in contact with. This is journalist Annie Jacobson, who wrote a book called Operation Paperclip. He was tall, blue-eyed, blonde, extremely good-looking, diplomatic. He had this polished aristocratic background, if he wanted to be so.

But he was also able to essentially be, you know, sort of buddy-buddy and talk to the ordinary worker. So he had an ability to inspire people. But he was also a very Machiavellian character, meaning he was willing to do whatever it took to see his dreams come to fruition. In my biography, I argue that he essentially becomes trapped in a Faustian bargain with the Third Reich.

And one of the deals that he made very early on with the devil, meaning Hitler himself, was to build rockets for the Third Reich. You know, they'll give him all the power and resources he wants to build rocketry, but only if they do it their way for their purposes. A means to an end. Von Braun figured if he played by the Nazis' rules and put in the time building up the rocket technology

for military purposes, he might eventually be able to use that technology for space travel. We take you now to Berlin. Tonight, here in Berlin, we should have a decision whether it's to be peace or war. This is London. You will now hear a statement by the Prime Minister. I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street.

In the fall of 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Hitler's Nazi state, and World War II began. It is evil things that we shall be fighting against. Brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution. And against them I am certain that the right will prevail. Pressure mounted for the rocket program to succeed. They brought prisoners from nearby concentration camps to work on the rockets, underground, in a factory with horrible conditions.

And von Braun was there, and he saw some of the things that were going on. It was a hellish environment. Dark, cold, dirty, dangerous. Thousands of people living and working in concealed caves, sleeping on straw or bare rock. They were beaten, sometimes even killed, for not working fast enough. And one Polish survivor later recounted that von Braun seemed, quote, completely unperturbed by the pile of corpses. There was not a whole lot he could have done about it. But he wrote documents, you know, regarding how concentration

gap labor should be used. He was involved in decision making about how the missiles are going to be produced. It's hard to say exactly how much Von Braun was involved in the day-to-day decisions there. But notes from one meeting revealed that he was among a small group of people who decided to set up the factory and bring prisoners from concentration camps to build the rockets. He was still morally responsible in some sense because he was part of that system. Fast forward to 1942. The U.S. had joined the war, and the tide was turning against Germany. But then, a breakthrough. Von Braun and his team successfully launched a potentially game-changing rocket called the V-2. The V-2 was a technological revolution in terms of rocket development.

It was 46 feet long. The world's first ballistic missile. These giant rockets are said to attain a speed of 2,000 or 3,000 miles an hour. The actual takeoff is very slow, something like 30 miles an hour. What was so deadly about it was the payload in its nose cone. So the V-2 carried 2,000 pounds of explosives, and that's what rained down on parts of Europe. London and Paris. Toward the very end of the war in Europe. On September 8th, 1944. Those of us in Britain who have listened to the roar that

followed the explosion of a V-2 on arrival will certainly recognize it. But even the V2 couldn't save the Germans from defeat. Now the white flag of capitulation has taken the place of the crooked cross. Eisenhower himself once said that if the V2 had been developed earlier on in the war, the tide of war could have gone in a very different direction. With the end of the war looming, the Allied powers, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. began making a new calculation. Everybody looked at this situation and said, well, you know, if we don't grab some of these technologies or maybe some of the people who built them, then maybe the Soviets will or maybe the French or the British will. So there was competition.

Part of it was sort of East-West. You know, a lot of people in the West were very suspicious of the Soviet Union. The U.S. was especially suspicious. So in the final days of the war, both the Soviets and the Americans began quietly gathering intel on some of these innovative technologies. Most importantly, the V2 rocket. And they each independently put together a list of names. They were looking for different scientists. German scientists who could help them piece together that information. American officers were ordered by the Pentagon to locate promising scientists.

The Joint Chiefs wanted their visa applications sped up. The covert mission was called Operation Paperclip. As scientists were identified, they were questioned about their involvement in the atrocities. Those who might have trouble getting a visa because of their actions during the war were marked quietly. And when a potentially promising scientist would be presented, that officer would place a simple paperclip

at the top of the file indicating that this was someone that needed to be looked at. The paperclip indicated that it would be difficult getting that scientist approved for a visa by the State Department. On the other hand, von Braun and his rocket team saw the writing on the wall. They knew the end was coming. So as to make the situation advantageous for them, what von Braun and his team did was stash away a bunch of documents,

engineering blueprints about the V-2 rocket were hidden. Then von Braun and his team fled to the Bavarian Alps, where they waited out the end of the war, kind of suntanning themselves on the decks of these ski slopes. Lieutenant General Schlemmer, commander of the 14th Tank Corps, surrenders. Major General von Drebber, commanding the 297th Infantry Division, surrenders. Lieutenant General Rinaldi, commander of the Medical Corps of the 6th Army, surrender. Within hours of hearing the news of Hitler's suicide,

von Braun decided it was the right time to make a move. They guessed correctly that they would be very valuable to the Americans. And so they turned themselves over to the Americans and made a deal. The deal was simple. They would tell the Americans where the documents were hidden in exchange for their freedom. The documents and the scientists were essentially married together and brought to the United States to build up America's new arsenal of weapons. Soon after the war ended, the U.S. government started bringing the scientists over to the U.S. And by the time the operation was completed,

nearly 1,600 German scientists would be brought over. When we come back, Wernher von Braun and the other Nazi scientists begin their new lives in the U.S. and set the stage for America's space program. Thank you. This is Nick Boltheis from Holland, Michigan, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world,

each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. After fighting a war with Germany and knowing about the atrocities committed by the Nazis, how do you sell this idea to the public that we're going to import, basically, German personnel who are going to help us, you know, with our own programs.

Well, it wasn't sold to the public at all at first because it was secret. The Germans were bought to the United States in secret by going around the immigration system. They were essentially prisoners of the armed forces. And this was the subject of a few rumors in the United States and the media and so forth. But fundamentally, there was no public knowledge and there was no rationalization offered until December 1946, more than a year and a half after the end of the war, when this program was finally declassified. Here's how the army explained Operation Paperclip to the public. America got the good German scientists. These individuals knew nothing of the horrors of Nazi Germany, of crimes being perpetrated by the Reich,

of genocide, of mass murder, of slavery. Right. I mean, certainly the Defense Department was presenting the story that these were not Nazi war criminals, that they were Germans who had just been Nazi party members out of opportunism, or because they had to be. Basically, they left out all the messy, more damning details. Several of them had favor with the Fuhrer, meaning they wore what was called the Golden Party Badge.

And some even worked side by side at some point in their career with Hitler, Himmler or Goring, which suggests that many of them not only knew about the atrocities and possibly participated in them, they had received special treatment. It was a carefully devised PR campaign to make these former Nazi scientists seem less threatening, less guilty. Still, when the American public

found out about the operation, many people were uncomfortable with it and made their frustration known. At the end of 46, in the early part of 1947, there were protests. Some people wrote letters to Congress and a few prominent public figures spoke out against it. One of the first detractors of this mythology was actually Albert Einstein. Together with Eleanor Roosevelt. They kind of rallied public opinion about the idea that these Germans were not so beneficent, and if they were, they would have left Nazi Germany when they could. But then world events shifted to such a degree that the idea of Operation Paperclip became about the lesser of two evils.

Of course, as you go from 1947 into the early 1950s, you get this growing anti-communist hysteria and fear. The American military establishment began preparing for what was known as total war with the Soviet Union. And it was absolutely imperative that we grab as many of these expert former Nazi scientist weapons makers that we could because if we didn't get them, surely the Soviets would. And that pretty much killed the discussion. The former Nazi scientists were here to stay. Werner von Braun came to the U.S. with 115 of his team members from the rocket program.

They were settled at Fort Bliss outside El Paso, Texas. And as the Cold War ramped up, von Braun continued doing the same work he'd done for the Nazis, improving the V-2 rocket, testing new types of missiles, thinking up innovative weapons. But space travel was still there in the back of his mind, a childhood dream that hadn't faded with time. President Truman's dramatic announcement that Russia has created an atomic explosion... In August 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb.

And suddenly... A new race was on. And that was to develop a delivery system for the atomic bomb. That delivery system was going to be a ballistic missile. Von Braun's specialty. So he and his team got to work trying to figure out how to build something even more powerful than the V-2. Something that could cross continents before the Soviets could.

After spending two decades on two continents designing rockets for two different militaries, he decided this was the time to push for a full-fledged space program. And he took his shot. Von Braun is among a number of prominent people who begin proselytizing the American public to believe in a space program. So even though his day job is to build ballistic missiles or lead a team to build a ballistic missile, you know, he was spending a lot of time in the 1950s advocating for space travel. Here to reveal a plan for a trip around the moon is the chief of the guided missile development at the United States Army's Redstone Arsenal. One of the foremost exponents of space travel, Dr. Werner von Braun.

A voyage around the moon must be made in two phases. A rocket ship taking off from the Earth's surface will use almost all the fuel it can carry. Von Braun knew that for people to buy into a space program, he had to sell the idea of space travel. He had to make them feel what he felt, that space was the next frontier. So he wrote magazine articles, which got a lot of attention. And he went on TV. Walt Disney's Disneyland. When you wish upon a star It makes no difference who you are

His real shift toward American space hero comes when he's hired by the Walt Disney Corporation. He's hired to develop and be featured in a special series devoted to space for a show called Disneyland, Man in Space. Here to introduce you to this new series is Walt Disney. One of a man's oldest dreams has been the desire for space travel, to travel to other worlds. Great new discoveries have brought us to the threshold of our lives. In this very thick German accent, he would explain to Americans sitting in their living rooms, happy to be watching this incredible new technology called television. How spaceflight worked. To facilitate this refueling operation,

we will establish an advanced space in the orbit, a thousand miles above the Earth. And how one day man could travel to the moon and maybe even Mars. If we were to start today on an organized and well-supported space program, I believe a practical passenger rocket could be built and tested within 10 years. And when that first episode aired, some 42 million Americans tuned in,

making it the second most watched program in the history of television at the time. People loved him. He is, as far as the U.S. news media is concerned, the prophet of space travel. His star status was solidified. So he's already a famous person in 1955, you know, and this is 10 years after he come to the United States in secret as a prisoner, and he's already a celebrity. Who will be next to launch man in space? Me! And these efforts to create public support for a space program worked. Branches of the military began devising plans to launch a satellite into Earth's orbit.

But in 1957, something unexpected happened. Moscow newspapers were first. Then headlines around the world echoed the news. On every continent and in every land, the story of Sputnik 1 dominated the front pages. The Soviets had scored a scientific first. The Soviets successfully launched Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite, into orbit. It caught the American public totally off guard.

It was embarrassing for them. The Soviets beat them to space. Some American politicians were angry, so Congress held hearings to strategize a faster way to space. Von Braun testified at those hearings. And in 1958, the government started a civilian space program separate from the military whose sole focus would be space travel. It was called NASA. Von Braun became the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, a key part of the Apollo program.

He was finally working on the thing he'd always imagined, and the moon was within reach. So it's probably no surprise that NASA's main objective also quickly became... Land a human on the moon and bring him, in those days only a him, bring him back alive. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon.

Kennedy set a deadline of the end of the decade, which could be 1969 or 1970, but it was an extraordinarily ambitious project. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. When we come back, Von Braun's dream becomes a reality. And his Nazi past

comes knocking. Hello, this is Octavian from San Diego, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. This is Apollo 5, the first all-up unmanned flight test for the lunar module. The 6.2 million pound Saturn V launch vehicle now on its own power at 38 seconds and counting. The mission of NASA's unmanned Apollo 6 will test the Saturn V for the second time. The United States completed one of its most remarkably successful tests yet of man and machine in space. Throughout the 1960s, the Apollo program launched mission after mission, some successful, others disastrous.

Apollo astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward White, and Gus Grissom lose their lives in a tragic flash fire aboard their grounded space capsule. The tragedy occurred during a simulated countdown. All the while, the scientists and engineers adjusted their measurements, tweaked the design of the rocket, ran tests, failed, ran more tests. And von Braun's team is building the Saturn V rocket, this super booster rocket that's going to lift the space capsule into orbit and essentially make it possible for the moon landings. And his team included some of the same people who worked with him in the underground slave factory to build the V-2.

Getting the Saturn V technology right was critical for a safe flight. T-minus one minute, 35 seconds on the Apollo mission, the flight to land, first men on the moon. After nearly a decade of work, all the pieces finally fell into place. The countdown ends. Three, two, one, zero. All engines. And Apollo 11. Liftoff.

We have a liftoff. Liftoff. What a moment. I am on the way for most. Werner Von Braun, born Silesia 1912, nationality American, boss of a group of former German rocket scientists, today understandably jubilant. The greatest day in our life, I think, that we see this

as a fulfillment in their life, in their professional life. So the height of von Braun's fame most certainly comes in the ticker tape parade moment after the Americans successfully land on the moon. Yeah, the moon landing was a great triumph for him personally.

And then the aftermath was pretty disappointing. In just a few years time, the whole Apollo program is shut down in the wake of the Vietnam War. And this idea by a great majority of Americans that money should not be spent that way. And the Nazi issue began creeping back in in the 1960s. You know, with the overwhelming Cold War atmosphere of the 1950s, nobody really wanted to talk about it, and a lot of information about his past was classified. Stuff began seeping out in the 60s. Of course, there were popular parodies,

and most notably Tom Lehrer's famous song about Wernher von Braun. Gather round while I sing you a Wernher von Braun. You know, when the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun. Call him a when the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Werner von Braun. Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown. Nazi schmatzi, says Werner von Braun. You know, Hollywood makes a movie about him called I Am at the Stars, but it bombs. It wasn't a very good movie.

You know, jokes are made about him. But in general, he was still, for the most of the American public, a hero. Von Braun left NASA in 1972 and began working with a private company. But the following year, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died just a few years after that, before the Operation Paperclip documents were officially declassified. It's been a decades-long battle to have the truth about Operation Paperclip unearthed and brought into the light. NASA has been complicit in trying to make sure that that doesn't happen. Same as the U.S. Army.

In the mid-1980s, a reporter named Linda Hunt started to break the story open. She filed Freedom of Information Act requests. And forced the U.S. Army into declassifying many of these paperclip files, which for the first time revealed the truth about the German scientists. The army gave Linda Hunt a bill for Xeroxing that totaled $240,000. So the message was clear to journalists, don't mess with us. I mean, Linda Hunt got out of paying that, but it did take decades for more documents to come to light by myself and others through the Freedom of Information Act. This new information began to shift how people viewed these scientists. And it left a shadow over the legacy of Warner von Braun. If you look at the sum total of his efforts, without a doubt, he's one of the most significant scientists of the 20th century. I mean, he was able to get America's first satellite into space, and then he was responsible

for the science and technology behind the entire Apollo program. But his legacy will always be tainted by this Nazi past. He's not going to escape it. He shouldn't escape it. I think Operation Paperclip is a pitch-perfect cautionary tale. It's a nod to future scientists to be mindful of who they're working for and what the goals are behind the programs in which they participate. That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui.

And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and... Laurence Wu. Jamie York. Lou Olkowski. Lane Kaplan-Levinson. Jordana Hochman.

And Nidri Eaton. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Volkl. Thanks also to Anya Grunman and Neil Rausch for his voiceover work. Our music was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric. If you like something you heard or you have an idea for an episode, please write us at throughline at npr.org or hit us up on Twitter at throughline NPR.

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