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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wernher von Braun | 5/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:12:35.863675+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Arrest and release by the Nazi regime === According to André Sellier, a French historian and survivor of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, Heinrich Himmler had von Braun come to his Feldkommandostelle Hochwald HQ in East Prussia in February 1944. To increase his power-base within the Nazi regime, Himmler was conspiring to use Kammler to gain control of all German armament programs, including the V-2 program at Peenemünde. He therefore recommended that von Braun work more closely with Kammler to solve the problems of the V-2. Von Braun stated that he replied that the problems were merely technical and he was confident that they would be solved with Dornberger's assistance. Von Braun had been under SD surveillance since October 1943. A secret report stated that he and his colleagues Klaus Riedel and Helmut Gröttrup were said to have expressed regret at an engineer's house one evening in early March 1944 that they were not working on a spaceship and that they felt the war was not going well; this was considered a "defeatist" attitude. A young female dentist who was an SS spy reported their comments. Himmler's unfounded allegations branding von Braun and his colleagues as communist sympathizers and accusing them of sabotaging the V-2 program, coupled with von Braun's regular piloting of a government-provided airplane that could facilitate an escape to Britain, led to their arrest by the Gestapo. The unsuspecting von Braun was detained on 14 March (or 15 March), 1944, and was taken to a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland). where he was held for two weeks without knowing the charges against him. Through Major Hans Georg Klamroth, in charge of the Abwehr for Peenemünde, Dornberger obtained von Braun's conditional release and Albert Speer, Reichsminister for Munitions and War Production, persuaded Hitler to reinstate von Braun so that the V-2 program could continue or turn into a "V-4 program" (the Rheinbote as a short-range ballistic rocket) which in their view would be impossible without von Braun's leadership. In his memoirs, Speer states Hitler had finally conceded that von Braun was to be "protected from all prosecution as long as he is indispensable, difficult though the general consequences arising from the situation." An investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation on 1 May 1961 advised that "there was no record of an arrest in their respective files" suggesting that von Braun's imprisonment was wiped from German prison records at a point after his conditional release or after the Nazi regime had fallen.
=== Surrender to the Americans ===
The Soviet Army was about 160 km (100 mi) from Peenemünde in early 1945 when von Braun assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Unwilling to go to the Soviets, von Braun and his staff decided to try to surrender to the Americans. Kammler had ordered the relocation of his team to central Germany; however, a conflicting order from an army chief ordered them to join the army and fight. Deciding that Kammler's order was their best bet to defect to the Americans, von Braun fabricated documents and transported 500 of his affiliates to the area around Mittelwerk, where they resumed their work in Bleicherode and surrounding towns after the middle of February 1945. For fear of their documents being destroyed by the SS, von Braun ordered the blueprints to be hidden in an abandoned iron mine in the Harz mountain range near Goslar. The U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps managed to unveil the location after lengthy interrogations of von Braun, Walter Dornberger, Bernhard Tessmann and Dieter Huzel and recovered 14 tons of V-2 documents by 15 May 1945, from the British Occupation Zone. While on an official trip in March, von Braun suffered a complicated fracture of his left arm and shoulder in a car accident after his driver fell asleep at the wheel. His injuries were serious, but he insisted that his arm be set in a cast so that he could leave the hospital. Due to this neglect of the injury, he had to be hospitalized again a month later when his bones had to be rebroken and realigned. In early April, as the Allied forces advanced deeper into Germany, Kammler ordered the engineering team, around 450 specialists, to be moved by train into the town of Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps, where they were closely guarded by the SS with orders to execute the team if they were about to fall into enemy hands. However, von Braun managed to convince SS Major Kummer to order the dispersal of the group into nearby villages so that they would not be an easy target for U.S. bombers. On 29 April 1945, Oberammergau was captured by the Allied forces who seized the majority of the engineering team. Nearing the end of the war, Hitler instructed SS troops to gas all technical men concerned with rocket development. Upon hearing this, von Braun commandeered a train and fled with other "technical men" to a location in the mountains of South Germany. After some time, von Braun and many of the others who made it to the mountains left their location to flee to advancing American lines in Austria. Von Braun and several members of the engineering team, including Dornberger, made it to Austria. On 2 May 1945, upon finding an American private from the U.S. 44th Infantry Division, von Braun's brother and fellow rocket engineer, Magnus, approached the soldier on a bicycle, calling out in broken English: "My name is Magnus von Braun. My brother invented the V-2. We want to surrender." After the surrender, Wernher von Braun spoke to the press: