Konrad Dannenberg

By The Week Staff

last updated 8 January 2015

The German V-2 rocketeer who later worked for NASA

Konrad Dannenberg

1912–2009

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During World War II, Konrad Dannenberg helped design the engines of the German V-2 rockets that rained death on London, Antwerp, and other cities. Later, he helped build the rockets that put U.S. astronauts into orbit and onto the moon. One of the last of the 118 German engineers who came to the U.S. with Nazi rocket wizard Werner von Braun at war’s end, Dannenberg died last week at 96.

“Dannenberg studied mechanical engineering at Hanover University,” said the London Independent, “but when the Second World War broke out he was called up for service in the army.” Soon he transferred to the budding German rocket program, headquartered in the remote Baltic fishing village of Peenemünde. There, he worked on Vergeltungswaffe-2 (“Vengeance Weapon-2”), the first missile to reach outer space, which it did on Oct. 3, 1942. “This unforgettable sight is still the highlight of my career,” Dannenberg remarked years later. But the achievement came at a terrible price. “Perhaps as many as 20,000 prisoners died producing the deadly weapons,” to say nothing of those who were killed in German bombing raids. Dannenberg was held by the British “as a potential war criminal.” But late in 1945, with von Braun and his compatriots, “he was whisked off to the U.S. as part of the secret Operation Paperclip,” to pioneer the American space effort.

In the ensuing decades, Dannenberg was instrumental in designing engines for the Redstone and Jupiter rockets, as well as the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo astronauts, said the Los Angeles Times. “We didn’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians,” he recalled. “We had had enough of a totalitarian society. We generally felt better about America.” He also championed NASA: “We wouldn’t be involved anymore in producing rockets that could kill people. We could aim at the peaceful exploration of space.” But as details of Operation Paperclip became known, Dannenberg and his fellow engineers came under scrutiny for their wartime activities. At least one book claimed he had joined the Nazi party in 1932. Indeed, he never expressed remorse for his early rocket work, arguing that he had engaged in

science, not atrocities.

Dannenberg received NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal and, well into his 90s, continued to advocate space exploration, including the conquest of Mars. In retirement, he sometimes visited the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., where he would sit atop a restored Saturn V and reminisce about the early days of the space race. “We built a chariot for astronauts to go to the moon,” he said, “and I’m glad to be a part of it.”