In 1954, Walt Disney was struggling to imagine tomorrow. Disneyland was set to open the following year and would be divided according to four themes: Fantasyland, Adventureland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. While there was plenty of preexisting material for Walt Disney to draw upon to design Fantasyland, Adventureland, and Frontierland, there was nothing upon which to base Tomorrowland. Disney looked to producer and animator Ward Kimball for ideas. His pitch? Outer space. The result was a three-part educational series, Man in Space (1955–57), cohosted by the German aerospace engineer Dr Wernher von Braun.
Von Braun’s background was not what one would expect from someone effectively working in children’s entertainment. His journey from Nazi rocket scientist to American celebrity is a remarkable one. During the war, von Braun, then an SS officer, was an integral part in the Nazi rocket development program. He helped design the V-2 rockets at the army research center in Peenemünde and became the technical director of the Dora labor camp, where an estimated 20,000 people died producing rocket parts.
The extent of the horrific conditions to which he and his fellow Nazis subjected prisoners would only come to light during the Nuremberg trials in 1947. But by then, von Braun was long gone; the United States had recruited him along with other German scientists in Operation Paperclip, a secret government program that brought over some 1,600 scientists from the former Third Reich to help develop American science. Von Braun and his peers would receive protection from the US secret service, who would also shield him from scrutiny for decades.
Von Braun would later claim he only worked for the Nazi regime because it funded his research, helping…
Auteur: Rowena Squires
