Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun was born to Baron Magnus von Braun and Emmy von Quistorp on March 23, 1912, in Wirsitz, a town in the eastern German province of Posen. Wernher's father was a wealthy farmer and a provincial councilor and served as Minister for Agriculture during the 1930s in President Hindenburg's Weimar Republic. From childhood, Wernher revealed an interest in both science and music. At age 11 he enrolled in the Französisches Gymnasium that had been established two centuries earlier by Fredrick the Great. There, the boy showed only a modest ability in mathematics and physics, subjects in which he would later excel. In 1928 Wernher's father placed him in the progressive Hermann Lietz schools. Wernher's grades and abilities improved. Hermann Oberth’s book, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Planetary Space) captured the young boy's attention. However, von Braun soon learned that he would have to excel in mathematics to even understand the concepts and principles in the book.

   Even during these younger years of his life, von Braun was experimenting with rockets and propulsion. He once strapped a cluster of solid rocket motors to a wagon and shot it down a crowded street. Many in the crowd were not amused.

   “I was ecstatic,” von Braun later recalled. “The wagon was wholly out of control and trailing a comet’s tail of fire, but my rockets were performing beyond my wildest dreams.” The fire-breathing wagon diverged onto the Tiergarten Strasse, a very crowded Berlin city street. An angry police officer grabbed the young rabble-rouser and threatened to arrest him. “Fortunately, no one had been injured, so I was released in charge of my father.” —Erik Bergaust, Reaching for the Stars, 1960

   The next step for the eighteen-year-old Wernher von Braun was to enter the Technische Hochschule in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. All the while, his interest in astronomy and space travel kept growing. He had become acquainted with astronautics pioneer Hermann Oberth, writer and spaceflight promoter Willy Ley, and rocket experimenters Rudolf Nebel and Johannes Winkler. He has also followed the exploits of Max Valier who had gained publicity driving autos and rail cars powered by solid-fuel rockets. Von Braun quickly joined the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR, Society of Space Travel) and was soon participating in rocket experiments at the Raketenflugplatz located on a vacant Army proving ground near Reinickendorf. —Frederick I. Ordway & Mitchell Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 1979

   After they were invited to watch a rocket demonstration, members of the Army Reichswehr at Army Ordinance failed to be impressed with anyone or anything other than the young Wernher von Braun. The VfR members had hoped to gain funding from the Army to continue their experiments, but it was 1932 and Adolf Hitler was in power. Nazi Germany was going to ban all rocketry experiments and discussion - outside of the German military. On November 1, 1932, von Braun signed a contract with the Reichswehr to conduct research leading to the development of rockets as military weapons. In this capacity, he would work for Captain Walter Dornberger. His association with Dornberger would last for over a decade. In the same year, under an Army grant, von Braun enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität from where he graduated two years later with a Ph.D. in physics. His dissertation dealt with the theoretical and practical problems of liquid propellant rocket engines. 

   Even before he graduated, von Braun was busy conducting his first rocket tests at Kummersdorf, an old Army artillery range outside of Berlin. A few of von Braun's colleagues from the VfR days joined him and started work on what would be called the A1 rocket. The A1 would eventually evolve into the A2 and A3. These rockets were successfully tested off the coast of Germany in the North Sea. By, 1935, von Braun and his team, which had grown to eighty members, were regularly firing liquid-fueled engines with great success. The operation was out-growing the facilities at Kummersdorf. —Frederick I. Ordway & Mitchell Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 1979

   A secure, isolated location was suggested by Wernher's mother. It was called Peenemünde. This wooded, quiet part of Germany was located on the Baltic Sea at the mouth of the river Peene on the island of Usedom. The Army and the Luftwaffe poured money into the co-development of Peenemünde. A huge complex of buildings for housing, testing, manufacturing and development were constructed. The site would eventually be home to over 2,000 scientists and 4,000 other personnel. —Christopher Lampton, Wernher von Braun, 1988

   The Peenemünde complex began work on the military weapon, the A-4, with von Braun in charge of technical development. After several tries, an A-4 missile was successfully launched on October 3, 1942. Much was still unfinished though - a successful launch did not translate into a proven weapon system. It would be two years later that the first A-4/V-2s were operationally deployed. 

   During these fast-moving early development stages of Peenemünde's growth, the multitude of German scientists and engineers were well served by the young and resourceful von Braun. His ability to put the right personnel in key positions, the ability to streamline research efforts, head off disputes, secure materials and von Braun's own exuberance for the A-4 project was key in Peenemünde's success. 

   Less than a year after the first A-4 success, the British became suspicious of the goings on at Peenemünde. In mid-August 1943, hundreds of RAF bombers attacked the site causing damage. The facilities could be repaired but, it was decided that full production of the A-4/V-2 would have to be moved to a more secure location, away from other potential bomber attacks. Peenemünde would remain as a research center for improved missile designs and Luftwaffe jet powered aircraft. Von Braun was to remain at Peenemünde in charge of testing. 

   A frightful event occurred in mid-March 1944 when von Braun was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Stettin. The alleged crime was that von Braun had declared his main interest in developing the A-4/V-2 was for space travel—not as a weapon. Also, since von Braun was a pilot, who regularly piloted his government-provided airplane, it was suggested that he was planning to escape with A-4/V-2 secrets to the Allies. It was the personal intervention of Munitions and Armaments Minister Albert Speer with Hitler that gained von Braun's release from jail. It had only been a few weeks earlier that von Braun refused an offer from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler had proposed that von Braun should leave the German Army rocket program and come to work for the SS. It is believed that Himmler was directly responsible for von Braun’s arrest. —Michael Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 1995

Von Braun had accepted a position of rank in the SS when it was offered to him a few years earlier. Later, von Braun would say that he accepted it only out of necessity and that he only wore the uniform on one occasion. While his statement may be somewhat true, this does show that von Braun was willing to compromise much to keep the research ongoing. 

   In 1943, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler forced component manufacturing, missile assembly and military deployment of the A-4/V-2 out of the hands of Dornberger and von Braun who wanted to continue improving and testing the rocket before releasing it for production. The underground factory called the Mittelwerk, in central Germany, began producing A-4/V-2 rockets late that year along with other weapons such as the Fi103 or V-1 flying bomb. Several thousand workers from nearby concentration camps, together with thousands of civilian workers began producing weapons. Even after production had begun on the missile, the V-2 systems were not completely ready for mass production. Almost another year of testing was needed to make the weapon reliable. Beginning in September of 1944, the A-4s—now called V-2s—were launched against Paris, London, Antwerp, and other targets.

   During the summer of 1945, interrogation by the Allies continued. The Americans soon offered von Braun and some 120 key members of his team a six-month contract to work for Army Ordnance in the United States. The offer was accepted. Soon von Braun and six colleagues were on their way to the United States. After briefings in Washington, D.C., they were sent to Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas. Six months later, many more Peenemünde scientists were sent to the U.S. to join them. 

   It was at the new U.S. missile proving grounds in White Sands, New Mexico that von Braun set about training and testing rockets for the U.S. military. For the next five years hundreds of captured V-2s were sent skyward carrying a multitude of payloads. Von Braun and his men were transferred to Huntsville, Alabama in April of 1950 to start development of an Army tactical ballistic battlefield missile. At the Redstone Arsenal, von Braun helped develop the Redstone missile. 

   It was in Alabama that the Germans eventually gained their American citizenship. Soon, the space race with the Soviet Union created an urgent need for von Braun's help. America's first satellite was launched from a Wernher von Braun design, the Redstone-based Jupiter-C. Von Braun would eventually go on to head NASA and would see his visionary rocket, the Saturn 5, carry man to the Moon. Von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16, 1977. 

   Many today believe that von Braun should not have been celebrated as a hero. They feel he turned a blind eye toward what was happening to slave laborers in Germany. There is not much evidence in official records to indicate that he was even somewhat troubled by the use of slave labor. The means through which his experimentation could continue was the vehicle of the Wehrmacht’s war machine. While all of this may be true, von Braun’s work on the rocket was his passion throughout his whole life, not just during the war. His crime was one of success through available means or the greater evil of complacency, which infected so much of the German population during World War 2.