NAME: ________________________________________
The Space Race in Context: Hunting the Nazi Rocket Scientists
1. The new German super weapon:
2. Who built it?
3. How many people died making it?
4. Who was the head of the Nazi rocket program?
5. How did Allied intelligence view him at the end of the war?
6. Major Robert B. Staver – what was his mission?
7. What set Von Braun on his path into rocketry? What interest from his childhood?
8. Seemingly minor but critical point – what did Von Braun do in 1937?
9. Peenemunde – where is it and what was there?
10. How good was Von Braun’s technology compared to other countries?
11. The model number of the rocket? _________
12. It was the first _________________________ the world had ever seen?
13. Advantages of the new rocket as a weapon?
14. Dimensions, if you can catch them:
15. Fuel source?
16. Von Braun is now a captain in the ___________ (!!)
17. Launch to near-orbit in __________ seconds.
18. Production problems that Von Braun had to solve:
19. The solution, at the facility called Mittelwerk?
20. How bad were the conditions for the workers? (Give details)
21. How long did the launch prep sequence take?
22. Cities hit? ______________ ___________________ Casualty figures?
23. The search for the Nazi scientists becomes a race between whom and whom?
24. What does the rocket team decide to do as the end of the Third Reich approaches?
25. Reminder: What was at Nordhausen, their stop along the way?
26. How did Von Braun hope to avoid charges as a war criminal?
27. Why was Stalin kinda ticked about the situation?
28. Operation Paperclip – know this name. What was it?
29. Who authorized the plan: ______________________ Note: He specifically said no actual Nazis or potential war
criminals. The Army Intelligence people just falsified the files of the Nazi scientists.
30. What world circumstances made the former Nazis acceptable to the US?
31. The nuclear ____________________ missile was a direct descendant of the V2.
32. Then – what happened to make Von Braun even more important? ________________________.
33. What did Eisenhower create in 1958? __________________
34. Then, JFK. His goal:___________________________________.
35. Von Braun’s greatest achievement: the _______________ rocket. How big compared to the old V2? _________.
36. What is the lingering ethical question about Operation Paperclip?