Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War
Wernher von Braun explains the Saturn V Launch System to President John F. Kennedy. Six days later, Kennedy was dead.
In a recent interview on the Seedtable Podcast, Gonz Sanchez and I discussed Michael Neufeld’s excellent biography about the German-American space pioneer Wernher von Braun. The book seems to have hit a nerve with listeners, as a few have reached out to learn more. In this post, I want to delve deeper into two big themes from the book that stood out to me.
The first theme is the inherent tension that exists between scientific advances and our moral choices. Neufeld’s biography examines the profound moral complexities of a man who, before and during WWII, was the leading figure of the V-2 missile program in Nazi Germany and who, after the war, became the chief architect of Saturn V which propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. Unlike many other biographies about von Braun, Neufeld doesn’t evaluate his subject in black-and-white terms. He doesn’t frame him as either a Nazi villain or a space hero. Instead, he acknowledges that von Braun was a complicated man whose conservative-nationalist upbringing and romantic obsession with space led him to sleep-walk into a “Faustian bargain” with an evil regime. Von Braun’s single-minded vision of exploring space blinded him to his moral responsibilities. It was only late in the war that he became disillusioned with the Nazi regime and began taking preparations for going with the winners once the war was lost.
The mathematician and satirist Tom Lehrer once characterized von Braun as “a man whose allegiance [was] ruled by expedience.” He couldn’t have said it better. The charismatic von Braun had an almost uncanny ability to attach himself to whoever was willing to fund the development of his rockets, and to then land on his feet when fortunes changed. In contrast to Goethe’s Faust, he never paid an eternal price for his S.S. membership and his complicity in using slave labor to build the V-2; the worst disclosures about his Nazi past achieved general circulation only after his death in 1977. Nonetheless, his story holds important lessons for anyone who is working on frontier technologies, such as artificial intelligence or gene editing, today. No scientific or engineering work takes place in a vacuum.
The second theme of the book is von Braun’s genius for managing highly complex engineering projects. Popular mythology casts engineering leaders like von Braun as inventor-scientists who are removed from the project’s operations. Nothing is farther from the truth. Von Braun was the undisputed leader in Peenemünde (V-2) and Huntsville (Saturn V) not because of his scientific contributions but because of a very rare combination of talents: A high level of technical competence coupled with an uncommon skill for dealing with people.
Von Braun was an enormously charismatic person and a consummate salesman who displayed an incredible entrepreneurial drive and who excelled at managing vast technical teams. His real genius, however, was rooted in his ability to “organize genius.” To quote Neufeld: “Talented, creative engineers and scientists are essential for any program that is attempting to make fundamental technological breakthroughs, but those relatively rare skills are common in comparison to the few who have both superior technical talent and the ability to manage, lead, and inspire large, complex organizations.”
Peter Wegener, an aerodynamicist who worked with von Braun in Peenemünde, highlighted how von Braun’s leadership flowed from his technical knowledge: “Every specialist sitting at the table was better versed in his own field, but von Braun had a remarkable grasp of all fields. He could separate important from peripheral items, distinguish what had to come first, make clear decisions, and inspire people to work.” Superb technical leadership as displayed by von Braun is the foundation of every science-driven organization that is building frontier technology, whether it’s in the field of modern rockets (Elon Musk), quantitative finance (Jim Simons), or artificial intelligence (Demis Hassabis).
The exploration of these two themes results in an endlessly fascinating portrait of a complex, two-sided man. In the words of the author, “here was a man who had shaken the hand of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon – but also Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and Goebbels.” Wernher von Braun was a giant of the 20th century––a modern-day Faust who had space dust in his eyes and blood on his hands. Michael Neufeld’s biography does justice to his moral complexity and place in history. If you’re interested in learning more about von Braun’s role in the Apollo program, a great companion piece to the book is Robert Stone’s brilliant six-hour documentary “Chasing the Moon,” which aired on PBS in 2019.
Thanks to Ricardo J. Mendez for the fruitful discussion about Neufeld’s characterization of Wernher von Braun as a “20th century Faust.”