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11+ Obras 566 Miembros 8 Reseñas

Sobre El Autor

Michael J. Neufeld is chair of the Space History Division of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

Incluye el nombre: Michael Neufeld

Obras de Michael J. Neufeld

Obras relacionadas

MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Winter 1999 (1998) — Author "The Road to Peenemünde" — 9 copias

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
1951
Género
male
Nacionalidad
Canada
Lugar de nacimiento
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Educación
University of Calgary
University of British Columbia
Ph.D. in Modern European History from The Johns Hopkins University
Ocupaciones
Smithsonian Curator of Space and Science
Biografía breve
Dr. Michael J. Neufeld is a Museum Curator in the Division of Space History. He served as Chair of the Division from January 2007 to January 2011. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 1951, he received history degrees from the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia, before getting a Ph.D. in Modern European History from The Johns Hopkins University in 1984. After teaching at various universities in upstate New York, Dr. Neufeld came to the Museum in 1988 as the A. Verville Fellow, and held Smithsonian and National Science Foundation fellowships in 1989-90.

Miembros

Reseñas

In The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era, Michael J. Neufeld “aims to provide a balanced and readable history of the German Army liquid-fueled rocket program based on archival research. The symbolic center of the book is the rise and fall of the Army rocket facility at Peenemünde as a major research and development institution” (pg. x). Neufeld focuses extensively on the rocket program in an exhaustively-researched monograph with a great deal of attention devoted to the engineering problems of the A-4 and V-2 ballistic missiles.
Neufeld begins with Von Braun’s 1933 program and its objectives. He writes, “The first was development of engines based on aluminum alloys. Raketenflugplatz had begun using aluminum for the obvious purpose of saving weight and thus increasing the performance of launched vehicles” (pg. 33-34). Neufeld continues, “Von Braun’s second objective was the fully automatic operation of ignition and tank pressurization. Proper ignition was a serious problem; if too much fuel or oxidizer reached the engine first and ignition was delayed, an explosion usually resulted” (pg. 34). Finally, “Von Braun’s third objective was the design and construction of the rocket itself” (pg. 35). Neufeld relates the rocket program to the Paris Gun of World War I. He writes, “The most fundamental flaw in their [the army’s] thinking lay in the lack of any well-thought-out strategic concept of how the missile could actually affect the course of a war” (pg. 52). Neufeld continues, “In a fundamental sense the A-4 was another Paris Gun. It was the product of a narrow technological vision that obscured the strategic bankruptcy of the concept” (pg. 52). More to the point, the German military was unprepared for war and had “no plan for the mobilization of science and engineering” in 1939 (pg. 82).
Turning to more advanced rocketry, Neufeld writes, “A possible design for an ‘America rocket’ (in modern terminology, an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM) had emerged during the preceding year in the studies of the center’s Projects Office” (pg. 138). He continues, “The concept was actually far beyond Peenemünde’s technological grasp: The guidance requirements were too extreme, the aerodynamics were unknown, and the materials did not yet exist to prevent the upper stage from burning up during reentry into the atmosphere” (pg. 138). According to Neufeld, “The Germans seem not to have made the connection between atomic weapons and the missile, because their nuclear project never proceeded much beyond preliminary reactor experiments and theoretical studies of a bomb. In any case, by early 1942 the German leadership decided that the gigantic industrial effort required for an atomic weapon was not feasible during the war” (pg. 139). To underscore this, Neufeld writes, “The repeated warnings from Ordnance about foreign competition reinforced by faulty German intelligence reports, had had their effect. The Army rocket program had become an ironic mirror image of the Manhattan Project: While the Germans were racing a virtually nonexistent American missile program, the Americans (with British and Canadian help) were racing a virtually nonexistent German atomic bomb effort” (pg. 170).
Neufeld concludes, “Peenemünde grew and flourished under Hitler because of the very nature of his regime. As a result, the rocket program built an institution and a weapon that made little sense, given the Reich’s limited research resources and industrial capacity – a perfect symbol of the Nazis’ pursuit of irrational goals with rational, technocratic means” (pg. 279). Finally, “The German Army rocket program was thus greatly influenced by – and integrated into – the structures and practices of the Nazi regime, whatever its ideological and technological origins. The ease with which its military and civilian leadership became involved in mass slavery in order to achieve technical and military ends is certainly one of Peenemünde’s most troublesome legacies to the world. But a much more ambiguous legacy was the big rocket itself” (pg. 279). The work at Peenemünde ultimately served to support the arms race of the Cold War.
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DarthDeverell | 2 reseñas más. | Nov 26, 2017 |
In this all encompassing biography of Von Braun something that stands out to me is how predestined his life really was, once you get past his rebellious dream to be a great engineer and achieve space flight. The best part of this book is the first third where Neufeld reconstructs the man's upbringing and one finds a polished scion of the Prussian "service" aristocracy, the sort of person born and bred to serve the German state and who would do so unquestioningly, so long as their caste entitlements were respected and they were offered glittering prizes to pursue; Von Braun was arguably never happier then after Hitler granted him the title of professor, such was his hunger for recognition. This being the case one can say that Von Braun was stained with the great sin of his class; unleashing the Nazis in the belief that they could be controlled in pursuit of the selfish conservative, nationalist agenda.

Assuming that I've gotten this all straight the outstanding, and at this point unanswerable, question is how much was Von Braun simply an opportunist on the make (the sort of man who was probably the foundation of the Nazi party) and how much he intellectually accepted the agenda of the Hitlerian regime. I tend more towards opportunist but there is no doubt in my mind that Von Braun should have been in the defendant's dock at a war-crime tribunal, if only as a witness, and he should really have never been offered American citizenship.

I might add that those who are looking less for a measured examination of the ills of the German nation and who want an epic of technological adventure will also not come away unsatisfied from this book.
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Shrike58 | 3 reseñas más. | Sep 20, 2017 |
This one took a while to finish since I left it at work and only read it at lunch times which rarely include much reading there.

Certainly someone who made a huge difference in mankind reaching into space. He also was responsible for great advancement in rocket arts leading to ballistic missiles.

This has been lauded as perhaps the fairest biography on von Braun, it explains his status and story of working for the Nazi party. He is responsible for his choices and their effects, but I don't think he is as huge a villain as some would have him be. He wanted to get to space and if he had to make missiles first than that is what did. He denied he was aware of working conditions of slave labor at some of the rocket plants. Which is possibly true according to the evidence the author researched.

People that are really interested in the history of space or rockets should be familiar with von Braun. I recommend this book for those people.


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Denunciada
Chris_El | 3 reseñas más. | Mar 19, 2015 |

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Obras
11
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Miembros
566
Popularidad
#44,192
Valoración
3.8
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8
ISBNs
23
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