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Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the final months of the Second World War,

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Speaker 1: the Nazis began to use a dreadful rocket powered bomb.

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Speaker 1: It traveled faster than the speed of sound, which meant

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Speaker 1: that you couldn't hear it coming. One moment you were

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Speaker 1: queuing up at a store or enjoying a pint at

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Speaker 1: the pub, and the next moment, well, there was no

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Speaker 1: next moment. It was a cruel, spiteful weapon. Technologically it

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Speaker 1: was a miracle, but economically and militarily, the V two

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Speaker 1: rocket was a total disaster for Nazi Germany. How did

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Speaker 1: this terrible weapon come into existence? Why were so many

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Speaker 1: of the people it hurt not the people you might expect,

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Speaker 1: And what lessons can we learn from the V two

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Speaker 1: Rocket even today? I'm very excited to introduce my new

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Speaker 1: three part series on the V two Rocket, in which

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Speaker 1: I investigate the answers to those questions. All the episodes

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Speaker 1: are available now ad free for Pushkin Plus subscribers. But

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Speaker 1: the mini series was inspired by former and founding Cautionary

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Speaker 1: Tales producer Ryan Dilly, the og producer of Cautionary Tales,

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Speaker 1: Ryan is also our resident V two expert, and while

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Speaker 1: I've been able to cover the rocket weapon in depth.

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Speaker 1: I haven't yet had the chance to geek out with

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Speaker 1: Ryan on the topic, and today Ryan Dilly joins me.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Cautionary Tales, right.

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Speaker 2: It's so lovely back on the other side of the

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Speaker 2: glass in the studio part, rather than the cubicle directing you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, just because you're no longer the boss of Cautionary Tales,

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Speaker 1: we can actually get you in front of the mic.

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Speaker 1: While you were in charge, this was never going to happen.

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Speaker 1: We can talk about how you got me into the

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Speaker 1: V two, but how did your interest first start?

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Speaker 2: There are surviving versions of the V two. There were

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Speaker 2: rockets that they were collected after the war and it's

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Speaker 2: one of the Imperial Museum. So when I was a kid,

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Speaker 2: I would go there and I'd see this huge black

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Speaker 2: and white rocket, amazing thing, and they cut it out

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Speaker 2: so you can see what's going on inside.

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Speaker 1: And I mean it's tall as a house, isn't It's forty.

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Speaker 2: Five feet tall, about five feet wide, and it takes

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Speaker 2: up the whole atrium of the museum, three floors up.

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Speaker 2: But I didn't realize this until quite later, that one

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Speaker 2: of the V two bombs landed very close to where

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Speaker 2: my great grandmother actually worked March eighth, nineteen forty five.

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Speaker 2: She was a kitchen hand in a cafe next to

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Speaker 2: London's main meat market, Smithfield Market, which is a very

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Speaker 2: kind of grand, beautiful Victorian building, an ancient market which

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Speaker 2: was built on the original land outside the city walls

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Speaker 2: the Romans had built where animals were slaughtered and it

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Speaker 2: still operates as a meat.

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Speaker 1: Market to this day. It's an amazing place. Yeah, on this.

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Speaker 2: Day, on with the real tail end of the war.

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Speaker 2: This is, you know, a month or two before the

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Speaker 2: end of the war, lots of people had heard a

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Speaker 2: rumor that there were all good rabbits on sale, so

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Speaker 2: they went to the market very early to line up

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Speaker 2: because I was obviously rationing and food shortages. And just

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Speaker 2: as they were doing that, one of these fearsome V

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Speaker 2: twos landed no warning, as you said, supersonic speed. The

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Speaker 2: speed and the weight of the rocket caused it to

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Speaker 2: break through the building through the ground and there's an

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Speaker 2: underground railway which used to serve the market, and that

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Speaker 2: collapsed and many people were flung into that hole. There

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Speaker 2: were one hundred and ten deaths, many of them women

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Speaker 2: and children, just regular shops waiting. My family ever talked

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Speaker 2: about this, and I'm sure my great grandmother was there,

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Speaker 2: probably about sixty seventy yards beyond the blast zone, so

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Speaker 2: not injured, but it was definitely something that came very

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Speaker 2: very close to change in my family history.

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Speaker 1: It is absolutely extraordinary, and one of the things that

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Speaker 1: we discussed in the series is the way that this

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Speaker 1: thing would just come from nowhere and hit almost always

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Speaker 1: civilian targets because it wasn't accurate enough to really be

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Speaker 1: of any military value, and because it was so random,

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Speaker 1: there wasn't anything they could do about it. They couldn't

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Speaker 1: go to a bombs shelter. It wasn't like in the

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Speaker 1: blitz earlier, which killed many more people. You knew, you

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Speaker 1: had some warning the bombers were coming. You could go

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Speaker 1: and hide, you get somewhere safe. But this would just, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're queuing for rabbits.

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Speaker 2: This is why particularly it's an interesting weapon. So when

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Speaker 2: it was developed it was called the A series weapon.

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Speaker 2: It was the A rocket. The V comes from German,

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Speaker 2: the geltungs buffer, so that's kind of retaliation vengeance, and

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Speaker 2: the idea is it's a weapon to terrorize people.

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Speaker 1: Because German is losing the wall badly by then. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so this is their revenge.

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Speaker 2: But actually military is not a great weapon in military values.

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Speaker 2: Do you mention that the bombers. Bombers would come over,

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Speaker 2: the air aid sign would go and all the workers

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Speaker 2: have to get out of their beds, so that you

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Speaker 2: disrupt their sleep and you disrupt production. The next day,

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Speaker 2: maybe you hit their factory and you maybe knock out

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Speaker 2: the railway line. The i thing that the Germans would

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Speaker 2: do would sdrop timed bombs, so a whole street would

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Speaker 2: be closed down while they're waiting for this time bomb

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Speaker 2: to be diffused, and you would kill anyone trying and

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Speaker 2: diffuse it or it would go off. So that was

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Speaker 2: a way of disrupting huge amounts of the city over

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Speaker 2: days from one rate. The VTA didn't do any of that.

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Speaker 2: It came along. It had huge destructive power. It would

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Speaker 2: burrow itself into the ground and with one tonne explosion

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Speaker 2: quite deep down, would cause huge damage to the foundations,

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Speaker 2: absolute destroy buildings in a way that conventional bombs didn't do.

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Speaker 1: And that this is something that we explore in the series.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things we also explore is how

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Speaker 1: Germany came to build this thing in the first place.

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Speaker 1: Why did anybody ever think that this was a good

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Speaker 1: investment of resources rather than building more tanks and planes.

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Speaker 1: And one of the reasons is because the senior engineer

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Speaker 1: on the V two program was this incredibly charismatic man.

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Speaker 2: Fair enough on Brown, Yes, thinking about him, I find

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Speaker 2: him deeply distasteful. I've become very angry about him. Actually,

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Speaker 2: he was born in about nineteen twelve into an aristocratic family.

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Speaker 2: They were prushan aristocracy, So he was kind of the

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Speaker 2: blonde haired, blue eyed kind of perfect German that people

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Speaker 2: then revered from the yunkers class, this kind of political

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Speaker 2: and military elite of Germany, the people who really pushed

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Speaker 2: what we think of as being as being classic Germans,

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Speaker 2: the kind of heel clicking, militaristic Germans. Yeah, he came

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Speaker 2: from that background.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and that slightly somewhat sneering at the Nazis as

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Speaker 1: a bit ridiculous upstarts, but at the same time very

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Speaker 1: interested in the Nazi agenda of military domination of German nationalism.

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Speaker 1: That kind of thing would sit very well with von

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Speaker 1: Brown's background. Ye.

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Speaker 2: For Brown's father, as I understand it, was a government

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Speaker 2: minister served in the Vinmark public. We think of the

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Speaker 2: Wimark Republic as being of progressive lefty, but in many

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Speaker 2: ways that there was a respectrum of people, and he

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Speaker 2: was more conservative.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't all cabarets, it wasn't.

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Speaker 2: All it wasn't all lives in la. He was a

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Speaker 2: more kind of conservative figure. The Prussians would have shared

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Speaker 2: many of the views that the Nazis had, perhaps not

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Speaker 2: the kind of street fighting ways of the essay or

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Speaker 2: the SS, but certainly they would have shared many of

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Speaker 2: the racist views, many of the economic views. Would have

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Speaker 2: shared a fear of Bolshevism, that have shared a fear

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Speaker 2: of kind of international jury, that have shared a fear

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Speaker 2: of Western decadence. So there are many overlaps between their worldview.

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Speaker 1: And the series is one of the things that we

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Speaker 1: do is follow von Brown along with following the Rocket

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Speaker 1: and talk about his journey and his decisions and his

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Speaker 1: moral responsibility for what happened. So I don't want to

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Speaker 1: go into too much detail about that, but he does

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Speaker 1: end up in an extraordinary place, which is, among other things,

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Speaker 1: working for Disney.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I find that that transformation slightly obscene.

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Speaker 1: It's undoubtedly obscene, yes, but I was.

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Speaker 2: Looking through the archives. It's quite rare to find people

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Speaker 2: criticizing that. I found a really interesting article written by

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Speaker 2: British major newspapers, the Daily Mirror, just after the war,

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Speaker 2: which looked at his situation going to live in America,

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Speaker 2: and it's very, very critical of it and makes many

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Speaker 2: of the points that I would make today. And these

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Speaker 2: someone were swept under the carpet in the fifties.

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Speaker 1: I mean, in a nutshell, this guy is a Nazi

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Speaker 1: war criminal. We can debate to what extent he's a

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Speaker 1: Nazi war criminal, but he was a major part of

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Speaker 1: the German war effort. And now he's making a TV

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Speaker 1: series for Walt Disney about how We're going to go

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Speaker 1: to space. He's suddenly a kind of popular science commentator.

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Speaker 1: It is astonishing.

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Speaker 2: And via Walt Disney and via those appearances and the public,

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Speaker 2: he hobnobbed with politicians. He became friends with JFK to

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Speaker 2: an extent. I mean, his daughter says that when JFK

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Speaker 2: was killed, it was the most upset she'd ever seen

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Speaker 2: her father. Yeah, he went off to his den and

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Speaker 2: just stayed there, and she was told not to go

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Speaker 2: nowhere near him. He had a link with him, and

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Speaker 2: JFK was instrumental in giving the funds it needed to

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Speaker 2: get to the moon.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the moonshot was JFK's vision and Von Brown was

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Speaker 1: intimately involved in making that happen. He said that that

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Speaker 1: wasn't much criticized at the time. There was a debaate

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Speaker 1: as to what was going to happen to these people.

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Speaker 1: Who would they go to work for or maybe they

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Speaker 1: should all just be shot. There is an argument that

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Speaker 1: they should have been executed for war crimes. But fine,

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Speaker 1: instead they go to build rockets. But they could have

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Speaker 1: built rockets for the Soviet Union, for the French, for

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Speaker 1: the British. It could have worked out differently. Do you

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Speaker 1: think he would have been treated differently by these different

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Speaker 1: post war powers.

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Speaker 2: I almost certainly think he would have been treated very differently.

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Speaker 2: I doubt he would have been celebrated in the way

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Speaker 2: that he was. He would never been called a hero

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Speaker 2: by the Soviets if they'd have captured him. I believe

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Speaker 2: some German scientists did defect the Rush, and particularly I

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Speaker 2: think the communy sympathis.

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Speaker 1: And there was this joke when America got to the

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Speaker 1: Moon that that's because our Germans are better than their Germans.

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Speaker 1: That's the joke the Americans told.

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Speaker 2: Yes at the end of the war. And this is

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Speaker 2: one of the things I find annoying about Ferdo von Brown.

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Speaker 2: At the end of the war, he sought out the Americans.

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Speaker 2: He had a choice, and I think that the pragmatic

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Speaker 2: choices the Soviets probably wouldn't tread him very well. He'd

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Speaker 2: have ended up in Siberia, living in a goolag, perhaps

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Speaker 2: still doing the same research, but it wouldn't have been

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Speaker 2: a comfortable lifestyle. So the French, I'm guessing after the war,

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Speaker 2: wouldn't have been all that welcoming to him or accommodating

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Speaker 2: to him. They would have certainly taken him on. So

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Speaker 2: there's another kind of Nazi scientist engineer in parallel, who's

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Speaker 2: Ferdinand Porsche, so of famous Porsche carmakers. He was very

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Speaker 2: good friends with Hitler. He joined the Nazi Party about

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Speaker 2: the same time as Von Brown joined the Nazi Party. Equally,

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Speaker 2: Von Brown was in the SS and on Porsch in

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Speaker 2: the SS. They both came up with kind of slightly grandiose,

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Speaker 2: hair brained technical scheme. So he made perfectly usable military kit.

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Speaker 2: Cooper of argons and other jeep type things. But he

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Speaker 2: also wanted to make a massive one hundred ton mouse tank.

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Speaker 1: A mouse tank is a tank for mice.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I guess it's a joke. The idea is his

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Speaker 2: massive tank.

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Speaker 1: Like Little John and Robin Hood. It's the mouse tank

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Speaker 1: because it's enormous.

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Speaker 2: Like a castle on wheels that would trundle along and

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Speaker 2: win the war. And obviously it was a complete disaster,

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Speaker 2: and so both of his characters were very, very entwined

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Speaker 2: in the Nazi wharf. In the Hitler's grandiose schemes. Ferdinand

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Speaker 2: Porsche fell into the hands of the French and was

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Speaker 2: basically imprisoned by them. They seemed his war criminals, all

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Speaker 2: of the same things that he did for Hitler. You

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Speaker 2: could argue that ron Brown did for Hitler. The French

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Speaker 2: imprisoned portion. They wanted him to work for them, But

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Speaker 2: they certainly were rolling out of the red carpet.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't putting him on Disney.

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Speaker 2: Yes, Well, when ernevon Brown's ranted the Americans, he also

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Speaker 2: was interrogated by the British. There was a little bit

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Speaker 2: of cooperation between the Anglo American allies. He said he

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Speaker 2: had a moral duty to give the technology, the terrible

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Speaker 2: weapon that he developed, moral duty to give that to

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Speaker 2: a nation. And I think the quote is something like

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Speaker 2: a nation that lives by the Bible, the Americans, obviously,

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Speaker 2: that's compared to the godless Communists. The idea is he

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Speaker 2: suddenly think it's very convenient, or maybe he's a wonderful Christian.

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Speaker 2: And then his daughter once asked about what was his

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Speaker 2: what were his views of Christianity?

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Speaker 1: So he wasn't.

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Speaker 2: Really We'd go water skiing every Sunday morning, so we

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Speaker 2: ever went to church and didn't really talk about God.

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Speaker 2: He was kind of spiritual, but he wasn't. So I

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Speaker 2: think there's a real kind of sense that he claimed

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Speaker 2: to have a more responsibility to deliver this weapon to

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Speaker 2: the Americans. It was okay when he was giving to

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Speaker 2: the Nazis and dropping bombs on all in Sundry or

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Speaker 2: doing whatever he did in the factories that made the bombs,

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Speaker 2: but he suddenly it had a great mold duty. So

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Speaker 2: I think he was very good at telling the Americans

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Speaker 2: what they wanted to hear and making out that he

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Speaker 2: was a good fellow.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that we explore in the Three

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Speaker 1: part series is early on we're hearing a lot of

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Speaker 1: von Brown's descriptions of himself, and then later we start

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Speaker 1: to hear a more objective viewpoint and you'd start to

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Speaker 1: see what's going on in a different way. And when

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Speaker 1: he did go to talk to the Brits, there is

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Speaker 1: this extraordinary moment where he's been driven through southeast London

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Speaker 1: and there's a sign that has basically been flattened by

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Speaker 1: one of the V two rockets, and he's a bit

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Speaker 1: irritated because they've cleared all the rubble away and what

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Speaker 1: he really wanted to do was examine the site fresh

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Speaker 1: and he could understand what the V two had actually done.

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Speaker 1: So there's something very cold there. It's like a scientist

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Speaker 1: examining of a rat in a laboratory.

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Speaker 2: Which goes against lots of the other defenses he has

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Speaker 2: is I wanted to make it a spaceship. I always

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Speaker 2: wanted to go to the Moon. I didn't really want

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Speaker 2: to make a weapon. And then that anecdote tells another story.

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Speaker 2: I do have a quote from him which I find

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Speaker 2: interesting because I was saying that he never really expressed

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Speaker 2: regret about what he'd done, and actually I was wrong,

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Speaker 2: So I found this quote. I very deep and sincere

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Speaker 2: regret for the victims of the V two rockets. But

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Speaker 2: there were victims on both sides, and I find how

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Speaker 2: well I find that A mean who does he mean

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Speaker 2: by victims? The victims are manifold. It's not just people

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Speaker 2: like the shoppers at Smithfield Market and my great grandmother.

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Speaker 2: I mean the destruction of housing stock in the last

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Speaker 2: few weeks of the war. I think one of the

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Speaker 2: figures I've seen this six hundred thousand houses in the

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Speaker 2: southeast either damaged or destroyed by V two's Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: my grandparents found it very difficult to find housing after

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Speaker 2: the war, so unfortunately, my grandparents had to live in

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Speaker 2: a kind of a dilapidated hut that was formerly a

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Speaker 2: kind of barracks through which disease spread overcrowded, uncentry conditions,

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Speaker 2: and those health problems had huge impacts on my family

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Speaker 2: for decades afterwards. So there are kind of a number

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Speaker 2: of victims. It wasn't just the necessary of the people

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Speaker 2: who are killed. There are bigger ripples that go through

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Speaker 2: British society. And also these bombs landed in Holland, in

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Speaker 2: Antwerp Liege areas in Belgium. But also there were a

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Speaker 2: number of other victims. The people who made the bombs

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Speaker 2: and people who were involved in constructing the factories and

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Speaker 2: constructing the railway lines and constructing the other machinery that

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Speaker 2: made this weapon possible were often slave laborers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Ryan. We will hear more about Vanda

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Speaker 1: von Brown. A little bit from the satirist Tom Lera.

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Speaker 1: After the break, we're back. I'm Tim Harford. I'm with

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Speaker 1: the founding producer of Caution Retales, Ryan Dilley, and we're

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Speaker 1: talking about fan of Von Brown and the V two rocket.

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Speaker 1: One thing that we didn't get to include in the

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Speaker 1: series was Tom Larra's famous song about Von Brown. Tom Larra,

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Speaker 1: many people will know, still with us in his nineties,

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Speaker 1: a great satirist of the post war era, and he

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Speaker 1: I think reflected some of the controversy about should this

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Speaker 1: guy who built this super weapon be working for NASA.

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Speaker 1: Let's have a little listen to the Von Brown song?

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Speaker 3: And what is it that put America in the forefront

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Speaker 3: of the nuclear nations? And what is it that will

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Speaker 3: make it possible to spend twenty billion dollars of your

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Speaker 3: money to put some clown on the moon. Well it

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Speaker 3: was good old American know how. That's why as provided

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Speaker 3: by good old Americans like doctor Werner von Brown. Gather

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Speaker 3: around while I sing, you are Verner van Brown a

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Speaker 3: man whose allegiance is ruled by expigence. Call him a Nazi.

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Speaker 3: He was even from a Nazish Nazi, says Werner van Brown.

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Speaker 1: We shall hear a little more of that in a moment.

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Speaker 1: So this was originally recorded live in nineteen sixty five

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Speaker 1: for the album that was the year that was.

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Speaker 2: So was he a Nazi when I immediate want to

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Speaker 2: say yes. I think he was certainly very culpable in

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Speaker 2: Nazi crimes. I think he was culpable in developing this weapon.

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Speaker 2: I think he began to develop a weapon before the

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Speaker 2: Nazis came to power. As a teenager, he was making rockets, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: the larger kind of glorified fireworks. They'd be packed with

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Speaker 2: kind of explosive, not hugely powerful rockets. He was apparently

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Speaker 2: not a good student, but he performed really well at

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Speaker 2: the university, so he got multiple degrees. He got degrees

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Speaker 2: in engineering or degrees in physics. So he was kind

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Speaker 2: of like a underkind in the perfect sense. And his

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Speaker 2: work was spotted by the army. They said they would

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Speaker 2: fund his PhD project, which is to make a rocket.

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Speaker 1: And about a few months after that, Hitler comes to

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Speaker 1: power and then he's got a choice.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason that the Army were funding him wasn't

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Speaker 2: because they were interested in getting to the moon. They

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Speaker 2: were interested in weaponry, and that this was a time

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Speaker 2: when the German state had been disarmed by the First

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Speaker 2: or War allies.

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Speaker 1: The rockets were an alternative to artillery because artillery was banned.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and also it was very difficult to have an

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Speaker 2: air force, so the lots of thes rictions they were

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Speaker 2: trying to get round the idea that a twenty five

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Speaker 2: year old would suddenly become the darling of the German army.

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Speaker 2: I presume his father, who was a minister in the

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Speaker 2: government at the time, probably would have had a role

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Speaker 2: in introducing to people and advising him. So Vernavon Brown

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Speaker 2: was not an innocent in this, a kind of hair

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Speaker 2: brained dreamer. Certainly, his behavior throughout his career it shows

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Speaker 2: he had political nous. He wasn't just wandering into things.

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Speaker 1: And by the end of the war he was a

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Speaker 1: senior SS officer. This is one of the most evil

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Speaker 1: organizations in the history of human civilization. Now we can argue,

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Speaker 1: and we discuss it in the series why he joined

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Speaker 1: the SS, whether it was because he was absolutely committed

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Speaker 1: to the genocidal goals of the SS, or because he

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Speaker 1: wanted to build rockets and he didn't much care about

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Speaker 1: the genocidal goals of the SS. If it helped him

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Speaker 1: build rockets, that that was fine by him. There's seem

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Speaker 1: a little bit more from Tom Larra.

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Speaker 3: Don't say that he's hippocritical, say rather that he's a

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Speaker 3: political Once a rockets up, who cares where's they calm downs?

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Speaker 3: That's not my department says.

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Speaker 1: Do you think he could have washed his hands where

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Speaker 1: the rockets came down? He knew where they were going.

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Speaker 2: But he knew their weapons. I've been mulling this over

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Speaker 2: a lot, so that part of me thinks that could

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Speaker 2: he not have slowed the ProRes of the rocket program down?

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Speaker 2: Could he not have essentially sabotaged it? He was the

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Speaker 2: kind of lynch pin. I think people have described him

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Speaker 2: as being a kind of organizer.

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Speaker 1: He was a brilliant technical director.

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Speaker 2: He had a great breadth of knowledge, but not a

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Speaker 2: great depth of knowledge. It's what one of the people

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Speaker 2: who worked with him and NASA said, And I think

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Speaker 2: the idea was, if he'd really wanted to, he could

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Speaker 2: have stopped. He could have maybe slowed down the progress

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Speaker 2: of the bomb. Lots of programs in Nazi Germany, lots

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Speaker 2: of hair brain schemes failed. Huge amounts of money were

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Speaker 2: being pumped into the V two. It's a huge effort,

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Speaker 2: apparently comparable to the American effort to create the atomic bomb.

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Speaker 2: Huge amounts of money being essentially wasted on this project.

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Speaker 2: But there were other projects were equally expensive, which just

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Speaker 2: failed and they didn't take the scientists out, or they

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Speaker 2: didn't take the rex out and shoot them against the wall.

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Speaker 2: They were just, you know, fair enough didn't work. I

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Speaker 2: wonder possibly if Ernavon Brown could have slowed it down.

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Speaker 2: He knew what was happening in Nazi Germany, he knew

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Speaker 2: what the rasion was doing. He also knew that the

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Speaker 2: writing was on the wall and it was all going

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Speaker 2: to be over quite soon. And yet plowed on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, to the extent that he was nearly killed

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Speaker 1: in a car crash because he and his chauffeur were

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Speaker 1: working so hard. This is in the final weeks of

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Speaker 1: the war, they're driving all over the place trying to

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Speaker 1: get stuff done, and the chauffeur falls asleep at the

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Speaker 1: wheel and von Brown is asleep in the back and

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Speaker 1: nearly killed him. And that was overwork.

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Speaker 2: But the other part of me is actually, despite the

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Speaker 2: deaths of all of the people who worked on the project,

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Speaker 2: and despite the deaths in London and other cities in Europe,

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Speaker 2: the money that was draining out of the Nazi regime

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Speaker 2: because of the V two project was actually quite useful.

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Speaker 2: If they've spent it wisely, they maybe could have kept

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Speaker 2: the war going slightly longer. They could have chewed up

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Speaker 2: more lives to kick out more people. At the same time,

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Speaker 2: the launch sites of the V two were mainly in

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Speaker 2: Holland because that was where you could basically reach London

410
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Speaker 2: from the Hague. So the Germs were based themselves down.

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Speaker 2: They weren't withdrawing partly because of the V two sites there,

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Speaker 2: and they were starving the population, which is awful. The

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Speaker 2: VTA did more damage to the German war effort than

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Speaker 2: the cruelty inflicted on many one hundreds of thousands, if

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Speaker 2: not a million people.

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Speaker 1: I didn enormous enormous damage to the German war effort.

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Speaker 1: There's one physic I quote who said we were very

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Speaker 1: grateful to Von Brown because it was as though they

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Speaker 1: had pursued a policy of unilateral disarmament. So much money

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Speaker 1: that could have been spent on planes, fighter planes or

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Speaker 1: tanks was going on this v too. But I mean

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Speaker 1: it did cause mass starvation purely because of the all

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Speaker 1: the potatoes. That sounds absurd, the potatoes required to make

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Speaker 1: the alcohol which was an important part of fueling this rocket,

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Speaker 1: and millions of people, literally millions of people were starving

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Speaker 1: to death in Eastern Europe at the time. Let's listen

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Speaker 1: to the end of the Tom Lera song.

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Speaker 3: Some have harsh words for this man of renown, but

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Speaker 3: some think our attitude should be one of gratitude, like

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Speaker 3: the widows and cripples in old London town who owe

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Speaker 3: there are large pensions to Werner von Brown. You two

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Speaker 3: maybe a big hero. Once you've learned to count backwards

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Speaker 3: to zero in German or English. I know how to

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Speaker 3: count it down, and I'm learning Chinese, says Werner.

435
00:21:17,970 --> 00:21:26,930
Speaker 1: Fun what's the China reference about?

436
00:21:27,530 --> 00:21:29,530
Speaker 2: So Tom Lair's argument was that he would sell himself

437
00:21:29,570 --> 00:21:31,250
Speaker 2: to the high spidder. I think it was an open

438
00:21:31,330 --> 00:21:33,090
Speaker 2: question who he'd work for. I doubt he would have

439
00:21:33,090 --> 00:21:35,010
Speaker 2: been the Chinese, but there were other people interested in

440
00:21:35,010 --> 00:21:37,730
Speaker 2: his services. So in the immediate aftermath of the collapse

441
00:21:37,770 --> 00:21:40,410
Speaker 2: of Germany, the allosis, you'll find Japan. It was quite

442
00:21:40,490 --> 00:21:42,570
Speaker 2: a good idea to grab hold of these rockets. Scientists

443
00:21:42,610 --> 00:21:45,290
Speaker 2: in these rockets, and maybe you could reversion these rockets

444
00:21:45,290 --> 00:21:46,690
Speaker 2: to work for the invasion.

445
00:21:46,330 --> 00:21:48,370
Speaker 1: Of Japan five V twos on Tokyo or something.

446
00:21:48,450 --> 00:21:51,770
Speaker 2: Kill Japanese, save American and British lives. That I guess

447
00:21:51,930 --> 00:21:55,650
Speaker 2: was the plan. There's a slight hiatus, so when bernardvon

448
00:21:55,650 --> 00:21:59,250
Speaker 2: Brown went to America, initially he complained about lack of funding,

449
00:21:59,290 --> 00:22:02,650
Speaker 2: but actually between nineteen forty five and nineteen fifty there

450
00:22:02,730 --> 00:22:05,330
Speaker 2: wasn't a huge amount of interest in those rockets. It

451
00:22:05,370 --> 00:22:07,530
Speaker 2: wasn't until the Cold War really started to ramp up

452
00:22:07,570 --> 00:22:10,090
Speaker 2: with the Berlin Blockade, and then of course in the

453
00:22:10,170 --> 00:22:13,050
Speaker 2: Korean War there's a sense that maybe we need to

454
00:22:14,130 --> 00:22:16,730
Speaker 2: arm ourselves against the communist threat, and that's when the

455
00:22:16,770 --> 00:22:19,090
Speaker 2: money started to flow. And for most of his career

456
00:22:19,130 --> 00:22:22,050
Speaker 2: he was actually a weapons scientistic. Only towards the end.

457
00:22:22,490 --> 00:22:25,210
Speaker 2: Did he then turn to working for Nassa The thing

458
00:22:25,250 --> 00:22:27,530
Speaker 2: that he often claimed was his ultimate goal, which was

459
00:22:27,530 --> 00:22:29,890
Speaker 2: getting to the Mood or getting to Mars. Veron von Brown.

460
00:22:29,890 --> 00:22:32,210
Speaker 2: When he was made into an American citizen, apparently his

461
00:22:32,330 --> 00:22:34,450
Speaker 2: sough of says, it was the proudest day of his life.

462
00:22:34,730 --> 00:22:36,130
Speaker 2: So for being a man who says like, no, I

463
00:22:36,210 --> 00:22:37,770
Speaker 2: needed to fight for Germany, I need to fight for

464
00:22:37,810 --> 00:22:40,290
Speaker 2: my homeland, I need to make weapons for Hitler because

465
00:22:40,290 --> 00:22:43,410
Speaker 2: I love Germany. Within two or three months of arriving

466
00:22:43,450 --> 00:22:45,410
Speaker 2: in America, he's very very keen to be American.

467
00:22:45,770 --> 00:22:48,450
Speaker 1: Yes, a political as Tom Larra says.

468
00:22:48,330 --> 00:22:50,210
Speaker 2: He found it very difficult to speak up and try

469
00:22:50,210 --> 00:22:52,490
Speaker 2: and help the workers in this factory, try and help

470
00:22:52,650 --> 00:22:55,490
Speaker 2: people who were persecuted by the Nazis. Felt it wasn't safe,

471
00:22:55,530 --> 00:22:57,330
Speaker 2: he shouldn't do it. But when he was an America

472
00:22:57,330 --> 00:23:01,250
Speaker 2: he played a very very high stakes game of criticizing

473
00:23:01,250 --> 00:23:04,970
Speaker 2: the American government, his employer for not giving enough resources.

474
00:23:04,970 --> 00:23:07,370
Speaker 2: And there's one point where he even accepted an offer

475
00:23:07,410 --> 00:23:09,410
Speaker 2: to speak in Russia and there was a really worried

476
00:23:09,450 --> 00:23:11,290
Speaker 2: that he might not come back. Yeah, So there was

477
00:23:11,330 --> 00:23:13,410
Speaker 2: a sense in the nineteen six of Tom leahra that

478
00:23:13,450 --> 00:23:16,770
Speaker 2: this man who preached morality, who preached being a loyal American,

479
00:23:17,610 --> 00:23:19,570
Speaker 2: was actually up for the high spidder, and anyone who

480
00:23:19,650 --> 00:23:22,050
Speaker 2: financed his dream would win his loyalty.

481
00:23:22,090 --> 00:23:26,130
Speaker 1: And that was certainly a fear that both sides had

482
00:23:26,210 --> 00:23:28,130
Speaker 1: at the end of the Second World War. I say

483
00:23:28,130 --> 00:23:29,730
Speaker 1: both sides, both sides of the Cold War, So the

484
00:23:29,770 --> 00:23:32,450
Speaker 1: Soviet Bloc and the America and its allies were both

485
00:23:32,490 --> 00:23:34,850
Speaker 1: worried that these German scientists would go off and join

486
00:23:34,890 --> 00:23:37,450
Speaker 1: the other lot. Whether that was actually true or not,

487
00:23:37,490 --> 00:23:40,090
Speaker 1: that was certainly what people were afraid of, and clearly

488
00:23:40,250 --> 00:23:43,290
Speaker 1: was something that von Brown was willing to exploit.

489
00:23:43,690 --> 00:23:46,690
Speaker 2: But certainly, to return to your question about about how

490
00:23:46,730 --> 00:23:48,610
Speaker 2: we've been treated differently, I think this article and from

491
00:23:48,610 --> 00:23:51,970
Speaker 2: the Daily Mirror, which is from nineteen forty seven, actually

492
00:23:52,170 --> 00:23:55,970
Speaker 2: writes very angrily about the conditions that the German scientists

493
00:23:56,210 --> 00:23:56,690
Speaker 2: kept him with.

494
00:23:57,010 --> 00:23:58,290
Speaker 1: So this is a British newspaper.

495
00:23:58,330 --> 00:24:01,170
Speaker 2: This is yeah, this is the British newspaper. Most notorious

496
00:24:01,290 --> 00:24:04,210
Speaker 2: among the scientists is Professor Erna von Brown thirty five,

497
00:24:04,690 --> 00:24:06,930
Speaker 2: principal inventor of the V two rocket, which brought death

498
00:24:06,970 --> 00:24:09,850
Speaker 2: to many British men. Women and children. Although nats is

499
00:24:09,850 --> 00:24:12,850
Speaker 2: guilty of much milder crimes have been executed or imprisoned.

500
00:24:13,090 --> 00:24:15,690
Speaker 2: Von Brown and his bride are being entertained and made

501
00:24:15,690 --> 00:24:16,330
Speaker 2: a fuss off.

502
00:24:16,970 --> 00:24:20,370
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he should have been shot, is what they're saying. Well,

503
00:24:20,370 --> 00:24:22,490
Speaker 1: what did this way? That the Americans certainly did not

504
00:24:22,530 --> 00:24:25,370
Speaker 1: come close to shooting him. They put him on Disney.

505
00:24:25,370 --> 00:24:27,570
Speaker 2: Even in the next paragraph. There is a campaign to

506
00:24:27,610 --> 00:24:30,730
Speaker 2: whitewash them. Some US Army officials insist they were merely

507
00:24:30,890 --> 00:24:34,010
Speaker 2: nominal Nazis and now they are one hundred percent pro

508
00:24:34,130 --> 00:24:37,530
Speaker 2: United Nations, so pro ally. Many Americans shocked point out

509
00:24:37,530 --> 00:24:39,690
Speaker 2: that the usefulness of a criminal is no excuse for

510
00:24:39,730 --> 00:24:41,210
Speaker 2: not punishing them for their misdeeds.

511
00:24:42,330 --> 00:24:46,850
Speaker 1: Fascinating, fascinating, And there is a reason in the end

512
00:24:46,930 --> 00:24:51,410
Speaker 1: that we didn't use the Tom Lehrer song in the series.

513
00:24:51,690 --> 00:24:55,170
Speaker 1: Much as I love Tom Lehrer, and that's I think uncharacteristically,

514
00:24:55,210 --> 00:24:59,490
Speaker 1: Tom Lehrer missed the point. He missed the most important

515
00:24:59,530 --> 00:25:03,370
Speaker 1: fact about the V two weapons program, And if people

516
00:25:03,370 --> 00:25:05,890
Speaker 1: want to find out what that fact is, they can

517
00:25:05,970 --> 00:25:09,490
Speaker 1: listen to the V two trilogy. Ryan Dilley asked in

518
00:25:09,530 --> 00:25:11,290
Speaker 1: front of the microphone, thank you for joining us.

519
00:25:11,410 --> 00:25:13,730
Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure for me, if not for the listeners.

520
00:25:15,850 --> 00:25:19,850
Speaker 1: All three episodes are available now add free exclusively for

521
00:25:19,930 --> 00:25:23,090
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus subscribers. You can join on the Cautionary Tales

522
00:25:23,130 --> 00:25:27,770
Speaker 1: Apple show page or at Pushkin dot fm slash plus.

523
00:25:28,210 --> 00:25:30,570
Speaker 1: That is it from me and from Ryan today. But

524
00:25:30,730 --> 00:25:32,970
Speaker 1: I'll be back again next week on Friday, the fourth

525
00:25:32,970 --> 00:25:36,730
Speaker 1: of August with another brand new episode of Cautionary Tales

526
00:25:36,930 --> 00:25:47,130
Speaker 1: on our main ad supported feed. Cautionary Tales is written

527
00:25:47,130 --> 00:25:50,850
Speaker 1: by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by

528
00:25:50,850 --> 00:25:54,930
Speaker 1: Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound design

529
00:25:55,010 --> 00:25:59,210
Speaker 1: and original music as the work La scale Wise. Julia

530
00:25:59,290 --> 00:26:03,090
Speaker 1: Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of

531
00:26:03,170 --> 00:26:07,850
Speaker 1: Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright. The

532
00:26:07,930 --> 00:26:11,690
Speaker 1: show wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,

533
00:26:11,970 --> 00:26:16,890
Speaker 1: Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, let Al Millard, John Schnaz, Carlie

534
00:26:16,930 --> 00:26:23,770
Speaker 1: mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production of

535
00:26:23,890 --> 00:26:27,890
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in London

536
00:26:28,010 --> 00:26:31,130
Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, Please remember

537
00:26:31,170 --> 00:26:33,930
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review go on you know it

538
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Speaker 1: helps us and if you want to hear the show,

539
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Speaker 1: add free sign up for Pushkin Plus on the show

540
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Speaker 1: page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash

541
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Speaker 1: Plus