German-Born Space Pioneers Helped America Reach the Moon

October 22, 2025

Part 2: Wernher von Braun, Kurt Debus — Champions of Space Exploration

By Bob Granath

In the months and years following the conclusion of World War II, Dr. Wernher von Braun and Dr. Kurt Debus led a team of German rocket experts who came to the United States and helped set the foundation for the utilization of space with benefits for all humankind. While their contributions now are a crucial part of everyday life, revisionist historians are attempting to erase the legacy of these pioneers. While their work resulted in development of the infamous V-2 missile, the goal of von Braun and Debus always was to explore space.

Dr. Kurt Debus, director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, points to a television monitor in the Launch Complex 37 blockhouse during the liftoff of a Saturn 1 rocket for the SA-8 mission on May 25, 1965. To his left are Dr. Hans Gruene, deputy director of Launch Operations at Kennedy, Dr. Wernher von Braun, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Dr. Eberhard Rees, deputy director for Research and Development at Marshall. All came to the U.S. from Germany after World War II and each played crucial roles in America’s space program. Photo credit: NASA

In part 1 of this feature, facts established that even though von Braun’s family were members of German aristocracy, they were not ambivalent about the rise of the Nazis. Rocket team members were not devoted Nazis and they did not willingly join the SS. Responsibility for use of slave labor to assemble V-2s under horrible conditions was directed by SS Gen. Hans Kammler who also was responsible for the missile’s use against civilian targets.

Von Braun, as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, and Debus, as director of the Kennedy Space Center, played roles that were vital to catching up with and surpassing the Soviet Union during the Cold War’s Space Race. They also led in the effort to put the first humans on the Moon and, with it, setting the groundwork for the advanced technology and spaceflight of the 21st century.

Escape to America

As had been the plan for many months, von Braun and other German rocket specialists took their skills to U.S. Army forces once the Americans advanced close enough to safely do so. Knowing the technology they developed would have a major effect the second half of the 20th Century, von Braun explained his team’s reasoning for seeking out forces from the United States.

Members of the German rocket team are seen after surrendering to U.S. troops in Bavaria, Germany on May 2, 1945. From the left are U.S. Counterintelligence Corps agent Charles Stewart; Dr. Herbert Axster, chief of staff at Peenemünde; Dieter Huzel, propulsion engineer, Dr. Wernher von Braun, technical director at Peenemünde; Wernher’s younger brother, Magnus von Braun, a chemical engineer; and Hans Lindenberg, a combustion chamber engineer. Von Braun’s arm was broken in March when his car crashed after sliding off an icy mountain road. Photo credit: U.S. Army

“Our decision was not one of expediency, but a moral decision,” he said. “We had created a new means of warfare and we wanted to surrender such a weapon to a nation whose people were guided by the Bible.”

While over 200 rocket specialists were interested in working for the America government, the number allowed to come was limited to half that number. Members of the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps worked with the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, interviewing scores of individuals and developing files on each. Counterintelligence Corps met with von Braun to select the most important contributors marking those top experts file folders with a paper clip.

Under Operation Paperclip, the U.S. Army offered 115 of the Germans one-year contracts to work in the United States. In August 1945, Col. Holger Toftoy, chief of the Rocket Branch in the Research and Development Division of Army Ordnance, brought the rocket team and parts for 100 V-2s to Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas. The team launched V-2s from the White Sands Proving Ground just over the state line in New Mexico to conduct landmark research in the upper atmosphere, paving the way for orbital satellites in years to come.

Rocket Team Moves to Alabama, Florida

After members of the German Rocket Team moved to Redstone Arsenal, they developed rockets such as, from the left, Jupiter-C, Redstone, Juno II, Mercury-Redstone and Jupiter. Photo credit: SpaceAgeChronicle.com/Bob Granath

As the Cold War with the Soviet Union began to heat up, the U.S. military needed larger missiles, traveling faster and farther. In 1950, von Braun and his rocket team moved from Ft. Bliss to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. They became part of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), developing America’s first large ballistic missile, the Redstone.

Prior to the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite, from the left, Dr. Kurt Debus, director of Launch Operations; Albert Zeiler, chief of design engineering in Launch Vehicle Operations; and Dr. Hans Grune, director of Launch Vehicle Operations, stand in front of the Jupiter-C rocket at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 26. Photo credit: U.S. Army

Additionally, a launch site on the east coast was needed. Operating from Cape Canaveral, Florida, rockets would avoid traveling above populated areas by launching over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. At the new location, the group would operate under the leadership of Debus, the group’s Launch Operations director. In this role, he oversaw development and construction of facilities at Cape Canaveral to launch military rockets during the period between 1950 and 1960.

“We brought along everything we needed — the rocket, the motor, the guidance system,” Debus recalled years later. “They were hectic days, but they were good days. We were putting together knowledge that has made the impossible fairly commonplace today.”

During speeches in the early 1950s, von Braun, by then chief of Guided Missile Development Operations for ABMA, saw a competition coming. He pushed for an effort to launch an Earth-orbiting satellite. He warned that Russia’s advanced rocketry might allow the Soviet Union to gain an advantage in a race for missile supremacy over the Free World.

Following a post-launch news conference at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., participants hoist a full-scale mock-up of the Explorer 1 satellite. From the left, are Dr. William Pickering, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California; the satellite’s principal investigator, Dr. James Van Allen, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Iowa; and Dr. Wernher von Braun, chief of Guided Missile Development Operations.at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech

In 1955, von Braun, along with many other members of his team, were sworn in as American citizens. Altogether, some 765 German specialists would go on to serve in key branches of the U.S. aerospace industry.

Von Braun, Debus and their teams played a pivotal role in the successful development, testing and building the Redstone, Jupiter, Juno and Pershing missiles, all of which played a key role in holding the Soviet Union at bay during the Cold War.

Many Americans were stunned when the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, on Oct. 4, 1957. However, von Braun led the ABMA team that designed the Jupiter-C rocket that launched America’s response, the Explorer 1 satellite. launched Jan. 31, 1958. The satellite confirmed radiation belts surround the Earth.

After tracking stations established that Explorer 1 was safely in orbit, von Braun characterized the event as a crucial beginning for the nation’s space program.

In 1960, Dr. Wernher von Braun, left, describes a model of a Saturn I rocket to President Dwight Eisenhower during a visit to the newly opened Marshall Space Flight Center. Eisenhower announced the formation of NASA in two years earlier. Photo credit: NASA

“We have firmly established our foothold in space,” he said during a news conference. “We will never give it up.”

After President Dwight Eisenhower created NASA, consolidating U.S. space research, many of the German rocket team transitioned to the civilian space agency. Von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and Debus director of the agency’s Launch Operations Center in Florida.

At Marshall, von Braun’s team modified the Redstone rocket to send America’s first two astronauts, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, on suborbital flights into space. After President John F. Kennedy set the goal to “land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth,” von Braun and Debus led the way, developing and testing the Saturn series of rockets.

Von Braun Advances Civil Rights

As von Braun and his fellow Germans settled into life in Huntsville, they worked to assimilate into the community. After earning U.S. citizenship, they sponsored the creation of a Huntsville symphony and successfully pushed for a University of Alabama campus in Huntsville to continue engineering education for employees at Redstone Arsenal and Marshall working on the Apollo Program.

Dr. Charlie Smoot traveled to colleges and universities from Michigan to Puerto Rico recruiting African Americas students in the fields of engineering, physics and mathematics. Photo credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center

“If it had not been for the Germans, there would be no college here,” a student was quoted as saying in Ward’s 2005 book Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun.

However, von Braun offered NASA funding for an extension of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Nevertheless, he stressed that if the facility was to receive U.S. government funding, it must be desegregated.

In the 2020 article in the Los Angeles Times, von Braun’s daughter, Margrit, stressed that her father strongly believed in equal rights for minorities.

“My parents, as much as they could, were very passionate about the civil rights movement,” she said.

While von Braun’s work helping lead America’s efforts to explore space are well known, at the same time he had a significant impact on providing equal employment opportunities for minorities – especially in northern Alabama. In their 2015 book, We Could Not Fail, Richard Paul and Steven Moss pointed out that von Braun played a crucial role in providing opportunities for African Americans. Their book focused on the experiences of the first African Americans to work in the nation’s space program.

“The actions taken on race relations by the Marshall Space Flight Center would go above and beyond anything done elsewhere by NASA in the South,” they wrote. “Von Braun actually paid attention to the issue and was as engaged on it.”

Wernher von Braun campaigned for constructions of the University of Alabama campus in Huntsville. He promised NASA funding, but only if the facility was not segregated. A few history revisionists are working to rename this Research Hall on the campus. Photo credit: NASA

In a 1964 address on civil rights to contractors who were members of the Association of Huntsville Area Companies, von Braun spoke out against discrimination. He was particularly critical of laws such as poll taxes, which discouraged or prevented many African Americans from voting. He compared these restrictions to the barrier that divided West Berlin from Communist East Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

“All these regulatory barriers form a ‘Berlin Wall’ around the ballot box,” he said. “I am not going to sit quietly on a major issue like segregation.”

According to Fred Schultz of General Electric’s Space Division, von Braun’s remarks gave association members “the backing they needed to launch further successful drives for equal employment opportunities.”

President John F. Kennedy, right, and Dr. Wernher von Braun talk during a presidential visit to Redstone Arsenal in 1963. Von Braun was one of the officials Kennedy consulted in making his decision to propose a “space goal in which the United States had a reasonable chance to beat the Russians.” Photo credit: NASA

In a speech later that year to the annual banquet of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce von Braun asked, “Are you doing everything in your power to strive for fair employment and improvement of racial relations in our city?”

To do just that at Marshall, von Braun established a Cooperative Education Program, recruiting at historically Black colleges. Additionally, he hired Charlie Smoot, to recruit Black engineers to come south. As “co-ops,” students alternate semesters at school with semesters at space agency centers. Students worked in paid positions directly related to their fields of study.

Smoot was successful in finding students to become the first African American co-op engineers working for NASA. During his tenure with the agency, he established key contacts with professors, students, advisors, department heads and placement directors that held the door open for African Americas to gain access to jobs that had previously remained out of reach in the South.

However, a significant challenge was locating a place for the students to live. Segregated apartments and hotels were not available to Blacks. Smoot found families in Huntsville’s African American community to provide homes for the young engineers.

Von Braun, Debus Led Race to Moon

Teams at von Braun’s Marshall Space Flight Center developed the Saturn series of rockets that took nine crews to lunar orbit and six of these landed on the Moon’s surface. Debus led the monumental task to construct Kennedy Space Center facilities to process and launch those Apollo missions in which the first humans traveled beyond Earth.

On Feb. 23, 1962, Dr. Kurt Debus, NASA’s Launch Operations Center director, escorts President John F. Kennedy on a tour of Launch Complex-14 at the Cape Canaveral. Three days earlier, astronaut John Glenn launched from that site on America’s first orbital spaceflight. Photo Credit: NASA

Throughout the 1950s, the Soviet Union’s rockets clearly were more powerful than any developed by the United States. In October 1961, the first Saturn 1 rocket launched with 1.5 million pounds of thrust with a capacity of lifting a 20,000-pound payload to low Earth orbit. By 1967, the firsts Saturn V was launched which would eventually take American astronauts to the Moon. Von Braun’s team at Marshall also developed American’s first space station, Skylab.

In 1962, the Launch Operations Center at Cape Canaveral became independent from Marshall. The site was renamed in honor President Kennedy following his assassination in 1963. Debus oversaw the four Mercury orbital missions between 1962 and 1963, launches of Project Gemini during 1965 and 1966, as well as Saturn test flights, including all Apollo missions.

*The first stage of the Saturn V for the Apollo 8 mission is lifted in the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building on Feb. 1, 1968. Photo credit: NASA*

During the massive buildup for the Apollo lunar missions, Debus led NASA and its team of contractors in building facilities on Florida’s Merritt Island, adjacent to the Cape. The facilities included the 525 feet tall, 716 feet long and 518 feet wide Vehicle Assembly Building. It encloses 129,328,000 cubic feet of space. When constructed, it was the largest building in the world.

Debus’ work included launching three Skylab crews prior to his retirement in November 1974. He died Oct. 10, 1983 at the age of 74.

The positive global reaction to the successful landing of the first humans on the Moon inspired President Richard Nixon to ask NASA Administrator Thomas Paine to develop a plan for space flight well into the future. In March 1970, von Braun and his family moved to Washington, D.C. to assist in forming Paine’s plan. In this role, he became NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Planning at NASA Headquarters.

In mid-1970, Paine and von Braun presented the president with a program that included additional Skylab missions, a reusable space shuttle, and Earth orbiting space station, a platform orbiting the Moon, a lunar base and an eventual expedition to Mars. Nixon eagerly received the plan. A few days later, the director of the Office and Management and Budget called Paine with an estimated budget allocation. Only the Space Shuttle would be funded.

*Wernher von Braun, left, and Kurt Debus confer during launch preparations during the Apollo Program. Photo credit: NASA*

Following that decision, various versions for a completely reusable Space Shuttle were compared and debated. Von Braun’s design included a reusable winged orbiter with three engines fueled by an expendable external fuel tank. Two powerful strap-on solid propellant boosters would support liftoff thrust, separate, and then parachute into the ocean for retrieval and reuse. The proposal was one of von Braun’s last efforts before leaving the agency.

Von Braun retired from NASA on May 26, 1972. Two months later, he became vice president of engineering and development for Fairchild Industries, an aerospace company in Germantown, Maryland. At the company, von Braun’s last project was the Applications Technology Satellite-6, a NASA experimental spacecraft launched on May 30, 1974. It was the first educational Direct Broadcast Satellite providing learning opportunities to remote areas of India.

Kennedy Space Center Director Kurt Debus, right, congratulates Launch Operations Manager Paul Donnelly following the successful liftoff of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. Photo credit: NASA

During a routine medical examination in 1973, von Braun was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He resigned from Fairchild in January 1977 and died on June 16, that year at age 65.

Von Braun’s legacy continues in the lives of young people who have been the Space Camp, a program developed by von Braun. He knew that America and the world would need a new generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers to continue of his dream of travel beyond the Moon. Launched in 1982, Space Camp has inspired future explorers for more than 43 years. Focusing on developing teamwork and leadership skills, the program is based on NASA astronaut training and has more than one million alumni.

“I got to see all that engineering and meet all those amazing people,” Zoe McElroy said at the start her freshman year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. “I loved everything about it and I really knew that that’s what I wanted to do.”

What Others Say

In recent years, most if not all of the Germans who worked at Peenemünde and went on to play key roles in America’s early space efforts are deceased. As the facts of their legacy fades, it becomes easy for revisionist historical accounts to take root.

“They (the German engineers) were an important cog in the business and to have left them out would have been silly,” said Abraham Silverstein, left. He is seen during a spaceflight committee meeting in 1958 with Wernher von Braun at the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. Photo credit: NASA

A few individuals and groups are pressing to remove von Braun and Debus from the narratives of America’s efforts to explore beyond Earth. Fortunately, those who are well acquainted with the facts of the past are unwilling to distort the background of those leading pioneers who put footprints of U.S. astronauts on the Moon.

While some question the rational for bringing people who worked for the Nazi government to the United States, many of America’s top space flight leaders believe the decision was well founded. As NASA was formed in the late 1950’s, Abraham Silverstein was the agency’s chief of space flight. He grew up in a Jewish family in Terre Haute, Indiana. Silverstein later became director at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. He felt the German engineers’ role in supporting the new space agency was crucial.

“They were an important cog in the business and to have left them out would have been silly,” he said.

In the 2020 Los Angeles Times feature, NASA’s longest tenured administrator, Dan Goldin, strongly supports the role of the leaders such as von Braun and Debus.

*“Not to have brought them (the German Rocket Team) over would have been a crime,” said former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, in a 2020 Los Angeles Times feature. Photo credit: NASA*

“Not to have brought them over would have been a crime,” said Goldin, a Jewish engineer from New York. “You could get dogmatic about it, but the Cold War could have ended the world.”

Dr. William Pickring, director of the Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California had high praise for the role of Debus upon the retirement of NASA Kennedy Space Center’s director in 1974.

“With your help, we can look back to many significant accomplishments together,” he said.

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues at the same time, Acting Chief Astronaut John Young spoke of Debus’ outstanding contributions to the evolution and advancement of space flight.

“We note with great pride and personal gratitude your involvement in NASA,” he said. “You know you will always have a special place in the hearts of those of us who rode those manned launch vehicles.”

Rocco Petrone began working with members of the German Rocket Team at Redstone Arsenal during the early 1950s participating in development of the America’s first ballistic missile. In 1966, Petrone became Debus’ director of Launch Operations at the Kennedy Space Center.

“We were dealing with people such as Kurt Debus and Wernher von Braun on a daily basis,” said Rocco Petrone, right, seated next to Kurt Debus during the countdown for the launch of Apollo 7 on Oct. 11, 1968. “We knew that we were working with people upon whom the world would soon look as the true pioneers of rocketry and manned spaceflight." Petrone would go on to become the third director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. — “We were dealing with people such as Kurt Debus and Wernher von Braun on a daily basis,” said Rocco Petrone, right, seated next to Kurt Debus during the countdown for the launch of Apollo 7 on Oct. 11, 1968. “We knew that we were working with people upon whom the world would soon look as the true pioneers of rocketry and manned spaceflight.” Petrone would go on to become the third director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. Photo credit: NASA

”Those of us who had the good fortune to work with him (Debus) fully understood that we were seeing history in the making,” he said. “He was a person of great insight. We were dealing with people such as Kurt Debus and Wernher von Braun on a daily basis. We knew that we were working with people upon whom the world would soon look as the true pioneers of rocketry and manned spaceflight.”

In June 23, 2003, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine published its listing of the “Top 100 Stars of Aerospace” to commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers historic first powered flight. The listing was prepared by “industry professionals worldwide and selected as the most important, influential and intriguing personalities in the history of flight.” Number one on the list was Orville and Wilbur Wright. Second was Wernher von Braun.

“There is no doubt that without (Wernher) von Braun the U.S. would not have won the space race,” said Bob Ward, a former Huntsville Times newspaper journalist. Photo credit: The Huntsville Times/Michael Mercier

As part of the 2008 interview for Smithsonian Magazine Dr. Michael Neufeld concurred with the Aviation Week & Space Technology list.

“He (von Braun) was, in my view, the most important rocket engineer and space promoter of the 20th century,” said Neufeld, a senior curator in the Space History Division of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

“There is no doubt that without von Braun the U.S. would not have won the space race,” Bob Ward wrote in his 2005 book, Dr. Space, The Life of Wernher von Braun. “Like many people that saw opportunity in the U.S., he was an indispensable man that helped the United States beat the Soviet Union.”

In spite of these facts and the viewpoint of top NASA leaders and space experts, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center museum removed a bust of von Braun and a plaque with his quote displayed over a visitor hall. Pressure continues to rename facilities at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, Redstone Arsenal and the Wernher von Braun Civic Center in Huntsville. The National Space Club-Florida Committee’s top award for more than three decades, named for Kurt Debus, has been renamed the “Heroes and Legends Award” along with the conference center at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex .

In 2021, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center near the Marshall Space Flight Center and Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, removed a bust of von Braun. Soon after, a plaque with a Wernher von Braun quote also was taken down. The facility opened in 1970 through the efforts of von Braun. Photo credit: U.S. Space & Rocket Center

The evidence is clear. While von Braun’s family were part of Germany’s aristocracy, they were not ambivalent about the Nazis. Members of the German rocket team clearly were opposed to the policies of Hitler’s regime. Von Braun and Debus did not willingly join the Nazi party or the SS. They were not responsible for use of slave labor and the horrible conditions of the Mittelwerk. They did what they could to improve conditions for the laborers there. German rocket specialists were not responsible for the deaths through use of the V-2. That responsibility fell on leaders of the SS, especially Gen. Kammler.

Some argue that von Braun, Debus and their team knew they were building a weapon of mass destruction. But, so did Dr. Robert Oppenheimer who led the team that developed the atomic bomb. While the V-2 resulted in the deaths of 29,000, the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan killed an estimated 246,000 people.

The Von Braun Center in downtown Huntsville remains named for Wernher Von Braun. It is a multi-purpose facility equipped to accommodate major conferences, conventions, concerts, Broadway performances, symphonies and sporting events. — The Von Braun Center, in downtown Huntsville, remains named for Wernher Von Braun. It is a multi-purpose facility equipped to accommodate major conferences, conventions, concerts, Broadway performances, symphonies and sporting events. Photo credit: Von Braun Center

In spite of these facts, NASA’s official website biographies for both von Braun and Debus list that they were members of the Nazi party and SS, but the articles do not point out the fact that they both were compelled into joining.

It should be remembered that with the work of the German Rocket Team, the United States had missiles to hold the Soviet Union at bay during the hottest days of the Cold War. These same individuals launched America’s first satellite, first probe to the Moon, the nation’s first astronauts and they placed the first humans on the lunar surface. This all helped set the groundwork for future exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus deserve the place of honor each earned during their work on behalf of not only the United States, but also the entire world.