The Nazi Rocketeers

The Nazi Rocketeers PDF Author: Dennis Piszkiewicz
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811733878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Explores the development of the V-2 rocket. A sobering testimony to the consequences of corrupted genius.

The Nazi Rocketeers

The Nazi Rocketeers PDF Author: Dennis Piszkiewicz
Publisher: Stackpole Books
ISBN: 9780811733878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
Explores the development of the V-2 rocket. A sobering testimony to the consequences of corrupted genius.

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie PDF Author: Monique Laney
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300198035
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
This thought-provoking study by historian Monique Laney focuses on the U.S. government-assisted integration of German rocket specialists and their families into a small southern community at the end of World War II. In 1950, Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket experts relocated to Huntsville, Alabama, a town that would celebrate the team, despite their essential role in the Nazi war effort a decade earlier, for their contributions to the U.S. Army missile program and later to NASA's space program. Based on oral histories, provided by members of the African American and Jewish communities, the rocketeers' families, and co-workers, friends, and neighbors, Laney's book demonstrates how the histories of German Nazism and Jim Crow in the American South intertwine in narratives about the past. This is a critical reassessment of a singular time that links the Cold War, the “Space Race,” and the Civil Rights era while addressing important issues of transnational science and technology, and asking Americans to consider their country's own history of racism when reflecting on the Nazi past.

Breaking the Chains of Gravity

Breaking the Chains of Gravity PDF Author: Amy Shira Teitel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472911199
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
The incredible story of spaceflight before the establishment of NASA. NASA's history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But America's space agency wasn't created in a vacuum. It was assembled from pre-existing parts, drawing together some of the best minds the non-Soviet world had to offer. In the 1930s, rockets were all the rage in Germany, the focus both of scientists hoping to fly into space and of the German armed forces, looking to circumvent the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. One of the key figures in this period was Wernher von Braun, an engineer who designed the rockets that became the devastating V-2. As the war came to its chaotic conclusion, von Braun escaped from the ruins of Nazi Germany, and was taken to America where he began developing missiles for the US Army. Meanwhile, the US Air Force was looking ahead to a time when men would fly in space, and test pilots like Neil Armstrong were flying cutting-edge, rocket-powered aircraft in the thin upper atmosphere. Breaking the Chains of Gravity tells the story of America's nascent space program, its scientific advances, its personalities and the rivalries it caused between the various arms of the US military. At this point getting a man in space became a national imperative, leading to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, otherwise known as NASA.

Wernher Von Braun

Wernher Von Braun PDF Author: Dennis Piszkiewicz
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the biography of the German man who created the V-2 rocket and came to the United States to develop missiles.

All Up

All Up PDF Author: J. W. Rinzler
Publisher: Permuted Press
ISBN: 1682619028
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 586

Get Book Here

Book Description
“With its fascinating personalities that only Rinzler could describe, All Up can’t be put down.”—David Mandel, Veep executive producer All Up plunges its readers into the cloak-and-dagger espionage and blitzkrieg battles of World War II that swirled around rocketry; it introduces them to extraterrestrial phenomena, secret organizations, and the nail-biting missions launched from Cape Canaveral—as well as the secrets and unknown history behind Apollo 11’s legendary trip to the Moon. All Up tells the incredible true story of Nazi Germany’s Wernher von Braun, Soviet Russia’s Sergei Korolev, and America’s Robert Goddard as they work feverishly to fulfill their countries’ technological, military, and geopolitical objectives while satisfying their own personal obsessions. Alongside the Space Age history is the strange but well-documented trail of UFOs—one that leads to a desperate struggle in the highest corridors of power. Who will control the alien technology for their hidden agendas during the Cold War? Secret services compete worldwide in that ruthless game—and no one is a more deadly player than the mysterious agent named Rachel, hot on the trail of war criminal, former SS Brigadeführer Hans Kammler.

Von Braun

Von Braun PDF Author: Michael Neufeld
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525435913
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 626

Get Book Here

Book Description
Curator and space historian at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum delivers a brilliantly nuanced biography of controversial space pioneer Wernher von Braun. Chief rocket engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the U.S. space program, Wernher von Braun is a source of consistent fascination. Glorified as a visionary and vilified as a war criminal, he was a man of profound moral complexities, whose intelligence and charisma were coupled with an enormous and, some would say, blinding ambition. Based on new sources, Neufeld's biography delivers a meticulously researched and authoritative portrait of the creator of the V-2 rocket and his times, detailing how he was a man caught between morality and progress, between his dreams of the heavens and the earthbound realities of his life.

Hitler's Scientists

Hitler's Scientists PDF Author: John Cornwell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101640154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Get Book Here

Book Description
An eye-opening account of the rise of science in Germany through to Hitler’s regime, and the frightening Nazi experiments that occurred during the Reich A shocking account of Nazi science, and a compelling look at the the dramatic rise of German science in the nineteenth century, its preeminence in the early twentieth, and the frightening developments that led to its collapse in 1945, this is the compelling story of German scientists under Hitler’s regime. Weaving the history of science and technology with the fortunes of war and the stories of men and women whose discoveries brought both benefits and destruction to the world, Hitler's Scientists raises questions that are still urgent today. As science becomes embroiled in new generations of weapons of mass destruction and the war against terrorism, as advances in biotechnology outstrip traditional ethics, this powerful account of Nazi science forms a crucial commentary on the ethical role of science.

From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler's Bunker

From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler's Bunker PDF Author: Dennis Piszkiewicz
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the amazing story of Hanna Reitsch, one of the most celebrated women of the Third Reich. As a decorated test pilot for the Luftwaffe and a protege of Hitler, Reitsch was one of a handful of women who achieved personal success by breaking from the traditionally defined role of wife and mother in Nazi Germany. Reitsch's skills and accomplishments ultimately earned her an Iron Cross and celebrity status. A witness to the last days of the Third Reich, Reitsch visited Hitler's Berlin bunker where she received orders to deliver letters designed to rally the Luftwaffe. She left on this futile mission only minutes before Hitler's marriage to Eva Braun. This is the amazing story of Hanna Reitsch, a woman who excelled in an environment that for most was extremely repressive—Germany before and during World War II. She achieved personal success when she escaped the culturally defined role of wife and mother in Nazi Germany to live her passion for flying. Reitsch began her career flying gliders, setting both distance and endurance records in the 1930s. As the war approached she became a test pilot for new and dangerous aircraft for the Luftwaffe. The aircraft she flew included a large number of gliders and military aircraft, including Focke-Achgelis FW 61 Hubschrauber (the first practical helicopter), the jet-powered piloted version of the V-1 buzz bomb, and the rocket-powered Messerschmitt 163. Her achievements as a test pilot made her a celebrity in Nazi Germany and earned her an Iron Cross and the friendship of Hitler. As a friend of the Fuehrer, she became an eyewitness to the fall of the Third Reich. In the final days of World War II, she flew with her friend and lover, Luftwaffe General Robert Ritter von Greim—to join Hitler in his bunker. Minutes before Hitler was to marry Eva Braun, Reitsch and von Greim—on Hitler's orders—flew from Berlin to Rechlin in a desperate attempt to rally the Luftwaffe and save the Reich. After the war, Reitsch was interviewed as a potential witness for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Her interviewer stated that [Hanna's] account of the flight into Berlin to report to Hitler and of her stay in the Fuehrer's bunker is probably as accurate a one as will be obtained of those last days. It has remained so for half a century. This book also recounts a vivid and remarkable encounter in a cemetery in Kitzbuehel, Austria, in June of 1945, between Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker, perhaps the only other woman to be so successful in the Third Reich, and Hanna Reitsch. During this chance encounter, Hanna shows the letters of Josef and Magda Goebbels to Riefenstahl and the reader shares their shocking contents. Hanna Reitsch found in the Nazi establishment opportunities and rewards for her achievements. Consorting with the devil paid well; yet, in the end, she was called on to pay back more than she had received. Her story shows how hard it is for a woman to excel in a repressive society, and how that success can lead to defeat and misery.

The Nazis Next Door

The Nazis Next Door PDF Author: Eric Lichtblau
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547669224
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Newsweek Best Book of the Year: “Captivating . . . rooted in first-rate research” (The New York Times Book Review). In this New York Times bestseller, once-secret government records and interviews tell the full story of the thousands of Nazis—from concentration camp guards to high-level officers in the Third Reich—who came to the United States after World War II and quietly settled into new lives. Many gained entry on their own as self-styled war “refugees.” But some had help from the US government. The CIA, the FBI, and the military all put Hitler’s minions to work as spies, intelligence assets, and leading scientists and engineers, whitewashing their histories. Only years after their arrival did private sleuths and government prosecutors begin trying to identify the hidden Nazis. Now, relying on a trove of newly disclosed documents and scores of interviews, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau reveals this little-known and “disturbing” chapter of postwar history (Salon).

To a Distant Day

To a Distant Day PDF Author: Chris Gainor
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496211588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Insightful, instructive, and definitely worth the read."--Greg Andres, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada "As someone who has been teaching a course on space exploration for many years and has visited most of NASA's space centers, I have found plenty of new and valuable material in To a Distant Day. . . . I recommend the book to all who wish to know more about the conditions, people, and discoveries between 1890 and 1960 that led to the space age."--Pangratios Papacosta, Physics Today Although the dream of flying is as old as the human imagination, the notion of rocketing into space may have originated with Chinese gunpowder experiments during the Middle Ages. Rockets as both weapons and entertainment are examined in this engaging history of how human beings acquired the ability to catapult themselves into space. Chris Gainor's irresistible narrative introduces us to pioneers such as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth, who pointed the way to the cosmos by generating the earliest wave of international enthusiasm for space exploration. It shows us German engineer Wernher von Braun creating the V-2, the first large rocket, which, though opening the door to space, failed utterly as the "wonder weapon" it was meant to be. From there Gainor follows the space race to the Soviet Union and the United States, giving us a close look at the competitive hysteria that led to Sputnik, satellites, space probes, and--finally--human flight into space in 1961. As much a story of cultural ambition and personal destiny as of scientific progress and technological history, To a Distant Day offers a complete and thoroughly compelling account of humanity's determined efforts--sometimes poignant, sometimes amazing, sometimes mad--to leave the earth behind.