Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun was a German-American rocket engineer central to both the V-2 programme and the United States space programme. He developed weapons for Nazi Germany using a system tied to forced labour, then worked for the United States and helped design the Saturn V launch vehicle.

As technical director at Peenemünde, von Braun led the development of the V-2 ballistic missile, a programme later manufactured at Mittelwerk with concentration-camp forced labour. He surrendered to United States forces in 1945 and was brought to America through Operation Paperclip. His post-war work on Redstone and Saturn launch vehicles culminated in leadership at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and a central role in the Apollo lunar programme.

Robert Harris’ V2 places Wernher von Braun beside the fictional engineer Rudi Graf inside the German rocket programme during the winter of 1944. Von Braun represents the extraordinary technical achievement of the V-2 project and its inseparability from the Nazi war machine, while Graf experiences the growing futility and danger of continuing the campaign. The parallel Allied effort to locate mobile launch sites turns von Braun’s weapon into both the novel’s technological marvel and its central moral problem.