Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is the second episode of a series. You
Speaker 1: can appreciate it on a standalone basis, but if you've
Speaker 1: not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen to
Speaker 1: that first. The movie theaters in Germany in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: nine are all showing.
Speaker 2: Frau in wond The Woman in the Moon.
Speaker 1: Germany is giddy about rocket ships and space travel. There's
Speaker 1: even a Society for Spaceship Travel, which aims to promote
Speaker 1: the exploration of space. The society is led by a
Speaker 1: science writer named Villy Lay. It received a letter from
Speaker 1: a young man keen to join the Society for Spaceship Travel.
Speaker 1: He replied instructing the aspiring applicant to present himself at
Speaker 1: the Lay household on the appointed day. Filly Lee d
Speaker 1: was running a little late. As he arrived on his
Speaker 1: own doorstep, he could hear the moonlight sonata emerging from within.
Speaker 1: His visitor had seated himself at vide Lay's piano and
Speaker 1: was entertaining himself with typical self assurance. Vidi Lay could
Speaker 1: have been forgiven for asking himself who on earth was
Speaker 1: this guy? I doubt the young pianist presented a resume,
Speaker 1: but it would have been quite a document. He was
Speaker 1: then only seventeen years old. His musical gifts also encompassed
Speaker 1: the cello and amateur composition. He was an enthusiastic hunter
Speaker 1: and a crack shot. It struggled with maths and physics
Speaker 1: at school until he found out that maths and physics
Speaker 1: might get him to the Moon, at which point he
Speaker 1: focused his formidable intellect and became incandescently brilliant at both
Speaker 1: His father had been a senior civil servant and then
Speaker 1: a well connected banker. His mother traced her ancestry back
Speaker 1: to the kings of four different countries. With bright blue
Speaker 1: eyes and light blonde hair, he looked like a movie star,
Speaker 1: and he knew it. He was charming, He was driven,
Speaker 1: He was brilliant. He was Baron Werner von Brown. Von
Speaker 1: Brown flourished at the Society for Spaceship Travel, but the
Speaker 1: society faced formidable obstacles. In the first episode of this series,
Speaker 1: we heard how rocket pioneers lost their eyes or their
Speaker 1: lives trying to develop the basics of rocketry. The only
Speaker 1: reason the Society for Spaceship Travel didn't suffer more serious
Speaker 1: accidents is that it barely had enough funds to do
Speaker 1: anything It was a ragtag collection of students and enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: woefully under resourced. They did have permission to use a
Speaker 1: scrap of wasteland near Berlin. They called it the Rakaton
Speaker 1: Flugplats or rocket port. It was a grandiose name, a
Speaker 1: statement of bravado when they were begging or bartering for gasoline,
Speaker 1: welding gear, even food. It wasn't easy to build a
Speaker 1: rocket at the best of times, but without money it
Speaker 1: was almost impossible. Progress was slow, But then, in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, a black sedan slowly rolled up to the
Speaker 1: rocket port and outstepped three officers of the German Army.
Speaker 1: They had a proposal for the Society for Spaceship Travel.
Speaker 1: They'd fund more serious rocket research if the enthusiasts of
Speaker 1: the Society would devote their efforts to the challenge of
Speaker 1: using rockets as weapons. To reach the Moon would require
Speaker 1: an almost unlimited budget. The Army was a ready source
Speaker 1: of cash. Verna von Brown later remarked.
Speaker 3: We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use
Speaker 3: of our brainchild. We were interested solely in exploring outer space.
Speaker 3: It was simply a question with us of how the
Speaker 3: Golden Cow could be milked most successfully.
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. Of
Speaker 1: the three men who stepped out of the army car
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty two, The most senior was Valta Dornberger.
Speaker 1: As we heard in the previous episode, Captain Dornberger was
Speaker 1: in charge of the German armies fledgling efforts to build
Speaker 1: a ballistic missile weapon, and he took an instant liking
Speaker 1: to Von Brown.
Speaker 2: I was struck by the energy and shrewdness with which
Speaker 2: this tall, fair young student with the broad, massive chin
Speaker 2: went to work, and by his astonishing theoretical knowledge.
Speaker 1: Drnberger would become Von Brown's boss. Together, the two of
Speaker 1: them would prove highly effective at milking the golden cow.
Speaker 1: The basic sales pitch was straightforward. After the First World War,
Speaker 1: Germany had been banned from developing artillery weapons under the
Speaker 1: Treaty of Versailles. Ballistic missiles were attempting alternative. But while
Speaker 1: the German Army's accountants had been instructed to furnish Drnberger
Speaker 1: and Von Brown with money for experimental apparatus, they kept
Speaker 1: a tight grip on the purse strings. This was just
Speaker 1: a research program after all, Yet they were easily blinded
Speaker 1: by science. When the accountants approved the research team's request for.
Speaker 2: Appliance for cutting wooden rods up to ten millimeters in diameter.
Speaker 1: They didn't realize they'd just agreed to pay for a
Speaker 1: mechanical pencil sharpener. Similarly, when releasing funds for instrument.
Speaker 2: For recording test data with rotating roller.
Speaker 1: They would have been astonished to learn that they had
Speaker 1: just bought Dornberger's secretary a typewriter. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: trivial stuff, and there should never have been any question
Speaker 1: of refusing to pay for simple office supplies, but it
Speaker 1: underlines the fact that nobody really seemed to understand what
Speaker 1: Dornberger and von Brown were up to, and if you
Speaker 1: didn't understand it, it was hard to stop them. In
Speaker 1: one exchange, a bureaucrat questioned some expenses, What was this
Speaker 1: money for for experiments? What kind of experiments? Asked the
Speaker 1: bureaucrats eight weeks.
Speaker 2: Later, secret experiments.
Speaker 1: They got the money, but no wonder they wanted to
Speaker 1: keep those experiments secret. It wasn't just about mischievous obfuscation.
Speaker 1: Had the top brass of the German army taken a
Speaker 1: closer look at those secret experiments, they would not have
Speaker 1: instilled confidence. In their first work together, Von Brown and
Speaker 1: Drnberger had tested a stationary rocket engine fixed to a
Speaker 1: new outdoor test stand. The day was bitterly cold, four
Speaker 1: days before Christmas nineteen thirty two. Dornberger was eleven meters away,
Speaker 1: peeping from behind a tree as fn Brown approached the
Speaker 1: rocket engine with a long flame tip rod and lit
Speaker 1: the cloud of alcohol fumes seeping out from below the engine.
Speaker 1: There was a swoosh, a hiss, and an explosion. Shrap
Speaker 1: filled the air. Fragments of wooden panels, metal sheeting, and
Speaker 1: cables rained down all around them. Dornberger and von Brown
Speaker 1: looked at each other in disbelief. They were incredibly unharmed.
Speaker 1: Their new tests stand had been obliterated when the Nazis
Speaker 1: took over in nineteen thirty three. Dornberger and von Brown
Speaker 1: realized that the game had changed. Hitler wanted to turn
Speaker 1: Germany back into a military superpower. If the rocket enthusiasts
Speaker 1: told the right story, it might be possible to get
Speaker 1: much more funding, but they weren't going to get it
Speaker 1: if their test program teetered between slapstick and tragedy. They
Speaker 1: needed to create a compelling vision of the weapon of
Speaker 1: the future in the minds of the leaders of the Reich.
Speaker 1: Captain Dornberger reminded the Nazi authorities of the Paris Gun,
Speaker 1: which at the end of the First World War had
Speaker 1: fired four hundred and fifty pound shells a distance of
Speaker 1: eighty miles to strike at Paris itself. Fon Brown's rockets
Speaker 1: could do far better than that, he said. They would
Speaker 1: fly twice as far and carry one hundred times the payload.
Speaker 1: They'd be more accurate than the Paris Gun, and they'd
Speaker 1: be portable, carried by road or rail, launched from anywhere.
Speaker 1: What would those authorities have thought if they'd seen the
Speaker 1: underwhelming reality. The first rocket fon Brown designed for the
Speaker 1: army was called the A one. It was tiny, It
Speaker 1: stood less than five feet high, and it couldn't have
Speaker 1: delivered much more than a hand grenade as a payload.
Speaker 1: But that was theoretical because the A one never got anywhere. Privately,
Speaker 1: fon Brown joked.
Speaker 3: It took us half a year to build and half
Speaker 3: a second to blow up.
Speaker 1: Publicly, he and Dornberger continued to boast about the amazing
Speaker 1: potential of rocket weapons. The next effort, the A two,
Speaker 1: was barely bigger than the A one, but did fly
Speaker 1: to a height of one point five miles in front
Speaker 1: of senior army officers. The A three was a step
Speaker 1: forward in ambition, over twenty feet long, but it was erratic,
Speaker 1: flying off at unpredictable angles. Luckily for Ron Brown, that
Speaker 1: wasn't obvious to observers. They saw a long, sleek missile
Speaker 1: blast upwards into the sky amid a deafening roar and
Speaker 1: a blinding flame. The fact that it wabbled off at
Speaker 1: random was something few people noticed. Dornberger and von Brown
Speaker 1: were magnificent salesmen for the rocket. Despite this string of disappointments,
Speaker 1: they convinced many Nazi power brokers that Germany couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to ignore rocket technology. The Third Reich was full of
Speaker 1: competing power structures. Adolf Hitler seemed to like it that
Speaker 1: wayaps because such infighting made his own position unassailable, or
Speaker 1: perhaps out of some conviction that the best man with
Speaker 1: the best ideas would triumph. Whatever the reason, this brutal
Speaker 1: internal politics was about to give Dornberger and von Brown
Speaker 1: the chance to divide and rule. Cautionary tales will return
Speaker 1: after the break. In nineteen thirty six, senior figures in
Speaker 1: the Luftwaffer the German Air Force, were unnerved that a
Speaker 1: supposedly spectacular rocket weapon might be left in the hands
Speaker 1: of the army. Some also wondered whether rockets might be
Speaker 1: used to power airplanes, perhaps to give a bit of
Speaker 1: extra lift to help the heaviest aircraft take off from
Speaker 1: short runways. So the lutfuffer approached Werner von Brown directly
Speaker 1: by passing his Army boss Dornberger. They made a staggering offer,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money,
Speaker 1: to spend on a new rocket research center where he
Speaker 1: would build the next generation rocket, the A four, the
Speaker 1: rocket that would finally serve as a futuristic super weapon.
Speaker 1: Vohn Brown must have been delighted, no more blowing up
Speaker 1: test stands while Dornberger peeked from behind a tree. Eh
Speaker 1: But instead of simply accepting the money, he took news
Speaker 1: of the offer back to the Army, which had been
Speaker 1: funding the rocket research up to that point. Imagine the
Speaker 1: astonishment of General Carl Becker when a twenty four year
Speaker 1: old civilian strolled into his office to ask if the
Speaker 1: Army had a better offer, and on reflection, General Becker
Speaker 1: decided that the Army did have a better offer.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to let Luftwaffer run the wheel of
Speaker 4: this business. I'm going to be the majority stockholder in
Speaker 4: this enterprise.
Speaker 1: The General agreed that the Army would provide twenty percent
Speaker 1: more funding than the Luftwaffer had proposed. Von Brown accepted
Speaker 1: both offers. The Luftwaffer wouldn't be at the wheel of
Speaker 1: developing the A four rocket, it seemed, but neither would
Speaker 1: the Army. Then A von Brown would. He was now
Speaker 1: in charge of a Nazi mega project. Von Brown and
Speaker 1: Drnberger used their new funds to build a vast facility
Speaker 1: at Panamunda, about one hundred and fifty miles north of
Speaker 1: Berlin on the coast of the Baltic Sea. There was
Speaker 1: a supersonic wind tunnel, one of the first ever closed
Speaker 1: circuit TV systems, so the rocket engineers could monitor test
Speaker 1: launches from a safe distance. The biggest factory in Europe,
Speaker 1: a coal fired our station, housing for thousands of scientists
Speaker 1: and workers, and it was here that von Brown's talents
Speaker 1: really started to shine. Still just in his mid twenties.
Speaker 1: He proved to be a masterful technical director, marshaling and
Speaker 1: focusing the talents of the scientists and engineers who worked
Speaker 1: for him. The powerbrokers of the Nazi state gazed on
Speaker 1: Painnamunda with a variety of emotions. Some were enthusiastic backers,
Speaker 1: giddy with excitement at this wonderland of technological advancement. Others
Speaker 1: were cynics, convinced that the money was being squandered. Still
Speaker 1: others were predators, looking for an opportunity to close in
Speaker 1: and seize the spoils. But all of them were curious,
Speaker 1: when would the mysterious genius von Brown get round to
Speaker 1: producing this much vaunted A four rocket? What was he
Speaker 1: really up to? Verna von Brown had come to the
Speaker 1: Army from the Society for Spaceship Travel. They really should
Speaker 1: have been able to guess. Verna von Brown's proposed A
Speaker 1: four rocket was as tall as a five story building.
Speaker 1: It needed a mixture of super cooled liquid oxygen and
Speaker 1: alcohol to power it, and clever pipework to make sure
Speaker 1: the oxygen didn't freeze the alcohol. It needed gyroscopes to
Speaker 1: stabilize it, and sophisticated fuses to ensure the warhead exploded
Speaker 1: at just the right moment. It needed to be triggered
Speaker 1: by impact at any angle, yet fullproof against accidental detonation.
Speaker 1: The rocket needed aerodynamics that would allow for the change
Speaker 1: in air pressure as it reached the stratosphere, and it
Speaker 1: would have to withstand temperatures of twelve hundred degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty celsius as it arcd down to
Speaker 1: re enter thicker atmosphere. All of this added up to
Speaker 1: an astonishing technological challenge. It took the engineers into uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: There was absolutely no room for error in design, manufacture,
Speaker 1: or deployment. The first test launch in February nineteen forty
Speaker 1: two was not a success. The rocket slipped while being
Speaker 1: mounted on the launch pad, crushing its fins. This was
Speaker 1: a distinctly undignified way to lose a rocket, and after
Speaker 1: some attempts at repair, it was scrapped. Fron Brown's team
Speaker 1: slunk back to the factory to build another. Three months
Speaker 1: later they were ready to try again. Some powerful Nazi
Speaker 1: figures came to pay Amunda to watch the test under
Speaker 1: gloomy low clouds. Hitler's personal friend Albert Speer recalled the occasion.
Speaker 2: At first with a faltering motion, but then with the
Speaker 2: roar of an unleashed giant. The rocket rose slowly from
Speaker 2: its bed, seemed to stand upon its jettle flame for
Speaker 2: a fraction of a second, then vanished with a howl
Speaker 2: into the low clouds. Fairer fon Pound was beaming.
Speaker 1: Spier didn't know it, but that beaming smile was masking
Speaker 1: some alarm. Von Brown, with his expert eye, could see
Speaker 1: that the rocket had been unstable. It reached supersonic speeds
Speaker 1: and a height of thirty miles, but after fifty four
Speaker 1: seconds the rocket cut out and it began to spin
Speaker 1: and fall right back down towards the launch pad. The
Speaker 1: roaring noise of the falling rocket grew louder and louder.
Speaker 1: Were they about to be struck by their own rocket.
Speaker 1: In the end, it spun into the Baltic Sea less
Speaker 1: than a mile away. Von Brown had gotten away with it.
Speaker 1: The zimble launch had been spectacular, and the dramatic failure
Speaker 1: had been concealed by the cloud cover. Another launch in
Speaker 1: August nineteen forty two was another failure. This time the
Speaker 1: warhead fell off and the rocket itself disintegrated. But it
Speaker 1: too had reached supersonic speeds, and that was enough for
Speaker 1: von Brown to spin it as he always did. The
Speaker 1: firing was one hundred percent successful. This dashing young man
Speaker 1: seemed so confident and assured it spent colossal sums of
Speaker 1: money that the Reich could scarcely afford. Surely he knew
Speaker 1: what he was doing. Large ambitious projects have a certain
Speaker 1: reputation these days, over time, overbudget, over and over again.
Speaker 1: That reputation is perfectly accurate. According to the world's most
Speaker 1: prominent expert on large projects, Bent Flubia, a management professor
Speaker 1: at Oxford University, Flubia has accumulated a large database on
Speaker 1: what he calls mega projects, and his data did not
Speaker 1: tell a pretty story. Nine out of ten of these
Speaker 1: huge projects have cost overruns, benefits often fall short of
Speaker 1: what's been promised. This is true all over the world,
Speaker 1: and it's true for public and private sector projects alike.
Speaker 1: But why There are two explanations. One is that we
Speaker 1: fool ourselves. Whatever we do always takes longer and costs
Speaker 1: more than we expected. One classic study of this phenomenon
Speaker 1: was conducted by a young doctoral student named Roger Bueler
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen nineties, Bula asked a group of
Speaker 1: undergraduates to predict how long it would take to submit
Speaker 1: their honors thesis, and to consider upside and downside scenarios
Speaker 1: if everything went as well as it possibly could, and
Speaker 1: if everything went as poorly as it possibly could. The
Speaker 1: student's optimistic estimate was twenty eight days, and their baseline
Speaker 1: guests not much longer, thirty four days. Their worst case
Speaker 1: scenario estimate was forty nine days. In reality, the average
Speaker 1: thesis took fifty six days, twice the optimistic estimate, but
Speaker 1: also even worse than the worst case scenario. I hardly
Speaker 1: need to cite this research. We all know it's true. Surely,
Speaker 1: there's no more reliable source of disappointment anywhere in the
Speaker 1: world than looking at all the incomplete tasks on yesterday's
Speaker 1: to do list. Then of von Brown was as guilty
Speaker 1: of this wishful thinking as anyone. His biographer, Michael Neufeld
Speaker 1: says that von Brown was always an enthusiast, always an optimist,
Speaker 1: that this was one of the traits which made him
Speaker 1: such an inspiring leader. But like Roger Bueler's experimental subjects,
Speaker 1: he was perfectly capable of being optimistic to the point
Speaker 1: of delusion. Von Brown was far more interested in conquering
Speaker 1: space than in conquering the British or the Soviets. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but he was obsessed with the idea that
Speaker 1: he personally would one day travel into space. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: he never did.
Speaker 2: Like all the.
Speaker 1: Undergraduates who answered Roger Bueller's survey, he was surprised at
Speaker 1: how long everything seemed to take. Von Brown struggled to
Speaker 1: see that by the time there was such a thing
Speaker 1: as an astronaut, he'd be far too old to be one.
Speaker 1: But there's a second explanation for why mega projects are
Speaker 1: so often over time and over budget. It isn't delusion,
Speaker 1: its deception. The promoters of large projects almost always exaggerate
Speaker 1: their benefits and understate their costs. Ron Brown had been
Speaker 1: happily doing this for years, making ambitious claims about the range, payload,
Speaker 1: and accuracy his rockets would achieve. And the more the
Speaker 1: difficulties became evident of VN. Brown, the bolder his claims became.
Speaker 1: But would his unachievable promises eventually catch up with him?
Speaker 1: When the Second World War began, Von Brown recalled.
Speaker 3: The army told us in very clear terms that either
Speaker 3: we had to produce something of promise as a weapon
Speaker 3: in the very near future, or we must go out
Speaker 3: of business.
Speaker 1: And by the time of the next test in October
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, the war was not going well for Germany.
Speaker 1: Ron Brown really needed to put on a show. The
Speaker 1: luxurious facilities in Paina Munda had been sucking in resources
Speaker 1: for more than half a decade. Where were the results?
Speaker 1: Ron Brown's boss felt A. Doorn Berger later recalled how
Speaker 1: anxious he felt, had.
Speaker 4: We really discovered the cause of failure of the last
Speaker 4: two attempts.
Speaker 2: A great deal depended on this launching.
Speaker 1: We all knew that Drnberger saw one of his officers
Speaker 1: pale with worry and tried to say something encouraging.
Speaker 2: Keep your fingers crossed. It must come off this time.
Speaker 2: There's so much at stick.
Speaker 1: The roar of the engine was so spectacular that witnesses
Speaker 1: felt they were inside a thunderstorm. And this time the
Speaker 1: sleek fuselage remained stable even as it accelerated through the
Speaker 1: sound barrier.
Speaker 4: It was an unforgettable sight. In the full glare of
Speaker 4: the sunlight, the rocket rose higher and higher, the flame
Speaker 4: darting from the stern was almost as long as the
Speaker 4: rocket itself.
Speaker 1: The rocket reached an altitude of around fifty miles, flew
Speaker 1: for four minutes and fifty six seconds, and plunged into
Speaker 1: the Baltic Sea, one hundred and twenty miles away. At last,
Speaker 1: at last, the A four rocket might actually be usable
Speaker 1: as a weapon. It would soon gain a new name,
Speaker 1: the V two. The V stood for Vengeance, and Painna
Speaker 1: Munda would soon quite suddenly be crawling with Nazi power players.
Speaker 1: Vron Brown had finally started to succeed, and that perhaps
Speaker 1: was much more dangerous than continuing to fail. Hartionary tales
Speaker 1: will be back in a moment. As soon as it
Speaker 1: looked like enn of von Brown's V two weapon might
Speaker 1: actually be going somewhere, senior officers from the Army, the SS,
Speaker 1: and the Loftwaffer started to appear at Painna Munda, handing
Speaker 1: out orders and setting delusionally optimistic targets. At the start
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty three, Dornberger agreed an ambition of building
Speaker 1: one hundred rockets each month by the end of the year.
Speaker 1: That target was soon revised upwards to three hundred, then
Speaker 1: changed again to eight hundred, then finally set at an
Speaker 1: absurd two thousand a month. Even von Brown was unsettled
Speaker 1: by this. As Dornberger recalled.
Speaker 2: Professor von Brown was giving the imploring and despairing looks,
Speaker 2: shaking his head again and again in incredulous astonishment.
Speaker 1: VN Brown's concern was that there was no way that
Speaker 1: he could build two thousand V two rockets a month.
Speaker 1: But even if he could, what about the fuel? Even
Speaker 1: if every tank of liquid oxygen in Germany were sent
Speaker 1: to the V two program, that wouldn't be enough for
Speaker 1: half those rockets. The other key fuel component was alcohol,
Speaker 1: which was distilled from potatoes. Food in wartime Germany was
Speaker 1: becoming scarce, while in areas attacked or occupied by German forces,
Speaker 1: four million people starved to death as the Germans seized
Speaker 1: food supplies. Each V two rocket needed thirty tons of
Speaker 1: potatoes to supply its fuel. Where would those potatoes come from?
Speaker 1: Who would starve? As a result? The goal of building
Speaker 1: so many V twos was simply impossible. That anyone who
Speaker 1: objected was threatened with dismissal or worse, The mega project
Speaker 1: had acquired its own momentum, as mega projects do. The
Speaker 1: problem was magnified by the derangements of the man at
Speaker 1: the top, Adolf Hitler, sometimes viciously insightful, but often unhinged.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he had been an enthusiast for the rocket program.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he'd dismissed the rocket engineers as dreamers. He made
Speaker 1: absurd suggestions, like firing the rockets out of a gigantic cannon.
Speaker 1: In July nineteen forty three, Hitler summoned Valter Doornberger and
Speaker 1: Werner von Brown. Together, they watched the film of the
Speaker 1: latest successful test launch, with von Brown providing the commentary.
Speaker 1: The Fura could barely contain his enthusiasm.
Speaker 3: Why was it I could not believe in the success
Speaker 3: of your work.
Speaker 1: He asked. Dornberger later proudly recalled Hitler's words.
Speaker 3: I have had to apologize only to two men in
Speaker 3: my whole life. The first was Field Marshal von Prauschitch.
Speaker 3: I did not listen to him when he told me
Speaker 3: again and again how important your research was. The second
Speaker 3: man is yourself. I never believed that your work would
Speaker 3: be successful.
Speaker 1: With Hitler now fully on board, the V two megaproject
Speaker 1: and the Pain and Munder complex became prizes to fight
Speaker 1: over for the Nazi barons. In the Third Rune. But
Speaker 1: just a few weeks later, in August nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the British bombed Painamunda. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the
Speaker 1: ss happened to be with Adolf Hitler when news of
Speaker 1: the raid reached them. As head of the s S,
Speaker 1: Himmler was one of the architects of the Holocaust, the
Speaker 1: systematic murder of six million Jews, which was already well underway.
Speaker 1: He was one of the most evil and dangerous men
Speaker 1: in the Third Reich. Himmler immediately proposed that missile production
Speaker 1: be moved underground to a disused mine or freshly blasted tunnels.
Speaker 1: Hitler agreed. The move underground from Painamunda to a mine
Speaker 1: near the city of Nordhausen, right in the center of Germany,
Speaker 1: began with punishing speed. The human cost, as we'll soon see,
Speaker 1: was appalling. Himmler also suggested to Hitler that the ESSs
Speaker 1: should now take the lead on the rocket program. Hitler
Speaker 1: said no, he liked to divide and rule. He kept
Speaker 1: the army in charge for now, but Himmler didn't give
Speaker 1: up on his ambition. In February nineteen forty four, he
Speaker 1: ordered Werner Vron Brown to fly over to his field
Speaker 1: headquarters near the Eastern Front. Himmler's command center had the
Speaker 1: nickname the Black Lair. At first a few concrete bunkers
Speaker 1: hidden from air assault by the Polish forests, it had
Speaker 1: grown low. Wooden buildings were scattered through the trees, heavily camouflaged.
Speaker 1: There was even a command train parked up on a ramp.
Speaker 1: SS guards were everywhere. It was the kind of place
Speaker 1: people were summoned to, never to return. Even the self
Speaker 1: assured Vron Brown was unnerved by the prospect of meeting
Speaker 1: the most sinister man in the Third Reich. Himmler received
Speaker 1: Vron Brown behind a simple wooden table.
Speaker 3: I must confess that I felt a bit jittery when
Speaker 3: I was shown into his office. But he greeted me
Speaker 3: politely and conveyed rather the impression of a country grammar
Speaker 3: school teacher than that horrible man who was said to
Speaker 3: weighe knee deep in blood.
Speaker 4: I trust you realize that your V two rocket has
Speaker 4: ceased to be an engineer's toy, and that the German
Speaker 4: people are eagerly waiting for it. Why don't you come
Speaker 4: to us. You know that the fuel's door is open
Speaker 4: to me at any time, don't you. I shall be
Speaker 4: in a much better position to help you lick the
Speaker 4: remaining difficulties than that clumsy army machine.
Speaker 1: Heinra. Himmler was making his play. The SS was launching
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover of Paina Munda and the entire rocket program.
Speaker 1: Vron Brown pushed back.
Speaker 3: General Donberger is the best chief I could wish to have,
Speaker 3: rex Fura. It is technical trouble and not red tape
Speaker 3: that is holding things up.
Speaker 4: The feed to is like a.
Speaker 3: Little flower that needs sunshine, fertile soil, and some gardener's tending.
Speaker 3: If you pour a big jet of liquid manure on
Speaker 3: that little flower in order to have it grow faster,
Speaker 3: it might kill it.
Speaker 1: You have to laugh. Ron Brown, speaking to the head
Speaker 1: of the SS, compared the SS to a jet of
Speaker 1: liquid excrement. It was bold, very bold. If he ever
Speaker 1: said it, we only have Von Brown's account of the conversation,
Speaker 1: but in any case, Himmler apparently smiled or laughed, and
Speaker 1: the conversation with one of the most powerful and murderous
Speaker 1: men in Germany ended on pleasant terms. Von Brown flew
Speaker 1: back to the rapidly shrinking team and Pain Amunda. One
Speaker 1: month later, the day before his thirty second birthday, Verna
Speaker 1: von Brown was visited at three o'clock in the morning
Speaker 1: by the Gestapo. They were there to invite Von Brown
Speaker 1: to make a witness statement at the nearby police headquarters.
Speaker 5: He wished to arrest me. There must be a misunderstanding.
Speaker 5: By no means are we talking about arrest. We have
Speaker 5: the express order to take you into protective custody.
Speaker 1: Protective custody was worse than arrest. It might mean torture,
Speaker 1: it might mean death. There would certainly be no trial
Speaker 1: and no judicial oversight. People would simply vanish, but von
Speaker 1: Brown was so indispensable to the rocket program even Himmler
Speaker 1: hesitated to simply have him disappear. Instead, Von Brown was
Speaker 1: held in good conditions, allowed to receive birthday flowers and gifts,
Speaker 1: but he knew he was in mortal danger. Von Brown's biographer,
Speaker 1: Michael Neufeld, is sure that he would never have been
Speaker 1: arrested if Himmler hadn't seen some advantage in doing so.
Speaker 1: Himmler was simply waiting to see what the fallout might be,
Speaker 1: to discover how powerful vn Brown's protectors were. The Gestapo
Speaker 1: had an excuse for bringing von Brown into custody. Of course,
Speaker 1: Ostensibly they wanted to investigate the report of a drunken
Speaker 1: conversation at a party at which Von Brown had apparently
Speaker 1: been rather indiscreet about his milking of the Golden Cow.
Speaker 3: The war will not end well, It's clear enough where
Speaker 3: this is all going for Germany. But what of your weapon,
Speaker 3: Professor von Brown? Surely it is a source of hope
Speaker 3: for the German people. My feeling about the weapon is
Speaker 3: that it is aimed at the wrong planet. Rockets are
Speaker 3: not designed to conquer Britain or Russia. They are designed
Speaker 3: to conquer space.
Speaker 1: Did he ever say such things in an unguarded moment
Speaker 1: at a party? Perhaps perhaps not, But it rings true.
Speaker 1: Thener von Brown had come a long way since playing
Speaker 1: Moonlight Sonata at Ville Lais Piano. Had he only ever
Speaker 1: thought of the Nazi war effort as a handy source
Speaker 1: of funds for the Society for Spaceship Travel? Perhaps so.
Speaker 1: Von Brown, like most promoters of mega projects, systematically exaggerated
Speaker 1: the benefits and understated the costs of his ambitions. The
Speaker 1: Gestapo began to question Von Brown. He found the process.
Speaker 3: Grotesque and had a macabrun reality. As an engineer, I
Speaker 3: dealt constantly with tangible facts and comprehensible problems. Here everything
Speaker 3: appeared as if in a hallucination. Quite obviously, they wanted
Speaker 3: to inject fear into me. If the Gestapo wanted to
Speaker 3: convict me, how was I supposed to prove my innocence?
Speaker 1: He wasn't and he couldn't, and luckily for von Brown,
Speaker 1: he didn't need to. The second day of questioning was
Speaker 1: interrupted by his longtime boss, General Walter Dornberger, resplendently clad
Speaker 1: in full dress uniform, who marched in, shot Von Brown
Speaker 1: a genial glance, and without a word, placed a document
Speaker 1: in front of the chief interrogator. It was an order
Speaker 1: to release Von Brown, signed and stamped at Hitler's office.
Speaker 1: It had been a narrow escape, which Von Brown and
Speaker 1: Dornburger celebrated with a large bottle of brandy, then returned
Speaker 1: to working on the V two rocket program. A few
Speaker 1: months later, the third Reich would be collapsing and Von
Speaker 1: Brown would be plotting his next move. He didn't know
Speaker 1: it then, but his unnerving arrest had been the most
Speaker 1: extraordinary piece of good luck. In our next episode, Cautionary Tales,
Speaker 1: will return with this story's final shocking installment. Michael Neufeld's
Speaker 1: definitive account of Germany's V two program is The Rocket
Speaker 1: and the Reich. For a full list of our sources,
Speaker 1: see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales
Speaker 1: is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust. The
Speaker 1: sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Stella Harford, Jemma Saunders and
Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, Ditel Millard,
Speaker 1: John Schnaz, Eric's handler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at
Speaker 1: Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate and review and
Speaker 1: tell your friends and if you want to hear the
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Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot FM,
Speaker 1: slash Plus,