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The
development of rockets at that time shows two faces in
Kummersdorf: the weapon forge on one side and the cradle of
to-day’s civil astronautics on the other side. The booster
rockets of manned space flight, both in the UdSSR and in the
USA, are based on the German A4-Rocket. This was the result of
the military development, which started in
Kummersdorf
and carried on from 1937 in Peenemünde. The A4 was developed
as a weapon right from the start and was support of a deadly
payload. Between September 1944 and March 1945 the A4 killed
over 6.000 people in Belgium and England and its production
let a much bigger number of people lose their lives. |
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Hardly
another technical development of the modern times was covered
for a quarter of the century behind military fences und
bunkers like the beginning of the civil astronautics. The
space enthusiasm of the early twenties in Germany catapult
apart from enthusiasts and dreamers also seriously engineers
and scientists in the sight of public interest – also the "father" of the astronautics, Wernher von Braun. At that time
the army of the Third Reich knew how to bait Wernher von Braun
and how to let him provide his knowledge’s completely to the
early rearmament and the following total war. Nevertheless an
image of the
"women in the moon” out
of the film of the same name by Fritz Lang decorated every
rocket, as to spite the military.
The
technical progress, which started in Kummersdorf and leaded
over Peenemünde with the impulse for the Weapon V 2 to the
rocket experiments of the great powers USA and UdSSR, returned
with the Sputnik from 1957 again to its civil beginning. But
the highlights of the civil astronautics, the moon landing,
the space stations and shuttle-missions remain inseparable
connected with the destruction of the National Socialist
Germany and
thousand dead people in the production places of Mittelbau-Dora and
the targets of the V 2 in England and Belgium. |
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