German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past during the Civil Rights Era 9780300198034, 0300198035

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ge rman ro c keteers in th e h ea r t of dix ie

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monique lane y

German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie ma k i ng se n se of the n azi past d u ri ng the civil rights e ra

new haven and london

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Calvin Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College. Copyright © 2015 by Monique Laney. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or sales@ yaleup.co.uk (U.K. office). Set in Scala and Scala Sans type by IDS Infotech, Ltd., Chandigarh, India. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Laney, Monique, author. German rocketeers in the heart of Dixie : making sense of the Nazi past during the civil rights era / Monique Laney. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-300-19803-4 (alk. paper) 1. Rocketry—Biography—20th century. 2. Aerospace engineers—United States— Biography. 3. German Americans—Alabama—Huntsville—History—20th century. 4. Ex-Nazis—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. TL781.85.A1L36 2015 629.4092'3310761—dc23 2014042886 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Omi and Granny

In Huntsville, they seemed to be really pro-German. . . . How else can you explain that the civic center is named after von Braun? —Mario Rheinfurth, German rocket specialist who moved to Huntsville in 1957

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xv Introduction 1 1 From Enemy Aliens to Valued Citizens 2 Huntsville Becomes the “Rocket City”

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3 “I Never Thought of Him as a Foreigner” 4 Becoming Americans

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5 “We Just Did Not Move in the Same Circles” 6 The Rudolph Case

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7 Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Huntsville

Epilogue 201 Notes 207 Bibliography 263 Index 293

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the idea for this project emerged in the summer of 2005. Since then, I have received generous financial, intellectual, and emotional support from many sources to complete it, for which I am very grateful. But first, I would like to thank the interviewees, without whom this book would not exist in the first place. Many of them graciously invited me into their homes and all generously shared their time and memories, helping me understand their experiences and perspectives. I had a lot of support from my family on both sides of the Atlantic. Their diverse perspectives taught me early on to think beyond singlenation boundaries and identities. Thankfully, most of them never tired of discussing the grinding details of my research, helping me navigate the history and memory of World War II from their different personal and national viewpoints. Among them were my grandmothers, Margarethe Holtmann (Omi, 1919–2011) in Germany and Ruth M. Calder (Granny, 1921–2005) in the United States, who had little in common except that both experienced World War II as adults, albeit from opposite sides. They also became my biggest cheerleaders when they learned that I was going back to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. Since this book is based on my dissertation, I owe much to my official and unofficial advisors and mentors at the University of Kansas and at the National Air and Space Museum. My friends, colleagues, and mentors at ix

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the University of Kansas kept me convinced that I had made the right decision to go back to graduate school after eight years of earning a solid income in the information technology industry. I would not have made it through the process without their support, encouragement, and care. They include my dissertation advisor, Sherrie Tucker, who always knew the right questions to pose to move me forward in my thinking, and Joane Nagel, who showed me how to work efficiently in the academic world as well as how to combine an academic relationship and friendship with ease. Other faculty members who influenced my thinking and approach to research include Brian Donovan, David Katzman, Anne Soon Choi, and Ted Wilson. Thank you also to Norm Yetman, who jumped in at the last minute as a reader for my committee and whose enthusiasm and engagement are disarming. In this context, I would also like to thank Christiane Harzig, who was a member of my committee from 2006 to 2007 but unfortunately passed away before I finished. Her input was very important during my prospectus defense and sorely missed during the writing of the dissertation. This list also includes my colleagues in the Humanities and Western Civilization Department, who helped me navigate the world of college-level teaching, and the staff at the Institute for Policy and Social Research at KU, who were instrumental in helping me put together my application for an NSF grant. I also want to thank the staff members of the American Studies Program at KU, Kay Isbell and Terri Rockhold, who keep the department up and running. I was lucky to be part of an amazing cohort of students that started with me in the program in the fall of 2003. Our conversations inside and outside the classroom were always inspiring, and we have been very supportive of one another in our academic pursuits, which makes a world of difference in navigating graduate school. Many thanks go to the curators and staff members in the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum, in particular Michael J. Neufeld, David DeVorkin, Roger D. Launius, and Margaret Weitekamp, who never seemed to tire of answering my questions and engaged in many conversations on my research topic, thereby helping me refine my questions while pointing me to the appropriate sources. I would also like to thank the following people for helping me find pertinent files and pointing out available and potentially useful sources over the years: Lawrence H. McDonald, archivist for modern military records

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at the National Archives at College Park; Michael E. Baker and Claus R. Martel, historians at the Office of the Command Historian at Redstone Arsenal; Jane H. Odom, chief archivist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration History Division; Mike Wright, historian at the NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center’s History Office; Irene Wilhite, former curator at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville; Anne Coleman, reference librarian at the archives of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH); archivists Susanna Leberman and the late Ranee’ G. Pruitt, as well as intern John O’Brien, at the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library; history professors Andrew J. Dunar, Stephen P. Waring, and Jack Ellis (emeritus) at UAH; Brenda Webb, former director of the Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville; Evelyn Loehrlein of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra; Laura Kendrick, formerly at the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville–Madison County; Denise Taylor, former director of public communications for the City of Huntsville; Patricia Heberer, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Christopher Orwoll, former president and CEO of the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center; Jerome Saintjones, director of marketing and public relations, and Prudence White Bryant, reference librarian and assistant professor at Alabama A&M University; and Andrew Grace, documentary film maker and faculty member at the University of Alabama. Special thanks go to Heidi Collier, Bill Goldberg, and Dorothy Huston for introducing me to members of the German, Jewish, and African American communities, respectively, in Huntsville. I also want to thank Christian Mühldorfer-Vogt, formerly of the Historisch-Technisches Museum Peenemünde GmbH, for showing me the Peenemünde facilities not generally open to the public, and Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, for taking the time to meet with me and explain the history of commemorating the camp. I have spoken to many more people about the project since its inception whom I have not explicitly mentioned here. Please know that I am grateful to all who have helped make this book possible. In addition to those who pointed me to important sources, I would like to thank my friends in Atlanta, Georgia, especially Edwina Tims, Karen George, and Moushumi Kabir, whom I had to leave to move to Kansas. They not only supported my decision to return to graduate school but kept track of my progress while always encouraging me to continue.

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Edwina and Karen even came to observe my hooding ceremony. While I was conducting research in Washington, D.C., Karen and Brad Elmquist and Ursula and David Harscheid invited me many times to their homes to get me out of the archives and thinking about something other than my research every once in a while. During my trips back to Lawrence, Kansas, in the last stages of writing my dissertation, Carrie McDonald and Rachel Vaughn generously opened their homes to me, so I always had a place to stay where I felt welcome. It made what could have been a tedious chore a pleasant break that I always looked forward to. A warm thank-you goes to Nouchka Kruschke, a close friend since my early college years in Frankfurt, who took an interest in my project and eventually joined me on a visit to the memorial site for the Dora concentration camp near Nordhausen—a moving experience for both of us. Similarly, I want to thank my dear friend Zanice Bond, whom I met at the University of Kansas and who always encouraged me to stay positive when things got tough. I would also like to thank Deganit Paikowsky, a friend from Israel, whom I met during her fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum. Her perspective, insights, and questions helped me consider the meaning of some of my findings for someone whose grandparents had survived the Holocaust and whose identity is deeply entwined with those memories. I was able to complete my dissertation, on which this book is based, in a timely fashion thanks to several sources of funding. A six-month predoctoral Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum in 2007 catapulted me into the world of space exploration, the history of science and technology, and public historians. A Dissertation Improvement Grant within the NSF’s Science and Society Program in 2008 provided much-needed funding for transcription services, travel, PC equipment, software, and books. In addition, I was the 2008 Richard and Jeannette Sias Graduate Fellow in the Humanities, which included a stipend and a beautiful office at the Hall Center for Humanities on the grounds of the University of Kansas. I completed the book thanks to a fellowship in the History of Space Technology from the Society for the History of Technology, supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an A. Verville Fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum, and a fellowship in

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Aerospace History from the American Historical Association, also supported by NASA. I had several readers who offered their comments, questions, and feedback on the dissertation and later the book chapters. I thank you all for your thoughtful engagement with the book’s topic and attention to detail: Pete Daniel, Andrew J. Dunar, Lindsey Feitz, Torrie Hester, Anita Kondoyanidi, Ashok Maharaj, Maddalena Marinari, Michael J. Neufeld, Katharina Vester, and Stephen P. Waring. Many thanks also to Joseph Calamia, my editor at Yale University Press, and the anonymous readers of this manuscript for their invaluable feedback. Finally, I am grateful to Roger D. Launius, who not only shared his expertise as a space historian and highly accomplished writer but also showered me with love and affection these past years. He supported and calmed me in my many moments of anxiety and doubt, while discussing multiple iterations of various chapters. His patience and endurance sustained me.

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A B B R E V I AT I O N S

ABMA AIAA CORE CSC FBI FOIA GTE INS JIOA MSFC NASA NSDAP OMGUS OSI POW SCLC SNCC TVA USSRC

Army Ballistic Missile Agency American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Congress of Racial Equality Community Service Committee Federal Bureau of Investigation Freedom of Information Act General Telephone and Electronics Corporation Immigration and Naturalization Service Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency Marshall Space Flight Center National Aeronautics and Space Administration Nazi Party Office of Military Government, United States U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations prisoner of war Southern Christian Leadership Conference Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Tennessee Valley Authority U.S. Space & Rocket Center

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Introduction

on july 24, 1969, the Chicago Tribune reported, “Bells rang out in European cities . . . as a jubilant world applauded the safe return of the Apollo 11 astronauts from their rendezvous with history on the moon.”1 Meanwhile, citizens of Huntsville, Alabama, were applauding their neighbors, Wernher von Braun and his team of German and American rocket specialists—the team that had developed the Saturn V, the “moon rocket” that transported the astronauts to the moon. The New York Times painted a vivid picture of the celebrations in Huntsville: “Gripping an American flag, Dr. Wernher von Braun was hoisted on the shoulders of four local councilmen today and waved excitedly to thousands of applauding, placard-carrying townsmen celebrating the splashdown of the Apollo 11 astronauts. . . . Signs reading ‘Werner– you’re our boy’ and ‘Huntsville is Rocket City’ bobbed in the crowd of Boy Scouts, high school bands, housewives, businessmen and local space employes that surged around the courthouse square.”2 Although intended to appear spontaneous, the celebrations had been carefully planned by members of the town’s Chamber of Commerce and officials at the Marshall Space Flight Center. In a memo to von Braun on July 2, 1969, Marshall’s director of administrative and technical services, David H. Newby, explained that the intention was to take advantage of the opportunity to “get nation-wide publicity for Huntsville and the Marshall 1

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Huntsville residents carry Wernher von Braun on their shoulders during local celebrations of the successful return of Apollo 11, July 24, 1969. Courtesy of Huntsville–Madison County Public Library.

Space Flight Center.”3 Television and radio broadcasts were supposed to alert residents to come downtown to celebrate after the safe splashdown of the capsule. Huntsville’s residents probably did not need much nudging. They had long recognized the benefits of having the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) nearby and “rocket scientists” as neighbors. Since 1950, when the army consolidated its rocket development program and transferred it to nearby Redstone Arsenal, the town had evolved from “watercress capital of the world” to “Rocket City, U.S.A.” to “Space Capital of the Universe.” NASA activated the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960, and in 1961 President John F. Kennedy gave the center the task to develop the rocket that would send men to the moon by the end of the decade. By 1969, the influx of rocket-development-related experts and their families had taken the population to 137,802—almost 8.5 times the city’s population in 1950. The city’s officials created an inviting environment for

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business and industry over the years, and the success of Apollo 11 provided another chance to advertise for Huntsville and, it was hoped, continue to boost the town’s economy. The New York Times article mentioned that not just von Braun but many of the directors, managers, and technical employees of the MSFC had moved from Germany to the United States. In 1969, few readers would have been concerned. On the contrary, the fact that about two hundred of the “rocket scientists,” including von Braun, had acquired their expertise in Germany during World War II seemed to be a bonus— after all, they were “our Germans.” “Our Germans” was a nationally popular description of the rocket experts who had moved from Germany to the United States under the military operation Project Paperclip immediately after World War II. They had developed the V-2 rocket under Wernher von Braun’s management for the Nazi regime and were contrasted with “their Germans”—“our” Germans’ former colleagues who had been captured by the Soviet Union after the war. Both the United States and the Soviet Union utilized German rocket experts in their rocket development programs.4 The successful launch of the first manmade satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik, in 1957, seemed to imply that “their Germans” were superior to “our Germans.” The successful moon landings of U.S. astronauts reversed that notion.5 In Huntsville, Alabama, “our Germans” had yet another, more local, meaning. In 1950, the German rocketeers followed the army’s rocket development program from Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, Texas, to Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville. More Germans joined the rocket program and settled in the area over the years. In 1960, most of the team from Germany transitioned from developing guided missiles for the army to working on rockets for space exploration at the MSFC, which was built on the army arsenal. By the time of the first moon landing, the German rocket experts who had been instrumental in developing the Saturn V rocket that took the astronauts to the moon had, along with their families, long become an integral part of the small southern town’s fabric. From the locals’ perspective, their success was also Huntsville’s success, and they thanked the “von Braun team” in 1970 by naming their new civic center after the team’s leader.6 The real test, however, for how embedded the Germans had become in the town’s identity came in 1984 when the U.S. Justice Department’s

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Office of Special Investigation (OSI) accused the project manager of the Saturn V, Arthur Rudolph, of having committed war crimes during World War II while he was the production manager of the V-2. The “Rudolph case” raised enormous protests and efforts to fight the allegations among Rudolph’s former Huntsville neighbors and colleagues. For many, the Germans were all “good citizens” and their deeds in the United States had made them seem beyond reproach.7 This response from the Huntsville community suggested extraordinary acceptance of an immigrant from Nazi Germany, especially considering the magnitude of the allegation. This expression of intense loyalty is what inspired this book. In order to understand how Rudolph and his colleagues were able to evoke such a protective attitude from their neighbors, German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie examines the integration of the German families into Huntsville and inquires how local residents negotiated changing national narratives about the team members in light of their former work for the Nazi regime. The main sources for this book are oral histories conducted primarily in summer 2007 with members of the German families, members of the African American and Jewish communities, and former coworkers, friends, and neighbors of the German families. The analysis is based on methodologies and theories from cultural and social history, oral history, memory studies, ethnography, and sociology. It places the negotiations over the meaning of the German team members’ past in Nazi Germany in the context of Huntsville’s dramatic transformation between 1950 and 1970 due to federal programs, heavy in-migration, and the civil rights movement. This study contributes to the interdisciplinary fields of migration studies, memory studies, the history of technology, and scholarship on the U.S. South during the cold war. It demonstrates that the quick national transformation of these immigrants from a recent enemy nation into celebrated American heroes had a profound effect on local narratives about the team members’ roles and responsibilities in Nazi Germany. This study reveals connections between immigration, race, ethnicity, science and technology, nation, history, and memory that affect Americans’ identities and political thinking. By exploring some of the effects of the U.S. government’s choice to subvert its own denazification policies as well as immigration and naturalization laws based primarily on immediate scientific, technological, and security needs, this inquiry

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illuminates the long-term ramifications of such pragmatic national decisions on those directly affected by them. It shows the ways in which national decisions have both erased and magnified the rocket specialists’ participation in German weapons development with the help of concentration camp labor during the Second World War, and reveals the ongoing controversies associated with the now-American rocket specialists and the U.S. government program that brought them here. The contradictory decisions to invite the German team to work for the U.S. military and become American citizens and later to investigate one of them for war crimes and effect his renouncement of his American citizenship reflect the ongoing national debate over the role and meaning of the Nazi regime in defining what it means to be an American. The fact that the German rocket specialists became American citizens and nationally celebrated heroes of the space race complicates the debate. With Wernher von Braun in the foreground, the team was once a highly visible part of American life. Later narratives of their experiences under the Nazi regime have inevitably become part of the struggles over national, local, and other collective memories in the United States. This book argues that these struggles over the rocket specialists’ involvement with the Nazi regime are, in effect, struggles over how Americans see themselves in relationship to Nazi Germany. How should Americans, who are still grappling with their own national history of racism toward minorities, evaluate Germany’s Nazi past? V E R G A N G E N H E I T S B E WÄ LT I G U N G I N H U N T S V I L L E

Oral histories are a form of dialogue that is always personal and creates relationships between the researcher and her or his sources.8 This means that the researcher is part of the source, which produces several complications for interpretation. I will address some of those later, but because the research questions I grapple with in this book are rooted in my personal background, I think it is important that I introduce myself briefly before I continue. As the daughter of a German mother and an American father, I was raised in both Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Frankfurt, Germany. I was educated primarily in Germany but earned my Ph.D. in the United States. Since my father married a daughter of one of the German rocket experts in Huntsville in his second marriage, I also have a family connection to the subjects of this research. This background is important because I will

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be using a concept unfamiliar to most of my non-German readers that is essential for understanding how I came to this project and how I interpret my sources. When I first met family members of the German rocket team and heard anecdotes about their experiences as Germans in Alabama, I knew very little about the team’s previous work in Germany. The people I met were very friendly, and the stories they told were fascinating. The lives they described included all the ingredients of a big adventure story, with some unbelievable challenges and a lot of good fortune. They had been through many stages of their lives together in more or less the same configuration and naturally enjoyed reminiscing together. Their gatherings felt like big family reunions. With a research interest in migration studies, I initially wanted to learn how the influx of German rocket specialists had affected the Huntsville community. I began reading existing literature about the German team members and learned about their achievements for the U.S. Army and NASA space programs but also about their work on the V-2 rocket development for Nazi Germany. It was quickly apparent that the history and representations of the team members were quite controversial outside of Huntsville. Some celebrated them as national heroes who had been instrumental in winning the cold war, while others portrayed them as Nazi villains who should never have been allowed into the country in the first place. Soon, anecdotes I had heard earlier took on different meanings and my questions about them changed. Around that time, I also learned how Huntsville’s community reacted to the OSI investigation of Arthur Rudolph in 1984. I heard familiar rationalizations about how people behaved during the Nazi period and why they should not be faulted for that. Accordingly, Rudolph did “nothing wrong.” This was the first time I was reminded of the German term and concept Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Vergangenheitsbewältigung has been a defining part of German national identity for decades, which scholars of postwar Germany have explored thoroughly.9 The term describes the complicated process of relating to, negotiating, and struggling with the Nazi past and the Holocaust in which Germans have been engaged since 1945.10 The expression emerged in the latter half of the 1950s and can be seen as an extension of Allied postwar denazification and reeducation efforts, which

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were handed off to be administered by German officials as early as 1946. While denazification refers primarily to the legal prosecution of former Nazis, Vergangenheitsbewältigung expands judgment to include the ethical and moral evaluation of the Nazi past by all Germans, individually and collectively. First and foremost, Vergangenheitsbewältigung encourages the institutionalization of critical history, which demands difficult intellectual and emotional work. As historian Susan Crane has noted, this work “is shaped by irreconcilable differences between lived experience and memories, repression, official historiography, and above all, the variety of generations who participate in the debate.”11 So, while German government officials, historians, and intellectuals tried to grapple with the Nazi past on a meta-level in sometimes abstract ways, the German population had to reconcile those official narratives with personal family histories, and the two seldom seemed to mesh.12 Finding out that a former colleague, friend, or family member had been more involved in committing atrocities during the Nazi regime than previously assumed has been reality for many in Germany since the end of the war. In the context of the United States, few scholars have invoked Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Two notable exceptions are Alexander Freund and Thomas McCarthy, who have used the term in very different settings. Freund used it to discuss interviews with Germans who had migrated to North America after World War II. His goal was to “investigate how Germans abroad thought and talked about their personal and national past and dealt with their knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust in the context of being outside of Germany and of being inside (albeit partially as outsiders) U.S./Canadian society.”13 McCarthy used the German model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung to argue that it is important for the United States to come to terms with the fact that racism is “integral to our history and identity as a nation.” He argues that failure to understand this and for the larger citizenry to act upon it—something more than just an acknowledgment by academics—results in “obstacles to developing the degree of transracial political solidarity required for democratic solutions to the forms of racial injustice that are its [slavery’s] continuing legacy.”14 My study combines and extends these two approaches to Vergangenheitsbewältigung by exploring how the Germans in Huntsville negotiated their lives in World War II Germany in the U.S. context, and how their white, Jewish, and African American neighbors

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made sense of the Germans’ pasts in context of the U.S. legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. In a 2005 interview in Der Spiegel, historian Norbert Frei defined Vergangenheitsbewältigung as a “constructive dialogue with the past.”15 Based on the reactions to the Rudolph case in Huntsville, it occurred to me that this dialogue never took place there, neither among the Germans nor other residents. In fact, many of the people with whom I spoke suggested that the past lay behind us and that we (that is, I) should focus instead on the future. Reactions to suggestions that the rocket team might have been implicated in Nazi atrocities were often marked by indignation. I knew from the security reports and personal statements in their army files that their affiliation with the Nazi regime had been a serious issue for the rocket specialists—one they had to deal with when they received offers to work and live in the United States after the war. So what had happened since then? Why was it a surprise that their past was not forgotten but still a serious issue? Why was it so hard to imagine that someone had been more involved in committing atrocities during the Nazi regime than previously assumed? Why did people in Huntsville feel so strongly about the meaning of someone’s actions that took place in a time and place most had not experienced? I concluded that the reactions to the Rudolph case must be related to the location and situation in which German and non-German Huntsville residents had lived most of their lives. Despite claims in local newspaper articles that the German families liked the area because it reminded them of home, Huntsville, Alabama, was obviously not Germany. This was a very different national, regional, economic, historical, social, and cultural setting which, along with concerns over the cold war and the impact of the rocketry and future-oriented space exploration industry on the lives of many Huntsville residents, combined to create an entirely different context than the one that Germans in Germany experienced. While people in Germany were forced to confront the past as they were reinventing a new nation from the ashes of World War II, the German rocket specialists in the United States had the chance to leave Germany with its problematic past and join the victorious nation that was now, more than ever, considered a world leader. Members of the German rocket team did not publicly volunteer much about their past in Nazi Germany, and their friends and colleagues in Huntsville had refrained from asking any hard

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questions. Together, they had created a sense of community and security that excluded a “constructive dialogue with the past.” The Rudolph case, initiated outside of Huntsville, threatened to change that. I began my inquiry by asking what experiences brought the Germans and other Huntsville residents closer and what stories they told each other about those experiences. I collected documentation about the history of the town and interviewed former and current Huntsville residents who remembered the arrival of the first German families in 1950 and their integration into the town thereafter. I wanted to understand how their mutual experiences informed the entire groups’ understanding of narratives about experiences that were not shared because they lay not only further in the past but also in different nations. In other words, I wanted to know how Huntsville’s residents made sense of each other’s pasts to forge a communal identity so protective of its members. T R A N S N AT I O N A L M E M O R I E S I N A L O C A L C O N T E X T

World War II and the Holocaust are main areas of memory studies research. Referring to what he calls “the unfinished business of reckoning with the memory of the Second World War,” historian Patrick Hutton has pointed out that “we stand at the edge of the end of living memory of that war’s events. Within a few years all of its participants will have passed away, and with them the existential memory of that traumatic event.” Even though many participants are gone, it will remain worthwhile for some time to collect and analyze oral histories related to World War II and the Holocaust, even if the interviewees did not experience either directly. These oral histories reveal in what ways which memories were passed on or precluded from the narrative by someone who “was there” to those who were not, and how the following generations negotiated these memories, which in turn affects how the listeners understand their collective history. As Francesca Cappelletto’s edited volume on memories of World War II in different European contexts demonstrates, history is one of the main influences informing people’s cultural, ethnic, and national identities; people’s understanding of what they perceive as their history is therefore crucial for politics on all of these levels.16 While the national level is important for understanding the context of memories of a war, Huntsville had its own contentious past to grapple

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with. Founded by white settlers in the early nineteenth century, Huntsville was a small cotton mill town of 16,437 inhabitants in 1950, priding itself on being the “watercress capital of the world.”17 The first German families arrived when Jim Crow laws were still a mainstay of southern culture, with its legacy of slavery and a growing civil rights movement on the horizon. Only a few Jewish merchants had lived in the area since the midnineteenth century. Although World War II had brought federal money and jobs for locals to the nearby Redstone and Huntsville arsenals, both disappeared quickly in the postwar period. The move to Huntsville provided the Germans an opening to reinvent themselves in this different location and society that, due to the move of the army’s rocket development program to Redstone Arsenal, was similarly reinventing itself at that time. Like most long-term immigrants who choose of their own volition to move to another country, the Germans focused on fitting into the society they encountered as best they could. Meanwhile, Huntsville was transforming itself from a small cotton mill town to a thriving city with a diverse industry base and a highly skilled and educated workforce. Germany and its recent history must have seemed light years away for both the Germans and their Huntsville neighbors, for whom the most important task was learning how to live together and build a future for their families. This book explores how some Huntsville residents have understood their history by collectively making sense of a past they experienced from very different—in fact, oppositional—national vantage points. The dynamics of sharing memories between generations is therefore complicated by the different national contexts of where the remembered events occurred and where they are remembered. Although they experienced World War II in different localities, most of the interviewees experienced the cold war era primarily in the United States, although some members of the German team and their families remained in Germany well into the 1950s before moving to Huntsville. Their “collective frameworks of social reference points” therefore lie primarily within the context of the United States.18 This means that the German families’ memories of the German past are remembered in the American, not the German, context. The first-generation German interviewees are removed not only by time but also by space, national culture, and history from their experiences in World War II Germany, and their narratives have been heard and repeated

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by family members and others in their vicinity who are usually even further removed from German history and culture. Perhaps the most novel aspect about listening to the stories by and about the Germans in Huntsville is therefore how they disclose shared memories between the Germans and their American neighbors that bridge or connect their histories from before the Germans moved to town. In effect, they reveal the creation of what may be called “transnational memories”—memories that exist in a transnational space, combining memories of experiences from different national contexts in order to make sense of divergent pasts in a current context.19 COLLECTING STORIES

I conducted oral histories with seventy-three people over the course of three years—one in 2005, three in 2006, but most in 2007. Some of the interviews were conducted with two or three persons together. Sixtynine of the interviews were with former and current residents of Huntsville, and most of those took place at the interviewee’s residence in the Huntsville area. A few took place at the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library and one at a bookstore. Some of the members of the second generation in the German group had moved to other locations, so I traveled to their locality to conduct the interview, if feasible (New York City, the Appalachian Mountains, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area). In three instances, I conducted the interview over the phone. In addition to current and former residents of Huntsville, I interviewed Eli Rosenbaum, who was the lead investigator for the Rudolph case at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations, and Andrew J. Dunar, who had cowritten a book on the Marshall Space Flight Center, where von Braun and most of his German team had worked for NASA since 1960.20 I also interviewed authors Michael J. Neufeld and Frederick I. Ordway III, who had published monographs about the German team.21 During my initial research, I had noted the lack of racial diversity among the audience of a videotaped public panel held at the downtown Huntsville–Madison County Public Library in 2003.22 The panel celebrated the city’s history since the army’s rocket development moved to Redstone Arsenal in 1950 in the context of celebrations of the hundredth anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight.23 The lack of African Americans at this forum and a comment by the only African American

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on the panel that he was “not surprised” about this when I asked suggested a still prevailing cultural privilege for white residents of Huntsville to publicly recount the past. It seemed to confirm W. Fitzhugh Brundage’s claim of an “enduring presence of white memory in the South’s public spaces,” where white people are “colonizing public spaces with their version of their past.”24 In order to understand the social dynamics of the process of group identity formation better and to be sure that the interviewees reflected some of the diversity of the community as it was between 1950 and 1970, I interviewed people who had differing relationships with the German families—not only friends, immediate neighbors, and former coworkers but also members of the African American and Jewish communities and other white non-Jewish residents of Huntsville who had little to no contact with the Germans.25 Since social integration is not a one-way process, I also interviewed first- and second-generation German family members. There were no initial limits on the number of interviews I wanted to collect, but circumstances imposed multiple “natural” limits. For one, the number of surviving members of the first-generation Germans who were still well enough to participate in an interview was dwindling. In addition, I did not have contact information for all members of the second generation. When I solicited interviewees in the African American community, I learned that most of the African American women and men who once worked in the Germans’ households had already passed away or could not be identified by the people I spoke to. The larger issue in finding interviewees may have been the perception among many I contacted that they would not have much to contribute to a story about the German rocket specialists. Fortunately, I was able to persuade some of them otherwise. The Jewish community was fairly small in the 1950s and 1960s, so I only found a few who remembered the arrival of the Germans and their first years of integrating into the community. As I was wrapping up the interviewing phase, I still received suggestions for other people to interview. I decided not to pursue all of these suggestions since I had already collected a sizable number that provided me with a wide range of perspectives. The age of the current and former residents of Huntsville I interviewed ranged between forty-five and ninety-three at the time of the interview. Of these interviews, fourteen were with members of the first

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generation, who were the first to arrive in Huntsville in 1950 (seven men and seven women), and one with an American woman who had married a member of that group. Of those who arrived after 1950, I interviewed five women and four men. Among the first-generation Germans I spoke to, the youngest had just turned eighty years old. I interviewed twenty members of the second generation—twelve men and eight women—and one woman of the third generation. The youngest member of this group was forty-five and the oldest seventy-one. Of Huntsville’s African American community, I interviewed seven men and one woman, and of the Jewish community I interviewed four men and three women. The African American interviewees were between sixty and seventy-seven, and the Jewish interviewees were between fifty-two and eighty-three years old. In addition, I interviewed seven other white non-Jewish males and one female resident of Huntsville who were between sixty-seven and eighty-six years old. I conducted the first interviews with some of the first- and secondgeneration Germans I had met at gatherings in 2005–6 who had expressed interest in my research. The bulk of the interviews, however, were conducted during a longer research trip in 2007. Some of the early interviewees recommended other people for me to talk to—either other Germans in the community or friends and former colleagues. Usually, these were people who had been interviewed before or who had been in the public eye in some other form and therefore would presumably be comfortable speaking to me. Most of the interviewees were well-educated, eloquent speakers who seemed to be reasonably well off and who had traveled extensively to other parts of the United States and abroad, so their narratives were typically clear, thoughtful, and included perspectives beyond Huntsville. Several of the interviewees had been interviewed many times before, which became evident especially when I had access to other interviews or newspaper stories based on interviews with the same person that seemed almost identical to mine. I would repeatedly find myself listening to clearly rehearsed anecdotes, often designed for comedic effect. The interviews focused on specific events and experiences that I asked about. At the same time, I did try to allow as much freedom as possible by encouraging interviewees to elaborate on any aspect they wanted to. After inquiring about some general demographics, I used

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questions that I hoped would elicit longer responses. As a consequence, I learned about some things I would not have known to ask about. This additional information often allowed new insights for further research. I used a set of questions that I adjusted depending on the individual as I learned more about him or her during the interview. The length of an interview depended on the interviewee’s time constraints and the number of interviewees in one session, varying in length usually between one and two hours with a few lengthier exceptions. Typically, I conducted oneon-one interviews, but in some cases it seemed more feasible, or made the interviewees feel more comfortable, if I interviewed them as part of a group of two or three people. In the interviews with the first- and second-generation German family members, I asked about the individuals’ memories of life in Peenemünde, their move to the United States, life at Ft. Bliss in Texas, where some members of the group lived first, the move to Huntsville, getting started and becoming part of Huntsville, effects of the rocket experts’ work for the U.S. Army and later NASA on their family’s life, being German in America, remaining connections with Germany, how they felt that the rocket specialists’ past had been portrayed by U.S. historians and the media, and how they believed the Rudolph case has impacted the German community. I had been warned that some members of the German community would not want to talk to me. Previous reporters and researchers had presumably betrayed their interviewees’ trust and used their interviews to reflect negatively on the German rocket team. I did encounter hesitations and a few refusals when I sent out requests for interviews to first- and second-generation Germans, although the reasons varied.26 In order to avoid a confrontation that might lead to an interviewee revoking my right to use an interview already in process for my research, I did not ask the first-generation German interviewees directly about their involvement with the Nazi regime or the use of concentration camp prisoners for the production of the V-2. I hoped that the questions about the Rudolph case might provoke some commentary about this aspect, which indeed they often did. Comments about the Rudolph case did not tell me what the interviewees’ individual level of participation had been, but they did provide insights into how they interpreted this past, and what they shared voluntarily with someone who had not been there. This in turn was helpful in interpreting some of the

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comments from Huntsville residents who had not been in Germany during the war but had probably heard interpretations of the Germans’ past similar to what I was hearing. My questions for non-German residents of Huntsville focused on descriptions of the town and community dynamics during the 1950s and 1960s, initial responses to and impressions of the German families, changes the town underwent related to the presence of the Germans, and the interviewee’s thoughts on the increased awareness of the relationship between the rocket engineers’ work in Germany and the use of forced and slave labor to build the rockets they designed for the Nazi regime. The questions for the authors Dunar, Neufeld, and Ordway were more specific to the individual’s background, expertise, and the books they wrote. The questions for the former OSI investigator, Eli Rosenbaum, focused on the Rudolph case. At the end of the interviews, I always asked if interviewees had anything to add that I had not asked about, if they had any questions for me, and what their personal interest in my research was. This is how I learned, for example, that some of the second-generation German interviewees were hoping that they would find out from the results of my research what other members of the group have been doing, especially if they left the Huntsville area. I am afraid they will probably be disappointed since that is not the focus of this book. In most cases, I had also asked the interviewee what book he or she would recommend that was related to my topic. Most of the German interviewees recommended Dr. Space, a book written by Bob Ward, a former local reporter who covered the space beat in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Based primarily on anecdotes about Wernher von Braun and interviews with those who knew him personally, Dr. Space was written in the vein of a “human interest story” and is a great resource for understanding how captivating the man was for many who met him. After reviewing this book, I understood what those who recommended it might expect of mine.27 They, too, will unfortunately most likely be disappointed. I gave the interviewees the opportunity to review their transcripts and indicate if they wanted something altered or removed before the transcripts are archived for access by future scholars. Where I have permission to do so, I use the interviewees’ actual names. Some of the interviewees have asked, however, that I do not use their name. In these

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cases, I have replaced them with pseudonyms, as indicated in the citations. While there are good reasons not to edit oral histories and allow the reader to get a sense of the speaker’s speech pattern, I decided that this would be distracting in this case and have therefore quoted only relevant passages from the interviews. I also removed utterances such as “you know” or “um” for ease of reading. The transcripts that will be archived, however, reflect the interviewees’ speech patterns as closely as possible. In addition to the interviews, I collected material produced since the arrival of the first group of German rocket specialists in the United States in 1945, such as local and national news and magazine articles, video recordings of local public panels, local and national documentary films, and records housed in local and national archives.28 ORAL HISTORY AS EVIDENCE

The first thing that makes oral history different . . . is that it tells us less about events as such than about their meaning. . . . They tell us not just what people did, but what they wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, what they now think they did. —Alessandro Portelli29

As the literature professor, oral historian, and scholar of history and memory Alessandro Portelli suggests, oral histories are not very useful for learning so-called hard facts; rather, they teach us what meaning people take from events and how they apply that meaning to their present understanding of the world. The oral histories and archival material I collected reveal which stories about the Germans, their past in Germany, their move to Huntsville, and their impact on the town have been repeated—and by whom. They disclose how these stories connect the presence of the German families with local history and social dynamics within the community. They are forms of memory-making that expose what memories are known and shared among individuals in the community, helping us to understand the process of public meaning-making about the Germans.30 They bring to light in what ways complicated and sometimes contradictory memories are negotiated among community

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members in order to make sense of the rocket experts’ work for the Nazi regime and the U.S. government’s decision to offer them citizenship and prestigious employment opportunities—in the complex context of a multicultural post-cold-war-era America. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes expand Portelli’s observation that oral histories tell us what people “now think they did” (my emphasis) by explaining, “Oral history, though documenting an often private, always personal past, is nonetheless also very much about a community’s present conditions, needs, and desires.”31 Like most communities in the United States and elsewhere, Huntsville consists of many internal communities differentiated by, at a minimum, race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and religion.32 Additionally, listening to stories told by members of these different groups uncovers which stories told by which group dominate in the larger Huntsville community and which ones are rarely heard. Expanding on Hamilton and Shopes, that means that the dominance of some stories over others is a reflection of the state of the relationships of these groups within the community today. Oral histories are not only produced within the context of communities but also in the form of a dialogue between the interviewer and the interviewee, which means that their relationship is important for the interpretation of an oral history as well. Talking to me, a forty-year-old, single, white, non-Jewish female doctoral student with family in the community, the informants in Huntsville had multiple ways of relating to me depending on their own age, gender, ethnicity, race, religious affiliation, education, and profession. My language skills and my cultural knowledge of Germany, the United States, and Alabama also had a significant impact on these relationships. My ability to speak both German and American English without a foreign accent was important for me to be perceived more as an “insider” by both my English- and German-speaking interview partners, but occasionally it also seemed to create confusion. For example, the conversations with first-generation German interviewees before and after the interview were often held in German, and one of the German interviewees even expressed her delight about my German-language skills. During the interviews, however, all of which but one were conducted in English, several of the interviewees would explain German culture to me, presumably forgetting my German upbringing.

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My cultural knowledge of both German and U.S. southern society has been sufficient to provide me with what Welzer and colleagues describe as “implicit and explicit knowledge about the way a topic can be talked about: what can be asked openly, what is considered a taboo, which knowledge is shared and what terms are used to describe it” in order to respond “appropriately” in the “social space” of the interview.33 Assuming that collective interpretive patterns for a nation’s or a region’s past exist, knowledge of these patterns is therefore important not only for the postinterview analysis but, as Welzer and colleagues point out, also during the interview. I seemed to be generally accepted as trustworthy and much “like us,” except for frequent questions and comments about my marital status, which suggested that this general notion of cultural commonality was sometimes disrupted. The interviewees’ search for commonality with me became more pronounced at the end of the interviews. I was frequently offered food or drink after the interview, at which point the interviewees would often tell me more about themselves, related and unrelated to the focus of the interviews, or ask more about my personal background and my research. The interviews created a level of intimacy typically only shared with friends (or possibly psychotherapists). The informal part after the interview often seemed like an attempt to compensate for having revealed much about themselves while knowing little about me. Several interviewees expressed their desire to stay in touch and to form an ongoing relationship with me. While this seems a natural reaction to the interview, maintaining the bond created during the interview is also a way to ensure that I feel friendly toward the interviewee when I write about him or her. Since I wanted to learn about the interviewees’ thoughts and explanations, I made an effort not to betray my own sentiments and thoughts too strongly before, during, or after the interview. In many cases that meant that I did not comment on statements I found offensive or objectionable. Since a simple nod or vocal acknowledgment that the speaker was heard is usually interpreted as agreement in a conversation, the lack of objection no doubt leads to misunderstandings on the part of those interviewed, who are deliberately not made aware of the researcher’s stance. The tension created in this way made me feel like I was committing “little betrayals” by creating a bond of intimacy in an interview while trying to maintain a researcher’s distance. This tension has stayed with me throughout the project.

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Harald Welzer and colleagues describe this dilemma as inherent to the interviewer’s dual social role as an actor with a professional interest in acquiring knowledge on the one hand and an individual conversational partner on the other. Although the interviewee will typically perceive the interviewer primarily in the role of the conversation partner rather than the professional knowledge seeker, the interviewer’s professional role requires that he or she demonstrates open-mindedness even toward comments he or she perceives as boring, uncomfortable, or provocative, to which he or she would presumably respond differently in a nonprofessional setting. Welzer and colleagues explain that this dilemma is particularly pronounced in intergenerational interviews concerning the Nazi past, where the interviewer of the third generation may inadvertently influence the conversation because the interviewee wishes to be liked by the interviewer and viewed in a positive light, not as a perpetrator, but also because the interviewer signals the desire for the “nice, old person” not to expose him- or herself as such a perpetrator.34 I suspect that this dilemma is similar for intergenerational interviews with whites concerning the Jim Crow era in the South. As a descendant of both American and German societies, I try to consider this dynamic in the analysis of the interviews. My family connection to the German group not only prompted this research, it also played an important role in the relationship with the interviewees. My father’s second wife and her sister are the daughters of one of the now-deceased German rocket experts in Huntsville. My father’s sister-in-law moved back to Huntsville in 2000 and began inviting our family to gatherings she helped arrange for the German community in Huntsville. While I stressed this background to the German interviewees to try to put them at ease in regard to what they might imagine were my viewpoint and intentions in light of earlier warnings, I did the opposite with the African American and Jewish interviewees, choosing not to explain my connection to the German group and my own German background until after the interviews. There is no way for me to measure the tangible effects of this strategy on the content of the interviews. The only clear indication I have for its significance is that one of my Jewish interviewees thanked me for telling her and explained her appreciation by noting that I did not have to tell her that. Due to the nature of oral histories, this study deals with specific individuals and a specific location and time period. Yet the goal is explicitly

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not to judge potential individual wrongdoing in retrospect but rather to examine the mechanisms that privilege some narratives of the past over others in order to cope with painful realities rooted in the complexities and contradictions of human behavior. CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCHOLARSHIP

With its focus on German rocket scientists and engineers invited to live and work in the U.S. South immediately after World War II, this study contributes to multiple areas that migration scholars have not yet grappled with in detail. For one, research on post-1945 migration from Germany to the United States is sparse, so this study will help fill that void. Despite the exceptional situation of this group of German immigrants, their immigration, integration, and national celebrity in the United States would have had implications for other German immigrants of that period. Another still underresearched area is migration to the U.S. South. Much of this is due to the lack of any significant migration to the area between the early nineteenth century and the emergence of the so-called Sunbelt South.35 Some researchers have begun tackling immigration to the South after the passage of the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, which removed the racial bias of previous immigration laws and expanded the preference system for immigrants with special skills and the reunification of citizens’ and residents’ families. Besides covering a different time frame from mine, these studies often focus exclusively on immigrants from Asia or Latin America, so that there is still much unexplored territory that this study will help uncover.36 Unlike most research in migration studies, this study focuses on the host community and includes perspectives from community members with different social positions to explore the social dynamics and negotiations over the newcomers’ integration. There is a growing literature on the transnational or transcultural dimensions of migration, but these studies are frequently focused on the relationship between the immigrant and the sending community.37 Not many focus closely on the host community, let alone different perspectives based on social positions within the community.38 While the immigrants of this study are unique in many ways, I believe this research can nevertheless function as a case study for how larger migrant groups become part of a diverse community,

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that is, how they “find their place” in the community by reinforcing or subverting existing social dynamics in struggles over collective memories. In fact, the German rocketeers’ public visibility has the effect that more people are locally and nationally aware of their presence, which draws their ability to bolster or undermine existing social dynamics and national discourses into sharper relief. This study also contributes to the history of the immigration of scientists and technical professionals to the United States, which is still a largely underexplored area of migration studies. The invitation proffered to a group of highly skilled immigrants to work in and for the United States immediately after World War II exemplifies an early moment in this history—a moment when the United States first began to emphasize, value, and actively attract immigrants’ scientific and technical skills, but before creating a legal preference system for this category of immigrants. Scientists and engineers immigrated to the United States long before the German rocket team arrived, but U.S. immigration law did not add its first provisions for “highly skilled” immigrants until 1952.39 To date, migration scholars have focused mainly on highly skilled migrants of the post-1965 era, after the Hart-Cellar Act removed the discriminatory national origins quota system and the exclusion of immigrants from the Asia-Pacific Triangle. Since the majority of highly skilled immigrants who arrived after 1965 were from East and South Asia, the immigrants faced varying forms of racism in white America, as opposed to the German rocket team. Although historians of science and technology have written about scientists and engineers who immigrated to the United States or who were children of immigrants in earlier periods, the scholars’ primary focus was inadvertently on their protagonists’ contributions to their fields of expertise, rather than their relationship to U.S. immigration history and laws.40 In this way, this study is also significant for the history of technology, history of science, and science and technology studies. Last but not least, by virtue of its subjects, this study is a contribution to space history, a subfield of the history of science and technology, in which the German V-2 rocket and its developers played significant roles. The V-2 was a milestone in the development of ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles in the United States and the Soviet Union. The German rocket specialists in the United States have been celebrated

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nationally and internationally for their contributions to U.S. space programs, and their technological accomplishments have been widely heralded by space historians and admirers.41 My research tries to fill a gap in the scholarship on the German rocket team by focusing on them as highly privileged immigrants from a recent enemy country with a contested past. I show how residents of Huntsville have responded to the German families and tried to grapple with the specialists’ past in Nazi Germany in light of their national successes and international recognition as so-called rocket scientists and their local contributions to the community. This study explores some local ramifications of national decisions that were based primarily on scientific, technological, and security needs while subverting denazification policies as well as immigration and naturalization laws.42 By exploring relationships of race, gender, class, regionality, ethnicity, and nationality in the construction of the past, this research provides insights into what impact these national decisions have had on those who were directly affected—the immigrants as well as the host community—and describes multiple dimensions of integrating immigrants and their controversial past into a community with its own complex social and cultural history, and in opposition to changing national narratives.

CHAPTER ONE

From Enemy Aliens to Valued Citizens

ernst stuhlinger was a physicist and a prominent member of Wernher von Braun’s team—one of the few actual scientists among the German rocket specialists—and an engaging public orator and writer. When he was invited to talk to Huntsville organizations about the German rocket team’s experiences immigrating to the United States after World War II, he carefully placed the story in the context of three hundred years of German immigration to America. One of his speeches began: “My wife and I are two of about seven million Germans who, during the past three hundred years, left their home country, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and found a new home in America. And we are two of about 60 million Americans who are living in this great country today, and who can trace their descent from German ancestors.” Stuhlinger described the many reasons why Germans had taken this voyage over the past centuries and why he and his wife took it, and framed all this in the context of “the proverbial American-German friendship.” He invoked the names of famous German Americans, described his childhood images of America, and explained a particular affinity toward Americans among Germans that presumably was not shaken by the German government’s antiAmerican propaganda during the war. He then broadened his story to the circumstances that brought von Braun’s team to the United States in the early postwar period.1 The move of the German rocket team to the United 23

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States thus appeared to be just another episode in the grand narrative of the immigrant nation. What makes Stuhlinger’s account remarkable is that, in contrast to the alluring image he created in his talk, the circumstances that brought the German rocket team to the United States were not only quite unusual but highly controversial, and these Germans’ immigration followed anything but the common process. Stuhlinger and his colleagues were brought to the United States under military custody beginning in 1945 as part of a large military operation to exploit German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and technicians after World War II. When the news about the decision to offer the specialists U.S. citizenship broke, vocal protesters questioned the entire military undertaking on moral grounds, while government officials had to find a way to discern who among the specialists was and who was not an ardent Nazi. Hostility toward new immigrants was not a new phenomenon in the United States, but the process of the German rocket team’s immigration was in no way the norm for immigrants. Several considerations prompted the policy change that allowed the military to offer the specialists long-term contracts and the possibility of U.S. citizenship. Originally, at the time of the project’s inception in July 1945, the U.S. government’s goal was the short-term exploitation of the specialists’ expertise. By March 1946, the government had recognized the importance of denying the Germans’ scientific and technical knowledge to other nations and expanding the recruitment of experts from Germany. Some of the specialists who had been in the United States since the early fall of 1945 had access to classified information that could fall into enemy hands should the government return the experts to Europe. Reports from Germany indicated that many German specialists planned to immigrate to Argentina and other Latin American countries, while French and Russian agents made attractive offers to others. In addition, a number of specialists refused to renew their short-term contracts with the War Department unless their families could join them. With all this in mind, the U.S. military felt pressed to act swiftly and to provide more attractive incentives for the specialists to choose to work for the United States.2 This included security for their dependents and clarification of their future legal status vis-à-vis the state—that is, their entitlement to eventually become U.S. citizens.3

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The changed goals created serious immigration policy and public relations problems for the government since many of the experts were former members of Nazi organizations and all of them had worked directly for Hitler’s regime in one capacity or another. How could it ensure that no “ardent Nazis,” or, worse yet, war criminals would become American citizens? The U.S. War, State, and Justice departments (mainly the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Naturalization Service) spent almost two years determining how to process the immigration of the German and Austrian scientific and technical experts recruited to work for the United States. In the meantime, public protesters criticized the importation of these former enemies, primarily out of fear of Nazi infiltration and anger over the preferential treatment of those who worked for the Nazi regime over its victims, whom the U.S. government had barred from coming to the United States in the first years following the war. PROJECT PAPERCLIP

Even before World War II officially ended in the European theater, intelligence units of the militaries of the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union searched independently for German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and technicians who specialized in aerodynamics, rocketry, chemical weapons, medicine, and other fields. As a result, the Allies exported thousands of scientific and technical experts as well as leftover matériel and documentation out of Germany. The U.S. military alone brought more than five hundred specialists to the United States between 1945 and 1952 under an operation initially named Project Overcast, then renamed Project Paperclip.4 While the German and Austrian specialists voluntarily signed short-term contracts with the military, the undertaking was considered a form of “intellectual reparations” limited to temporary exploitation, after which the military would return the specialists to Europe.5 The military brought most of them on troop ships to New York, where it separated them and sent them to different destinations. Some had contracts with the air force, which took them to Wright Field, Ohio, or Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. The army sent smaller groups to bases like Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey. Yet other specialists had contracts with the navy, which dispersed them to bases in the northeastern United States and California.6 At the time, the U.S. government considered the specialists “enemy aliens temporarily in the United States as civilian employees

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of the War Department.”7 Under the initial mandate from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the military was charged to use the German and Austrian specialists to fight Japan in the Pacific arena, but when that war suddenly ended, the primary goal changed to ensuring that other nations were denied their expertise.8 One of the larger groups of German and Austrian specialists consisted of members of the team that had developed the V-2 rocket, one of Hitler’s “vengeance” or “wonder” weapons, for the Nazi regime at the rocket development facility in Peenemünde.9 The army’s initial mandate was to recruit 100 rocket experts for the United States, but the chief of the Rocket Branch, R&D Division, Office of the Chief of Ordnance, General Holger N. Toftoy, who would continue to play a vital role in the settlement of the German rocket team at Ft. Bliss and later at Redstone Arsenal, was able to bring a total of 119 to the United States in the first year.10 The Peenemünde facility once employed thousands of people, but not all of them were highly qualified or even interested in working in the United States. To select the few the U.S. military would offer contracts to, the team’s leader, Wernher von Braun, aided Toftoy in choosing those he deemed the most valuable for the creation of a rocket team in the United States. Almost all members of this group went to Ft. Bliss, Texas, not far from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. The initial group of rocketeers arrived in multiple batches at Ft. Bliss between fall 1945 and spring 1946. The army recruited another fifteen rocket specialists who arrived at Ft. Bliss between fall 1947 and spring 1948.11 Apart from showing the army how to assemble and launch V-2 rockets the military had collected in Germany, the rocket team’s task was to consult military and industrial researchers on guided missile research.12 The scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States “under limited military custody and surveillance,” outside of the formal immigration system.13 Since the U.S. government initially intended to send the specialists back to Europe as soon as they had served their purpose, it kept the project secret, segregated the specialists from unauthorized persons, prohibited them from moving freely, limited their access to classified information, and censored their mail. After learning that the project’s name was compromised and could no longer be kept secret, the military renamed Project Overcast to Project Paperclip in November 1945.

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The German rocket team in Ft. Bliss, Texas, 1946. Wernher von Braun is in the first row, sixth from the right, and Arthur Rudolph is in the first row, fourth from the left. NASA photo: MSFC-75-SA-4105-2C (available online at http://mix.msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts. php?p=840).

A new directive followed the new label in March 1946, which included the possibility of eventual citizenship as well as long-term contracts, if the administering officials deemed that to be “in the interest of national security.”14 The directive also stipulated that the military could bring a total of 350 German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and technicians to the United States under the project’s auspices, that some of the initial security measures would be loosened, and that in coordination with the Commerce Department, civilian industries and laboratories could now also employ the specialists. With these prospects, the specialists’ dependents began to join them in the United States within one or two years. In September 1946, another directive raised the limit of how many specialists could be brought to the United States to 1,000.15 Because of security measures that lasted until they became immigrants, as opposed to enemy aliens, beginning in 1948, and despite having come to the United States voluntarily, the rocket experts later liked to refer to themselves as having been “Prisoners of Peace.”16 The

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Intelligence Division of the War Department began creating security dossiers in August 1946 for each specialist, and later for all of their dependents who were over fifteen years of age. The dossiers, containing fingerprint cards, photographs, and biographical and professional sketches, were submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition, the agencies the specialists were assigned to created monthly surveillance reports. The specialists could venture from their assigned stations during the day if they spoke English, but they were not allowed to stay away overnight without a military escort. They were not permitted to leave the continental United States, and they had to inform the military agency they were assigned to of their whereabouts at all times. Their assignment agency also determined whom they could have contact with in the British and U.S. zones in Germany and regularly inspected their mail “to protect project security.”17 Although the military initially restricted their movements and rights to privacy, the imported scientists, engineers, and technicians knew that the U.S. military and government considered them highly valuable assets and used that perception not only to negotiate the terms of their shortterm contracts but also to bargain for the relaxation of those restrictions. Before even signing contracts with U.S. military units and leaving Europe, they had negotiated the promise that the U.S. Army would provide for their dependents in a special housing area by Landshut in Bavaria until they could join the scientists, engineers, and technicians in the United States or until the specialists returned to Germany. Later, the military lifted the initial prohibition against mailing packages to Germany, presumably in order to build morale among the specialists.18 I N T H E N A M E O F N AT I O N A L S E C U R I T Y

The promise of citizenship meant that the government had to transform the status of the German and Austrian specialists and their dependents from enemy alien to resident alien. This was possible only if they reentered the country under U.S. immigration laws, which were ruled by the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, also known as the Quota Act. And while the War Department had been able to circumvent the State and Justice departments for temporary exploitation, now it had to convince these entities that the procedures for immigration would ensure that neither war criminals nor so-called ardent Nazis could become U.S. citizens.19

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The Quota Act was one of the most restrictive immigration laws in U.S. history, but it worked in favor of most of the specialists from Germany since the restrictions applied only to those whom nativist groups and Congress had considered undesirable or “unassimilable” to the nation.20 The act’s goal was to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which had increased significantly in the early twentieth century. To accomplish this, the act capped overall immigration to the United States at 150,000 a year and set up a quota system based on the ancestry of the current citizenry. The quota was set at 2 percent, which meant that more immigrants could enter from countries that had supplied more immigrants in the past. Exacerbating the restrictions on immigrants from countries that were less well represented by the citizenry of the United States, the administrators were supposed to base percentages on the 1890 census, which gave 85 percent of the quotas to northern and western European nations.21 As historian Roger Daniels noted, one of the more bizarre implications of the Johnson-Reed Act at the time of its enactment was that just a few years after World War I, “among the greatest European beneficiaries of the new law were the very Germans with whom the United States had been at war a few years previously.”22 After World War II, the implications of the law seemed even more nonsensical, blocking victims of the Nazi regime from entering the country while allowing Germans who had worked for the regime to attain American citizenship. The Quota Act provided a potential bottleneck for Project Paperclip as well because not all of the specialists were born in Germany, but a clever scheme ensured that the desired specialists and their families still had an advantage over other immigrants. First, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested a first-priority nonpreference quota status by “recommending them [the specialists] as persons whose entry into the United States was deemed highly desirable in the national interest.”23 When the 1948 Displaced Persons Act threatened to fill up the German quota as well because the specialists and their dependents still in Germany would have been on the same lists with now-eligible displaced persons, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) had the specialists and dependents quickly register with a consul outside of Germany so they would be first in line, before the opening of general registration in Germany.24 This maneuver was one of the first expressions of favoring scientists and technical

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professionals over other immigrants to the United States before lawmakers implemented an explicit preference system for immigrants with special skills with the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act.25 Despite an advantage based on racially motivated immigration laws and the War Department’s efforts to manipulate the system, officials had to deal with the specialists’ involvement with the Nazi regime before the Germans could embark on the path to citizenship. While one of the initial stipulations for exploiting the German and Austrian specialists was that “no known or alleged war criminals should be brought to the United States,” allowing the specialists to immigrate required more serious examination of their backgrounds.26 Both the State and Justice departments agreed to accept immigration recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for specialists they had vetted beginning in December 1946, but it would take almost two years, several revisions, and multiple compromises in the name of “the national interest” before the War, State, and Justice departments finalized a procedure under which the German and Austrian specialists and their families could become formal immigrants. The three departments struggled over what type of information needed to be included for the preexamination process and how to evaluate the data. The State Department’s initial requirements for the specialists’ eligibility for a visa were “so strict that it appeared unlikely that any scientists would ever be admitted into this country.”27 At issue was how to determine whether or not a specialist or dependent qualified as an “ardent Nazi.”28 Since the U.S. government was preoccupied with the emerging cold war with the Soviet Union, the focus for evaluating the specialists shifted from looking at what they had done in Germany to what they could do in and for the United States. The involved parties eventually agreed on directives for the specialists’ immigration, which implied that as long as the specialists appeared to embrace American democracy and did not proselytize Nazi ideology they were considered assets for the nation. The government considered it imperative for national security and defense that they should not fall into the hands of other nations and determined that their immigration was in the national interest because of the expected long-term benefits for national security and industry.29 The shift in focus produced revised security reports that would later lead investigative reporters to question the morality of the entire project. In the context of the emerging cold war in

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the late 1940s, however, the compromises seemed to be mandated by the circumstances. The government charged the JIOA, an organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. armed forces, with the coordination of the process. Since many of the specialists were already working on highpriority research development programs, the potential danger of their capture by an enemy nation if sent back to Europe to obtain visas made that option impractical. Instead, they would undergo a preexamination procedure in the United States, after which they could obtain a visa at a consulate either in Canada or Mexico, depending on which border was closest. Immigration procedures for individual specialists began only after they had been under observation in the United States for a minimum of six months. In order to begin the process, the secretary of war had to submit a completed dossier for each specialist with a certificate stating that the specialist’s entry was “in the national interest, that his permanent residence in this country would aid in furthering national security requirements, and that such entry would not be prejudicial to the interests of the United States.” The dossier went to the secretary of state and the attorney general, and if they determined that a visa could be granted, they informed the consul, before whom the specialist was to appear, of the decision. In the meantime, the Justice Department made a final security check concerning national security and national interest and informed the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the results.30 Before the policy for Project Paperclip changed to include the specialists’ potential immigration, the Intelligence Division of the War Department had supplied the FBI with photos, fingerprints, and biographical and professional sketches for each of the specialists. This would not suffice to evaluate their suitability for immigration. The dossier now had to also include a denazification record, medical certificate, basic personnel record, the standard German questionnaire, monthly statements about the specialist’s surveillance, and investigation reports.31 Both the denazification record and investigation reports had been sources of contention among the War, State, and Justice departments. One of the major stumbling blocks was the fact that the military brought the scientists, engineers, and technicians to the United States without executing the mandatory denazification procedures that it otherwise enforced in Germany in the immediate postwar period.32 The War

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Department had thereby already evaded its own rules and created a fait accompli. To satisfy the State and Justice departments’ requirements for denazification, the War Department proposed a special procedure: instead of shipping the specialists back to Germany for denazification trials, the specialists would fill out the questionnaire (Meldebogen/ Fragebogen) required for the denazification process, which would then be forwarded to the U.S. military government in Germany and Austria for trials in absentia by a special tribunal created for this purpose.33 General Lucius D. Clay, head of the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in Germany, strongly opposed this idea, as it would have resulted in a public display of the special treatment of the German specialists already in the United States. He anticipated that this would not only affect German sentiments toward the U.S. occupiers but would also draw unwanted attention to Project Paperclip. In the end, the government departments agreed that, instead of sending the completed forms to Europe, the JIOA would collect them and base further recommendations on them—a very different procedure from those performed in Germany for denazification, under which some of the specialists would have been punished with fines, jail terms, employment restrictions, and forfeiture of civic rights. None of them would have been permitted to conduct the kind of military research they were asked to perform in the United States.34 The other major source of contention among the U.S. government departments concerned the evaluation of the investigation reports, also referred to as security reports. These had to include the results from surveillance of the specialists in the United States but also reports based on investigations by OMGUS in Europe. In addition, the specialists and their dependents had to submit a typewritten sworn statement explaining their membership in the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and affiliated organizations. Here they had to describe in detail the degree of their participation and reasons for joining.35 The investigations in Europe were supposed to be based on sworn statements of at least three reliable persons well acquainted with the visa applicant, a denazification report, a check of party records at the 7771st Document Center in Berlin, a résumé of the applicant’s criminal record, and a check of all available records of the Ministerial Branch of the Foreign Office of the State Department.36 The specialists had to supply lists of the names and last known addresses of

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persons they had been well acquainted with, which the investigators of the European command utilized to learn about the specialists’ political, social, and professional activities during Hitler’s regime. This was a lengthy process that often created long delays in the preexamination of visa applicants. The requirement for local investigations was therefore later limited to applicants whose records “indicate that the specialist was a leader or organizer in the NSDAP or its affiliates or . . . no official records can be found and other sources indicate the possibility of political incrimination.”37 The investigators in Europe, however, presumably using the same criteria that were used for other Germans, found many of the specialists to be “potential security threats” and even “ardent Nazis,” which prompted a revisiting of the procedures in the United States. Since the initial reports from Europe would have had an effect as limiting as the State Department’s initial requirements, the government had to change the policy for how to evaluate the data if more of the much-desired specialists were to receive visas. In September 1946, the State, War, and Navy departments, as well as President Truman, granted approval for a policy clarifying that while an individual who had been an active member of the Nazi regime could not be brought to the United States, “Any honors or positions awarded a specialist by the Nazi Party because of his scientific or technical ability were not to be considered sufficient evidence to disqualify his entry into the United States.”38 This created “a significant loophole indeed,” according to historian John Gimbel—a loophole that suddenly allowed specialists who had previously been classified as ardent Nazis or at a minimum “a potential security threat” to enter the country and eventually apply for citizenship.39 The question of how to evaluate the specialists remained an issue of contention and led to a shift in how the military directed administrators to assess the specialists’ past behavior. In November 1947, the chief of the Exploitation Branch of the Intelligence Division protested the security reports that OMGUS had submitted for several specialists, which would have excluded some of them “based solely on the fact that these specialists have not undergone denazification proceedings and appear to be presumptive class 2 offenders by reason of early membership in the Nazi Party.” The chief considered this approach unrealistic, declaring that security evaluations should state if a full investigation was not possible and that “where Party membership without rank, activity or Party honors

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is indicated, a saving clause should be inserted to allow for a change in security evaluation if subject is later denazified or demonstrates his fitness for permanent residence in the United States by his attitude and actions while under supervision for a minimum of six months in the United States.”40 While accused individuals in Germany had to prove their innocence during denazification trials, this official maintained that the military should consider the specialists innocent until proven guilty. Accordingly, when in doubt over a specialist’s level of involvement with the Nazi regime, the evaluator should assume less rather than more involvement. The chief evidently considered the specialists’ past less important than their current behavior. In many cases, information was simply not available because the specialist came from an area of Germany that was now occupied by Soviet forces. Since the information would be missing on the security reports for these specialists, the JIOA director ordered in 1948 that the security report should simply omit the paragraph that referred to local investigations and renumber the following paragraphs because “the appearance of an incomplete report is undesirable.”41 In January 1948, the secretary of state submitted a cable to all diplomatic and consular offices explaining in more detail how officials were supposed to evaluate aliens applying for visas who may have been members of the Nazi Party or affiliated organizations. The aerogram stated that “the consuls should take into consideration all facts and circumstances under which the alien had joined such organizations, his past and present conduct, and whether he believed in the principles of democracy.”42 Past behavior and involvement with the Nazi regime was becoming less important as long as the applicant “believed in the principles of democracy.” The real concern now was the perceived threat of Communism. As the JIOA director wrote on April 27, 1948, giving “serious and grave consideration to Nazi affiliations which were destroyed with the recent war . . . is placing an emphasis on a security threat which no longer exists.” Accordingly, it was “ ‘difficult to understand why, in the face of the threat of communism to the security of the United States,’ such consideration was still necessary.” Communist affiliations would therefore soon become the “only item identified specifically as ‘a basis for unfavorable security evaluations.’ ”43

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The War Department always looked for ways to speed up the preexamination process for the specialists to obtain visas. One of the inquiries on how to do this revealed that under the directive of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI was conducting additional extensive investigations of each applicant before recommending approval to the Justice Department. The director of Intelligence therefore met with Hoover and convinced him that the investigations of the military services were thorough enough and that the FBI should expedite the approval process in order to “relieve the War Department of its custodial responsibilities.”44 The agencies coordinated the procedures for obtaining visas with the respective consuls in Canada and Mexico. The American consul in Niagara Falls, Canada, issued the first visa in April 1948 to a specialist who had arrived under Project Paperclip.45 The army sent the rocket specialists who had arrived with von Braun and were stationed either at Ft. Bliss, Texas, or White Sands, New Mexico, across the Mexican border to obtain their visas.46 When the approval for a specialist’s immigration arrived, a military escort in civilian clothes took him to the U.S.-Mexican border. The specialist would appear in front of the consul in Ciudad Juárez with test results showing that he was not infected with tuberculosis or syphilis, an Alien Registration Receipt, copies of public records, four passport-type photographs, a chest X-ray plate, a blood serological report, and $20 in cash to formally apply for an immigration visa. After receiving a visa, the specialist returned to the United States and received resident alien status under U.S. immigration laws. He was no longer in military custody, which meant that his military employers no longer had authority over him, and he could now also submit the required forms to initiate the immigration of his dependents.47 Requirements for dependents over sixteen years of age were very similar to those of the specialists, except that only those over eighteen had to submit references for investigation in Europe.48 A few of the rocket team members returned to Germany instead of becoming American citizens. Some left voluntarily, but the army also forced several to leave. It sent Wilhelm Jungert back to Germany after he crossed the international border to Mexico with Bruno Helm in August 1946 despite explicit instructions not to do so. Helm was “given other punishment.”49 The army sent Kurt Deppe back to Germany on November 17, 1946, due to mental illness.50 It also sent Karl Fleischer, who was a

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personal friend of von Braun and whose role had been to organize food and supplies for the team, back with his family in August 1947 because he was “not eligible for exploitation under Project Paperclip.”51 According to Konrad Dannenberg, who was one of the rocket team members who remained in the United States, Carl Hager went back to Germany because his skills as a chemist were not particularly needed at White Sands or Ft. Bliss.52 Some of the rocket specialists experienced delays in the issuance of their visas due to “derogatory background information” and delayed security reports.53 But the army did not send anyone back to Germany because of early membership in the Nazi Party or for being an “ardent Nazi,” even though OMGUS had initially classified several of the rocket specialists as potential threats to the security of the United States.54 The army considered sending back patent attorney Herbert Axster and his wife due to allegations that she had been an ardent Nazi. On April 14, 1947, the secretary of war received a letter from the president of the American Jewish Congress, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, intended to alert him of a dispatch from Berlin published in the New York Times on January 4, 1947. The dispatch discussed Mr. and Mrs. Axster’s activities under the Nazi regime, claiming that under German denazification laws, Mrs. Axster would be considered a major offender.55 The army launched a reinvestigation of the Axsters in Europe, and the European Command sent a cable stating: “H. Axster not politically active . . . Ilse Axster—was highly active in Nazi Party, was not a war criminal but was a party member since 1937, an ardent Nazi and fanatical representative of Nazi ideology. Definitely a security threat.”56 These allegations were based on statements from former neighbors who reported on her activities as the head of the local NS Frauenschaft (Nazi organization for women) and their observations that she had mistreated foreign laborers who were working on the Axsters’ farm during the war.57 Despite these assessments, agencies within the War Department made several appeals to the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on the Axsters’ behalf. One of the reasons their employers did not want to see Axster and his wife deported was the fact that he “has had access to highly classified information in many fields of guided missile development.” His superiors used a common line of argument for keeping the German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and technicians in the country even if their records raised questions about their past Nazi involvement. Axster had

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information that made him “a definite potential security threat to the United States if he is deported.”58 Even his wife had presumably “acquired a sufficient technical orientation to be of intelligence value to the Russians or other power” thanks to her close association with the project.59 The Justice Department eventually authorized Herbert Axster’s preexamination in May 1953 in light of the new Immigration and Naturalization Act (McCarran-Walter Act) that became effective on December 24, 1952. One of the provisions of the act was a preference system for immigrants with special skills. In this context, Axster’s former membership in Nazi organizations now no longer constituted grounds for inadmissibility, according to a letter from the assistant commissioner of the INS Inspections and Examinations Division.60 The letter was an order to grant Axster and another colleague their applications for authorization of preexamination to eventually obtain visas. The Axsters forfeited this newly acquired privilege, left the country, and sent a note to the chief of ordnance from Germany requesting the cancellation of Mr. Axster’s immigration proceedings. Presumably, he could “handle [his] business better and more profitably” from Europe.61 Ironically, once the Axsters had left, his former custodians found that the Axsters’ knowledge of classified information was no longer considered “harmful to the National Defense effort, in the event of [Axster’s] falling into enemy hands.”62 The other rocket specialist whose application was granted along with Axster’s, thanks to the McCarran-Walter Act, was Kurt Heinrich Debus.63 Debus had applied for membership in the notorious SS (Protection Squadron) in 1940 and denounced a colleague as a traitor to Nazi authorities in 1942 based on a conversation they had about the causes of the war with Britain.64 The decision to authorize Debus’s preexamination for an entry visa based on the McCarran-Walter Act confirmed the sentiments and efforts the secretary of the army had put forth on Debus’s behalf in a letter to the secretary of state several years earlier, which summarizes the prevailing attitude among U.S. government and military officials toward the Nazi pasts of the German and Austrian specialists: “Although he [Debus] was classified as an ardent Nazi by the United States High Commissioner for Germany, surveillance in the United States for a period of four and one half years has given every evidence that he has embraced democracy and the American way of life. His value to this country, because

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of his technical qualifications and knowledge of present and future plans in his field, outweighs the consideration of his Nazi activity.”65 Unlike the Axsters, Debus remained in the country and became a U.S. citizen; in 1962 he became the first director of what would later be known as NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. PUBLIC REACTIONS TO PAPERCLIP

The War Department tried to keep publicity concerning Project Paperclip to a minimum and to control the dissemination and interpretation of information about the project. It submitted its first press release about bringing German scientists and technicians to the United States on October 1, 1945.66 It did not release the project name, but readers of the news reports that followed the press release learned about the existence of an undertaking to exploit German progress in science and technology. They also learned that the Germans were coming on a voluntary basis for a temporary stay, and that they were “outstanding German scientists and technicians” here to aid in military research under army supervision and to “insure that we take full advantage of those significant developments which are deemed vital to our national security.”67 In March 1946, the War Department submitted another press release that provided a few more details about the project and seemed to be an attempt to address potential concerns of the American public. The first announcement in October had not identified any of the specialists by name or specified in what areas of science and technology they were supposedly “outstanding.” Now, readers of the Washington Post learned that some of the specialists were working “on such projects as jetpropelled planes and aerodynamic research instruments.”68 They still did not know the name of the project or who the individual specialists were. Instead, readers learned that the “German scientists who were brought to this country to assist in military projects involving captured German equipment have already helped the Army ‘develop deadly rockets’ more effective than those the Nazis used.”69 The wording implied that the decision to bring the specialists to the United States had already paid off. The article further assured readers that “no one accused of being a war criminal is brought here,” and that their pay was nominal.70 Pointing out that the army had “sorted out the qualifications of some 6000 German technical specialists” seemed to minimize the impact of the 160

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specialists already in the country.71 And the fact that “original plans for larger scale utilization of German experts were ‘cut back drastically’ following the surrender of Japan” gave the impression that the undertaking was now quite small, considering its originally intended size.72 In mid-November, readers of the New York Times learned that the War Department would lift some of its secrecy around the German specialists in December and allow reporters to interview and photograph those at Wright Field, Ohio, and those at Ft. Bliss, Texas, although dispatches and photographs would be “subject to official censorship and held for future release.”73 Roughly ten days later, major national newspapers, reporting from Frankfurt and Berlin in Germany, announced that the U.S. government expected to bring one thousand German scientists and technicians to the United States.74 Although this seemed to contradict the reports in March, which had implied a reduction of numbers, the headlines indicate that for most readers the more significant news was probably that the government planned to offer the German experts citizenship and the option to bring their families to the United States. The next round of news, in early December 1946, revealed many more details about the project but also disclosed its inherent tensions. Enlarging on the previously announced official tour of the air force’s aeronautical laboratories at Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio, the news reports identified the name of the project and those of several specialists. Readers also found out that among the German scientists and engineers were those who had helped design and develop the V-1 and V-2 rockets, and that some were working at Ft. Bliss, Texas, and White Sands, New Mexico. All this indicated more transparency, but it also provided critics with more fodder. The newspaper headlines read very differently than the header of the press release that the War Department had provided. While national newspaper headlines announced that “Nazi Scientists Aid Army on Research” and “Ex-Nazi Experts Work on Secret Weapons in U.S.,” the press release was titled “United States Gains Technical Aid from GermanAustrian Scientists.”75 These divergent descriptions of the military operation’s purpose and meaning reflected some of the concerns associated with Project Paperclip. The War Department emphasized the expected gains from utilizing the Germans’ and Austrians’ expertise for American national security and technical dominance. In contrast, the newspaper editors decided that the public would be more interested in the potentially

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alarming employment of what one article referred to as “the former pets of Hitler” to work on sensitive national security projects.76 The New York Times seemed undecided on how to evaluate this military undertaking. Readers learned that “eventually 1,000 of Germany’s topflight scientists might be brought to the United States” and read speculations about the enormous cost savings in aeronautical and basic rocket research this undertaking might bring.77 But while introducing several individuals who had been brought to Wright Field, the article described one specialist as looking “remarkably like a youthful Hermann Goering.” This last comment and the reference to “former pets of Hitler” suggested some discomfort with the idea of having German and Austrian specialists who had worked for the Nazi regime in the country. The article also noted, however, that measures had been taken to screen the “Nazi scientists.” “They were all carefully screened in Germany and again after arriving here. Some were former Nazi party men and others were victims of the Nazi party. . . . A few have been found undesirable and shipped home.”78 This was the first time readers learned a few names and more details about the Nazi past of the specialists who could potentially become American citizens. The New York Times also reported that “at least twentyfive have expressed a desire to take out citizenship,” and that “it is understood that the State Department is taking steps to facilitate such action.”79 Alarmed particularly by this offer of American citizenship, which seemed to be already in progress, organizations of scientists, clergymen, educators, and other concerned citizens issued letters of protest to the news media and the Truman administration. A Gallup poll conducted on December 11, 1946, revealed that many Americans were concerned that the German specialists were still Nazis, that they might influence Americans’ political thinking, and that they might use the knowledge gained in the United States against the nation someday. Others believed that the United States could benefit from the Germans’ expertise since they were supposedly leaders in science. Those in favor of bringing the Germans to the United States also thought that this act could contribute to better understanding between Germany and the United States and that it was preferable to encourage them to stay in the United States rather than work for the Soviet Union.80 To those who publicly protested the military undertaking, the specialists’ privileged treatment was an insult to the survivors who had fought

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the Nazis and were “now starving in Europe” as well as “to the political refugees who escaped to this country and served us so faithfully in the war.”81 In his letter addressed to the secretary of war alerting him to a dispatch from Berlin about the Axsters, Rabbi Wise reminded the secretary of the national goals of World War II to illustrate the paradoxical nature of Project Paperclip: This operation [Paperclip] is all the more deplorable at a time when officials of our government find every possible reason for failing to fulfill the declared policy of President Truman to rescue as many victims of the Nazi terror as our immigration laws permit. Red tape, lack of shipping facilities, and every other handicap face these oppressed people while their oppressors are brought to this country with their families and are favorably housed and supported at our expense. . . . As long as we reward former servants of Hitler while leaving his victims in D.P. [displaced persons] camps, we cannot even pretend that we are making any real effort to achieve the aims we fought for.82 At the time Rabbi Wise sent his letter, U.S. immigration laws still forbade the majority of the victims of the Nazi regime to come to the United States. The quotas for the countries where most of the victims who had survived the Nazi regime were born were oversubscribed after World War II. It was therefore necessary to create special provisions that would allow refugees to enter the country. The resulting Displaced Persons acts were not ratified until 1948 and 1950, however—years after most of the German and Austrian specialists who had worked for Hitler’s regime had settled in the United States.83 The initial protests against Project Paperclip, while short-lived, seemed to validate the government’s decisions to keep the project secret for as long as possible and to seclude the experts in low-profile environments as well as to manage media representations once their presence became public knowledge.84 The military finally released information about Paperclip because of increased inquiries by the press and because the Soviet Union had accused the United States of hypocrisy after Western nations had criticized the USSR for the sudden forced relocation of several thousand German scientists and engineers from Soviet-occupied Germany to the Soviet Union for exploitation in 1946.85 According to

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“Army representatives” quoted by the Chicago Daily Tribune, the American public was not informed sooner “because of the possibility of reprisals by ‘werewolf’ and German underground forces against their families now living in modern apartment buildings in a special encampment provided by the army at Landshut in the American occupied zone of Germany.” To explain why the specialists’ families expected reprisals, the army officers suggested this was the result of their preferential treatment over other Germans.86 While the families’ safety in Germany may have been a consideration, the army was primarily concerned about public sentiments at home. According to an army report created in the late 1950s titled “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” the U.S. Department of War carefully managed information about the project in order to “insure public confidence in the program and to prevent any distorted reports from Europe reaching an unoriented public.” After it had previously released some rudimentary information, the War Department decided in September 1946 to move forward with more substantial press releases in response to a rising number of inquiries to the State Department and in order “to counteract any unfavorable public opinion.”87 Information about the project soon became more readily available, but the department continued to tightly control the release of names of individual German or Austrian specialists to protect potentially classified research and for the safety of their relatives living in Eastern Europe. By the time most of the rocket specialists and their families who had arrived in the late 1940s had become naturalized American citizens in the mid-1950s, the nation had moved on. The emerging cold war shored up fears of Communism that quickly outweighed any fears of Nazi infiltration. Changes to the existing immigration laws provided some refuge for displaced persons from Europe, and the war in Korea moved the public focus away from World War II and its aftereffects. Criticism of the importation of the rocket team dwindled to humorous attacks on von Braun’s flexible national allegiances and his presumed callousness toward human life as a designer of destructive weapons. Questions about the team’s involvement in the use of concentration camp labor to build the rockets for the Nazi regime did not become a larger public concern until the Rudolph case arose over thirty years later.

CHAPTER TWO

Huntsville Becomes the “Rocket City”

when the german rocket engineers and their families moved from Ft. Bliss, Texas, to Huntsville, Alabama, they were moving not only from a fenced-in military environment to an open civilian community but also to another region with a different and distinct history, culture, and social setting. An examination of this particular setting and how Huntsville’s residents remember it helps explain the acceptance and later celebration of the Germans in the community and, to some extent, why Arthur Rudolph found notable immediate and long-term support in his adopted hometown in the face of the OSI’s war crimes allegations. At the time the Germans arrived, most of the South had become more ethnically uniform than northern states, enhancing distinctions between black and white residents.1 After its initial settlement by European colonizers, labor needs were supplied by slavery, so immigration to the South was minimal. After the Civil War, there was still an abundance of white and black laborers, and the financially devastated South was lagging behind in industrial development. Millions of African Americans began moving out of the South during the Great Migration in the early part of the twentieth century. At the same time, a wave of mass immigration to the United States from eastern and southern Europe took place, but few of the newcomers moved south. The South’s cultural isolation started to erode only in the 1950s when foreign investors and 43

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newcomers, mainly from Mexico, Central and South America, and several Asian countries, began arriving.2 Moving to a state in the so-called Deep South and Bible Belt with its Jim Crow laws and customs in 1950, the Germans reaped the benefits of being considered part of the white majority in a racially segregated environment.3 They did not, however, witness firsthand the kind of brutal white-on-black violence that Alabama would become known for. Instead, Huntsville underwent dramatic social and cultural changes when the army moved its rocket development program to nearby Redstone Arsenal in 1950 and NASA opened the Marshall Space Flight Center on the same grounds in 1960. The town’s population grew exponentially as a result and desegregated its public facilities and institutions more rapidly and with less violence than other parts of the state. Depending on their social positions, however, Huntsville’s residents experienced the changes the town underwent quite differently. Although many white residents benefited economically from the influx of new jobs and saw a diversification in educational and cultural choices, African American residents could rarely take advantage of these opportunities. And while more Jews moved to the area to work for the army and NASA, they remained a small minority within an overwhelmingly Christian environment. Moreover, an increase in jobs in industries related to rocket development did not translate to prosperity for those who had no or limited technical or administrative skills. In a region in which the economy had been based primarily on textile mills and agriculture, the changes resulted in the loss of jobs and few options for those whose skills did not translate easily. F R O M C O T T O N A N D W AT E R C R E S S T O R O C K E T S A N D S P A C E

I’ve always loved Huntsville because . . . it’s a different city. How so? It’s not as southern as Alabama. —Interview with John Rison Jones Jr., Huntsville native, 2007

Located in the Tennessee River Valley at the lower end of the Appalachian Plateau in northern Alabama, Huntsville is part of Madison and

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Limestone counties, both of which border Tennessee to the north. Before World War II, it was a typical small southern town relying primarily on “King Cotton” and related industries, but during the second half of the twentieth century it would come to epitomize the changes taking place in much of the South. Nonindigenous settlement began with a trading post and a ferry service on the Tennessee River in 1802. German and Irish settlers followed, hailing mainly from Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. As cotton became the main harvest, which was traded in Huntsville and processed in textile mills surrounding the town, slavery became an essential part of the area’s society, economy, and culture. The antebellum population of Madison County’s eight hundred square miles peaked at 14,135 African Americans and 13,855 whites.4 Thanks to its wealthier residents, Huntsville was the first town in Alabama to open a bank, in 1817, and when the state joined the Union in 1819, Huntsville was its first, albeit temporary, capital.5 The Memphis and Charleston Railroad was completed in 1855. Besides bringing skilled northern and immigrant laborers working on the railroad or related businesses to the small town, it made Huntsville an ideal communication center for Civil War Union forces, which took the town in 1862. After the Civil War, Huntsville became a site for the Freedmen’s Bureau and school, federal military encampment, and a freedmen’s savings bank, which made the town attractive to freedmen and black former Unionist soldiers. Reconstruction ended in 1874 in Alabama, but in 1901, the state’s new constitution institutionalized the second-class status of African Americans with Jim Crow laws. Along with the loss of jobs due to the boll weevil epidemic and technological changes in the agriculture and coal mining industries, this renewed rule of white supremacy prompted many African Americans to join what later became known as the Great Migration to northern cities in search of jobs and better conditions.6 Like most of the South, Huntsville’s population suffered immensely during the Great Depression.7 In July 1941, however, Huntsville received a tremendous, although temporary, boost when the War Department announced the creation of a new chemical munitions plant, Huntsville Arsenal, on thirty thousand acres near the town. Production began in 1942. Around the same time, the Redstone Ordnance Plant was built as a

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shell loading and assembly plant close to Huntsville Arsenal for the production of various ammunition items.8 While the jobs were mostly difficult and dangerous, these arsenals employed nearly twenty thousand persons during the war.9 At the same time, farming communities such as Hickory Hill, Mullins Flats, Pond Beat, and Green Grove were lost, and black and white farm owners were forced to relocate. The army used the arsenals mainly for weapons assembly, but it also housed a side camp for German prisoners of war working under contract for private employers.10 Although they provided much-needed jobs during the war, “once World War II ended, production at both arsenals ceased and the focus shifted to such activities as renovating and salvaging ammunition returned from overseas; disposing of surplus property; decontaminating buildings and equipment; and placing the production plants in standby storage.”11 In the late 1940s the army placed Redstone on standby status and advertised Huntsville Arsenal for sale. The area went into another recession. Instead of selling the arsenals, the army’s chief of ordnance consolidated the two and reactivated Redstone Arsenal as the site for the army’s emerging rocket development programs.12 In 1949, General Holger N. Toftoy, who had been instrumental in bringing the German rocket team to the United States and facilitating the development of guided missiles, decided he had found an optimum new location for the army to “decentralize the management of the research and development, procurement, and field service activities from the Pentagon to a field installation.”13 Most likely, the same reasons that prompted the War Department to build the arsenals near Huntsville in the first place motivated the army’s chief of ordnance to choose them for a newly consolidated Ordnance Rocket Center in late 1949: “[The area] was cheap, sparsely populated, within the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) power range, located in the protected valley of a great river with access to the gulf, and connected by rail to both the East and West coasts.”14 As a result, the army moved about 110 German rocket experts, 500 military personnel, and approximately 300 General Electric and civil service employees to Redstone during the first half of 1950.15 This influx of newcomers induced dramatic changes to Huntsville’s economy, society, and culture. NASA’s entrance into the area in 1960 accelerated these changes, luring more families from across the nation

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Billboard on South Memorial Parkway near Lily Flagg Road intersection, 1958. Courtesy of Huntsville–Madison County Public Library.

to the town. In just one decade, a town of 16,437 residents in 1950 increased by 340.3 percent to 72,365, and then again by 70.7 percent by 1964 (to 123,519). Along with the space industry’s expenditures and employment, Huntsville’s population growth slowed down, with only an 11.6 percent increase from 1964 to 1970. Nevertheless, the once small cotton mill town now ranked third in the state, behind Birmingham and Mobile.16 Several speakers at a panel titled “Creating Rocket City” held at the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library in 2003 described the changes in the town’s personality. Alice Tanner, born and raised in Huntsville and the chair of the English and Humanities Department at Calhoun Community College in nearby Decatur, recalled that her mother moved to Huntsville in 1932 but was “still considered an outsider in 1954.”17 Former mayor and grammar school teacher Loretta Spencer, however, whose family moved to Huntsville from Jasper, Alabama, in 1944, characterized the town as an already more open community:

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We were a very friendly community. Everything happened around the courthouse square. On Saturdays the farmers came to town, in the late forties—once a week shopping. We had everything in the community there. And you wouldn’t walk down the sidewalk without seeing someone you knew. And that’s what made Huntsville so great, ’cause it was a very personable community. And I think it kept that feeling, whereas Birmingham, Mobile, and Montgomery are kinda closed communities. And I think, when I hear from people that have relocated here, they all say, “They’re so friendly,” ’cause all of us do some kind of volunteer work, and we always open the door for somebody to participate with us.18 By the time Max Rosenthal moved to Huntsville in 1963 to work for NASA, the town had lost its small-town atmosphere completely. In our interview in 2006, Rosenthal contextualized his experiences in Huntsville by first describing what it was like to move with his family from New York to Gadsden, Alabama, and subsequently to Birmingham in 1946. Gadsden seemed a “very closed society,” where the people not only spoke “with the deepest of southern accents” but had never traveled outside of the South. This impression was not limited to the small town, however. As Rosenthal explained, “Even when I moved to Birmingham, I knew . . . people who had lived there for forty or fifty years and were still called ‘the new people,’ . . . because . . . they weren’t fourth generation in Birmingham.19 While echoing Alice Tanner’s account of her mother’s earlier experience in his description of Gadsden and Birmingham, Rosenthal stressed how different attitudes were in Huntsville when he arrived: “Huntsville wasn’t like that, you know, everybody was from somewhere else then, and that made a big difference . . . you don’t have . . . the ingrained way of doing things here. People are more open to new ideas here.”20 Besides begetting a more open-minded society, the dramatic changes the town underwent produced a place of contrasts. Many of Huntsville’s residents prospered from the high-tech developments at Redstone Arsenal, but plenty were still grappling with the remnants of an agrarian and racially divided society. Maria Dempsey, who moved to Huntsville in 1964 and worked as a kindergarten teacher and social worker until 1993,

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recalled being startled by the discrepancies: “You know, the city was amazing. . . . Here we were sending men on the moon and yet we had traffic slowdown on our one main thoroughfares because this old gentleman with his mules was plugging along . . . to till soil in people’s gardens.”21 Those who moved to town from other parts of the country often did not know what to expect. Some had not even heard of Huntsville before; they just knew that it was located in Alabama. Frederick I. Ordway III, who grew up in the Northeast, moved to Huntsville to work for the army and later NASA in 1956. In our 2007 interview, he explained that the town “was just like on the other side of the moon,” meaning that, unlike cities such as Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans, Huntsville was little known outside of the South.22 When Howard and Diana Polin moved to Huntsville from Philadelphia in 1959, their friends considered them pioneers. During our interview, the couple noted that when Howard was offered a job with Thiokol, a prime contractor for rocket development efforts in Huntsville, their friends “thought . . . that we’d live in a shack and they were kidding us whether or not we had running water or electricity.”23 While Ordway’s description and this response reflect an image probably shared by many others in the late 1950s, they also reflect a notion of adventure that seemed quite appropriate for those who were joining the space program. Huntsville responded to the steady stream of new residents with extensive planning for and building of new homes, churches, schools, and utility infrastructure as fast as possible, thereby radically changing the character of Madison County.24 Much of Huntsville’s growth in population was caused by annexation. By 1960, the city limits had gone from 5 to 50.67 square miles and by 1964 to 93.19 square miles. The city expanded once more to cover 107.532 square miles by 1970.25 So, while “rural dominance [in Madison County] continued until about 1951 or 1952, when employment jumped at the Arsenal during the early 1950’s, the urban character of the county was sealed. By 1960 the urban population was 64 per cent of the county’s total.”26 The changes in the town’s needs were enormous. Charles A. Lundquist, an astrophysicist from South Dakota, arrived in Huntsville as an army draftee at Redstone Arsenal in 1954: “Housing was just impossible to get in Huntsville. You had to go to one of the adjacent towns to

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find a place to live. . . . They were building houses but they weren’t able to keep up.”27 In his speech at the “Creating Rocket City” panel in 2003, Frank Williams, who had lived in many different locations in the United States as an air force officer, described the first impressions he and his wife had as they tried to decide whether to move to town in 1957: “Well, first off it was a small town, very small town. . . . I remember going into Sears. It was on the north side of the square downtown. Wooden, squeaky floors and rickety stairs . . . it just didn’t measure up to what [my wife] was looking for in the way of shopping. . . . Housing was very limited. Entertainment, ach, now, entertainment. We came to the conclusion that you rolled up the sidewalks at dark. And . . . there really wasn’t that much to do in this town.”28 Despite the town’s drawbacks, Williams and his wife decided to move to Huntsville based on the job, which seemed to provide a stark contrast to the provincial setting. He explained that the new position he had interviewed for offered everything he had hoped for—“great people, an excellent team, super technology, fabulous facilities, if you wanted to be in the missile business. And a crowd that had their hands dirty doing it, which I loved too. So, I accepted an offer on the spot.”29 The changes in the Huntsville area were part of a larger shift in the country caused by the rise of the military-industrial complex and the so-called gunbelt during the cold war.30 These developments not only affected former industrial centers negatively, they also contributed to the segregation of Americans by class and race because “in the increasingly high-tech business of outfitting the services, military contractors hire[d] a disproportionate number of well-educated white men.” Consequently, “large pools of an urban underclass as well as displaced blue-collar workers [were] left with shrinking or inferior local employment prospects.”31 Huntsville was no exception. By 1960, it had “the highest proportion of White collar workers (45.8 per cent) and rank[ed] second in the proportion of manufacturing workers” compared to the state’s six standard metropolitan areas (Birmingham, Gadsden, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa).32 As in other parts of the country, the drastic change from farming to industry entailed some problems for Huntsville as well. According to a contemporary census analysis, “The economy of Huntsville, geared as it is to space age research and development, has not been able to provide jobs for ex-farmers with a limited kit of

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skills. Many of these unskilled people have left Madison County, reducing the population of both Huntsville and the county.”33 As a result, white people were moving to Huntsville from other parts of the country for good job opportunities in the missile-related industry, but many African Americans did not have access to training for the required skills and therefore had to move away to find jobs. Generally, the percentage of African Americans in northern Alabama was lower than in the rest of the state, but Madison County had been an exception because of its extraordinarily good farmland.34 The decline in agriculture in the South typically prompted migration to the cities, but Madison County was exceptional in this scenario as well. African Americans from the surrounding farmland often did not move to Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s because there were no jobs available to them. Clyde Foster, former mayor of Triana, an all-black community west of Redstone Arsenal, briefly described African American migration in Alabama during our interview: “There’d never been as many blacks in this area . . . as there’d been in Birmingham. More of the farm laborers, laborers of south Alabama came to Birmingham, which was a drop-off for ’em . . . for job opportunities. And for here, a lot of the blacks left here from the Huntsville area and went to Chattanooga, Tennessee. From Chattanooga, Tennessee, on to Chicago, Detroit.”35 Since Huntsville’s increasing prosperity was based on the rapid growth of the rocketry and space industry, new jobs typically required technically trained personnel. Thanks to racial segregation, African Americans in Alabama had established an economy separate from the dominant one that included businesses such as restaurants, banks, barbershops, beauty parlors, shoe stores, and livery stables.36 Alabama A&M University, the main historically black college in the area, had focused on vocational training and fields such as teaching, social science, pre-medicine, and law. Until desegregation took hold, African Americans had no opportunity to learn the skills needed in Huntsville’s new economy. And despite quick desegregation of public schools, the dual education system remained one of the primary causes of the continued slow economic advancement of African Americans in Huntsville and the surrounding area.37 Moreover, many African Americans from other areas of the country who had the required skill sets were hard to convince to move to Huntsville,

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thanks to the state’s reputation for exceptional racism.38 Huntsville’s African American population declined from 32 percent (5,250 out of 16,437) in 1950 to 14 percent (10,091 out of 72,365) in 1960 and 12 percent (16,729 out of 137,802) in 1970, even as absolute numbers grew.39 Foster’s experiences illustrate the job situation for blacks, which he tried to alter in his adopted community. Born in Birmingham in 1931, he moved to Huntsville in 1950 to attend Alabama A&M. Despite graduating with a B.S. in chemistry and minors in biology and mathematics, at the time of his graduation, he believed he would have a better chance finding employment in Birmingham “because we just didn’t have the job opportunities . . . in this particular county, Madison County.”40 Instead of leaving, though, Foster worked hard and creatively to find ways in which the residents of Triana could benefit from the activities at nearby Redstone Arsenal. Foster described what the estimated three hundred to four hundred families living in Triana in the early 1950s had to contend with: “When I first came to the community, it was a very, very poor community. . . . There was no running water. . . . We had to gather our water from the Tennessee River for household usage, and you had to prepare to drink it, boil it. There were no streets; gravel roads; no industry here.”41 Triana had had electricity since the mid-1930s thanks to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Encouraged by residents of the community, Foster was able to resurrect Triana as a municipality, which it had been from 1819 until 1872, according to his research. His findings reflect the history of many southern rural areas: “[Triana] existed up until right after the Civil War. And the record shows that the lots back then were very expensive because it was on the waterfront. And at that particular time the population was white, and what happened, ah, many of the white large landowners left and moved to other parts of the county, and the blacks just remained in small spots in the area and they kept it through inheritance. After so many years they were able to claim those . . . small spots that they had.”42 Over the next twenty years, Foster was able to establish a water and sewage system and form groups of families to work together to build houses for one another. This way, they needed only to purchase building material, for about $5,000 to $6,000, and had no labor costs except what Foster referred to as “sweat equity.” In the 1970s, Foster was finally successful in procuring more technical jobs for Triana residents with little formal education.43 One of the

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approaches he took was to persuade a subsidiary of General Telephones (GTE) to hire former cotton pickers to work on assembling “the inside mechanism that goes into telephones.” He argued that cotton pickers “had the dexterity with the fingers” and that they needed only to be able to differentiate the wires by color to make the correct connections. Using similar logic, Triana community members also found employment as keypunch operators (data entry). Foster explained that some of those employees were later able to advance to positions as computer operators and programmers. As the rocket development programs attracted more and more whites to the area and the discrepancies between whites and blacks were exaggerated by the juxtaposition of space rocket programs and communities lacking basic necessities, Huntsville’s African American community and some white residents began joining the national movement for racial equality. The struggles were less violent there than in other parts of Alabama, and Huntsville residents proudly proclaim that the town was the first in the state to begin desegregating public venues. Yet, as in other parts of the South, full desegregation would take many years and people were still fearful of the potential for violence. World War II had marked a major turning point for racial segregation and discrimination in most of the United States, including Alabama.44 The war itself did not lead to the desired changes at home, but many black soldiers returned from the war with a renewed determination to overthrow Jim Crow. African Americans had been pointing out the parallels between the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany and blacks in the United States long before the nation entered the war in 1941, and during the war, the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the main national newspapers geared toward an African American readership, initiated the Double Victory Campaign, which inspired hopes for a combined victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany and of African Americans over Jim Crow at home. The Chicago Defender published letters to the editor describing these parallels as early as 1936.45 At the same time that African Americans were growing more forceful in their opposition to white supremacy, however, white veterans from the South began forming and reviving white supremacist organizations such as the Dixiecrats, the Ku Klux Klan, and the White Citizens’ Councils. As violence against blacks surged across the South, Alabama joined Georgia

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as one of the two “most homicidal states in the nation in 1946, with murder rates nearly seven times that of New York.”46 The NAACP had been the leading advocate against white supremacy in Alabama since 1913, but the state outlawed the organization in 1956 in an effort to stem its successes. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually overruled Alabama courts and the organization returned to the state in 1964, but it never regained its earlier prominence.47 In the meantime, local black advocacy groups took over in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Mobile, while the regional Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed in 1957 and 1960, respectively, to continue the NAACP’s legacy, albeit with different methods. Where the NAACP focused on legal action primarily, the local and regional groups advocated direct action, such as nonviolent mass demonstrations, sit-ins, and boycotts. The most publicized milestones in Alabama’s civil rights battle include Rosa Parks’s 1955 arrest for refusing to vacate a bus seat reserved for whites only and the subsequent thirteen-month Montgomery bus boycott that ended with the Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was illegal. In the early 1960s, African American students were beaten, abused, and arrested for staging protests and lunch counter sit-ins, while the famous black and white Freedom Riders, committed to nonviolence, either encountered grotesque levels of violence at the hands of white mobs or were arrested as they crossed the South, especially in Alabama. In 1963, George Wallace was sworn in as governor of Alabama and exclaimed the famous words “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his inauguration speech. In a carefully orchestrated charade later that year, he stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to prevent two African American students from entering, only to step aside when confronted by federal marshals.48 Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested on Good Friday that same year for his participation in antisegregation demonstrations in Birmingham, and the city’s commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, made national and international headlines for ordering the use of police dogs and fire hoses against demonstrating high school students of the so-called Children’s Crusade in Birmingham.49 On September 15 of that year, a racially motivated bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church took the lives

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of four little black girls. Although violence and discrimination continued well after these events, the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery marks one of the last high-profile actions of the Alabama civil rights movement that received national and international attention.50 Meanwhile, Huntsville desegregated its first lunch counters before the Birmingham riots in 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Local black community leaders were joined by members of the Unitarian Church and a few scientists and engineers in their fight for desegregation and civil rights, and while there were plenty of verbal threats of violence, the town saw little physical violence. As Theresa Power DeShields observed in her 1965 M.A. thesis about the local civil rights movement, several factors allowed Huntsville to integrate sooner than other Alabama towns. She cited the town’s federally oriented economy, the eagerness of local businessmen to continue the “boom” in Huntsville, the cultural growth of the city, and the activities of the Community Service and Bi-racial committees.51 In our interview, Charles Ray Jr. explained that racism in the area was less fervent because of the relatively low percentage of African Americans in the community: “We posed no political or economic threat to whites.” Ray is an Alabama A&M alumnus, a retired employee of the army’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office at Redstone, and the owner of Nelms Funeral Home in Huntsville. He was born in Madison County in 1936, had lived in the Huntsville area most of his life, and described race relations in the rural areas as downright amicable: “We . . . lived in an area where there were large farms [that] had absentee owners, and they had sharecroppers as well on those farms. So we lived together, had fun together, and it was awfully inconvenient sometimes . . . for the kids, because we had to separate to go to school.”52 Describing the town of Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s, Ray contrasted it to other towns in the South: “[Huntsville] was a very pleasant kind of place to be. It was just as segregated as anywhere else, but it was not rabid. You seldom heard ‘nigger,’ you know. And when I started to move around . . . the state with [the] Alabama Student Union and SNCC— boy, I could not understand the attitudes of the whites that you ran into, because the whites that I knew were our neighbors and friends, the whole nine yards, you know. I knew why. . . . They were trying to protect their

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power, and they lit into black folk in every way possible to ensure that they kept that power.”53 Complementing this image, Foster pointed out how black and white residents of Huntsville sometimes lived side by side if it was convenient, which he said would have been impossible in Birmingham. foster: When I came here there were several residents in the

Huntsville area; they were living in the same neighborhood. There [were] several . . . black business persons. . . . I remember this guy. . . . He used to do dry cleaning of clothes. And his place was in an area what they call the old Huntsville area. . . . And he would clean clothes for all of those little pop and mama shop type cleaners. That would be unheard of, to have something like that in Birmingham. And in Birmingham, if you were walking the street . . . I would have to move over, regardless of the amount of room. That’s my showing my respect even more for you. laney: Because I am white and because I’m a woman, or? foster: White.54 While Foster was impressed to see a black entrepreneur live and work in an area inhabited primarily by white residents in the early 1950s, Ray described the downtown area of Huntsville as clearly segregated into black and white business areas: The shopping area was downtown, essentially gathered around the area of the courthouse. And there were certain streets where blacks congregated. . . . Holmes and Church Street . . . In the Holmes Street area you would find black restaurants, ice cream parlors, that kind of thing. Where there was social activity among blacks, it was in the area of Church and Holmes Street. You could sit where you wanted to, you know . . . but in the rest of town, you know, like Woolworth and Grants and all those places had lunch counters—we could not sit at those lunch counters. We were relegated to those black businesses on Holmes and Church. . . . And there were, of course, segregated water fountains; you could get a drink of water but out of the black fountain. . . . That kinda thing.55

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Ray added that entertainment venues were segregated as well: “The Lyric theater was white, the Grand theater was white, the Central theater was white, and the Princess theater was the black theater, and it was at one time on Holmes Street. They built a new theater—it was located on Church Street, which was right around the corner from where the old theater was. . . . There was a ballroom for blacks, upstairs over the sweets shop . . . that was it. There was not a whole variety of things, but if you decided to have a ball, there were places you could go. All black.”56 White residents of Huntsville, conversely, lived and shopped in the “old Huntsville area” around the courthouse. Like Foster, Ray noted that there were exceptions to that rule for convenience’s sake: “Well, there were some servants’ homes . . . as you moved further out. I guess so that it would be convenient to get to work.”57 While racial segregation had dramatic effects on the region’s social relations and cultures, it also threatened to have an inhibiting effect on the development of the region’s economy. As southern state leaders began focusing heavily on business development in the 1950s, they became ever more concerned about their image in the eyes of potential investors and therefore took steps toward desegregation, albeit purely of the token kind.58 Most southern governors toned down their rhetoric promoting segregation, but in Alabama, some of these business promoters “felt their efforts were being undermined by the controversy surrounding . . . governor George C. Wallace” for his belligerent segregationist stance.59 Civil rights organizers recognized the important role businesses would play in the fight for equal rights, and Huntsville saw its first lunch counter sit-in on January 3, 1962. These first sit-ins were organized by the national Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which was later replaced by the locally organized Community Service Committee (CSC), referred to by some participants as the “Committee on Psychological Warfare.”60 Altogether, there were 260 sit-ins with four hundred different participants over nineteen months, although the first lunch counters were desegregated after six months. Activists were regularly arrested, yet the white population was not always hostile. In some cases, individual whites not only stayed seated when black students sat down at the counter—they bought the protesters lunch.61 The CSC organized several high-profile actions that caught the attention of city officials and local businesses and eventually led to change in July 1962. After the so-called poster walks (picketing in front of local

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businesses), protest letters to the mayor, and lunch counter sit-ins did not seem to be as effective as hoped, the CSC tried to raise its activities’ profile. The protesters received national attention when the wives of two prominent members of Huntsville’s African American community, medical doctor Sonnie Hereford III’s wife, Martha, who was six months pregnant, and dentist John Logan Cashin Jr.’s wife, Joan, with their fourmonth-old daughter, Sheryll, staged a lunch counter sit-in with a known activist, Frances Sims, for which they were arrested and jailed.62 The actions producing the best results, however, were those that targeted white business profits. One such action was “Blue Jeans Sunday”: a large portion of the black community did not purchase outfits for Easter Sunday at local white-owned businesses, as they usually would, but instead wore blue jeans to church. In June, the CSC also organized a leaflet campaign at the Mid West Stock Exchange in Chicago, similar to an earlier action at the New York Stock Exchange. The leaflets proclaimed, “Don’t invest in Huntsville, Ala. Corporations. It’s Bad Business,” followed by a reminder of the town’s growth due to federal financial investment. The civil rights activists were correct in their assumption that this action would be effective, as it prompted eight store owners to jointly desegregate their lunch counters on July 10, 1962.63 The integration of the first lunch counters and a few other businesses inspired one commentator to add a line to the town’s historical marker: “1962—First City in Alabama to begin desegregation,” but it would take further action and more time for complete integration, especially in facilities that allowed for greater potential physical contact between blacks and whites.64 One way to resist integration was avoidance. Once the downtown public swimming pool at the Big Spring Park recreational center was integrated, for example, white children stopped swimming there.65 Similarly, the town’s bowling alleys were one of the last bastions of segregation, as white patrons presumably did not want to wear shoes that black patrons had worn.66 Desegregation of schools was also slow in comparison to other public facilities. It took a letter campaign to local and federal authorities and a Birmingham federal court ruling in August 1963 to force the city’s all-white schools to admit black students—marking only the beginning of the desegregation of Huntsville’s education system.67 The desegregation of businesses and the creation of equal employment opportunities occurred sooner in Huntsville than in other parts of

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the South, but it would be a while until African Americans could truly benefit from these changes. Largely dependent on federal government contracts, Huntsville was much like other booming southern cities, such as Dallas and Atlanta, where the business community was a driving force for desegregation.68 Supporting the actions of the civil rights activists, NASA suggested the formation of the Association of Huntsville Area Contractors in 1963, which was chaired by a local white business leader, Milton Cummings, and which became the leading force in creating equal employment opportunities for African Americans through federally funded apprenticeship and training programs. NASA administrator James E. Webb announced in 1964 that NASA and related industries might have to consider moving their operations to another facility if the racial climate in Huntsville did not improve.69 Since educational qualification was a key factor in getting a job in the space industry, however, the locals’ hesitancy to improve educational opportunities for African Americans continued to inhibit blacks’ ability to take advantage of the greater variety of job options now available to them. Attracting large numbers of well-educated professionals from other parts of the nation and from other countries, Huntsville had more residents willing to make the transition to racial integration than other areas. In a special edition of the Huntsville Times in February 2000, one of the articles described the desegregation of Huntsville from the perspective of a white boy, who explained that in the early 1960s Huntsville was already a “melting pot.”70 His own family had migrated from “the mountains of East Tennessee, where black people—and Brits, and guys from New York—were as rare as flat ground.” He explained how different Huntsville seemed: “Most of us were here for one reason and had just one thing in common. Our dads knew rockets. . . . The big deal here was finding common ground with other people who were nothing like you. It was a mine field, or a buffet, if you had the right attitude. You could make lifelong friends from around the world. . . . Too many of us were too aware of just how strange we were in our strange clothes, weird accents and funny haircuts.”71 The national civil rights movement had support from whites and blacks of different religious backgrounds. Martin Luther King Jr. especially acknowledged the contributions of northern Jewish activists, but he also

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lamented the fact that Jews in the South had fought with the segregationists instead of on the side of African Americans.72 This response from southern Jews was a reflection of their social and cultural environment, which was quite different from the environments of many northern Jews. Surrounded by an overwhelming majority of Southern Methodists and Baptists, who broke away from their northern counterparts in the 1840s over the issue of slavery and who mostly supported Jim Crow–style segregation in the twentieth century, southern Jews took a very different stance toward desegregation than did their northern coreligionists.73 Immigrants around the nation have long tried to emphasize their similarities with whites to differentiate themselves from blacks, but Jews, as a very small minority in the so-called Bible Belt, were even more vulnerable to potential discrimination and violence due to anti-Semitism than in other parts of the country. Jewish migrants began to arrive in the South in the early eighteenth century from many different parts of the world, settling primarily in Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, and New Orleans.74 They arrived in more significant numbers in the mid- to late nineteenth century as peddlers and merchants, becoming “the economic link between rural southerners and the national market.”75 Alabama’s total of eleven hundred Jews constituted a very small fraction of the state’s residents.76 Even today Jews constitute only 0.5 percent of the southern population.77 Under these circumstances, and with a history of persecution and ghettoization in Europe, Jews in the South were focused on assimilating to their environment as fully as possible. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, a younger, native-born generation of Jews in Charleston, South Carolina, sought reforms to counter “a growing ‘sense of crisis’ among whites.” Taking cues from the reformation of Judaism that was already under way in Holland, Germany, and Prussia, southern “reformers sought to balance the two poles of their identity—their white southernness and the Judaism of their ancestors”—and created the Reformed Society of Israelites in 1825, marking the beginning of Reform Judaism in America.78 Reform Judaism was thus essentially an attempt to de-emphasize “Jewish Old World roots in a country increasingly resentful of outsiders.” The changes from Orthodox Judaism included modifications in religious services: substituting English for Hebrew, introducing choirs and organ music, allowing men and women to sit next to each

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other, initiating the practice of rabbis preaching sermons, and ceasing to adopt the yarmulkes (skullcaps) and the tallitot (prayer shawls). Some new synagogues were even modeled after southern churches.79 Since the reformers were predominantly German Jews, synonymous with elite Jewish society in the United States, they mixed easily with Christians, who were often also of western European, if not German, descent.80 Although southern Jews had adopted the region’s dominant social and cultural beliefs and institutions, including owning slaves and embracing the Confederate cause during the Civil War, they “remained racially ill-defined within southern society.”81 They were mostly accepted until the Civil War, but “postbellum southern Jews . . . found themselves increasingly targeted as profiteers, interlopers, exploiters, and outsiders.”82 They were “treated as probationary whites who had all the civic privileges of whiteness, but [who] were often excluded from social and cultural venues where their uncertain status might undermine the assertion of white racial purity and integrity.”83 The rise of Jim Crow laws, which required the clear distinction of whites and blacks, put additional pressure on southern Jews to assert their whiteness. Constantly resurfacing discrimination and defamation resulted in an “almost total acculturation of Jews in the South [that] allowed them to maintain a facile cordiality with Gentiles, even though just beneath the surface lay a bed of prejudice ever ready to label Jews as Christkillers and Shylocks.” The Leo Frank lynching in Georgia in 1915 only confirmed a lingering anti-Semitism among southerners that southern Jews interpreted as a sign that they needed to work harder on erasing any differences their white neighbors perceived in them.84 Regardless of these efforts, anti-Semitism was on the rise again as the civil rights movement emerged. While privately many may not have supported segregation, “fear of personal safety led southern Jews to publicly dissociate themselves from northern activists.”85 In order to explain the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the revolt against Jim Crow, segregationists had found a scapegoat in “Communist Jews,” who presumably provoked blacks into rebellion. The resulting rise in repeated and indiscriminate terrorist attacks against synagogues reminded southern Jews of their precarious status and led many to distance themselves publicly from the endorsement of the Supreme Court decision by national Jewish organizations.

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Jews were also among the newcomers to Huntsville, seeking employment in rocket development or arriving under military orders. But if the lower number of African Americans in the Huntsville area seemed to pose less of a threat, then that was even more true for the small Jewish community which, as was true elsewhere in the South, attempted to blend into the larger community. Thanks to academic restrictions (quotas) against Jews across the nation in the early twentieth century, engineering was not a common profession among Jews in the mid-twentieth century, so Huntsville’s Jewish community did not grow significantly during the town’s boom years.86 The few who did arrive brought a more traditional form of Judaism back to the region, adding a Conservative synagogue to the town’s religious landscape. One of my interviewees, Margaret Anne Goldsmith, is a prominent member of the Jewish community in Huntsville whose ancestors were the first Jews to become permanent residents in the town after settling there in 1859. They came from different parts of Germany, were organizers of the local B’nai B’rith chapter, and were among the founding members of the B’nai Sholom Reform Congregation of thirty-two families, which had its first organizational meeting in 1876.87 Two of her great-grandfathers’ names, Goldsmith and Schiffman, are still prominent throughout Huntsville.88 According to an article she published in the Huntsville Historical Review, Goldsmith’s ancestors brought Reform Judaism with them from Germany, which corresponds with the style of the B’nai Sholom temple, which is based on a style developed in Germany in 1830.89 Goldsmith herself grew up in Huntsville, left the town in 1957, and returned in 1996 after having lived in New Orleans in the interim. After having lived in isolation from other Jewish communities for many years, Huntsville’s Jews apparently felt removed from their faith and had almost completely assimilated with their Christian neighbors in the early twentieth century. Goldsmith explained that her father was sent to a Christian Sunday school because there was no Jewish equivalent: “And there was no Sunday school when Daddy grew up and . . . the handful of kids . . . their parents . . . were second generation. . . . They had been so removed, they didn’t feel confident to teach Sunday school to the kids, to a religious school. So a handful of them went to a Christian Science Sunday school because . . . they felt that, well, the kids needed

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some religious training and this is close, and we’re comfortable with that. So, Daddy went to Christian Science Sunday school.”90 Buddy Miller’s parents responded differently to the isolation. They were both immigrants from the area of Minsk in Russia. Miller’s father started a scrap metal business in Huntsville in 1918, a business he handed down to Buddy, who later handed it down to his son, Solomon (Sol). The elder Miller was presumably still familiar with Jewish religious teachings, but as a new immigrant starting a new business he simply did not have the time to teach his son. Buddy Miller described how his family dealt with the lack of Jewish religious training in Huntsville: “Well . . . we didn’t have anybody to teach me, although my father could have if he had had the time. He was busy making a living, working hard. So I had my bar mitzvah at age sixty-five.”91 Goldsmith illustrated the precarious situation for Jews in Huntsville’s predominantly Christian society. She stressed that while her ancestors were accepted in the business community, they were not welcome in social settings: I think Huntsville overall has been very, very accepting, if I look back at my great-great grandparents. And, you know, they were Jewish immigrants and they were accepted into the community, into the business community. . . . They were . . . early directors of the [Regions] bank. One . . . great-great grandfather was . . . treasurer of [the] city government during Reconstruction. So here are strangers coming to town and becoming part . . . of the business community. You know . . . the city government, not necessarily the social. . . . I think probably socially there wasn’t that acceptance. There was a Jewish club, so to speak. I just think that the Jewish community was more within themselves. . . . I think that you probably saw more interaction, but not socially.92 Despite her belief that there was little social interaction between Jews and non-Jews in Huntsville, Goldsmith denied that there was any open hostility as she was growing up: “Well, as you see, my ancestors were integrated in the community. My grandfather was very well accepted . . . in playing the part that he did with the arsenal. . . . He helped start the Boy Scouts and was given the ‘Silver Beaver.’ He was very well respected in town. So our family, because of its long tradition in Huntsville and what it

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had done for the community . . . I never felt . . . it was a problem.”93 When a classmate suggested that she needed to attend church, however, Goldsmith clearly felt the need to defend herself: “I remember going to West Clinton [School], one little girl saying, ‘Why don’t you go to church with me? It’s important because you’re not Christian,’ you know, or something. And then Cora said, ‘You just tell her that you are of the Jewish faith and you go to temple, and you are very fine with who you are.’ ”94 With the display of solidarity from Cora, her African American caregiver, Goldsmith felt protected and safe when confronted with being perceived as different from the norm. Nevertheless, she was very aware of being a member of a minority group in a Christian society: “So overall . . . there was not a problem for me, but it was strange to be the only person Jewish in West Clinton School. . . . I didn’t think [about it] very much. I just accepted that there would be lunch prayer in Jesus’s name and Christmas parties, and there was never any mention of other holidays. It was definitely a Christian community, but you grow up with something and you accept that as the norm.”95 In contrast to Goldsmith’s family, the Millers seemed to feel less of a need to blend in to be accepted in the community. Buddy Miller noted that his parents had a heavy accent in English and that they spoke Yiddish and Russian at home. Miller described how residents of Huntsville responded to his parents’ foreignness: “My dad had a post office box his whole life, and he took a Yiddish-language newspaper from New York, the Forward. It came every day. So if something came in a foreign language they [the post office clerks] couldn’t understand, they couldn’t read the label, they’d say, ‘Put it in Louis Miller’s box. He’ll find out who it belongs to.’ ”96 It appears that this family’s foreignness was appreciated as an asset in Huntsville. The family seems to have interpreted it that way, since Buddy and Dolores Miller ensured that their son, Sol, learned Hebrew and German when he had the opportunity—even if he was taught in a very unconventional way, over the phone.97 When migration into Huntsville began to expand in 1950, Jews did not make up a large portion of the newcomers. Rosenthal offered the following explanation: Up until probably World War II [engineering] was a restricted profession, so Jews really could not get into engineering

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schools. There would be quotas . . . whether you could be in school or not. I mean, there were Jewish quotas on a lot of things. Medical schools and law schools, things like that. So Jews tended to go into things that they could get into— accounting . . . and medicine. . . . World War II really broke things open. And so . . . starting then, you begin to have Jewish people going into a number of occupations that in the past they hadn’t. But it’s still, even today, not all that popular a . . . field. Now . . . some of them will go into computers and things like that, but it’s not been a big field. So that’s one thing that really kept . . . the Jewish population in Huntsville down. And there were many great engineering jobs here, just weren’t Jews there to fill them.98 Enrollment and employment restrictions aimed at Jews became quite common beginning in the 1920s.99 The restrictions or “quotas” were enforced primarily at elite universities, but they were part of a larger practice, including discriminatory job advertising and hiring practices. According to historian Leonard Dinnerstein, the major culprits for discriminatory hiring practices included “utilities, banks, insurance companies, publishing houses, engineering and architectural firms, advertising agencies, school districts, major industrial companies, civic bodies for art and music, hospitals, universities, and law firms.”100 The Jews who moved to Huntsville in the late 1950s and early 1960s had different experiences from those whose families had been in Huntsville for multiple generations. Diana and Howard Polin, who moved to town in 1959, joined the Conservative synagogue as soon as it was established and felt very comfortable in their predominantly Christian neighborhood. As Diana Polin explained during our interview, they moved to a newly developing area, where few had roots in Huntsville: “Our neighbors . . . were all from out of town and you just kept meeting a lot of engineers. . . . [Right] across the street from us . . . the Brozmers . . . had two little girls, and my daughter was very friendly with them. . . . We had such a wonderful rapport with them. And . . . they were the only native Huntsvillians that we ever had met here. . . . The mother said, ‘Do you know that you’re the very first Jewish people we have ever met?’ Isn’t that something? And they used to like to see us put . . . our menorah in

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the window.”101 Polin’s statement implies that in contrast to other newcomers to Huntsville, native residents of Huntsville were largely ignorant of Jewish customs, having had little exposure to them before the city began to expand drastically in the 1950s and 1960s. In any case, Polin interpreted the response as a sign of friendly curiosity, not hostility toward her family’s perceived otherness. Today, B’nai Sholom has a membership of just under two hundred families, while Huntsville’s Conservative Etz Chayim Congregation counts about fifty-eight families as members. Etz Chayim was founded in 1962, when more non-Reform Jews moved to Huntsville.102 During our interview, Howard Polin explained why a separate Conservative congregation seemed necessary: “We consider ourselves Conservative. But when we came down [to Huntsville] there was only the Reform [temple]. And . . . not being disrespectful but . . . you would think you were going into a church if you went into the Reform temple. . . . So, anyway . . . when they had so many people coming from all over the country, and even some Israelis . . . to Huntsville in the aerospace business, they determined that they needed to have something a little more traditional and they formed the Conservative synagogue.”103 Apart from bringing new cultures and more open attitudes toward others, Huntsville’s newcomers seemed to want to change the environment to meet their needs. In his speech for the “Creating Rocket City” panel, Williams explained that the town was full of what he called “movers and shakers from the space program and their counterparts,” who made things happen. His speech is reminiscent of pioneer stories, reflecting local pride and a sense of defiance: They voted in a very progressive, businesslike city government. . . . They joined organizations from the Chamber of Commerce to the BTA, the Kiwanis, and any other organization that was doing things in the city. They’d become an active and involved participating member of that organization. . . . They didn’t complain about things, they did something about them through the system. Whether it had to do with infrastructure, the roads, the sewage, the water . . . whether it had to do with the schools, both the facilities or the teaching. A lot of the newcomers were

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educated and brought . . . into the school system as teachers. Parks, shopping, you name it. People were involved and making proposals and being active . . . together. . . . I think they not only talked about what needed to be done, but they put their brains, their muscle, their time and their dollars into making it happen. They really turned the corner and really started the growth in the right direction for the Huntsville area.104 For most of the South, increased federal spending since the New Deal counteracted some of the negative economic effects of racial segregation and eventually created a more favorable business climate that ultimately led to the emergence of the so-called Sunbelt South at the end of the 1960s.105 The New Deal had provided the foundation for a transformation of the southern economy through its agricultural emergency relief and industrial recovery programs in an effort to “redress the economic unbalance” between the nation’s regions. World War II added significant federal defense spending, while southern congressmen vied for military installations, defense plants, and related industrial enterprises for their districts.106 With “warm weather, good transportation systems, extensive rural areas, cheap labor, and a population generally supportive of the armed services,” Alabama was deemed a particularly attractive place for the military.107 Besides producing war material in new ordnance plants and defense industries across the state, the state had the largest number of military training camps outside of California and Texas, and it was considered an ideal location for prisoner of war camps.108 The benefits seemed obvious—“Military spending not only promised jobs, but permanent high paying jobs, which demanded and fashioned a skilled workforce. Defense plants also pioneered new production techniques and brought industrial prestige and additional investment to the region.” The expansion of the military installations led to “an expanded industrial labor force and a markedly more affluent consumer pool which became a crucial part of the region’s postwar attraction for market-oriented industries.” At the same time, it fostered “a political alliance with the Pentagon that brought economic bounty to the region in return for Congressional support of the Defense Department.”109 With the help of low taxes, low labor costs, and a largely nonunionized workforce, which meant low operating costs, southern states began

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to attract major foreign manufacturers in the second half of the century and therefore boosted their economies.110 And after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, southern politicians lobbied for the national space program, which they saw as holding “the key to the nation’s economic and political future.” NASA not only built research, testing, and assembly facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Virginia but also supported scientific research in universities across the South.111 After recruiting vital industry, specializing in defense and space-related industries, and achieving major social changes because of the civil rights movement, the South was situated to begin the process of becoming the “nation’s most economically vital region” in 1970.112 Despite regional and local transformations and continued efforts by Huntsville’s mayors, representatives of its Chamber of Commerce, and relocation guides to stress its uniqueness in Alabama, attracting a highly qualified workforce to Huntsville for the space-related industry is apparently still a challenge.113 Ed Buckbee, who worked with von Braun at the MSFC as public affairs officer from 1961 to 1970 and later assembled and directed the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, claimed that the stigma of the South as “backwards” is still prevalent: Younger people will . . . not recall that the Saturn program was managed out of Huntsville, Alabama. Part of that is because we’re southerners and . . . still to this day, a lot of people don’t want to move to Alabama because they can’t imagine anything being here technology-wise that they would want to be a part of. So we have [trouble] even trying to hire people for the university. I run into that all the time: “Well, I don’t know anything about Alabama. I’ve heard of Huntsville, but I’m not sure I wanna live there, I don’t wanna leave my family.” So we still have that unfortunate stigma, or whatever you wanna call it, of being southerners, where there’s not a lot of technology-based people and we’re not very smart. We’re still driving pickup trucks and so forth and so on.114 Then again, many of those who took the risk of moving to Huntsville stayed after retirement and some even returned after living in other places for a while. Located in a scenic area with less heat and humidity in the summer than other parts of Alabama, mild winters, lucrative jobs, a

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diverse population, and a variety of cultural offerings, Huntsville has become quite attractive. John Evans, an attorney whose family moved from Tennessee to Huntsville in 1947 when he was a child, noted during our interview that many military personnel stayed or returned to Huntsville: “I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the number of those folks . . . who were career officers, who when they finally did retire either stayed right here in Huntsville, if this is where they were when they retired, or came back to Huntsville if they had gone to another duty station and come back. . . . I’m not well traveled but I think, ‘Gosh, why are all these people doing this if this isn’t a pretty good place?’ ”115 DIVERSE EXPERIENCES OF THE SAME PAST

While the developments in Huntsville were not unique to the South, they stood out in Alabama. The region underwent massive changes as a result of post–World War II economic developments caused by increased military spending and active advertising encouraging foreign and northern industries to move to the South. As a result, Alabama emerged overall with a stronger economy by the end of the 1960s, but it still lagged behind regionally and nationally.116 Few people would have expected Alabama to become a center for cutting-edge, high-tech industry. Even today, many Americans are not aware that much of the development work that has been, and still is being, performed for space exploration occurs in Alabama. The state’s image as provincial and more openly racist and religiously intolerant than other parts of the country had been a major obstacle in recruiting a highly skilled labor force.117 Federal money and heightened publicity in the 1960s, however, gave Huntsville an added push and incentive to integrate its public facilities more quickly than other towns in the state. Its rapid population growth, caused mainly by an influx of people from other parts of the United States and foreign countries, radically changed the face of the town and its identity within two decades. While the majority of residents seem to have benefited from the town’s transformation, the development was uneven. The region’s previous disenfranchisement of African Americans affected the ways in which they could take advantage of the opportunities Huntsville had to offer. Both African Americans and Jews in Huntsville seemed to have to deal with the effects of prior restrictions and limitations in education and

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job opportunities, but the experiences of Jews as a minority in the South were quite different from those of African Americans, who had no choice in how they were perceived or treated. They could not “reform” to blend in with a predominantly white community. Huntsville’s uniqueness seems important to all of its residents, regardless of social position. Their narrations reflect a sense of local pride and ownership of these changes, despite the fact that the transformations affected them differently and were mostly driven by outside forces. When asked to describe Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s, my white interviewees would describe the size of the town, its provincialism, and the emerging diversity because of the increasing workforce from other parts of the world. Not surprisingly, the African American interviewees begin by describing where and how the town was divided because of segregation—a good example of how historical narratives are related to memories, which are themselves linked to past and present social positions. While white residents of Huntsville were aware of the segregation of the town in the 1950s and early 1960s, it did not affect their lives in the way it affected the everyday lives of African American residents. Similarly, the booming economy did not affect African Americans in the same way it did whites. Nevertheless, the narratives of members of the African American community support the notion of Huntsville’s exceptionality— albeit based on different factors from those suggested by their white neighbors. Since the leadership of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and later that of the Marshall Space Flight Center consisted in large part of the German rocket specialists, the changes in the community are often conflated with the arrival and participation of the German rocket team and their families.118 In many ways, they were considered essential to Huntsville’s “bootstrap” story. Many citizens of Huntsville see Redstone Arsenal and its employees as part of the community and believe that Huntsville would not be as prosperous as it is today without the close relationship with the arsenal. Anything that happens at the arsenal seems to affect the interests of the Huntsville community and vice versa.119

CHAPTER THREE

“I Never Thought of Him as a Foreigner”

arriving at huntsville International Airport, visitors and newcomers cannot miss the large portrait of Wernher von Braun located at the beginning of a wall mural dedicated to local accomplishments in space exploration.1 Venturing downtown, visitors will find the Von Braun Civic Center, and if they are visiting the University of Alabama in Huntsville, they will learn that it too has named one of its research halls after the famous rocketeer and visionary of spaceflight. Visitors to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (USSRC) will come across a large display case filled with von Braun’s office furniture and blown-up photographs of the rocketeer along with other memorabilia. Right next to the display, they will encounter a wall-covering photograph of Huntsville’s celebration of the first moon landing showing local residents carrying von Braun on their shoulders while navigating a large crowd of onlookers, press, and camera crews. And those who have business at the Marshall Space Flight Center might be in town to attend one of NASA’s annual von Braun forums or to visit the Wernher von Braun office complex, which exhibits a locally crafted bronze bust of the rocketeer. Whatever one’s reason for visiting Huntsville, no one can miss the importance of von Braun to the city’s identity. Huntsville’s admiration for von Braun played a significant role in how residents remember the German families’ arrival and integration. Longtime locals became familiar with several of the names of the German 71

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rocket team members over time, but the team’s charismatic and largerthan-life leader was without doubt the “face” of the German immigrant group. That said, local residents lived next door to the German families and many worked side by side with members of the German rocket team at Redstone Arsenal. They experienced the German group as neighbors and colleagues who seemed to blend in easily while having a unique and positive impact on the community. The result was often a local admiration for “our Germans” that outsiders do not always understand. The following story illustrates how perspectives of longtime residents have clashed with those of people who neither lived in Huntsville when the German families arrived and became part of the community nor worked with the German rocket experts on the army and NASA projects that brought so much good fortune to the once small cotton mill town. In our interview, Ed Buckbee, a close associate of von Braun’s since 1961, described his surprise at a question from a graduate student after he gave a talk about Wernher von Braun at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2006: And this one kid asked the question, “How could you work for a Nazi?” . . . I was shocked by that question, because . . . von Braun never . . . I never envisioned him as a Nazi. . . . It was just a question I wasn’t prepared for, and I didn’t give him a very good answer, I don’t think. I wish I had said, “Well, you know, the reason I never thought of him as a Nazi was because of his leadership skills.” And that’s, you know, there was never any question about the man’s ability or his past affiliation, because what he was doing was . . . right, was for the country, and we were all working together as a team, and I never thought of him as a foreigner. And . . . I think that’s safe to say about a lot of people like me, American born, who came to work here. . . . It just didn’t seem like we were working for Germans.2 For those who worked and lived with the Germans, preoccupied with the goal of building rockets for the nation’s defense and later to beat the Soviet Union in the “race to the moon,” the German team’s foreignness and role in Hitler’s regime seemed to evaporate. Nevertheless, the fact that the families were recent immigrants from Germany remained a notable attribute. When the first group of roughly 110 German families arrived in Huntsville in 1950, they came as part of a

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military program that brought thousands of new residents to the area. Despite their relatively small numbers, they elicited distinct attention from the local media. The specialists had not yet made the news for their contributions to rocket development in the United States, but the fact that they were Germans who had been brought to the country for their expertise was obviously intriguing. Over the following decades, local interest in the group grew as von Braun and the rocket specialists’ work became international news, which brought more attention to Huntsville and elevated the Germans as prominent actors in the community. While most viewed them as model citizens who quickly integrated into the community, some residents were alarmed by their presence. But those feelings were generally hidden from the majority of Huntsvillians, including the Germans. In fact, the positive and sometimes celebratory local perceptions of the German families were so persistent that they even affected how residents explained why the German rocket team moved to Huntsville in the first place. Since the Germans arrived during the Jim Crow era, just as the civil rights movement was emerging, the African American community’s experiences with the Germans was dramatically different from that of their white neighbors and therefore will be discussed in a separate chapter. W H E N T H E G E R M A N S I N VA D E D H U N T S V I L L E

Huntsvillians observed with curiosity the Spring of 1950 arrival of the first of the more than 100 German engineers and scientists. For many, the first reaction was suspicion; after all, these men and their families had been the enemy a scant five years earlier. But these feelings soon gave way to wholehearted acceptance and friendship as the Germans embraced their new home, and Huntsville embraced them. Few could imagine at the time how much the revival of Redstone Arsenal and arrival of the Germans would transform Huntsville and change its identity over the next decade. —NASA-MSFC Retiree Association3

The way in which the German newcomers were introduced to the community set the tone for how locals would later remember their arrival

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and integration.4 When the Huntsville Times first reported that the army’s consolidated rocket development program would be moved to Redstone Arsenal, residents of Huntsville were informed by the headline that there would be “100 German scientists among those who will be transferred here.”5 Another article announced that 102 families of GE employees from El Paso, Texas, would join the move to Huntsville.6 In total, the army expected approximately 500 military personnel and 65 civilian employees would join the arsenal, while about 235 civilians would be hired locally.7 Along with reports about the housing and infrastructure dilemmas caused by the transition of the army’s Ordnance Missile Development Division, residents of Huntsville learned that one of the newcomers was the “foremost authority in the world today on rockets,” Wernher von Braun, who, according to the article headline, “Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon.”8 The article included a picture of von Braun in a suit and tie, with his wife, Maria, sitting in front of him, holding their daughter, Iris, in her lap. The image embodied the ideal of the 1950s American nuclear family.9 Together, the article and image presented von Braun as a young, professional, highly educated, family-oriented man with a vision for the future, implying reliability and upward mobility. The picture reflected the American way of life; the von Brauns demonstrated conformity through their attire and display of traditional gender roles. The article, however, also identified them as Germans who have “taken out first citizenship papers, as have most of [the] German scientists who will come to Redstone arsenal.” Since von Braun was the leader of the German rocket team, the photograph and description would have inspired confidence in many for what to expect of the other German families. Not only did they appear to fit the ideal of model immigrants, they also seemed to be future model citizens. The tone of the article implied that what distinguished the Germans from white middle-class Americans were their ideas about traveling to the moon, not their affiliation with the Nazi regime, which was couched in a narrative of victimhood and innocence. After describing von Braun’s ideas about the future of space flight, the article provided a brief overview of the rocket team’s recent history, including a reference to its presumed “liberation from the Gestapo” by U.S. armed forces, which implied that the team had worked and lived under the constant threat of the Gestapo.

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Von Braun was quoted as stating that the Gestapo “had kept the group under close watch.” What readers would not have known was that von Braun was most likely referring to the last few weeks of the war when the team was seeking refuge until the U.S. troops arrived. In his memoir, Dieter Huzel, a close associate of von Braun’s, described von Braun’s worry that the SS men in Oberammergau might “try to destroy us and everything we’ve done.”10 Von Braun may also have been referring to his arrest by the Gestapo in March 1944. The exact reasons for this arrest are not clear. One explanation suggests that von Braun refused Heinrich Himmler’s offer to help move forward the development of the V-2, which might have angered the head of the SS.11 The explanation that has gained most currency, however, is that von Braun and his colleagues, who were also arrested, had made remarks at a party about their desire to create a spaceship instead of weapons, which was presumably interpreted as an expression of treason at this point in the war.12 Regardless of what exactly von Braun was referring to, the article left the misleading impression that von Braun and his team had been longtime victims of the Nazi regime, and it only hinted at the fact that the specialists had actually been closely affiliated with the regime by noting their “thorough screening” before they moved to the United States. Although the report identified the underground production plant in Nordhausen as the site from where V-2 parts were sent to the United States, there was no mention of the horrific scene American soldiers had encountered when they liberated the concentration camp connected to the plant.13 In April 1950, when the first families arrived, the Huntsville Times announced that a Lutheran church would be established “for the benefit of an estimated 75 families of German scientists who are moving here.” The next month, residents learned that a “heavy influx of GE, military, and German scientists’ families is expected after the first of the month.”14 From the beginning, stories about the influx of federal money accompanied reports about the revival of Redstone Arsenal and the arrival of so many newcomers. In July 1950, the Huntsville Times announced that “a bill authorizing $4,250,000 in appropriations for Redstone arsenal received final approval in the Senate, and has been sent to the President for his signature.”15 As the inflow was in full force, the Chamber of Commerce began planning “a gigantic party,” which was attended by an estimated twenty-seven hundred people, “to welcome newcomers to

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Huntsville who have become residents within the past few months.”16 The arrival of the newcomers coincided with growing U.S. involvement in the Korean War, which led to another increase of 500 military personnel for Redstone Arsenal.17

“HE

S O R T O F L O O K S L I K E A D I S TA N T C O U S I N ”

In some funny way, I’d look at Dr. von Braun— I think of him and he sort of looks like a distant cousin on my father’s side. . . . I’m sure a lot of people felt that way. —Maria Dempsey, white Huntsville resident, 2007

White non-Jewish residents who were in Huntsville when the German families arrived recalled some hostility in the community because of the loss of family members in the war against Germany and the rocket specialists’ current affiliation with the military, but they thought this hostility was isolated or purposely hidden from the Germans. Jimmie Taylor, a World War II veteran and former manager of Huntsville’s prominent Russell Erskine Hotel, remembered “a rumor” about an incident of open hostility toward the Germans: “This is a rumor, I don’t think it happened. We had . . . a veteran, he’d been in the European theater, and he had a Texaco service station here. And . . . about the time the Germans came, they said that one of the Germans came in to get gas and he wouldn’t serve it to him.”18 An alternative version of this story appears also in Bob Ward’s biography of von Braun; here the gas station owner, presumably “still grieving over the loss of a loved one in the war,” “posted a sign announcing that Germans were not welcome as customers.”19 This anecdote may have been a rumor, but certainly it was one some considered worth repeating.20 In our interview, Taylor, who knew the community quite well at the time because of his position at the hotel and his active participation in community events, emphasized that this was the only such incident he could recall. Portrayed as the exception to the rule, the gas station anecdote acknowledges that some residents were not ready to embrace the German families, but attributes this to personal loss and grievance rather than political conviction or empathy with those who were harmed by the Nazi regime. By casting the story as a rumor, Taylor

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questions whether the incident actually occurred, implying that it was too unlikely to be true. Alice Tanner was a child when the German families arrived in town. She did recall some negative sentiments toward the German families during her speech at the 2003 panel at the public library when former and current Huntsville residents discussed the beginnings of the dramatic social, economic, and cultural changes in Huntsville: “There were [a] few mothers, I’ll have to admit, who were a little leery at first, and I’m glad you didn’t know that. My mother came here in 1932 [and] was still considered an outsider in 1954. So you can sort of imagine how some mothers felt. I remember a friend’s mother saying one time, when her daughter was talking about dating a German boy, ‘Now you be very careful, because don’t you forget, those are arsenal people.’ ”21 Tanner’s comment that she was glad “you didn’t know that” was aimed at one of the second-generation Germans on the same panel. It points out that while some residents of Huntsville did not immediately embrace their new German neighbors, they were not overt about their reservations. Tanner’s story also illustrates that the perception of the families’ “otherness” was not based primarily on their German background but rather on the fact that they were nonlocals affiliated with the military and the arsenal, which, in this context, would have conjured up images of promiscuity and disease.22 John Evans, whose family moved to Huntsville in 1947, was about ten years old when the German families arrived. He later married the daughter of one of the German rocket specialists. In our interview, he seemed to struggle trying to describe the community’s response: “I don’t remember any resentment. . . . There may have been some very slight resentment that you heard from time to time, typically from people who had served in the army in the European campaign, and I . . . think there was a lukewarmness on their part to German people coming in to [town]. But that was so short-lived and, I mean, just a miniscule sentiment that I don’t even remember being openly expressed. . . . I mean, you would have to interpret it to come from that source.”23 Evans’s narrative echoes Taylor’s notion that openly hostile responses from community members were rare. He saw unfriendly attitudes expressed only in a kind of “lukewarmness” toward the Germans. By adding that “you would have to interpret it to come from that source,” Evans implied that negative viewpoints were not only marginal but

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potentially motivated by personal issues and irrelevant to the overall community response to the Germans. Evidently, he was not familiar with the concerns of the mothers that Tanner mentioned, which may well be because these worries were focused on the danger that men working at the arsenal allegedly would have posed to daughters, not sons. Gender relations therefore obviously also played a role in local responses to the Germans. None of these accounts mention the German rocket specialists’ association with the Nazi regime and the use of slave labor for the production of the V-2s. The Germans are described either as former enemies from a distant war or simply as outsiders. It should not be surprising, however, that most people were not concerned about the ideological reasons for the war and the possibility that some of the Germans might have still held political convictions contradicting democratic ideals. As historian Matthias Reiss has noted about Americans interacting with German prisoners of war, “Ideology did not matter much anyway in most Americans’ perception of World War II.”24 According to these depictions from white non-Jewish members of the community, the arrival of the German families in Huntsville received few negative responses. Only a few seem to have really considered them to be outsiders, let alone “foreigners.” On the contrary—they seemed “sort of like distant cousins.”

“GERMANS NEVER CHANGE” In contrast, Jewish residents do recall reservations among their community members toward the Germans, mainly because they had lost family members in the Holocaust. While these responses may have been stronger than in the non-Jewish community, they also were expressed in ways the German families and others would not have been aware of. For example, while Tanner remembered that dating one of the German boys prompted a mother’s warning, Margaret Anne Goldsmith, whose family had been in Huntsville for multiple generations and had actively tried to help Jews trying to leave Germany during the Third Reich, told me in our interview that her father forbade her outright to go out with a German. She recalled that when one of the rocket specialist’s sons asked her out on a date, “Daddy wouldn’t let me, ’cause he said . . . they were German and Germans never change. I didn’t really know what he was talking about, but whatever Daddy said—okay.”25

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Goldsmith remembered her father’s caution and prejudice toward Germans not as a reference to their affiliation with the U.S. military, as in Tanner’s case, but as a vague reference to something essentially negative about Germans. As a recipient of many requests for help from Jews trying to escape the Nazi regime, he was most likely referring to the atrocities committed against Jews under that regime. Some scholars have interpreted the enormity of the violence as an outgrowth of a particularly vicious form of anti-Semitism that presumably existed in Germany long before the Nazis came into power.26 Under that assumption, Germans are collectively implicated in the Holocaust; it cannot be blamed only on a select few acting on behalf of Hitler and Nazi ideology. Sol Miller, whose family has also been in Huntsville for multiple generations, was not yet born when the German families moved to town, but in our interview he recalled stories about his grandfather’s interpretation of and reaction to the Germans. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Sol’s grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Russia, in the 1910s and had probably left many family members in Russia who would have been directly affected by the Holocaust. During our interview, Sol reminded his father, Buddy, who was about twenty-four when the German families arrived and did not remember having had any “strong feelings” of his own about their move to town, that Sol’s grandfather certainly did: sol: Just generally, how you felt about so many Germans

coming so soon after the war. I mean, you didn’t have any very strong feelings about that, did you? buddy: Not really. sol: But your father probably did. buddy: Well, the closer you are to something, the more feelings . . . you’d have on it. Yeah, he had people that were lost in the Holocaust. sol: Well . . . did you tell Monique about the fact when you heard someone coming to the office with a German accent that he would step outside and then you dealt with ’em? buddy: Yeah. Although my father couldn’t blame individual Germans for the Holocaust, he still had a little feeling that . . . when an accent, clearly a German accent walked into the

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office, he would find something else to do, my dad, and either leave me to wait on them or leave somebody else to do it.27 Unless very perceptive, most people would probably not have noticed that Buddy’s father was avoiding Germans. Sol told another story of an occasion when his grandfather was directly confronted with the antiSemitism of German prisoners of war who were working at Redstone Arsenal during the war: sol: Before the war was over . . . there were POWs on the

arsenal. Did you tell her [Monique] about that? buddy: No, I didn’t. sol: There were POWs at the arsenal and . . . you know . . . we were in the metal recycling business, so my grandfather would go out there to . . . quote on material or to supervise projects out there. And there were often some of the German POWs there and . . . they would say in English to him, “Well, Mr. Miller, after the war we want to come work for you.” And then they would start talking among themselves in German, and he understood a lot of German ’cause of the similarity with Yiddish. And they would be saying not so complimentary things about his religious background.28 Buddy’s father’s active avoidance of Germans seems not only a result of his loss of family members in the Holocaust but also based on his own experience with German soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Together, these stories illustrate the contentious relationship between Jews and nonJewish Germans during and after World War II. Buddy’s explanation that “the closer you are to something, the more feelings you have on it” may also help explain why so few non-Jewish residents of Huntsville felt resentment toward the German families. Regardless of how much they knew about the Holocaust, non-Jewish Americans were not as immediately affected by it as many of their Jewish neighbors. And unless they lost a family member in the European theater, most non-Jewish residents would not have suffered direct loss due to the Nazi regime. As we will see in chapter 6, Huntsville residents often viewed the loss of lives in battle

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during World War II as the unavoidable casualties any war produces, not specifically as the result of German aggression under Hitler’s rule. Just as the German POWs at Redstone Arsenal tried to veil their hostility toward Jews, Jewish community members tried to hide their feelings toward the German rocket specialists and their families. The older generation’s reserve and potential hostility seemed to be nonexistent among the next generation, and neither the German families nor white non-Jewish Huntsvillians would have been privy to these complex and subtle dynamics. F R O M K U LT U R T O P O L I T I C S

A group of German scientists at Redstone arsenal will appear in a concert at Oakwood college auditorium. . . . Proceeds will be used to purchase equipment for . . . classes . . . at the college. . . . Members of the group have outstanding musical ability. —Huntsville Times, November 26, 195029

It did not take long for the Germans to begin contributing to the community and for local institutions to recognize and take advantage of the social and economic value of their classical training in German Kultur, which signaled respectability and superiority over others among those who considered themselves middle class.30 Despite their small numbers in comparison to the many other families that came to town around the same time, the German families gained a reputation for being the main contributors to the town’s educational and cultural development. Huntsvillians associate the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, the Broadway Theatre League, the symphony orchestra, the ballet company, St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville with “the Germans.” Few seem to realize that some of the talent was already present or that some of these institutions were initiated by other members of the community. Despite von Braun’s substantial influence on city politics, Huntsvillians perceived the German group as not particularly political. This image fit well with that of the apolitical scientist or engineer, which some of the German interviewees invoked in a different context to explain

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why the rocketeers should not be held responsible for atrocities committed under Hitler’s regime. When residents of Huntsville described the Germans, they used both positive and negative stereotypes. Some seemed to be under the impression that the Germans stayed to themselves, while others considered them to be very outgoing and active in the community. Those who were closer to the German families typically recalled positive experiences, while those who were not that close considered them somewhat aloof. Most of the people I interviewed, however, believed that overall the Germans had had a positive influence on the town. Those who grew up alongside the children of the rocket engineers emphasized how “smart” the children were, often outdoing locals in school, which is typically linked directly to their fathers’ reputation as “rocket scientists.” At the 2003 panel, Alice Tanner noted that the specialists’ children did more than increase the “dating pool”: “The wonderful thing about it was that they really expanded the intellectual level of our class, I think. Whereas many of us sat in Spanish, in French, and Latin classes and passed notes and giggled. We actually had some people in class who could speak a foreign language [a little laughter from audience]. They were wonderful. We really were delighted to have them in Huntsville.”31 One might wonder whether it was really that “wonderful” to have students in the classroom who were intellectually so advanced they made the native children of Huntsville appear immature and ignorant. The city’s mayor, however, seemed to share this self-effacing sentiment: “We had so many of the people that came with the children of the German scientists, who we went to school with, who graduated in our class. They were all smarter than us and I was always so impressed, because we did have a good time, but they were so studious. And all of us envied them, because they were as smart as they were. And it was great fun . . . to be in school with them.”32 Similar to Tanner’s account, Spencer’s description of growing up with German children implies that the Germans were considered superior to others living in Huntsville. Despite her admiration, her description was ambivalent—she flattered the German children for being smart, but she also noted that they were envied. If they were as “studious” as she described them, how would it have been “fun” to be in school with them? Having to work hard to compete with children from a foreign country

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must have been a humbling, if not humiliating, experience. Her ambivalence becomes apparent in how she stressed the difference between herself and her friends and the German children, who “were all smarter than us.” While these comments seem to imply that the German children were inherently intellectually superior, it is more likely that most of them had received quite different academic training in Germany that gave them an advantage over the local children. Tanner believed that her life was radically influenced by the Germans’ contributions to the town. She seemed very excited about the opportunities the Germans presumably provided for locals: “Does anyone believe we would have a Huntsville Symphony without those arsenal people? I don’t think so. I don’t think there’d be a Broadway Theatre League. I don’t think there would be a library like this one. The library that I remember was a tiny, tiny building. . . . I don’t think we’d have a ballet. I don’t think we’d have a good many of the wonderful community institutions that we have today.”33 The Huntsville Symphony was founded in 1955—not by a German but by Alvin Dreger, a cellist and longtime citizen of Huntsville. The orchestra was initially led by Arthur M. Fraser, and the Reverend George Hart was the president of the orchestra association, according to an article in the Birmingham News announcing the symphony’s first concert in December 1955.34 A report in the Huntsville News decades later explained that the Germans who joined were among many invited to the first rehearsal: “Since many Huntsvillians were musicians and a group of instrument-playing Germans had moved here to work in the space program, Dreger invited 70 of them to attend a rehearsal.”35 Nevertheless, Huntsville residents view the Germans as the main drivers for the development of the symphony. Like several others I spoke with, John Rison Jones Jr., whose family has been in Huntsville for many generations, told me that the symphony exists because of the Germans who moved to town in 1950: “They were responsible really for building the symphony here, which was ghastly until I came back in 1987, and you simply prayed that the program had no work of art requiring a lot of brass. . . . That’s something very much to be proud of.”36 Charles Lundquist, whose wife was a member of the symphony and who has been collecting documentation related to the individual members of the symphony orchestra, had a slightly different take. In our interview,

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he emphasized that the Germans were not the only newcomers influencing the local culture, although he too viewed the Germans as the main drivers of change: lundquist: It wasn’t just the Germans, of course, that got

moved from White Sands. There were a bunch of U.S. natives that had joined the group in White Sands and were moved at the same time. And they added influence also. laney: So is there something that you think is specifically, a specific influence by the Germans then? lundquist: Well, probably the cultural level in the city. There was culture here before the Germans came. For instance . . . I wasn’t here, but I know that there was a concert series, a community concert series that people bought tickets to and went to. So . . . there was a fair amount of indigenous culture in Huntsville that got a big shot in the arm from the addition of the German community.37 Although Huntsville residents always associated the German rocket team with its leader, von Braun, the fact that the team was an identifiable group seemed to also affect how locals perceived the actions of individual Germans. When a team member made contributions to the community, local publications regularly identified him as German, signaling that he belonged to von Braun’s group. At least in the local context, that seemed to be an advantage. A 1961 magazine article about Huntsville identified Hannes Luehrsen as the architect who had designed the parkway that bypasses downtown Huntsville that opened in December 1955 and changed the infrastructure of the city dramatically: “Huntsville’s new Memorial Parkway, a four-lane autobahn lined with neon-flashing motels, was designed by Hannes Luehrsen, former German city planner and master planner of Redstone.”38 The fact that Luehrsen was the “master planner of Redstone” signaled that he was a member of the German rocket team, even though he was an architect. Emphasizing this connection, the article not only mentions that Luehrsen was a “German” city planner but refers to the new bypass as an autobahn. As this was clearly a story about success, these references signified local pride in being able to take advantage of the presumed superiority of German engineering. The fact that the

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autobahn is also commonly associated with Hitler’s regime did not seem to be viewed as problematic. The German group even seemed to have its own unofficial public relations person, Walter Wiesman, a businessman who worked in public affairs for the U.S. Army and later the Marshall Space Flight Center. He presided over Huntsville’s Junior Chamber of Commerce and was a member of the Economic Development Association of Alabama and other local, state, and national organizations.39 Wiesman was credited with having been an ambassador for Huntsville particularly interested in its standing in the global community. According to an obituary in the Huntsville Times in 2000, Wiesman “was considered the best communicator and the most charismatic of the group, aside from von Braun.”40 In our interview, Sol Miller confirmed this characterization: “He’s probably one of the most outgoing in the community. I mean, he was just a real nice guy. . . . I’m sure he wasn’t practicing public relations, but that’s the effect of what he did. He really did—I mean, he was a real leader in all sorts of civic activities.”41 As the news article suggests, Wiesman was not only promoting Huntsville but also representing the German group. Despite the importance of Wiesman’s role, von Braun was the group’s charismatic leader and its main representative. Von Braun’s local and national celebrity informed and influenced the way locals interpreted his actions and those of the other German rocket specialists.42 As a government employee, he could not hold political office, but he was nevertheless known for his influence on the local economy, city planning, and education. His approach to influencing important decision makers had apparently not changed significantly since he tried to gain support for his research in rocketry from the Nazi regime.43 Buckbee summarized the German’s considerable impact on Huntsville during our interview: I think . . . he gave the city a direction. He . . . painted a picture for them, and that’s really why we are a technology city today. You know, we’re much more than a rocket city. Of course, there’s a lot of rocket science here, but this community, when you look across the board at . . . all the software companies that are not related to government. They’re here because of the brainpower. And von Braun told the city fathers in the early seventies, “You need to diversify. You are too much dependent

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on government contracts.” The city went out and did a huge recruiting program and brought in nongovernment companies. . . . He gave advice to community city fathers frequently. Sometimes when they asked for it; sometimes when they didn’t ask for it. The last statement implies some resistance and possibly resentment to von Braun’s requests. According to Buckbee, the city officials learned quickly, though, that von Braun had immense influence on the development of the community because of his national visibility: “When you got a call from von Braun, you went to the meeting . . . the community understood that he was connected with people in Washington and a lot of things were going on in Huntsville . . . because of von Braun, and the success of the future of the city depended on programs he had involvement with.”44 At the 2003 panel, Bob Ward, a former journalist who covered the space beat for the Huntsville Times and who wrote a biography of von Braun, illustrated how von Braun wielded his influence on the city’s politicians: “It was interesting; all these slums have since been eradicated. Von Braun . . . every now and then he would . . . put a little whisper in a city official’s ear, saying, ‘You know what, when I ride . . . in the community or from the arsenal to point B, it’s a terrible view and visitors get a very unpleasant scenic view of the city. When they take some of these trips around town and, you know, urban renewal . . . really oughta do . . . something about that.’ ”45 While in this anecdote von Braun seems more concerned about potential visitors than about the people living in “these slums,” his desire to create an environment attractive to current and potential employees for the rocket development program brought benefits Huntsville residents appreciated. Von Braun’s influence affected Huntsville’s landscape of higher education as well. Ben Graves, the first president of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), recalled in his speech at the 2003 panel that von Braun was concerned about the lack of a “high-quality” university in Huntsville, which he considered very important for recruiting.46 Consequently, he addressed the Alabama legislature in 1961, requesting funds to build and equip a research institute on the UAH campus. The legislature approved $3 million in revenue bonds for the university.47 At the time education was still segregated, so these actions affected mainly

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the white community, but it also had important meaning for the African American community, which will be discussed in chapter 5. Von Braun was also the driving force behind the creation of the USSRC, one of the major tourist attractions in Huntsville. In his speech at the 2003 panel, Frank Williams, who also worked closely with von Braun as his assistant for many years, described how the idea for the museum came about: “We’d been to a museum somewhere, and . . . he [von Braun] said, ‘You know, we need a museum there in Huntsville. . . . We’ve got a lot of space stuff coming out that we don’t need anymore. . . . We got a little area . . . where we are storing that, but the general public can’t see. . . . What do you think we can do about it?’ ”48 According to Williams and Buckbee, von Braun talked to city and state officials, the Kiwanis Club, officials of the army and NASA, and finally to the Alabama state legislature, which promised $1.9 million to build the museum.49 Buckbee described how von Braun was able to convince Alabama voters to approve this expense: Legislature approved it and then it had to be voted on statewide. And that’s not something that’s easily passed, you can imagine . . . some other people advised him on this. They told him, you should find somebody that’s well known in Alabama to endorse this amendment. He picks Bear Bryant . . . and Shug Jordan, coach of Auburn at that time and Bear Bryant, my God. He got those two to be honorary chairmen on this amendment. The thing passed 67 percent. No questions ever asked. And it was all planned and strategized. And he knew that, you know, von Braun’s name across the state would mean something to certain people, but others not. Those two football coaches, “If they said it was okay, it must be okay.”50 By asking two iconic figures of Alabama college football to endorse his request, von Braun demonstrated that he understood the significance of knowing his neighbors’ culture well. Collegiate football has been very popular in Alabama for most of the twentieth century, with the University of Alabama and Auburn University being considered the prime rivals in the state. Asking the coaches of both university teams to endorse his request for funding for UAH would have definitely received attention from Alabama’s residents.

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Von Braun’s display of cultural competence might also explain why Max Rosenthal, who moved to Huntsville in 1963 to work for NASA, had the impression that the Germans were not involved much in city politics. In the interview, he described the ease with which the Germans seemed to blend into the community: “I think they wanted to keep a low profile. I think many of them were very much concerned about . . . their background and did not want to raise the issue of, ‘Oh, Lord, the Germans are taking over.’ . . . Mainly I think it was because they did not want to raise . . . a political specter . . . of Nazi Germany. . . . They never did really participate heavily—they may have been in the background . . . when somebody was running for mayor . . . but . . . if it was done at all, it was quietly.”51 Whether or not von Braun or his colleagues really worried about being perceived as raising a “specter of Nazi Germany,” Rosenthal’s depiction suggests that they were perceived as apolitical benefactors of the town who helped to dramatically change its economic, educational, and cultural institutions. IN HINDSIGHT; OR, THE GROWING INFLUENCE OF CELEBRITIES

Perhaps the best illustration of how locals perceived the Germans lies in the explanations some residents offered for why the German team moved to Huntsville in the first place. The exact reasons for the move from Ft. Bliss to Redstone Arsenal were not entirely clear to everyone, which encouraged speculation. None of the people I interviewed was critical of the decision, but the varying explanations reveal how events and experiences following the move influenced the way in which it was later remembered. In contrast to two of my German interviewees, who attributed their location in Huntsville to the Korean War, which would have been out of their control, some Huntsville residents were under the impression that the Germans chose Huntsville because they preferred the landscape or that the army chose Redstone Arsenal to please the German team.52 The Korean War was not anticipated and did not begin until June 25, 1950—long after the decision to move the rocket development facilities to Redstone Arsenal had been made and the first batch of German families had moved to Huntsville.53 Instead, the move was prompted by the need to expand the army’s missile development facilities and to decentralize the management from the Pentagon to a field installation.54 According to

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Holger N. Toftoy, who became the director of the Ordnance Missile Laboratories at Redstone Arsenal, the commanding general at Ft. Bliss did not approve such an expansion because of other priorities.55 Searching for another location in August 1949, Toftoy visited Redstone Arsenal, which was listed for sale at the time.56 As historian Michael J. Neufeld pointed out, Toftoy’s lobbying efforts in Washington to move the facilities to Redstone were “aided by a worsening world situation that culminated in the Chinese Communist victory and Truman’s 23 September 1949 announcement of the detection of the first Soviet A-bomb test.”57 Officials from the Huntsville area, Congressman Bob Jones, and Alabama senator John Sparkman assisted in the lobbying efforts for the missile development facility as well.58 The Huntsville Times reported, “It is estimated a saving of approximately $4,500,000 will be made by moving this facility.”59 While none of the people I interviewed seemed to know why the Germans were moved to Redstone Arsenal, some thought that the Germans themselves had made the decision. One interviewee, a retired warrant officer who moved to Huntsville from Maryland with the army in 1960, suggested that von Braun was the one who decided to move the team to Redstone, presumably making that decision based on the good local conditions for testing rockets: “He [von Braun] wanted to build down here, in Alabama, on the river or near the river, because he could pipe in water from the river to the test stand. . . . So he said, he thinks that we could develop this rocket motor to the moon if we can move to Huntsville, Alabama, and build our test stands near the Tennessee River. . . . And anyway, after a lot of harangue and politics and everything else, they moved the team from White Sands Missile Range to Huntsville, Alabama.”60 Since von Braun did not have the authority to make such a decision and the interviewee did not move to Huntsville until 1960 himself, his explanation is probably the result of many years of hearing about the influence von Braun and the German team presumably had on the rocket development programs and the Huntsville community. The interviewee seemed to assume that von Braun was always in a position to determine the team’s destiny. Most intriguing is his suggestion that Redstone Arsenal was selected so von Braun “could develop this rocket motor to the moon.” While von Braun was publicly advocating the development of

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rockets that could fly to the moon in the early 1950s, this would not become a mission for the team—and therefore not a consideration for the site selection—until they joined NASA a decade after their arrival from Ft. Bliss.61 In the 1950s, the Germans’ work was focused on military missiles and rockets for warhead delivery, with the exception of the rocket for the Explorer I satellite, which was sent into orbit in 1958.62 This interviewee’s recollection reflects a common perception of von Braun and his team: today, most people are more familiar with von Braun as the promoter of spaceflight who made it possible to land on the moon. Few think of him as someone who was working for the U.S. military for almost fifteen years before he and his team joined NASA.63 Similar to the retired warrant officer, Charles Ray Jr., who grew up in Huntsville and owned Nelms Funeral Home, believed that the German rocket team made the decision to move to Huntsville, presumably because the area reminded its members of their former home: “I think the motivating factor, as far as I could get from the articles, was that they wanted them to be happy, and [the Germans] had visited here, searching for a place to . . . accept them. And they liked it here because it looked kinda like their home back in Germany.”64 In his account, Ray not only assigned immense power over their destiny to the Germans but also suggested that they were concerned about being accepted by the locals. As he explained, he learned from newspaper and magazine articles that the Germans liked Huntsville because it reminded them of Germany. Considering the warm welcome they received on arrival and the many positive portrayals of them in local newspapers over the years, it is hardly surprising that Ray inferred that someone “wanted them to be happy.” During our interview, Jimmie Taylor made a similar suggestion, specifying the army as the entity that wanted the Germans to “be happy”: “The army really worked to take care of them when they got here. The other thing is that . . . all these private contractors, when they came in working on this thing . . . they were getting them money. They could pay any salary they wanted. And von Braun, working for the government . . . I think he was limited at that time, probably somewhere around $35,000 a year. And . . . they had all these contractors wanting to hire him, double his salary. . . . So I think . . . they had to make a special . . . thing to pay him when he went in there.”65 In 1950, von Braun’s salary was less than a third of what Taylor suggests, and while many members of the group

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were offered jobs in private industry, for most that did not happen until later in their careers.66 Like the retired warrant officer’s and Ray Jr.’s, Taylor’s account about how hard the army presumably worked to keep the Germans seems to be influenced by the German team’s later successes, which did lead to other job offers. All three assign power and leverage to the German rocket specialists that they could not have had initially, illustrating how the interviewees’ memories are influenced by an image of the Germans that developed later.

“ Y O U D O N ’ T B I T E T H E H A N D T H AT F E E D S Y O U ” The German families clearly made a lasting positive impression on Huntsville’s community. They were viewed as the main drivers behind the dramatic changes the town experienced with the arrival of the rocket development program, changes that altered the quality and trajectory of many people’s lives. Considered the core of the rocket development program, the rocket specialists seemed to be responsible for bringing an unprecedented national focus to Huntsville—including presidential visits—which meant more federal money and contracts.67 In addition, they appeared to be invested in the economic, educational, and cultural development of the town. As Margaret Anne Goldsmith put it: “They were helping Huntsville’s economy tremendously. So . . . you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. . . . I think . . . there was just a great deal of respect for von Braun and the whole team. And I think there still is, and somehow there wasn’t the thought of them as Nazis. . . . I don’t think, even today, people make that leap. They think about what they’ve done for the community and what they’ve done for the country.”68 Although the people I interviewed never used the term class to describe the German group, Huntsvillians recognized that most of these new immigrants were highly educated and culturally sophisticated. They brought with them the values and expectations of highbrow society, which they seemed to expect Huntsville to adapt to and replicate. At a time when highbrow culture reflected the ideals of the middle class in the United States, it did not take long for the leaders of Huntsville to embrace these ideals and help the newcomers feel welcome and eventually at home. Just as local residents experienced Huntsville’s dramatic economic, social, and cultural changes in ways that depended on their social position

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in the community, they remember and make sense of the arrival, integration, and acceptance of the German rocket specialists and their families differently. Reservations were barely audible in the larger community, leaving the impression that the German families were no more or less accepted than other newcomers. Over time, the Germans seemed to blend into the community, and they stood out only for their positive contributions. While none of the interviewees stated this explicitly, it is obvious that the behavior and actions of von Braun reflected on the entire group. As Bob Ward’s biography of the man whose work he covered for the local newspaper since the late 1950s illustrates, von Braun garnered an enormous amount of goodwill and admiration in his adopted hometown. Similarly, the acts of a few other individual members of the German families created the impression that “the Germans” had an immense interest in and impact on the town’s development. Much of the sense of the group’s impact on the community is probably due to the fact that the German families came to Huntsville more or less as one unit. In addition, the self-segregation some of the Germans pursued by building homes in certain areas of town and the fact that Huntsville was not used to having a larger group of immigrants from one country move into town must have contributed to the perception of the Germans as a group. Perhaps also contributing to this was the fact that while immigrants to an urban environment often have to contend with other immigrant groups, Huntsvillians had no other immigrant group to compare the Germans to. The only reference points for comparison were the Americans who were also moving to town at the time. Whether the Germans would have been accepted in the same way in a different location is impossible to know. It is also difficult to determine whether they looked even better in hindsight since we have to rely mainly on people’s memories, which may have changed in light of the town’s positive developments. What is remarkable, however, is that they were distinguished as Germans, yet not as foreigners, and that their Germanness was stripped of Germany’s recent past. The following chapter focuses on how members of the German group experienced their integration into Huntsville. Among other things, it illustrates that the group was actually much more diverse than their

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image described here would suggest. But the fact that their neighbors perceived them as “the Germans,” which has mostly positive connotations in Huntsville, is essential for understanding how Huntsville residents responded to how the OSI treated Arthur Rudolph in 1984.

CHAPTER FOUR

Becoming Americans

That move to Huntsville was certainly the most significant event in the history of the German rocket team in America. First, it was a definite proof that the American government intended to keep the team here, and to assign important development projects to it. Second, we had become normal Civil Service employees of the government. Third, we were free to move around, to rent or buy houses, to join churches and civil organizations . . . and to eventually become real citizens of the United States of America. It was a great feeling for us to really belong now to this country which we had come to respect and to love as a second home. —Ernst Stuhlinger, German rocket specialist1

over 200 german rocketeers who had come to the United States under the auspices of Project Paperclip or later variations thereof moved to Huntsville with their families between 1950 and 1970.2 The first and largest group of approximately 110 families arrived in 1950 from Ft. Bliss, Texas; those who arrived later usually came individually and directly from Germany. Most of the Germans I spoke to felt that overall their families had been happy in Huntsville and they were well received by the locals. This is 94

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not too surprising. Not only had the German team’s association with the U.S. rocket development program brought the promise of economic growth for Huntsville, by 1950 Americans’ view of Germany and its citizens had changed dramatically since the end of the war. Divided into four occupation zones by the World War II Allies France, Britain, the United States, and the USSR, Germany had become the central stage for the cold war that now dominated U.S. domestic and foreign relations agendas. Following the decision against the more punitive Morgenthau Plan, the 1947 implementation of the Marshall Plan, which focused on rebuilding Europe, including Germany, as a future economic partner was in full swing. At the same time, national newspapers reported that American GIs and German women began fraternizing almost immediately after the war, despite an initial prohibition; before long, German war brides were allowed to move to the United States beginning in 1947.3 With the Berlin airlift of 1948 the U.S. government had demonstrated solidarity with the German population by successfully fighting the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The frequent delivery of CARE packets from the United States demonstrated Americans’ compassion for Germans; previous feelings of hostility were overcome as the two nations forged bonds over a new common enemy.4 The Nuremberg trials concluded in 1949, and the Federal Republic of Germany was formed, announcing its new basic law (Grundgesetz), which is based on the U.S. Constitution. The cold war, in which the United States considered the Soviet Union its main enemy and West Germany a trustworthy U.S. ally in the war against Communism, was at its height. The USSR tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, and President Truman gave orders to develop the hydrogen bomb in response in 1950. That year, Senator Joseph McCarthy began waging an internal war against Communism, and American troops faced a war in Korea. Despite this time of heightened anxiety, Germans and Americans alike were beginning to benefit from economic growth and feel more optimistic about their futures.5 Germany and its recent past were no longer a great concern for most Americans, and the historically ambiguous image of Germans had begun to swing back toward a more positive one. In order to align itself with the West and gain international respect and trust in addition to military protection, West Germany realized the importance of renewing its image around the world. As historian Brian C. Etheridge has explained, the

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United States supported these efforts and actively pursued favorable depictions of “the German people as dedicated democrats standing firm on the front line of the Cold War” to gain support for its policy of rehabilitating Germany.6 The challenge was to strike a balance between keeping images of Nazism alive to justify “the rhetoric of totalitarianism to explain the emerging Cold War” while separating Germans from Nazis—“the Cold War narrative not only distanced common Germans from the Third Reich but also cast present-day Germans in America’s image.”7 The American media absolved most ordinary Germans from responsibility for the Nazi regime and portrayed West Germany’s rapid economic growth in the 1950s as the result of American-style consumerism. Mainstream American images of Germans had come a long way when the German rocket specialists and their families moved to Huntsville. While the German families supported one another socially, by no means did they form a uniform group. In addition to differences in gender, age, education, the rocket specialist’s position in the workplace hierarchy, and pastime interests, their experiences and perspectives varied widely depending on what region in Germany they came from and the year they moved to the United States. Despite these differences within the group, however, the Germans recalled getting together regularly. Moreover, notwithstanding initial difficulties, most also eventually made friends with their American neighbors. The majority of those I spoke to wanted to “become American” in more ways than just acquiring citizenship, but their reasons differed, and some were still negotiating their German and American identities during the interviews. Most made Huntsville their permanent home and almost all who arrived in 1950 had become American citizens by 1955. As is common among the generation that witnessed the Nazi regime in Germany, the first-generation German interviewees did not discuss the atrocities committed during the Third Reich. Instead, many described the hardships of living through the war and some spoke of their fear of reprisal if they did not conform. The concept of a new start may have allowed them to consider their past in Germany under the Nazi regime to be something they could leave at the doorstep when they entered the United States. Nobody in Huntsville seemed to question that assumption, and if it had not been for the Rudolph case, most would have had little reason to revive those memories.

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THE GROUP

Recognizable to others mainly because of their accents, the Germans appeared fairly homogeneous from the outside, yet they were a quite heterogeneous group. One of the women expressed this tension to a friend: “You know, what still bothers me—they lumped us all together and we were very diverse. We were people from all over Germany—all kinds of experiences.”8 In fact, some were originally from Austria, but the diversity within the group went much further than just regional or national differences and affected their experiences of adjusting to their new environment. One aspect that seemed important to the group as a differentiating factor was the date of arrival in the United States. Among those who started out in Texas, the group that arrived in 1945–46 were somewhat exclusive. According to Konrad Dannenberg, those were “the 118 people we normally talk about. And in a way that’s really the original team.”9 This definition excludes those who came directly to Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s and even the specialists who joined the team in Ft. Bliss in 1947–48.10 Despite this caveat, everyone who lived and worked at Ft. Bliss was considered part of a discrete group. While some of the team members had already developed strong bonds at the rocket development center in Peenemünde, many of the specialists who were recruited for the U.S. military had not worked together, or even at the same location, before.11 What they did all have in common, of course, was the experience of working on the development of the V-2 rocket under the Nazi regime.12 Some of the families had already met in Peenemünde or in Landshut, Bavaria, where the dependents were temporarily stationed while awaiting the move to the United States. While all had experienced the war in Germany, some of the women had different experiences than their husbands because they did not live together during the war or because they had not been married yet. Living side by side as an isolated group in an annex of the William Beaumont General Hospital at Ft. Bliss for several years, however, created a union among the first arrivals that those arriving later sometimes felt excluded them.13 Those later arrivals had some demographics in common with the first group, but their experiences during and after the war had been quite different. In contrast to the group from Texas, they had lived through a longer period of poverty due to the destruction and chaos caused by World

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War II combined with significant social and political changes brought about by the postwar Allied occupation of Germany.14 They also did not share the experiences of Peenemünde, Landshut, or Ft. Bliss with the earlier group. Unlike that group, they were processed through Ellis Island. While members of the initial group helped recruit many of those who arrived later, and their families helped the newcomers adjust to the new environment, they did not invite the more recent arrivals to their reunions and did not consider them part of the team in the same way. Apart from their arrival dates, the Germans were also quite diverse in education and social status. The specialists who moved to Huntsville in 1950 included some with no or very little college education, a few who had almost finished their degrees but had to end their studies due to the war, and some with Ph.D.s in engineering or a natural science. These differences were quite important to some. Axel Roth, whose father was a degreed engineer, recalled having an argument with his parents about inviting his friend’s parents to his high school graduation party. Because his friend’s father, Erich Ball, was a technician and not an engineer, his parents told him, “Well, they really don’t fit in, you know.” Consequently, Roth explained, “Mr. and Mrs. Ball came by the house . . . a day or two before and brought a little present and they didn’t come to the party.”15 Although educational attainment and job position seemed to be important, none of the interviewees mentioned as a distinguishing factor the aristocratic background some of the German families had, marked by their surnames’ “von” prefix. It seems that this form of social classification, based on birth rather than merit, became obsolete in the American environment. The group did retain the German conventions of referring to members of the first generation by their last name only and addressing a person with a doctoral degree, even an honorary one, as “Dr.” In addition, some of the specialists had studied at more prestigious German universities than others, which offered another hierarchical layer.16 Among the women, many had worked professionally during the war and some had college degrees, but most had stopped working outside of the home once they were married. Very few had paying jobs in Huntsville.17 While there were some bachelors among the rocket experts, most were married and had children—from babies who had been born at Ft. Bliss to teenagers. Some of the bachelors, including Wernher von Braun, went back to Germany during their time at Ft. Bliss to get married. Several

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families included adult children who had not yet established their own lives in Germany when their parents left for the United States or who welcomed the opportunity to join their parents and begin a new life in America. Some of the rocketeers had brought other dependents from Germany as well, usually their own or their spouse’s parents and/or siblings. The rocket specialists were between thirty and fifty years old when they arrived in Huntsville, their wives generally a few years younger. Most of the families were Protestant (Lutheran), some were Catholic, and a few had no religious affiliation.18 FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND ADJUSTMENTS

In El Paso we were in a closed community. As a matter of fact, we had a fence around the place. We lived in that area and our fathers worked in that area. . . . My father just walked out the front door, walked down this ramp and went to his office. . . . It was a total change for us to come into an open community like [Huntsville]. —Axel Roth, son of a German rocket specialist19

The families that moved to Huntsville in 1950 had been in the country for up to five years, and their new status as resident aliens on the path to citizenship allowed them to plan their futures in the United States. The newness of America had worn off, but the move across the country nevertheless brought some significant changes. For one, they could now choose where and how they wanted to live. Their apartments in the barracks at Ft. Bliss had been very basic—some of the men had even built their own furniture to make it homey. Once in Huntsville, most became neighbors again in rented apartments, but they started looking for lots to build houses, even though there was no guarantee that this would be their last move. Most of the team members attained U.S. Civil Service status in 1952 and were naturalized as U.S. citizens by 1955.20 They saw a chance to build a new life in an environment that was culturally quite different from both Germany and the military compound at Ft. Bliss. Coming from an army base to an open environment meant that they had not only many more choices but also more direct interaction with the local community. Some had ventured out more than others while at Ft.

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Bliss, but most had some contact with Americans before they moved to Huntsville—usually through their children, who attended El Paso schools, or when they went shopping or to the movies. Most of the families were therefore already somewhat accustomed to American popular culture and had explored parts of their adopted homeland via road trips. One of the wives also mentioned a retired teacher of English at Ft. Bliss who offered some cultural and practical tips: to take advertisements “with a grain of salt,” how to protect oneself from sandstorms, and how to prepare American foods. Many had learned some English in school in Germany, and in Ft. Bliss some of those who were more proficient taught the others. But while the rocketeers were under extra pressure to learn the language because they needed it for their jobs, most of the wives did not have the same requirement, so their English did not necessarily improve as much in Texas.21 The landscape and climate were quite different as well: it was still hot, but the heat was now combined with intense humidity; instead of the desert, where they endured several sandstorms, they were now in the forested foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, a division of the Appalachian Mountain chain. Many of the German newcomers were happy to see the green hills of their new environment, which reminded them of landscapes in Germany. Others had fallen in love with the exoticism of the desert, its vegetation, and the mountains near El Paso. The humidity of Alabama was a stark contrast to the dry air of the area around Ft. Bliss, and air-conditioners were expensive. One member of the first generation remembered that Huntsville struck her as particularly dirty and she thought it was strange that people were sitting around the courthouse, apparently not working.22 Another remembered that Huntsville simply felt more rural than El Paso: farmers would come to town on Saturdays and preachers would sermonize from the courthouse steps. She was also surprised to see women shopping with rollers in their hair and found the relentless retail advertisements overwhelming.23 Even those who came to Huntsville in the mid- to late 1950s remembered it as a “cozy Alabama town” where “everybody left their doors unlocked.”24 While many experienced the move as a form of liberation from the enclosed environment of Ft. Bliss, Ursula Vann, eleven years old when her family moved to Huntsville, made a different observation. “Everything was older here than . . . it was in El Paso. . . . And I’m sure it was . . . just

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more of a western-style architecture, but it . . . seemed like this was a very old town. . . . I don’t know whether it just felt a little more oppressive . . . than in the West, where you just sort of had more of an optimistic feeling. . . . Maybe it was just big open sky and all the big vistas out there and suddenly we were kind of enclosed with mountains, the hills here and the greenery and old buildings.”25 Most families found vacant lots on which to build houses either on Monte Sano or in the Blossomwood area southeast of downtown Huntsville. A few moved to other areas of town, and some of those who arrived later moved to Darwin Downs, an area northeast of Huntsville. While the open environment meant more choices, it also exposed some obstacles. The lots on Monte Sano were attractive to many because they overlooked Huntsville, but the location was not particularly convenient for families with children, as they would have to drive their children to school and other engagements. Many of the women had never learned to drive. Axel Roth, who was fourteen years old when he and his parents moved to Huntsville, explained some of the difficulties his mother and the other German women faced: “Of course some of them didn’t have cars either and so I think for a lot of them, when they came to Huntsville it was a real shock . . . because suddenly they weren’t all in one little community. We were kind of spread out over Huntsville . . . and then they had to do things on their own and interact with Americans directly all the time . . . when they wanted to go shopping. It was kind of hard on some of them, I think.”26 At first the German families actually had little interaction with their American neighbors. The all-male rocket team worked long hours, and many of the wives were occupied raising small children. Since most of the wives did not yet speak English well and had German neighbors and friends, they mostly stayed among each other and formed an internal support network. Heidi Medenica recalled that some of the women would carpool to shop for groceries or other items: “We all started out slow and there was just a one-car family most of the time. And the women had to wait until the men came home. And so then they usually went out together to get groceries.”27 Most of the women cooked traditional German dishes at home if they could find the ingredients, although German goods were hard to find in Huntsville and some items had to be ordered by mail. A few interviewees remembered Marlin’s Delicatessen,

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owned by a Jewish couple, where the German families could buy some of the meats they were used to.28 Starting in 1963, a second-generation German, Dieter Schrader, opened a succession of restaurants offering German dishes.29 In her unpublished memoir, Elfriede Richter-Haaser recounted that her gingerbread houses and baked bread were popular when offered at the town’s fairgrounds, as were the baked goods German women offered to their American neighbors on special occasions.30 For many, the shopping trips were one of their few outings during the week. Some of the women would get together for coffee or to do needlework together. According to one interviewee, the lack of entertainment options in a small town did not help matters: “There was not a single bookshop, no theater . . . these special things. . . . There was no city life here in Huntsville. I guess that was very different in Chicago or New York, but here in Huntsville, there was a small library, but of course . . . at that time, I didn’t know enough English to use the library. So I missed that.”31 Some were so disappointed in how little entertainment Huntsville had to offer that they decided to leave, if only temporarily. Peter Finzel, who was five years old when his family moved to Huntsville in 1950, explained that his parents came from larger towns in Germany— the father from Leipzig and the mother from Danzig—and talked about their discontent with Huntsville, which was one of the reasons his father took a job for a short period in 1957 in New Jersey, where they could take advantage of the cultural and culinary opportunities that nearby New York City offered.32 Sabina Garrett’s family came to Huntsville in 1950 when she was still a toddler and moved back to Germany in 1963. Garrett married an American in Germany in 1970 and returned to the States, while her parents returned in 1979 after her father retired, presumably to be closer to the friends they had made in Huntsville. Garrett explained that her father took a job with the American company General Dynamics in Germany because “he wanted to make some money and offer his family . . . kind of a different life than just growing up in little Huntsville.”33 In this context, she recalled that as a teenager she did not find many entertainment options for her age group except for an ice-skating rink.34 Most teenagers seemed to cruise from one drive-in restaurant to another for diversion. Susanne Blumrich, fourteen when her parents moved to Huntsville in 1954, similarly recalled that, unlike in Germany, where she

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felt she had more options as a teenager, she could not go anywhere except downtown or to the public swimming pool in Huntsville.35 Whereas members of the first group seemed surprised and disappointed that many things were not as modern and sophisticated everywhere in the United States as they had expected, some of those who came later had the opposite reaction. Thanks to direct encounters with American troops stationed in Germany after the war and the “Americanization” of Western Europe, which had helped create a world of new images of America for Europeans, they had learned a lot more than the earlier group about current conditions in the United States before they came.36 Mario Rheinfurth, for example, who arrived in Huntsville in 1957, talked about his surprise to find running water and electricity in Alabama after reading journalist John Gunther’s Inside USA (1947). Gunther had apparently led him to believe that those basic conveniences were not available in the state.37 A few decided to leave the area when the opportunity arose, but Peter Cerny, who was eleven when his parents moved to Huntsville in 1957, explained that other members of his parents’ generation worked to create an environment that would allow them to feel more comfortable in their new hometown—eliminating some of the reasons people might have wanted to leave. “Part of it was that they sort of created an atmosphere too. You know . . . , the classical music, the symphony, the theater, the symphony guild, and all those kind of things—they helped create those and that sort of tied the . . . people together.”38 In addition, many would get together regularly, either at the Lutheran St. Mark’s Church for regular and special services—many of the second generation were baptized, confirmed, and some were married there— parties at each other’s homes, or later to picnic, swim, and fish at nearby Guntersville Lake, where several families purchased lakeside property or a boat. The guests at these parties were not always exclusively German, but according to some members of the second generation, their parents were playing German music, dancing, and sometimes talking about their war experiences, which was less likely to happen when Americans were present. Once they had settled in a little, music and theater appear to have been the main community activities in which the first-generation Germans invested time and energy. Quite a few played musical instruments, and some joined a group that later grew into the Huntsville

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Symphony.39 Others supported this development by attending performances and hosting small concerts in their homes. When Medenica arrived at the end of the 1950s, she found few classical music programs available on Huntsville’s radio stations and began hosting a one-hour program playing “classical, semiclassical, and lighter entertainment music.”40 Interested in a different style of music, another group of women formed a singing group accompanied by accordion that performed German folk songs at nursing homes and church events in traditional dirndl dresses.41 Other than music, most of the men recalled being too busy at work to get involved in clubs or other activities in Huntsville, although some later taught a few classes at what would become the University of Alabama in Huntsville. While some of the women were more comfortable among their group of German friends, others did venture out and pursued activities that involved the larger community—for example, by supporting animal care, volunteering at the town’s art museum, or joining a garden club.42 Richter-Haaser, who moved to Huntsville in 1950, stated in her memoir that she volunteered at Huntsville’s hospital for a while and at one point put together a book about Huntsville “for the many out of town visitors coming to see this once forgotten village which was now making World-news.”43 Some of the women got involved with the community through their children’s activities, for example, as den mothers for the Girl and Boy Scouts. Regardless of the level of the Germans’ involvement, the cultural changes Huntsville underwent seem to have created an environment more conducive to some of their interests. One of the women of the first generation explained that she missed people mainly, but very few other things because “there are so many things going on in Huntsville, which . . . really . . . that is all I need. I do have theater now. The Huntsville is not the Huntsville of fifty years ago. . . . And . . . so . . . what I missed fifty years ago I don’t miss today anymore.”44 There are, of course, a few things about Germany that some still miss. A few interviewees mentioned good public transportation, more opportunities for hiking and places to stop for a snack while hiking, more cultural performance choices, some foods, being able to sit as long as one wants in a restaurant after finishing a meal, and being in an environment where everyone speaks German.

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RECEPTION

Most of the interviewees remembered a warm welcome from their American neighbors and could not recall any negative encounters related to the fact that they had come from the former Nazi Germany. Quite the contrary, some were surprised to be treated as well as they were, and most remembered locals’ kindness, hospitality, consideration, helpfulness, friendliness, and sometimes curiosity. Käthe Jacobi, who arrived in Huntsville with her husband in 1950, recalled how the Americans she encountered would try to connect to her by recounting their own German heritage: “You found so many people . . . you’d go to a store or to a beauty shop. They all said, ‘Oh, my grandmother was a German too’ or ‘My mother is a German too.’ ”45 When the German families first moved into their new houses, their American neighbors sometimes stopped by to welcome them. One of the German women remembered being invited to join a garden club that her neighbors belonged to, and Richter-Haaser described a visit from a woman representing the Welcome Wagon Society who brought information about the merchants in town “who were welcoming us to Htsv. and had a small gift for us when we would visit their store.”46 Richter-Haaser again reflected on the positive reception of the Germans while describing her experiences learning to square dance: “In all our doing, we never found anybody from the American people who would have objected [to] our getting involved with something like this and mingle with the population—, the opposite, everybody was happy that we took such an interest in their life and felt happy joining them in their leisure time also.”47 The few who did recall some hostile remarks considered those exceptions. Instead of hostility directed specifically toward Germans, Vann recalled social boundaries that affected all newcomers because of their lack of local roots: “The ones that had been here, whose families were ‘old Huntsville,’ I think they were fairly selective about who they allowed in their group. But there were so many other people that had moved here from various parts of the country, so it was never . . . an issue as far as I was concerned.”48 While Vann interpreted local aloofness as a response to newcomers, Dieter Teuber, who moved to Huntsville in 1953 to join the von Braun team, viewed it as an expression of class-consciousness, referring to the group in Huntsville that enforced boundaries as the “cotton nobility.”49

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Medenica, who arrived in 1959, noted, however, that she did not recall any distinctions being made by the time she arrived, confirming Vann’s notion that these boundaries did not last long once the city’s population expanded and diversified significantly.50 Very few had the opportunity to compare their reception in Huntsville to how they would have been received in other parts of the country. An exception was Klaus Dannenberg’s family, which moved to Huntsville in 1950 but lived in Los Angeles between 1953 and 1958. Dannenberg remembered more animosity in L.A. than in Huntsville: “There was . . . a lot of post–World War II . . . anti-German sentiment . . . which we really never experienced in Huntsville. . . . I got in fights with people all the time and I was picked on in school. . . . In Huntsville, you know, I think the community there accepted us very readily.”51 While it is possible that antiGerman sentiments were stronger in Los Angeles than in Huntsville, there may be another explanation. The Dannenbergs came as a single family to Los Angeles, not as part of a larger group of Germans whose arrival coincided with large military contracts and jobs for locals, as was the case in Huntsville. Without the protection of the group and the tangible and intangible benefits that made the Germans who were moving to Huntsville attractive to locals, the Dannenbergs were probably more vulnerable in the metropolitan community. When asked, some of my interviewees speculated about how different their experiences might have been if they had moved to a different area as a group. Peter Finzel ventured that a move to a community where Germans had settled before might have allowed the group to integrate better into the larger community: “I think being in the South the Germans were kind of a self-contained German community. There were not a lot of Germans here. Had they gone to someplace like Wisconsin . . . that was already full of Germans they . . . might not have even been noticed that much. . . . Plus the fact is that a lot of them probably would have been happier with the climate. . . . North—that’s more like what they were used to so I . . . really think it did make a difference.”52 Gudrun Klauss, who joined her father in Huntsville in 1954 with her mother when she was eight years old, ventured that there was little resistance to the German families moving in because of the town’s “southern culture” and because the Germans were not perceived as a threat: “I think that it was because of the southern culture that the assimilation was easy

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as it was . . . laid back . . . hospitable . . . it was kind of a lazy town. So you weren’t really in conflict with anything that was going on when you brought this in. . . . The German population wasn’t a threat to anyone in the sense that there were two cultures fighting each other.”53 Klauss’s term southern culture, echoed by several of the white interviewees, seems to mean hospitality, politeness, and a laissez-faire attitude, but not Jim Crow–style segregation—at least not explicitly. Her description of the relationship with the locals, however, points to her awareness that the reception could have been quite different. The statement that the Germans were “not a threat to anyone” is reminiscent of Charles Ray’s comments about the lack of threat posed by African Americans to the white community of Huntsville, which he concluded is the reason for less zealous expressions of racism in the area.54 While Klauss may not have intended to suggest a correlation, Dieter Teuber openly compared the reception of the Germans to the treatment of African Americans at the time: “The discrimination was pretty severe against Negroes, and if there was any against Germans, that’s insignificant in comparison. Everybody discriminates in one way or another . . . but in relation to the way the blacks were treated, the Germans were treated first class.”55

“ROCKET SCIENTISTS” The children of the German rocket specialists had to adapt to their new surroundings just as their parents did. Most tried to blend in with their American peers, which mainly meant learning to speak English without a German accent, adjusting to the school system, and conforming to American consumerism. While the process of “Americanization” came with some hurdles when they were children, their German heritage was no longer detectable when they became adults. Despite adapting well to the new environment—to the extent that most spoke English with a southern accent—their German heritage and the German group formed an important part of the second generation’s identities. Without grandparents or uncles, aunts, and cousins nearby, the German community in Huntsville represents an extended family for some of the children. The initiation of regular gatherings of the second generation in the early 2000s brought together many who had left Huntsville and not seen each other in a long time but who feel a special CHILDREN OF

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connection because of their upbringing as part of the group. Several were nostalgic and at least two of the interviewees became teary-eyed when reflecting on their friendships among the German group. Most of the school-age children did not speak English when they moved to the United States with their parents. Although those interviewees who had gone to school in El Paso said they received some additional schooling in English, those who started school in Huntsville did not recall any supplemental language classes. Instead, some parents made a point of speaking German at home and some children were sent to take German lessons with Hertha Heller, one of the women of the first generation. If the children lived in a neighborhood where mainly other German children lived, they had to learn English quickly once they began attending school. This was particularly true for those whose parents arrived in Huntsville after 1950. Cerny, whose parents moved to Huntsville in 1957, was sent straight to sixth grade “speaking about five words of English.”56 If possible, the newly arrived children were paired with German children more experienced in speaking English. This strategy did not always work well, as Blumrich’s sister, Kathryn Hilten, who was about nine years old when her family moved to Huntsville, remembered. When she started attending school in Huntsville, “There was one German there. And he was supposed to translate for me. So he— of course, you cannot blame this poor kid. I mean, can you imagine? You clawed your way up the ladder and there all of a sudden you’re set back with this new kid on the block and he was supposed to speak German again when he is finally starting to blend in? And so he just . . . every time I even looked at him, he just . . . ducked under his seat or something. There’s no way he was going to help me.”57 For the school-age children of the German group, the move across country was possibly even more significant than the move from one country to another. Ursula Vann recalled suffering from “culture shock” when she was first sent to a rural school at age eleven: After that summer I ended up at Riverton School, a county school. Let me tell you about culture shock for that. I had never ridden a big yellow school bus. In Texas we had army buses that hauled us into El Paso with an MP to keep order, I guess. This was a yellow school bus that went way out in the country to

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Riverton School. . . . The kids were really nice and there was absolutely no problem as far as—there were probably three or four little Germans in the class. . . . [But] we had no sooner started school, there was cotton-picking vacation. . . . I was home again for six weeks. There was nothing to do. And I remember just sitting in . . . a chair outside and . . . reading away for six weeks.58 Vann’s experience illustrates a clash between rural and urban communities that not only surprised children not raised on a farm but affected their access to cultural capital. While the farmers’ children had to work in the cotton fields, the German children could use the time to read. Apart from different expectations for children in rural and urban communities, there were apparently also significant differences between American and German approaches to academics. Children who had gone to school in Germany before their families moved to Huntsville described a great difference in academic standards between their schooling in the two locations. Blumrich explained: I had gone to a girls’ school, a very strict girls’ school since I was ten years old—six days of school in Germany. And Sundays I had to spend with the family and doing homework. So I was really sheltered from the outside world since my tenth year of age. . . . [We] had I don’t know how many different courses, ten or so, with the main ones every day—English every day, German every day, Latin for two years, biology, etc. . . . So I had two years of algebra before I came to Alabama at fourteen, where I had to repeat the whole two years over again. The school system was archaic, Alabama’s school system in 1954 was the next to the worst in the nation; Mississippi was at the bottom.59 With this description, Blumrich confirmed Alice Tanner’s and Loretta Spencer’s comments, cited in the previous chapter, about how “studious” their German classmates were. Both American and German children seemed to experience this “contact zone” as humbling, yet from opposite perspectives.60 While Tanner and Spencer masked their humiliation by insisting that it was “fun” to be in the same classroom with the German children, Blumrich focused on the “archaic” school system rather than

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her classmates to describe her frustration of having to adjust to the standards in her Huntsville classroom. Neither of them wanted to offend the other. Not all Germans considered the school system offered in Huntsville’s public schools to be less academically rigorous than German schools. Susanne Teuber, who was already twenty-one when her parents moved to Huntsville in 1953, had younger siblings who attended high school in Huntsville, and her own children received their primary education in local schools as well. Besides noting that she believed she missed out on becoming more “Americanized” by not having attended high school in the United States, she saw definite advantages in the schooling her siblings and children received: “Something that you get in high school here—you get a broader spectrum of experiences. When we went to high school [in Germany], all we did was study, study, study, ’cause it was so hard. . . . If you didn’t shape up, you had to leave the school. . . . Here they had band and theater groups . . . they had so many extracurricular things here which we never had.”61 While Blumrich felt that Huntsville schools did not challenge her intellect enough, Teuber seemed somewhat envious of the variety of options American children had for exploring their interests and talents, as opposed to the academic rigor she had endured in German schools. While attending school in Huntsville apparently offered challenges for some of the children in the beginning, most recalled that it did not take long until they became friends with American children in school and in their neighborhoods. The ratio of friendships with German versus American children varied, often depending on residential proximity, since transportation was not readily available. Some of the German children saw each other only when their parents socialized or for birthday parties. Often the groups of friends were mixed, but some activities were limited to the German children. Finzel explained that he used to play with Germans and some Americans after school, but since he went to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church and the Boy Scouts with the German boys, “It just seems like we . . . knew each other pretty well.”62 Having other German children around to play and grow up with would have allowed them to share their experiences negotiating the new environment and their parents’ cultural expectations. Yet those who lived on Monte Sano were less likely to engage in after-school activities with

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other children, German or American. Inge Allan, who was thirteen years old when her family moved to Huntsville, recalled feeling quite isolated during her childhood: So I had plenty . . . of friends in school, but the minute school was out I got on that school bus and I had to . . . ride home and it took an hour, actually. . . . So I was one of those people who was kind of lonesome as a teenager because of that. . . . Now it seems that parents think . . . “Okay, I’ve got to take my children here and there or they’re not doing enough—we’ve got to enroll them in this lesson or that lesson or such.” Well, the Germans weren’t that way in those days. They’d just been through a war and . . . they had hardly enough time and energy to . . . assimilate themselves, much less provide extra transportation, and so my parents hardly ever . . . took me to school functions.63 Although a lack of after-school interaction could have an isolating effect, there were other factors that prevented some of the German children from engaging more with their American peers. Blumrich (who, incidentally, was one of the few who later married another member of the German group) blamed her parents’ attitude toward education for her failure to connect closely with American children once she was comfortable with the language: “I guess I wasn’t American enough for a while. . . . It takes about a year or two. You have to really be fluent in the language before you understand the humor, the idioms, the subtleties of what people mean—maybe even their attitudes and their lifestyles. . . . My parents had this exclusivity thing—you went home, you studied all day. I was sent to college that way. I was sent to a girls’ school, a restrictive girls’ school, so that I would just study. It was my mission in life, study and music.”64 In Blumrich’s case, her parents’ different approach to education evidently had broader consequences, preventing her from forming bonds with her American classmates. Education was not the only thing that could set the German children apart from their American peers. Those who did not actively try to avoid stereotyping and wore hand-knit sweaters and socks instead of massproduced, store-bought clothing or brought German food to school were ridiculed for their display of difference. Tomas Friend, whose parents, Edel and Willibald Prasthofer, came to Huntsville in 1958, grew up in

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Huntsville in the 1960s and 1970s. He recalled that other children in school harassed and even hit him because he was German. He thought this was a result of the many World War II movies and the Hogan’s Heroes sitcom that depicted Germans of the World War II era as buffoons.65 When asked if he knew of others with similar experiences, he said no, surmising that “other people might have tried a lot harder to fit in. I mean, when I went to school I often would bring my own lunch. My food would be different. I’d have a liverwurst sandwich and Bauernbrot [German-style bread]. And the other kids would look at it and say, ‘Oh that smells funny and it looks funny.’ ”66 With few exceptions, most of the children of the group married Americans who had no immediate connection with German culture.67 Many tried to pass their German-language skills on to their own children, but with only one German-speaking parent in most cases, this was a difficult task. Many of the sons and daughters of the rocket specialists sought professions in fields more or less related to their father’s area of expertise, and some also found employment with NASA. Some moved back to Germany when they were old enough to make such a decision. Most did not realize the uniqueness of their lives growing up, but upon reflection as adults realized that being a child of one of the members of the group was historically and culturally significant. Garrett summarized this sentiment: “You know . . . this is a unique group and . . . as I’m getting older now I realize that our parents had a very unique place in history and that [it was] such a special group to have . . . come over here under the circumstances that they did and to have been an integral part of the space program. . . . They were space pioneers. . . . I’m very proud to have been a part of that and . . . I almost brag about being the daughter of a space pioneer.”68 CHOICES

Most of the rocket specialists and their families had not planned to spend their lives outside Germany, but Ernst Stuhlinger and Oscar Holderer both stated that they had always wanted to live in the United States someday.69 The Nazi regime’s portrayal of America had been ambiguous at best, but in contrast to “barbaric” Russia, the United States stood primarily for modernity, technology, and wealth in Germany.70 Stuhlinger captured this image in one of his speeches in front of a local audience: “When I was a schoolboy in Germany during the late 1920s, my friends and I avidly read

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books about America. Most of them were adventure books; they told of the Indians, of the early settlers in the wild western territories, of the gold rushes, of the great railroad projects that won the West, of Henry Ford’s fantastic success with the automobile, of the endless wheat fields of the midwestern plains, of the cotton pickers in the south, the big cities and the enormous skyscrapers, of the marvelous prairies and mountains of the West, and of the unlimited opportunities available to those who are ready to accept them.” The adventure books that Stuhlinger refers to are most likely the fictional works of Karl May, which other interviewees mentioned directly and which have been highly popular in Germany since the end of the nineteenth century. Ironically, Karl May had not traveled to the United States when he wrote these books, but he captured the imagination of many Germans with his series of novels set in America in the style of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. In a later edition of this speech, Stuhlinger spoke of a teacher who had been to the United States and who told about his “adventures” in America, which apparently left a deep impression on his teenage students.71 Yet while some were obviously excited to finally live in the country of their dreams, others found the transition difficult. The rocketeers had moved voluntarily, and most recalled embracing the opportunity to work in their field with von Braun in a more prosperous environment compared to a devastated postwar Germany. Before it became a real possibility, however, neither the rocket experts nor their wives had thought about moving to another country—let alone the United States. Once in the country, the differences in culture seemed hard to adjust to for some, especially the wives, who did not have the exciting job opportunities that gratified their husbands. Some of the children recalled that their mothers were generally more vulnerable to homesickness than their fathers, albeit usually for a Germany that no longer existed. Finzel remembered that his mother often talked about wanting to go back to “her Germany”: “She just . . . thought America was too strange a land. It was the rampant commercialism, the capitalism over here that she didn’t like. She much preferred the way it was over in Germany where the German people—quality of life seems to be more important to them. . . . But as my brother and sister and I talked about [it], her Germany went away when the war was over because the Germany after World War II was never the same as it was the way she remembered it.”72

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Many simply missed their families and friends. So those who had the option began visiting them in Germany a few years after they had settled in Huntsville. One interviewee noted that although her mother would not talk about how much she missed life in Germany, that seemed obvious during their visits: “It was so interesting—we went to Germany together a few times and the last time we went I was . . . an adult . . . and I felt like she was a different person over there. She was just so carefree. . . . So I have a feeling . . . she did miss things but she never talked about that.” The interviewee’s father, on the other hand, seemed to have a very different reaction: laney: Was your father ever homesick, you think, . . . for

Germany? interviewee: If he was, I think it was immediately dispelled after

his first visit to Germany. . . . Because I do remember him coming back from a trip . . . and saying, “I could never live there again. It’s just too crowded—everything’s too small, everyone lives on top of each other.”73 The visits varied in frequency, and some of the women went back for extended stays. In the long run, these visits may have had an effect such as they had on Inge Allan, who explained that she thought her extended visit to Germany in 1960 at the age of twenty-three helped her decide where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.74 For the children, the issue was usually not that they missed Germany but that they grew up without any other family members except their parents. In some cases one or maybe two other family members had moved with their parents, but typically there were no aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents around. Finzel mentioned this when he compared his own experiences with those of his children: “My wife is one of seven kids so [my children] grew up around all their aunts, uncles, lots of cousins, you know, all the things I never had. I never knew my grandparents. I never knew my cousins and aunts and uncles because they were all over there [in Germany].”75 Most of those who had arrived in the mid- to late 1940s decided to stay in the United States, even when they were offered jobs in Germany. Finzel recalled that his father responded to his mother’s desire to move back to Germany by explaining that he “could never live this well over there . . . as an engineer.”76 In most cases the wives were the ones more

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interested in moving back, but in Thomas Luehrsen’s family, his father was the one who seemed to miss Germany the most, which resulted in his return after the successful first moon landing, while the rest of his family stayed in Huntsville, struggling to live on his pension from NASA and a small stipend he sent from Germany.77 The men’s retirement was another time to consider returning to Germany, but most interviewees explained that by that time they would have had to leave behind their children and grandchildren as well as the relationships they had formed in Huntsville. In contrast, according to Mario Rheinfurth, who has tried to keep track of the families that came to Huntsville after 1950, almost half of these families eventually returned to Germany. This difference between the earlier arrivals and those who came later may be related to Germany’s economy. By the time it began flourishing again, thereby making a move a more viable option, many of the early arrivals might have felt more settled in the United States.78 In addition, their positive memories were evidently primarily of a prewar Germany. Despite frequently visiting Germany beginning in the 1950s, the earlier group had limited exposure to the postwar environment. As some of the children noted, the Germany their parents missed no longer existed, so that a move back would have meant adjusting to a new environment yet again. Some members of the second generation moved back to Germany even though their parents and siblings stayed in the United States. These moves were usually motivated by marriage to a German citizen. Regardless of whether they were first or second generation, those who still had family in Germany were usually in touch with some of their family members. Several members of both generations tried to keep up with what was happening in Germany politically and culturally, but only a few made the effort to locate and read a German newspaper, so they relied mainly on the American media, which, for obvious reasons, do not focus as much on German issues. N E G O T I AT I N G I D E N T I T I E S

When somebody said one time becoming a citizen made no difference, I said, “Oh, no!” Because before I became a citizen, we had lost the war, and afterwards, we had won it! —Mario Rheinfurth, German rocket specialist, 2007

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With few exceptions, the majority of the German men and women eventually became American citizens, which meant that they had to relinquish their German citizenship. Many took part in one of two larger citizenship ceremonies that were publicized widely—one on November 11, 1954, in Birmingham, and the other on April 14, 1955, in a high school auditorium in Huntsville.79 Newspaper articles noted the attendance of more than one thousand people witnessing the ceremony in Huntsville, including military and city officials as well as the Reverend George Hart of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. After the ceremony, all new citizens were invited to a luncheon hosted by the local Rotary Club. For some, receiving American citizenship brought clarity about their national belonging, and some of the women became American citizens because they thought it would be beneficial to their husband’s employment status. The German rocketeers who had arrived with von Braun early after the war typically echoed his sentiment that “becoming American” was a matter of conviction. In the context of the citizenship ceremony in Huntsville, von Braun supposedly stated that the decision to surrender to the U.S. Army was based on the decision to surrender the “secret of rocketry” to “a people who read the Bible,” inferring not only that his team had options and chose the United States as their new home country but also that the American people earned the allegiance of the German team because of their adherence to Christian traditions.80 In the context of the cold war, von Braun’s statement highlighted the contrast between the United States and the Soviet Union, implying that the geopolitical differences between the two superpowers were based on, or at least compounded by, religious differences. By referencing the Bible, von Braun placed the team firmly within Christianity while simultaneously distancing himself and the team from the Soviet Union, Communism, and “Godless atheism.” This would have been particularly effective in endearing himself to his audience in the so-called Bible Belt. Von Braun continued that he was “proud to be a citizen of the United States of America and of Huntsville, Ala.” and that “this is the happiest and most significant day of my life. I must say that we all became American citizens in our hearts long ago.”81 With this statement he stressed that becoming American was a matter of true conviction for the German team members, solidified by a conversion process and confirmed and formalized by a citizenship ceremony similar to a baptism or confirmation. He assured

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his audience that he and his team members had let go of their allegiance to Germany a long time ago. In other words, by becoming American citizens and relinquishing their German citizenship, they accepted the American nation and its history as theirs, leaving their German pasts behind. At that same citizenship ceremony, Erich Ball offered another reason why many team members were elated to become Americans: “My home was in East Germany. . . . I lost everything and I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to.”82 Those who came from a region that was occupied by the Soviet Union after the war could not visit their hometowns until the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was dismantled in 1989.83 German citizenship had therefore lost significant meaning. Both von Braun and Ball assured American readers that they were grateful for the opportunity to become American citizens. While von Braun emphasized the act of choosing the team’s destiny, Ball focused on what he perceived as a lack of choice. And while von Braun appealed to the emphasis on religion in his new home country, Ball reminded readers of the so-called iron curtain—a symbol of Communism that both the German rocket experts and most of their American neighbors would have perceived as a serious threat. In this way, they presented the Germans as Christians and anti-Communists—model citizens in the 1950s. Von Braun suggested that American citizenship meant embracing American values, which also implied a distancing from the Nazi past. In contrast, Susanne Teuber, who came to the United States as an adult with her family in 1953 and who was the only interviewee who chose not to become an American citizen, linked American citizenship to her experiences under the Nazi regime. She alluded to experiences during the Third Reich as reasons for not wanting to become an American citizen: “The one thing that bothered me about becoming an American citizen is the . . . flag-waving thing here. You know, this ‘greatest country on Earth’—I have trouble swallowing that.” Earlier in the interview her husband, Dieter Teuber, had provided the context for the inferred relationship with the Third Reich: “We’re allergic, in a way, to flags and all that stuff. We’ve heard that all before. . . . We’re damaged from the last war . . . ‘Germans are the greatest.’ ” His wife added, “They . . . used our enthusiasm when we were growing up. . . . We stood forever there, greeting the flag . . . singing all those Nazi songs. So a flag today for us is a nonentity. We don’t want to have anything to do with the flag.”84

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The Teubers’ feelings about the use of flags to demonstrate patriotism is not uncommon in Germany. The display of flags in settings other than official government business has been controversial since World War II and has only recently become more acceptable in public settings.85 By comparing the use of the national flag in the United States to its use in Nazi Germany, however, Susanne Teuber suggested a similarity between the systems. She obviously felt betrayed by the Nazi regime and linked her decision not to become an American citizen to this betrayal—as if she expects that nationalism of any kind can lead to the same humiliation. Yet Teuber’s refusal to become a naturalized American citizen may have more complex roots, which appeared briefly when, referring to the United States, she explained, “Deep down, really, it’s not my country.”86 Although gaining American citizenship played an important role for many of the Germans, only a few tied it directly to “being American.” For some, this was a conscious either-or decision; for others, it was more of a negotiation. In each generation, some said they are American citizens and that their German heritage is expressed in their interest in German culture. For others, the answer was more complicated. Konrad Dannenberg stated that he thought of himself as American once he and his family moved to Huntsville, and that his second marriage later in life to an American woman reinforced this.87 Considering that the German families bought land on which they built houses once they moved to Huntsville, Dannenberg’s reply does not seem unusual. Many other interviewees commented on the move as marking an important change in their self-perception: from temporary to permanent residents. Others found it more difficult to answer my question about being American. Heinz Struck, who moved to the United States in 1958, explained that he identifies as American but qualified that he did not think he is a “typical American”: Well, I was not born here—that is paramount to . . . feel[ing] American. No, I’m not, but I don’t feel different from any other American. But of course I see the world . . . with a German eye, so . . . I don’t have a focused mentality. I see the world a little bit . . . broader than maybe a typical American. . . . You have put a hard question to me. I have to go into my inner sense and find out what do I really feel. Well . . . , when I [am] . . . in . . . other

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countries . . . I have to defend America. I can’t do that all the time because sometimes they do dumb stuff here too. So . . . I cannot . . . defend all things. But I did that once in a while . . . I defended the American way, and I said, “It’s free . . . you can do what you want to do in America unless you . . . do any bad things.” So is that American? I guess it is.88 To Struck, being American comes with the obligation to defend the nation, if only verbally, which he finds difficult at times. While these difficulties are clearly not specific to immigrants, he associates them with having also “a German eye” with which he views the world. One of the women, who joined her husband in the United States in 1951, struggled like Struck to provide an answer to whether she considers herself more American or German. Similar to Susanne Teuber, she suggested that it might be linked to her emotional reaction to national symbols and traditions: “I think about that myself very often. Where do I really [belong]?—they are very primitive feelings. In some ways, when you get goose bumps. . . . I don’t have that when I hear the American national anthem, which I had as a child when I heard the German national anthem. . . . I can’t tell you where my alliances are exactly. I can’t tell you.”89 She then explained that she feels at home in America, except when it comes to politics. Presumably, she did not agree with some U.S. government decisions, which was why she felt more European, if not necessarily more German, than American. She further noted that her neighbors in Huntsville would identify her as the “German lady next door,” whereas her brother’s next-door neighbors in Germany think of her as an American, implying that this contributes to her insecurity concerning her sense of belonging. Like Erich Ball, many members of the team and their spouses were born and raised in the part of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union after the war and were therefore unable to visit their hometowns and families during the cold war. Some were from areas that now belonged to Poland or Czechoslovakia.90 For them, “being American” had yet another meaning, as Ursula Vann described: “I realized later that I really never felt German because we were Sudeten Germans and that was . . . slightly different. . . . We had lived in that area . . . for ages as German nationals. And we were kicked out after the war. . . . Well, that’s why I never really

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felt that German identity that a lot of people felt because where I was born is now Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic and I don’t have any really deep roots in what is Germany now. . . . That’s one of the reasons I’ve never gone back . . . because it would be going as a tourist to another country. . . . Until recently, [I] really couldn’t go back to where I was born.”91 Some interviewees were not ambivalent at all. Käthe Jacobi just seemed surprised at how easy it was to change allegiances: “All of a sudden we were Americans,” while Hans Fichtner, who arrived in 1945, stated simply, “I’m American. . . . I made my decision to become an American.”92 He then explained that many in the group continue to compare the United States with Germany and that they “cannot let loose of the German.” In regards to allegiance, he said he believes that “you commit yourself to it [the United States] and then you stick with it.”93 Accordingly, national identity is based on a conscious decision, much like a contract or traditional notions of the level of commitment required for marriage. For Fichtner, being American seems to come with the obligation to relinquish feelings for his former home. He was not the only one who conveyed this conviction. One of the women recalled being told by another woman in the group to stop complaining about how different the new environment was with a German idiom: “Dessen Brot man ißt, dessen Lied man singt” (The one whose bread one eats is the one whose song one sings)—national allegiance is tied to whoever offers sustenance. It is also a conscious decision and commitment to distance oneself from former ties, which resonates with Huntsville’s willingness to ignore the Germans’ former allegiance to the Nazi regime. While the reprimanded woman took the comment to heart and presumably stopped commenting on the differences between Germany and the United States, she said that she still thinks of herself primarily as a German. Of those I spoke to, Oscar Holderer, who came to the United States in 1945 and who, like Stuhlinger, had prewar ambitions to visit the United States, was the only one who stated that he is American and does not think of himself as German. He noted that while he did not feel ashamed of being German, he felt at home in the United States as soon as he arrived and did not miss anything from Germany.94 Like Konrad Dannenberg, he was one of the few who married an American woman in his second marriage, which may have some impact on his current relationship to being German, although he explained that his first wife was as

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enthusiastic about the United States as he was and that after her parents had passed away, they preferred vacationing in Switzerland instead of Germany. Holderer’s desire to make the United States his home early on also seems evidenced by the fact that he built a house in El Paso as soon as he had the opportunity and before he knew that the team would be moved to Huntsville. According to him, he was the only one to do that.95 Most members of the first generation were often reminded that they were perceived as Germans because of their accents. This was not the case for members of the second generation, several of whom stated that they do not think of themselves as German, especially if they married an American spouse who has no connection to Germany. Nevertheless, the extent to which a member considers him- or herself American or German varied widely among the second generation as well. In fact, it seemed that the children of the rocket engineers were faced more directly with their parents’ past than their parents were because they were sometimes subject to teasing and confrontations with other children in school. Many lost that stigma as soon as they left Huntsville since no one outside the city knew their parents were German. As Peter Finzel explained, “When I went to college—I mean, no one in my college knew that I was German. . . . I was just another American to them . . . going to college.”96 Detaching himself from the Germans in Huntsville also increased Finzel’s own sense of being American: “I really think that the biggest step I took toward becoming American is when I went off to college. . . . For the first time I was away from all my German buddies. . . . And when I . . . developed American friends . . . I really . . . lost that sense of being part of that . . . German group.”97 Peter Cerny similarly thought that he became “Americanized” once he went to college but for a slightly different reason. His family came to the United States in 1957 from Austria when he was eleven years old. Cerny believed his Austrian parents were more strict than American parents, so he associated “being American” with freedom from his parents’ rules: “Not that [my parents] hovered over me or anything like that, but . . . there were certain things that they expected [and] once I was at college I didn’t have anybody to tell me what to do.”98 Peter Finzel’s response was a bit more unusual. He declared that his identity is based on a decision he made when he was a young boy and became a citizen: “In a lot of ways I’m more of an American than I am a

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German. . . . I often wondered . . . if my life would be any different had I married a German girl . . . but it seems like I had made the decision when I was younger, when I became a citizen at twelve . . . and I had the right when I got to be an adult to revoke my citizenship and take back my German citizenship, but I’d made the decision—no, I’m an American. I’m going to stay over here. So I . . . just adopted the whole idea that . . . America’s my future and . . . I’m going to marry an American and I’m just going to . . . make my future here.”99 Unlike Finzel, who based his decision to marry an American on an earlier decision to “be an American,” others of the second generation saw their marriage to an American who had no obvious German heritage as the deciding factor that made them feel more American. Like most Americans, members of the German group in Huntsville associated cultural expressions, such as food, music, clothing, language, and even politics, with their German “ethnic” identity. But answers to the question of “being German” among the second generation seemed also to inspire an array of stereotypes. Klaus Dannenberg, for example, whose mother followed his father and brought Klaus to the United States as a toddler in the late 1940s, used common stereotypes of Germans to describe how German he considers himself. While his declaration that he has “a lot of German national characteristics,” such as being “precise, being on time, being dependable, being harsh” may have been tongue-incheek, it was not said without a sense of pride.100 Some of the interviewees expressed that being German made them feel superior. One interviewee, who arrived in the United States when he was about five years old in 1946, contrasted himself with “rednecks” to describe his identity: laney: Do you think of yourself as German still? haukohl: You know, there are times I do and there are times

that I . . . think I’m about as redneck as you can get. I don’t speak redneck but I get along well with those people. I really do—it’s kind of funny. All you’ve got to do is go to a drag race and . . . I probably shouldn’t have said that but there are a lot . . . of folks where I went . . . there were a lot of rednecks out there and I was told not to speak to any of them and that’s all I did—I spoke to them. [My son] . . .

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said, “Daddy . . . you shouldn’t speak to those people over there. Number one, they won’t understand you.” But what he doesn’t understand is that I can get down to that level real quick and I communicate well with them.101 With this account, Haukohl inadvertently suggested that his identity choices between German and American mean that he has to decide between a higher and a lower social status. When asked directly why he is proud of his German heritage, Haukohl replied, “Gee, Germans have done some great things in history. They’re not a lazy people—very industrious, smart. I just hope to jump in and ride the bandwagon.”102 Roth, who arrived in the United States in 1946 when he was ten years old, explained his pride in his German heritage by suggesting that his bloodline made him superior to Americans: “I think that . . . maybe it’s a little bit elitist. . . . I feel like I’ve gotten one kind of blood in me, not all mixed up . . . from different countries, which most Americans . . . have . . . , as my kids . . . and my grandkids are now. . . . It’s not a big deal but . . . I . . . like it when Germany, for instance, wins in the World Cup soccer and I’m rooting for them and so I . . . do those kinds of things but it’s not like I’m ‘Boy, that’s it’ . . . and only that.”103 While the above responses suggest little awareness of Germany’s history and the negative connotations associated with notions of “German superiority,” not all members of the second generation ignored Germany’s Nazi past in their reflections on their German heritage. This may be related to their age and therefore what historical period they experienced in what location. Thomas Luehrsen, who was born in Huntsville in 1959, is of a different generation from Haukohl and Roth and never lived in Germany as a child. He pointed out that his wife was Jewish, which created a special tension in how he thought of his German heritage: laney: So has it always seemed like a positive thing, to be

German? luehrsen: Well . . . I would say . . . it can be a positive thing in many ways. Obviously . . . it’s a connection—a window on the world that . . . many people don’t have. That’s why . . . I would love to pass it on to my child. But . . . there’s still a lot of negative things. . . . I have a lot of Jewish family because my wife is Jewish and . . . I have the radar. You know how

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gay people say they have gaydar where they can detect a gay person in a room? . . . Well, I have that radar toward when a Jewish person’s back gets up when they hear that I’m German. . . . I can detect . . . it’s sort of a palpable kind of chemistry going on. . . . I’ve got to say it’s a negative . . . to have to identify myself as German in certain situations.104 Ursula Harscheid, whose family moved to the United States in 1956 when she was eleven, explained that she has only recently begun thinking of herself more as German, which has led her to imagine moving to Germany “to experience what it’s like just to live there.” She speculated that maybe her renewed interest in her German heritage makes her even more of a “typical American”: “Maybe that’s the trick, though—it’s like most Americans feel that way. They feel like they are what their heritage is, which is why you have so many people saying, ‘Oh, I’m Irish, I’m English, I’m German.’ Maybe that is the real typical American thing.”105 Harscheid’s comment refers to a phenomenon that has its roots in the 1970s as a response to the civil rights movement. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson has explained, this period saw a form of “ethnic revival” among white Americans whose grandparents immigrated in the early part of the twentieth century.106 Emphasizing their grandparents’ fairly recent immigration allowed some to distance themselves from white America’s historical wrongs against African Americans and deny their white privilege, despite the fact that one of the benefits most of their grandparents experienced was the privilege of “becoming white.” Ironically, these immigrants, who came mainly from southern and eastern Europe, had struggled to claim the privileges of being perceived as white within the American black-white binary. Nativists initially did not view the newcomers as white or Caucasian. In order to claim the privileges of whiteness, the immigrants responded by trying to distance themselves from nonwhite groups, thereby taking part in the discrimination of those groups.107 While the German group arrived later in the century than the larger wave of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, they too experienced the advantages of being viewed as white, especially in the racially segregated South.

CHAPTER FIVE

“We Just Did Not Move in the Same Circles”

in addition to suddenly having more freedom to choose living quarters and conditions, and to having to adjust to small-town life for those who had lived in large cities in Germany, the most significant changes some interviewees remarked on concerning their relocation to Huntsville were the obvious signs of Jim Crow–style segregation. They seemed surprised at that, even though they had previously lived in a society in which their government and fellow citizens clearly identified multiple groups of people as inferior by segregating them from the larger German population. While Jews, for example, may not have been distinguishable by the color of their skin, beginning in 1941 they were required to sew a yellow Star of David onto their clothing for easy identification, and non-Jews could be punished if they were seen with Jews in public. It would have been part of every German’s daily experience to be exposed to anti-Semitic propaganda as well as calls for boycotts of businesses owned by Jews and signs excluding Jews from public places and transportation.1 None of the interviewees stated this explicitly, but they may have been surprised to encounter Jim Crow because they did not expect to see this similar scenario in a country that prided itself on having recently overthrown the regime they came from, forcing Germans to face their culpability in their country’s racist policies and acts of terror via denazification procedures. 1 25

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Among the Germans who arrived in 1950, most did not know much about Alabama, let alone race relations in the Deep South. Some had probably read Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Gone with the Wind in German translation or seen the movie version of the latter, but besides these images from popular culture, they had little else to provide a framework for imagining their new environment. Once they arrived, however, they became clearly aware of the significant role that racial segregation played in southern culture, and several recalled having to learn how to behave in this new social setting. What the Germans encountered in Huntsville was not unusual in the U.S. South. Even though the town had begun to integrate some of its public facilities before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, racial discrimination under Jim Crow laws and customs had been just as central a feature of the town’s history as it was anywhere else in the region. The history of slavery, black codes, and Jim Crow had made it almost impossible for the majority of the black population in the South to advance economically, which is why so many left for better opportunities in larger cities in the North. In Huntsville, many black neighborhoods, such as Cavalry Hill and the downtown area near Spring Park, along Adams and Franklin streets and near Councill School, were marked by signs of debilitating poverty, overcrowding, and a lack of pure water.2 As outlined in chapter 2, the town did not offer many employment options for black residents, even when the rocket industry began to boom. In our interview, Clyde Foster explained, “We [blacks] didn’t have a population with the prerequisites that would be needed to do this type of work. . . . At that time [we] only . . . had barbershop[s], funeral home[s], beauty salon[s], [and] café[s].”3 And as Sonnie Hereford III, a retired family doctor and civil rights activist, described in his recent memoir, white residents of the mill village would not permit the few African Americans who worked in the cotton mills to become their direct neighbors.4 Black and white children frequently played together, but the white parents never treated them as equals. According to Hereford, after playing together “the white kid could not invite the black kid to come to his table for a sandwich and Kool-Aid, though it was all right for the white kid to go to the black kid’s house.”5 When they were school age, these children were then separated to attend segregated schools, which reinforced some

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white children’s belief that they were superior and therefore entitled to bully black children. The doctrine “separate but equal” for schools was no less misleading in Huntsville than it was in other parts of the country. The quality of even the better-equipped African American schools in town, compared to the county schools, was a far cry from that of white schools. In his memoir as well as in the interview with me, Hereford explained that when he went to school in the 1940s, Councill School was located right beside a dump site that curved around the school, which made studying particularly miserable in the summer, when the only relief from the heat came from opening windows. The school library consisted of only a few dozen books contributed by private citizens; the desks were discards from the white schools; there were no swings or slides in the yard for children to play on during recess; there was no gym or lunchroom; and the teachers were not as well prepared as those in the white schools. Throughout his grammar and middle school years, Hereford and his classmates were shuffled back and forth between Councill and the new Winston Street School because the latter did not have enough teachers and desks.6 In our interview, Hereford added that the school had no chemistry lab or biology lab, which was particularly frustrating for him since he wanted to become a physician.7 He did later manage to get the education he needed, but it was an arduous journey with many stumbling blocks.8 Store clerks would make African American customers wait until they had finished serving white customers, and employment announcements for blacks were separated in a section for “Colored Employees.” Most drinking fountains in stores were marked “White Only,” often without an alternative for black customers, and places like the famous Russell Erskine Hotel were off limits for African Americans, unless they were employed as maids or porters. Public facilities across town were segregated—the public library banned black Huntsvillians completely. If they wanted to see a movie, blacks often had to wait two years before it was released at the Princess movie theatre for African Americans on Church Street.9 Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the African Americans I spoke to did not have specific memories of the Germans’ arrival or their contributions to the town, mainly because the Germans were considered part of the larger, privileged white community. One

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Governor of Alabama George Wallace (left), NASA administrator James Webb, and Marshall Space Flight Center director Dr. Wernher von Braun during a tour of MSFC on June 8, 1965. Wallace and Webb were at MSFC to witness the first test-firing of a Saturn V booster. NASA photo: MSFC-75-SA-4105-2C (available online at http://mix. msfc.nasa.gov/abstracts.php?p=945).

interviewee, who came to the Huntsville area in 1949 to attend Alabama A&M, seemed to only vaguely remember that the German team was moving to Huntsville around the same time: “I was here . . . and I do remember hearing . . . some people talking about . . . people coming from Germany here . . . but I didn’t know too much about it.”10 In light of the Germans’ commonality with other white residents of Huntsville, African Americans also did not consider them particularly important to the changes the town underwent: “I did not know of their . . . direct participation in the affairs of Huntsville. I’m sure . . . the financial uplift that they brought to Huntsville with the program was controlled not by Germans but by the white management at NASA. And that’s essentially what the [black] community dealt with, was the white power structure at NASA.”11 Thanks to institutional and social segregation, Germans and African

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Americans had little contact with each other, except in employer/ employee relationships when the Germans hired African Americans to work around their houses. Their lack of regular interaction resulted in sometimes diametrically opposed perspectives on their relationship to each other. U N F L AT T E R I N G C O M P A R I S O N S

Several German interviewees described their great surprise when they saw the segregation of schools and other public institutions in Huntsville, even though segregated facilities and discrimination against African Americans and Mexican Americans existed in El Paso, where they had lived since they first moved to America.12 Some tried to make light of a grim situation by illustrating its meaninglessness for the uninitiated, commenting that they were not sure at first whether to expect the water to be colored differently when they first saw water fountains marked “white” and “colored.”13 Axel Roth, who was fourteen when his family moved to Huntsville in 1950, explained that one of the few things he did know before the move was that racial segregation was more pronounced in Alabama, but he had no clear concept of what that might mean for his daily life: “I knew by that time where Alabama was . . . and I do remember thinking about . . . the racial thing at that time. . . . We heard stories about that. In El Paso it wasn’t that big a deal. . . . There . . . you had a little bit of [confrontation] once in a while with the Mexicans . . . or Hispanics, you might say, but it wasn’t a big deal, but somehow we’d gotten, or I, at least, I’d gotten the impression that the racial thing in Alabama was more of a big deal than it was in El Paso.”14 De facto racial segregation of Mexican Americans and white Americans existed as an extension of Jim Crow laws in El Paso, where few African Americans resided. While it certainly would have been “a big deal” for Mexicans and Mexican Americans residing in El Paso, it apparently had not affected the Germans in the same way that the legal and social segregation of African Americans and whites in Huntsville would. For the black community in Huntsville, the Germans who came in 1950 were, if anything, a reminder of the humiliation they had experienced just a few years earlier when Redstone Arsenal held German POWs. As in other parts of the country, white locals treated the POWs from an enemy nation with more respect than their African American

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neighbors even as African American troops were helping in the fight against Nazi Germany. One interviewee, who came to Huntsville in 1960, said that he had heard others in the black community discuss the presence of German POWs during World War II. He noted that some of the discussion centered on the fact that the POWs had more legal rights than African Americans at the time: “They would come in [to town] on [a] pass, . . . they could go places that we couldn’t go. This didn’t make us very happy.”15 During our interview, he clarified that these are not his personal memories, but his use of “we” and “us” suggests that these experiences resonated with his own. He continued: “Oh, they [black residents] didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all. They spoke very adamantly about that . . . here they were citizens and these people were coming in, who were supposed to be prisoners of war and been given privileges that they didn’t have. So that didn’t go over big at all.”16 In addition to their own observations, Huntsville’s African American residents would have been familiar with reports about the preferential treatment of German POWs in comparison to African American soldiers in other parts of the South. Toward the end of the war, the Chicago Defender, a newspaper read by African Americans nationwide, published an article headlined, “Nazi Prisoners Better Treated Than Negro Soldiers in South, Army Told.” The Fraternal Council of Negro Churches had presented a report to the U.S. assistant secretary of war, basing these claims on a tour of ten army camps in the South.17 Another article reported that African American singer and actress Lena Horne ended her USO-sponsored tour of southern army camps because she was not allowed to entertain black soldiers in the same facility in which she was supposed to entertain an audience of “Nazi prisoners”—all due to the army’s Jim Crow policy.18 With this knowledge, it would have seemed plausible that the German POWs seen in Huntsville were simply exercising their privilege. Without records of the rules for the Huntsville camp, it is impossible to determine whether its prisoners were indeed allowed to leave the camp and frequent local entertainment locales reserved for white patrons, signifying their privileged status over African Americans. One anecdote repeated later in a local paper confirms, however, that POWs were seen around town: “In one case two POWs actually walked off from a work detail and hitchhiked into Huntsville, where they went to an evening

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matinee movie and then went next door to a restaurant and enjoyed a large meal. When it came time to pay the bill they calmly told the restaurateur to call the base so they could turn themselves in. Even though they were clad in prisoners’ uniforms with large white letters painted on the legs and sleeves, no one had thought it was unusual!”19 The anecdote suggests that unescorted POWs were not an unusual sight for Huntsville residents. Huntsville was therefore probably much like many other locations in Alabama and other areas of the United States where German POWs enjoyed what one German POW termed a “golden cage.” According to historian Daniel Hutchinson, the POWs enjoyed comforts that made “some Alabama residents resent . . . what they perceived as the POW’s pampering while they endured rationing.”20 Encounters between German POWs and Alabama residents usually occurred when the POWs were working off the campsite on labor details. In addition, “Alabamians often formed remarkable relationships with the prisoners working in their midst and expressed their friendship through gift-giving and, in a few occasions, invitations to their homes for meals.”21 Even without the comparison to previous experiences with German POWs, the fact that the German rocket specialists, who were not even citizens yet, had more privileges than their African American neighbors offered its own source of grievance. Sonnie Hereford III, who was about nineteen years old when the German families arrived, recalled, “When Dr. von Braun . . . and his group [came] . . . there were celebrations and welcoming committees and so forth, but none of our people were invited to come to participate.”22 Hereford was most likely referring to the barbecue party organized by the town’s Chamber of Commerce to welcome the newcomers from Ft. Bliss, Texas, as “Special Civic Guests.” The event was announced repeatedly in the town’s main newspaper in 1950, and it was clearly a well-planned and large-scale undertaking: “Local civic clubs will be asked to cancel their meetings during that week, to meet during the municipal party at the Big Spring Park. . . . Elaborate entertainment and reception committees will also be established, to make sure that everyone is introduced, and has the opportunity of knowing others who will be present. . . . Sponsoring Chamber officials are hopeful that the barbecue and fellowship will create continued harmonious relations between the various segments of the Huntsville population.”23 As to be expected, the creation of “harmonious relations” did not apply to those

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between the white and black communities of Huntsville, let alone between Germans and African Americans. While African Americans in Huntsville associated the German group with the usual insults that came with Jim Crow segregation, the Germans were trying to figure out how to behave in this new setting. In her memoir, Richter-Haaser described her perspective: “The black community started south of Lowe drive and we noticed that the white people were very aloof about them. On busses, we could sit in front; they had to ride in the back. Washrooms had a sign ‘White only.’ All this seemed strange to us and we were often not sure how to handle this situation. In Germany the only black people we ever saw before the war was in a circus or after the war, the black soldiers, and at that time we talked to them as equals if we needed their help or assistance. Nobody had prepared us for this strange situation in Huntsville.”24 Since Germans would have been used to segregated societies, that was not what made the situation in Huntsville “strange.” Rather it was the group of people whom Huntsville’s white community discriminated against that was unfamiliar. Richter-Haaser’s statement that the Germans did not know “how to handle this situation” suggests, however, that they recognized that they needed to decide whether to imitate the behavior of their white American neighbors or not. Richter-Haaser’s description of previous experiences with “black people” points to the image many Germans would have had of African Americans after World War II. The fact that she stressed treating black soldiers “as equals,” even though they had tangible power over German lives, illustrates that Germans, like their white counterparts in the United States, typically did not consider African Americans to be equals—a fact that was underscored when German attitudes toward African American soldiers, which were quite positive at first, turned openly negative with the rise of interracial children born to African American soldiers and German women.25 German perceptions of African Americans, characterized by distance and unfamiliarity if not contempt, had a long history. Even before Germans were exposed to Hitler’s racist regime, Germany had its own, albeit relatively short, history of colonialism in Africa, and when France stationed African soldiers from its colonies as occupation troops in

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Germany after World War I, the German media referred to the troops as the “Schwarze Schmach am Rhein” (the black disgrace on the Rhine), considering this an added insult. Children born to white German colonizers and black Africans in Southwest Africa, East Africa, and Samoa, or later to black soldiers and German white women in Germany, symbolized a loss of national status for many, whose citizenship and identity as Germans was based on the principle of jus sanguinis rather than jus soli. In other words, Germans had long viewed people with non-German bloodlines as alien and inferior. “Racial mixing” during Germany’s colonial period and later only sharpened such racial thinking.26 Despite most Germans’ images of African Americans after World War II, black soldiers reported positive experiences in Germany during the first years of the Allied occupation.27 Although the economic situation was very dire for most in Germany while the occupation was in full force immediately after the war, many Germans reportedly treated African American soldiers quite cordially. They were presumably responding to their experiences with black soldiers who were generous and friendly, despite their position of relative power as members of the occupying forces. The Germans’ friendly response was surprising for many African American soldiers, who had heard horrific stories about German racism and who were still segregated in their military units as well as at home. I L L U S I O N A R Y E X P E C TAT I O N S A N D I N C O N S E Q U E N T I A L S U B V E R S I O N S

African American magazines and newspapers around the country reported that encounters with Germans in Europe were unexpectedly positive experiences, which may have left the impression that Germans generally had a more favorable attitude toward African Americans and therefore more sympathy for their plight. Knowledge of these positive reports is probably what provided the backdrop for higher expectations of the Germans in Huntsville: “Well, we were hoping that . . . they might join us in our fight for freedom. . . . But I guess we were naïve. . . . We were thinking . . . since they were encountering some resistance . . . maybe they’ll join with us and all of us will fight. . . . But . . . I don’t recall any . . . of the people from the German community actually helping us.”28 The disappointed expectations of solidarity and active support from Germans for the causes of African Americans in Huntsville point to an important fact: being German in the United States had a very different

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meaning from being German in Germany, especially in the immediate aftermath of World War II.29 The Germans who came to the United States very shortly after the war would not have experienced the occupation of Germany to the same extent and therefore would not have had the opportunity to connect with African American soldiers in the same way as Germans who were left behind. Instead of experiencing the Allied occupation, which provoked strong feelings of humiliation in many Germans in the postwar years, the German rocket engineers and their families encountered very little resistance in Huntsville, blended well with the white majority, and were generally welcomed with open arms by a community that appreciated the prosperity and cultural influence they brought. They had little reason to feel a kinship with those less fortunate. Although most of the Germans attested to having been surprised when they first encountered the tangible effects of segregation, they did not consider expressions of solidarity, let alone acts of open support, an option. After recalling her surprise at seeing segregated waiting rooms at her doctor’s office, Susanne Teuber, who came to Huntsville with her parents as an adult in 1954, exclaimed, “And that stank, literally. . . . I thought, ‘We don’t have to do this,’ but we had no say in this.”30 Teuber did not explain why she believed that Germans “had no say in this” or who she thought might have been able to change the situation. Her statement suggested, however, that as newcomers their primary goal was, like that of many immigrants before them, to avoid disturbing the status quo but instead reap the benefits of conforming to Huntsville’s racial hierarchy.31 Teuber’s words imply that any efforts to push for change might have affected the Germans’ own position in the community negatively, but also offer the image of the Germans as innocent bystanders in a racist society. The self-image of innocent bystander might help explain why some interviewees claimed that they had unusually good relations with the African Americans they interacted with, despite the fact that this contradicts the impressions African Americans had of the Germans as being no different than other white Americans. In contrast to Teuber’s declaration that the German group had no choice but to comply with the status quo of race relations, she and several other interviewees recalled a few stories of their resistance. Their heritage afforded them a different perspective and therefore a different approach to interacting with African Americans,

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which offered “proof” that they disagreed with racial segregation. For example, several interviewees described scenarios in which a German offered a black person, usually an older woman, a seat on a bus, which usually caused a commotion. Tomas Friend, whose parents came to Huntsville in 1958, relayed a version of this story, describing an exchange between his oldest brother and an elderly black woman on a bus: “My older brother, being brought up to be a gentleman in Germany, stood up and offered her his seat. And she couldn’t take the seat because she had to go to the back of the bus, and people got angry with him for trying to offer it to a black woman.”32 According to this story, the brother’s German upbringing distinguishes him from other white people, implying that German children were raised to treat people differently, based on their age, not the color of their skin. These types of stories were told with some incredulity in the voice, implying that the Germans were not like their southern neighbors when it came to racial matters. None of the interviewees seemed to see the irony in the fact that they came from a nation that had just recently taken racism to its extreme. Some families hired African American women as domestic workers and recalled friendly relationships with them, emphasizing that they were comfortable sharing meals, and in some cases, family occasions, with their black employees, who were presumably surprised at that.33 Teuber described such an interaction as a culture shock for the African American woman who worked for her: When his [Dieter’s] parents were visiting, and my father-in-law shook hands—like the Germans do; they shake hands. And Lula didn’t know what to make of it. Lula was the black girl, young lady. Well, she wasn’t a girl, she was in her thirties when she started working for me. And he shook her hand and she did then extend her hand and shake his hand, but it obviously puzzled her. Nobody had wanted to shake her hand before, of her employers. That was the only thing that, well, that may have been a culture shock. And my mother—I took her to my mother’s house every once in a while; if she had a free day and my mother needed help, I would take her there. And my mother ate lunch with her. And that was news to her,

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that some white person would sit down at the same table and eat lunch with her. She . . . always praised my mother. She liked my mother a lot. My mother was a very democratic person. And I didn’t mind sitting down and eating lunch, except I was gone. When she came, that was my day off. If I had been here, I would have eaten lunch with her. I had no qualms.34 Teuber’s German father-in-law’s formal greeting presumably showed an unusual level of respect from a white man toward an African American woman. It obviously created a brief yet noticeable disruption of southern cultural norms, allowing both Teuber and her African American employee a glimpse into possible alternatives to their reality. Teuber’s story also offers insight into the privileged position the Germans could take for granted in Huntsville. To emphasize that her mother was “a very democratic person” or that she herself “had no qualms” about eating lunch with Lula signals not only that this was unusual but also that they both had a choice in how they interacted with African Americans—a choice that Lula did not have in her interactions with white people. Oscar Holderer, who was the only German interviewee of the first generation who considered himself exclusively American, was also the only one who spoke about taking advantage of his privileged status and seeking tangible change for an African American in Huntsville when he had the opportunity. After hiring Horton Boone, an African American man, to help him build his house, he helped Boone get a job at Redstone Arsenal, where Boone went on to enjoy a career as a civil servant.35 The positive results of Holderer’s actions contrast with the inaction or the lack of concrete results from minor acts of subversion described by other interviewees. Friend, Teuber, and other interviewees seemed to provide evidence that German culture offered them means for subverting the racist aspects of “southern culture.” Yet these subversive acts were mainly in their minds and in small gestures that apparently went mostly unnoticed by the black community. While they did not openly compare the racial caste systems of the Third Reich and the U.S. South, their actions may have been in response to their experiences in Nazi Germany, offering them ways in which they could distance themselves from their

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pasts as well as from other whites in Huntsville without threatening their own privileged status. MAKING TROUBLESOME CONNECTIONS

Despite the Germans’ subtle efforts, for African Americans the fact that they had belonged to the privileged majority in Nazi Germany in a system that segregated and persecuted Jews and other minorities made their silence toward the Jim Crow system appear to be a continuation of the same disastrous callousness toward those constructed as racially or otherwise inferior.36 Michael Smith pointed toward this relationship and connected the use of slave labor for the production of V-2 rockets during World War II with the slave labor system of the United States in the not so distant past, offering one explanation for why the German rocket engineers’ past in Nazi Germany seems to have been overlooked by many in Huntsville: “And, so these people love von Braun and will not hear about the Mittelwerks. . . . [In] Huntsville . . . I don’t hear any particular outrage over the fact that it might be true. . . . Again, Huntsville is in no position [to be critical] . . . because . . . you had slavery right here . . . and many of the same people are still here today . . . and even if they’re not, they’re from other parts of the South . . . and you have the same immorality.”37 The Mittelwerk GmbH referred to by Smith was the company that built the V-2 rockets for the army with the help of concentration camp laborers toward the end of the war. In contrast to the Germans’ image of themselves as innocent bystanders, Smith explicitly connected German and American histories of cruelties committed against those perceived as racial minorities, suggesting a common intellectual heritage and mindset among white southerners and the German families. Even though Sonnie Hereford III does not compare the two systems directly, his description of how white people in Huntsville dealt with segregation reveals remarkably similar attitudes to those of the majority of Germans toward the plight of Jewish people and other minorities during the Third Reich: “Many Caucasians here . . . were just nonchalant. I mean with some of them, they knew that the black people were being mistreated, but they weren’t trying to do anything about it, and then there were some of them doing the mistreating. You know what I mean. And there were a few that wanted to work with us to try to change it.”38

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The Germans not only seemed unsupportive of African American causes, they appeared to be placing even more obstacles in the way of African Americans’ progress. As Smith explained: This is one of the negative things they’ve done—they were [the ones] who helped found the University of Alabama here in Huntsville. And I say negative because there was already a statesupported school in Huntsville and it’s called Alabama A&M. And so you now have this clash, this friction, this tension, between the new white school and the old black school, both state supported. So that’s one of the things the Germans also did. Von Braun. So, in other words, von Braun may have brought his European ethnocentrism . . . from Germany to Huntsville. And it was nothing out of the ordinary for him to . . . advocate the opening of a Jim Crow school. So the Germans were not advocates of racial integration, as far as I know.39 As discussed in chapter 3, von Braun was indeed instrumental in getting substantial funding for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which was founded in 1961, before the town desegregated. Clyde Foster, however, offered another perspective on what happened in this case. Like Smith, Triana’s former mayor was appalled at the prospect of a new university since Huntsville already had one, which was “175 years of age and they come in and start a UAH,” but he also described the difficulties in convincing the existing institution to implement an apparently muchneeded engineering program:40 foster: That’s one of the things I tried to get A&M at that

particular time to take advantage of. . . . I couldn’t get ’em interested. . . . They [were] hard to convince back in the sixties, to get them to understand what’s at hand, and what would be available. I guess they didn’t wanna rock the boat. A lot of [that], I’ve figured back now, had been caused by what segregation had done. . . . Because when I went to A&M in 1950, we had white citizens from Huntsville . . . come out to the school for certain activities, and they would . . . rope off the area for all of the whites who would be coming to those activities.

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laney: Would you please explain a little bit more? foster: Yeah . . . we told them they were acting like Uncle Tom. laney: So . . . they were practicing segregation on A&M grounds

is what you’re saying? foster: That’s right.41 What Foster was referring to were the effects of systemic racism that often led to what he called “acting like Uncle Tom,” that is, African Americans who would not fight white supremacist beliefs about blacks’ inferiority. Foster suggested that the school’s unwillingness to “rock the boat” expressed itself not only in enforcing segregation even at an African American school but also in forgoing the opportunity to offer engineering classes to black students. African Americans were already at an immense disadvantage long before they could even think about attending college, let alone try to compete for the new jobs coming to town. Summing up the effects of the lack of educational opportunities on income prospects available to the black community and the additional consequences of the Germans’ presence, Foster declared: “To have been born . . . in one of the most difficult times to be born and to compete, here in Alabama, confronted with all of the segregation, George Wallace, and on the other hand you’ve got Dr. Wernher von Braun with the team from Germany from the University of Berlin! And how do you wanna compete?”42 In light of this comment, one of the reasons A&M may not have wanted to offer engineering degrees could have been the fear that even with such a degree, graduates would still not have a chance to get a job in the field—be it because of racial discrimination or because of having to compete with people with presumably superior education. For many in the black community, the German rocket team and their families were therefore more than simply part of the “white power structure.” They appeared to inadvertently add insult to injury by being noncitizens with multiple advantages over African American citizens who did not seem to use this privilege and the accompanying leverage to actively support desegregation. THE PERILS OF SILENCING HISTORY

While the first generation of Germans might be faulted for their complicity and, in some cases, active participation in Jim Crow, their children

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approached racial segregation quite differently, albeit with their parents’ teachings as a backdrop to the southern cultural setting. Like other Huntsville children at the time, they grew up as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum and white resistance was becoming more virulent. What differentiates their experiences from those of their American friends is that their reflections on this past often included a grappling with the Nazi past that seemed conspicuously absent from their parents’ narratives. In this way, “southern culture” offered insights into Nazi Germany. Susanne Blumrich, who was fourteen years old when her family moved to Huntsville in 1954, noted that she believed that her initial “shock” of encountering segregation was linked to her lack of knowledge about the Holocaust in Germany: “I think its racial problems were probably what kind of shocked me in the beginning because I didn’t know about my own horrible racial heritage in Germany.”43 Since Blumrich was five years old at the end of World War II, she was probably not cognizant of the discrimination against Jews and others under the Nazi regime when she arrived in Huntsville. Her statement, however, indicates a struggle with what she later learned about the Holocaust and a realization that the segregation she observed in Huntsville was not as foreign to her own heritage as she might have initially thought. Not learning about the Nazi regime until later in life affected Rainer Klauss, who was five years old when his family moved to Huntsville in 1950, very differently. In our interview, he recounted having been swept up by rallies advocating segregation when he was a schoolboy. In dialogue with his wife, he then drew a parallel to Nazi rallies, suggesting that his experience allows him to empathize with his parents’ generation for supporting the Nazi regime, even though he now condemns his own behavior: rainer klauss: [George Wallace] came to our school to give us

money . . . and gave a rabble-rouser address . . . and we knew he was there as the governor of the state who “wasn’t going to let niggers go to school.” . . . We were swept up by the climate of those times . . . swept up in the prejudice. . . . It’s like a Nazi rally, for heaven’s sake. . . . In a way . . . you really know this is . . . not right, but you’re sort of swept away by . . . the emotion and whatever.

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gudrun klauss: You’re no longer an individual. You’re part of

this group. rainer klauss: Looking back at it . . . I should have known a little bit better.44 In describing how he was “swept up” by the rally cries of a demagogue and condemning his support of a system he knew was “really not right,” Klauss illustrated that he now recognizes the dangers of propaganda and the parallels between the Nazi regime and the Jim Crow era. While he later suggested that his age played a role—he was fourteen years old at the time—the parallel he drew and his wife’s comment about mob mentality both suggest that this is what they believed may have affected their parents’ generation’s complicity in and possibly even enthusiasm for the Nazi regime. In effect, they suggested that their parents’ generation acted like most human beings would have under the circumstances—a common trope in the German discourse about the Nazi past.45 The children’s lack of knowledge about the treatment of minorities under the Nazi regime paralleled their lack of understanding of the motivation for Jim Crow. Without specific knowledge of U.S. history, even their parents seemed unable to explain their neighbors’ behavior. Blumrich’s younger sister, Kathryn Hilten, recalled an incident when her family was planning to go see a movie. Her father came home and told them that they could not go because the movie was playing only at one of the theaters in the black part of town. Hilten recalled that when her family asked him why that should keep them from going, her father responded, “I’m not sure; they didn’t explain anything.” Hilten offered her interpretation of what had happened: “The southerners, when it came to racial issues, would just clamp down very often and would not—very few would talk about, would explain it. It was almost as if you touched on some deep religious conviction that you cannot go there. . . . And we said, ‘Well, what did you do, ask them? Is there something we can do? Are they going to be very upset? Are we insulting the black people if we come?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘I can’t explain it but I know that they implied that we can’t go.’ ”46 The situation Hilten described is very similar to the one many second-generation Germans encountered when trying to talk to their parents about the war, the Nazi regime, or the Holocaust.47 Both the white

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southerners portrayed here and the Germans who were adults during the Nazi regime were unwilling to answer questions about their behavior, leaving their interlocutors to speculate about what reasons they may have had—possibly because they believed that their reasons would not be satisfactory to people who were not raised in the South or had not experienced Hitler’s Third Reich. Not understanding the deep roots of racism and how it had shaped both German and southern culture led some to believe that there were simple solutions to the conflicts resulting from desegregation. Some of the German children attended Randolph School, a private school founded in 1959 that offered classes up to ninth grade. Since most African Americans in Huntsville would not have been able to afford to send their children to a private school even after mandated integration, the children at Randolph were sheltered from racial strife for a while. One interviewee, who was born in Huntsville in the early 1950s, remembered being confronted with the realities of integration when she had to switch from Randolph to an integrated public high school: “Yeah . . . that was my hardest part of . . . being in Alabama. I guess at the little private school I was at it was a very sheltered existence and everything was focused on education and . . . we had languages and excellent teachers, and then suddenly [we] got to the high school and there were knifings in the school because . . . during the pep rally they were singing a song that was offensive to the blacks or whatever. And . . . my thought was ‘Well, just don’t sing the song,’ you know?”48 Her response illustrates that those who had been sheltered from the conflicts lacked an appreciation of how severe the situation was. Not recognizing the danger and seriousness of the polarizing politics of segregation could have sobering repercussions. Ursula Harscheid, who was eleven years old when she moved to Huntsville with her parents in 1958, recalled an incident at a Shoney’s restaurant—a national restaurant chain that would later become infamous for its racist hiring practices.49 Harscheid had made plans to meet friends (Ellen and Phil) after work one day, when Phil came in with Connie, the guy that [integrated] my high school class. And we had trouble getting served. And we went home and . . . the phone rang. It was 10:30 at night. Of course

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nobody calls Germans after 10:00 at night! And my father answered the phone and it was some Klan’s member or somebody threatening because they had seen me. . . . We found out later that it was Ellen’s somewhat boyfriend. And she didn’t know. She was from Maryland. It didn’t occur to her that somebody might be offended. And so anyway . . . we integrated Shoney’s. And my father told this man off on the phone like, “You do not call my house after—.” . . . But boy, it was a threatening phone call. . . . It’s like all of a sudden you realize that this is a different kind of—like you saw the other side of Huntsville, sort of the racial dangers, really, of segregation, integration, and being there right as the civil rights movement was happening. And anyway . . . I got involved with Phil and we started a well-baby clinic . . . for people that were basically not even on welfare, that lived out in the county—poor black sharecroppers who had no access to medical care. . . . But anyway, the whole idea of getting involved and civil rights was not something that I did consciously. . . . It was something that just happened naturally. And yet looking at it now, it was dangerous . . . to be involved in that.50 Harscheid’s story illustrates that it could indeed be dangerous to openly reject segregation, but also that not all Germans complied with the Jim Crow system. It also counters the accounts of many Huntsville residents—Germans and non-Germans—that desegregation went smoothly in their community. There may not have been as much racial violence as in other locations, but violations of southern racial “etiquette” still elicited harsh responses. C O R D I A L AT B E S T

When I asked Charles Ray during our interview whether his experiences as a soldier stationed in Germany between 1954 and 1957 had been useful for his relationship with the German families in Huntsville, he explained, “No. Because when I came back, that was about the time they were here . . . and . . . I didn’t think anything about it. We just did not move in the same circles.” In light of racial segregation under Jim Crow, Ray’s comment that “we just did not move in the same circles” is an intriguing

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interpretation of the relationship between the African American community and the German families, who were no doubt considered part of the white community by all of Huntsville’s residents. It implies that the form this relationship took was a matter of choice on both sides and possibly the result of class divisions, allowing Ray to transform the insult of racism and thereby render it nonexistent. His account also suggests that he did not take note of the Germans’ arrival in 1950. It makes sense that he would have become more aware of their presence when he came back in 1957, since they were celebrated nationally for the first time when the rocket they had developed put the first American satellite, Explorer I, into orbit on January 31, 1958. Although he acknowledged that there was some tension, Sonnie Hereford III was very careful in how he described the relationship: “I think some people in my community were maybe jealous . . . because . . . they [the Germans] were permitted to go to the theaters and the concerts and to the sports arena, and we were not. . . . And they were permitted to go to the restaurants and the hotels and motels and what have you, and we were not. . . . I think there was maybe some animosity.”51 Here the issue is that, at least in the first years, the Germans were foreigners who had more rights than African American citizens. It highlights the role the Germans played in Huntsville’s segregated society, which was never neutral, as much as they might have wanted it to seem that way. Overall, the relationship between Huntsville’s African American and German communities was nonexistent or cordial at best, but mostly dictated by the realities of Jim Crow–style segregation. While most in the African American community probably did not differentiate between the Germans and other white residents, most of the Germans made little effort to understand and effectively intervene in the treatment of African Americans as second-class citizens under Jim Crow. Imagining themselves nevertheless superior to their white southern neighbors, many of the first-generation Germans seemed to manage to obscure the obvious parallels between the Nazi regime and the Jim Crow South. For a long time, they seemed to be able to forget their past in the Third Reich. The Rudolph case, however, would force them to revisit it.

CHAPTER SIX

The Rudolph Case

in 1984, almost forty years after Project Paperclip was first implemented, many national newspaper readers would have been surprised to see one of the more prominent members of the celebrated German rocket team make national headlines for allegedly having committed war crimes under the Nazi regime. Arthur Rudolph, who was once the production manager for the V-2 rockets, had long since retired from NASA, where he was the project manager for the Saturn V—the rocket that had put the first man on the moon in 1969. He used to live in Huntsville along with most of the other rocket specialists, but had moved to California with his wife ten years earlier to live out their remaining years near their daughter. His life in Nazi Germany must have seemed like ancient history. The revelations following the 1984 Rudolph case made it a watershed moment for U.S. perceptions of von Braun and his team members. For one, the case revived questions about the Machiavellian logic and morality of the military program that brought the German and Austrian specialists to the United States in the first place. More important, the revelations came with increased publicity about the conditions at the concentration camp Dora (a.k.a. Mittelbau-Dora) that supplied laborers for the V-2 rocket production, which was under Rudolph’s management. The previous silence about these conditions and the lack of publicly expressed regret from the rocket team members concerning the fate of the victims 145

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created an opening for investigative reporters. What other damning information had been hidden from the public? Some journalists accused the government of having deliberately covered up the importation of “ardent Nazis” and war criminals. It appeared that the team members could no longer be assumed to be the so-called good Nazis.1 With the protective adjective stripped, they became simply “Nazis”—an entirely different trope in the postwar national landscape. DORA

At the end of World War II, von Braun and his team were considered valuable assets because of their potential for boosting U.S. rocket development. The fact that the V-2 had been mass produced with the help of concentration camp laborers under extremely gruesome circumstances was not a topic of wide public concern for many years. First, it was not well known among the American public for decades. Second, government officials and the German rocketeers themselves continually asserted that the treatment of the concentration camp laborers had been solely the responsibility of the SS. Therefore, the German rocketeers presumably could not have been implicated in war crimes. As long as the survivors of the concentration camps were not heard and the sites for the design and production of the V-2 rockets were under the control of Communist East Germany, this perspective was left largely unchallenged. During the war, the team worked at a gigantic German military facility in Peenemünde on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea, which housed the Heeresversuchsanstalt (Army Research Center) for the rocket development program and a test site for the Luftwaffe.2 The army’s center in Peenemünde had been constructed specifically for this purpose, with state-of-the-art living quarters and work and leisure facilities for the specialists and their families. It had no fewer than twelve thousand employees, foreign laborers, and prisoners at its peak. Some of the rocket specialists had been recruited directly from German corporations and universities where they were conducting technical and scientific research; others had technical skills or engineering backgrounds and had therefore been offered the opportunity to leave the eastern front as soldiers to work instead with thousands of others on “a secret program” on a somewhat remote island. The nature of the work was not revealed to new employees until they arrived at the development facilities.3 Secrecy and elite

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treatment as well as exciting work on cutting-edge technology created powerful notions of privilege and camaraderie among the employees in an environment that facilitated high productivity, dedication to the project, and loyalty among the center’s engineers and technicians.4 The rockets the team designed were far from perfect, but they were the world’s first ballistic missiles, and despite their lack of accuracy, Hitler decided to surprise the enemy with this new weapon in a last effort to win the war. He ordered the mass production of the A-4 rocket, later known as the V-2—V standing for Vergeltung (vengeance).5 The order came in early 1943, at which time the leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, also took an interest in the rocket program. His solution for the problem of finding workers this late in the war was to use concentration camp prisoners. Previously, Czech, Polish, and Italian civilians and French, Dutch, Soviet, and Polish forced laborers (POWs) were used for construction and production in Peenemünde, but by mid-June 1943 the site also contained a subcamp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Karlshagen I, “where six hundred mostly Russian and French-speaking prisoners were held under SS guard.”6 In addition, Camp Trassenheide housed more than 3,000 forced laborers, mostly from Eastern Europe, who were working for the construction company Baugruppe Schlempp. Construction of a production site at Peenemünde had already begun when Great Britain’s Royal Air Force attacked the area during the night of August 17–18, 1943. The housing area and Camp Trassenheide were hit the worst in this attack, while the rocket development facilities were left more or less intact.7 About 600 of the 735 killed in the attack were forced laborers.8 After the attack, the development sites were dispersed over a wider area but remained in the vicinity of Peenemünde. The production sites were moved to an underground tunnel in the Kohnstein Mountain near Nordhausen (Harz Mountains), closer to the geographic middle of Germany.9 The forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners from Peenemünde, who had survived the British air raid, were brought to Camp Dora, next to the Kohnstein Mountain, along with prisoners from Camp Buchenwald, in order to reconfigure the former depot tunnels for the mass production of the V-2 rockets. Camp Dora began as a new subcamp of Buchenwald and was later combined with other extension camps to form the stand-alone concentration camp Mittelbau—today known as Mittelbau-Dora.10 The camp was intended for male prisoners

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only, most likely because of the construction labor most prisoners had to perform. Nevertheless, approximately eight hundred women were moved to the Mittelbau camp system as other camps were evacuated in early 1945.11 Dora was one of the first (and by war’s end the largest) concentration camps built exclusively for the war industry; “the predominant prisoner groups in order of size were Soviet, Polish, French, German, Belgian, and Italian.”12 Most concentration camp prisoners were not directly involved in production but worked as construction workers and miners.13 Jewish prisoners were brought in only in May 1944. In January 1945, the number of Jewish prisoners rose drastically as they were being evacuated from the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Groß-Rosen because of the Red Army’s advances.14 During the reconfiguration period, in which the tunnels were expanded for the V-2 production, the concentration camp prisoners were forced to live in the tunnels under inhuman, “hellish” conditions.15 The death toll reached its peak in the winter of 1943–44, and more prisoners died than could be replaced from Buchenwald. Once production of the V-2 rockets started again in winter 1944, the laborers were presumably kept in better health to avoid constant retraining for the assembly line. Some had lived in the tunnels for nine months, not once seeing the light of day.16 Later they were kept in newly assembled wooden barracks not far from the tunnel entrance. On average, about five thousand prisoners and three thousand German civilians worked on the V-2 assembly at Mittelwerk.17 By March 1945 approximately six thousand V-2 rockets had been assembled. The prisoners were guarded by SS guards while working under the direction of the German engineers and foremen.18 The total death toll at Mittelbau is estimated at twenty thousand, of which approximately eight thousand died during evacuation at the end of the war.19 Near the end of the war, beginning in mid-February 1945, most of the rocket specialists and their families around Peenemünde headed south toward the Nordhausen production plant to avoid capture by the Soviet Army and to bring matériel and documentation to safety.20 From there, about five hundred were ordered to head to Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps, where they waited to surrender to American troops.21 Most had remained in the Nordhausen area and were the first to be discovered by the U.S. Army Ordnance intelligence officers and evacuated to avoid their capture by Soviet troops. Magnus von Braun, Wernher’s younger

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brother, initiated contact with the U.S. Army on May 2, 1945, because he was the best English speaker in his group. Some of the team members who later joined those in the United States had not been in Peenemünde or Nordhausen. They had worked in different locations for the Peenemünde project and had to be rounded up after the war. In the meantime, the prisoners at Dora were forced to keep building V-2 rockets under worsening conditions until they were either shipped to Bergen-Belsen by rail or forced to leave on foot. When the 104th Infantry Division discovered and liberated Dora on April 11, it found only about 750 survivors too ill or too weak to leave as well as 3,000 corpses, many killed in two RAF raids on the city of Nordhausen, where there was a subcamp for sick prisoners.22 PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE AND RESPONSES

U.S. news outlets informed the American public about the discovery of the Dora camp and its connection to the V-2 rockets but reported little more. Newsreels at U.S. movie theaters showed footage of Nordhausen, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald in 1945. Some news articles explicitly made the connection with V-2 production, but there was no follow-up, and “within a year or two, that connection had almost sunk without a trace.”23 There were two trials concerning the crimes committed at Mittelbau-Dora—in 1947 at Dachau and in 1967–70 in Essen, Germany. Members of the von Braun team submitted depositions, but none of them were called as defendants. These trials were also not widely publicized in the United States. Since the V-2 development and production sites in Peenemünde and outside Nordhausen were both located in the Soviet-occupied zone, which would soon become East Germany, knowledge about their history was limited in the West during the cold war. In the 1960s, East Germany tried to embarrass the United States by playing up Wernher von Braun’s membership in the SS and his connections to the Dora concentration camp, but due to the enormous information divide during this period of the cold war, these efforts did not receive any attention in the United States.24 On the contrary, instead of being considered an embarrassment, von Braun was celebrated as “the most visible symbol of the Space Race with the Soviets” in the West and the “vindicated prophet of spaceflight.”25

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As a result of this lack of information about the use of concentration camp labor, few challenged the German rocketeers when they publicized memoirs and historical accounts of their work on the V-2 project in the 1950s and 1960s that included no mention of Dora.26 Instead of describing the horrific conditions under which the V-2 rockets were built, their stories romanticized the past. According to these accounts, the V-2 was developed by apolitical and anti-Nazi engineers whose ultimate goal was space travel, far removed from weapons development or anything else that would cause human suffering.27 What public criticism of the German rocketeers that existed was fairly sparse and inconsequential. Earlier and more general fears that the Paperclip specialists might bring Nazi ideology to the United States as well as concerns that they were receiving privileged treatment compared to victims of the Nazi regime had all but disappeared. Now, any public disapproval was aimed at the fact that the German rocketeers had designed weapons for the Nazi regime. In 1960, Columbia Pictures released a feature film about von Braun’s life, I Aim at the Stars. In response, comedian Mort Sahl reminded audiences of von Braun’s work for the Nazi military during World War II, suggesting that the subtitle for the film should have been “And sometimes I hit London.”28 And song writer Tom Lehrer’s biting lyrics in his 1965 “Wernher von Braun” portrayed von Braun as an opportunist who switched national allegiances as needed and was indifferent to the human cost of the weapons he designed.29 The use of concentration camp labor to build the V-2 rockets was still not an issue of larger public concern, and what is more, critical voices had to compete with the more exciting images emerging in the 1950s and 1960s of the German specialists as “rocket scientists”—a term that signaled competency and expectations of an alluring future. The rocket experts promised to send humans to the moon and beyond—and they seemed to have the expertise to do it. Wernher von Braun began publishing articles about his ideas for space exploration to a national audience in Collier’s magazine in the early 1950s.30 Soon after, he contributed to the edited volumes Across the Space Frontier and Conquest of the Moon and collaborated with Walt Disney in producing three popular shows to help promote Tomorrowland—one of the four sections in the new Disneyland theme park in California. The shows, titled Man in Space,

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Man and the Moon, and Mars and Beyond, aired on ABC in 1955 and 1957.31 The successful launch of the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, into orbit on January 31, 1958, demonstrated that these were not unrealistic fantasies. The launch restored the public’s faith in U.S. technical and scientific capabilities after the Soviet Union had taken the world by surprise when it launched Sputnik I on October 4, 1957. When NASA recruited the rocket experts for the human spaceflight program in 1960, the media began portraying them as exploratory adventurers comparable to Columbus, Lewis and Clark, or the Wright brothers. Their achievements symbolized the technological power and organizing capacity of the nation, signaling national supremacy in a war of ideologies.32 The technicians, engineers, and scientists working for NASA had become precious assets, “cast as citizen soldiers in the Cold War.”33 Once astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon and returned with Michael Collins to Earth in 1969, the rocketeers who had once worked for Hitler became national heroes as celebrated as their American colleagues. The decision to bring the German team members to the United States after the war seemed vindicated—they had proven their worth. Growing awareness and knowledge in the West of the Holocaust and the camp system did eventually lead to more serious questioning of the connection between the rocket specialists and the use of concentration camp laborers to build the V-2 rockets. In a 1976 TV interview, a dying von Braun finally admitted publicly that he knew of the use of slave laborers and their horrible working conditions at the V-2 production site. But he insisted that the slave laborers had been under the control of the SS and that the rocket specialists had no role in their treatment.34 With the proverbial stamp of approval from the U.S. Army and the State and Justice departments, which had organized the rocket team members’ U.S. citizenship, and no specific incriminating evidence concerning the German team’s past in Nazi Germany, Americans had little cause to doubt this explanation. This would change, however, with the revelations that accompanied the Rudolph case in 1984. I N V E S T I G AT I N G R U D O L P H

Two books, The Rocket Team and Dora, published in 1979 and 1980, respectively, prompted the investigation that led to Arthur Rudolph’s move back to Germany and thereby initiated the change in how

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Americans remember the production of the V-2 rockets, Project Paperclip, and members of the German rocket team. The Rocket Team was the first research-based monograph about the German rocket specialists that detailed the journey of the German rocket specialists from working together on the V-2 rocket in Germany to moving to the United States to work for the U.S. Army and then NASA. It included a description of the use of inmates from the Dora concentration camp for the production of the V-2 missiles but, like von Braun in his interview, it suggested that the rocket experts now residing in the United States held no responsibility for the treatment of the concentration camp laborers.35 Shortly after the publication of The Rocket Team, concentration camp survivor Jean Michel published an English translation of his memoir, Dora.36 This was the first English-language account from a Dora camp survivor. American readers could now gain insights into the inner workings of the Dora concentration camp as well as the V-2 production from the memories of one of its victims. Michel’s memoir represented the first public counternarrative to that of the German rocket specialists, which forever changed the larger national narrative about the Germans. Shortly before becoming a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Eli Rosenbaum came across both publications. After reading them in succession, he was struck by some of the quotes attributed to Rudolph in The Rocket Team: I was in law school . . . and I go into the big bookstore that was there. . . . And I see a book . . . by Holocaust survivor Jean Michel. With a very dramatic cover . . . claiming that the space program had been born in the concentration camps. . . . So I read that and I was shocked. And right around the same time, in the same bookstore, I found the Ordway and Sharpe book [The Rocket Team], and I started reading that. And I was impressed that they had not shied away from the Mittelwerk. They . . . said it was very bad. . . . And then they quoted some of the men who were there, particularly Arthur Rudolph, who had been operations director. . . . There was one quote that really troubled me where he explained that on New Year’s Eve of ’44, so December 31, ’43, he had been at a . . . New Year’s Eve party. . . . And suddenly the word came in that some rocket parts had

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arrived. So he said something like, “I cursed at having to go out into the cold with some men to move these heavy rocket parts.” And I’m thinking, the men that he used to move the rocket parts, they would have been slaves. . . . And they were not enjoying some nice party—I just thought that was really, really callous . . . after all that had happened, to say that, you know, it’s terrible that he was inconvenienced.37 The “callousness” he thought he had detected prompted Rosenbaum to suggest looking into Rudolph’s role at the V-2 production site when he joined the OSI soon after reading the books. His new boss, Neal Sher, was skeptical at first and told him that “those Paperclip cases don’t go anywhere” and that “ ‘the von Braun team, they were . . . the good Nazis.’ ”38 Although Sher probably used the term good Nazis ironically, he captured what most Americans had believed until then—that the German rocket experts, who had been such valuable assets of the nation, may have been opportunists but were certainly not implicated in war crimes. For the OSI, the Rudolph case was not only unexpected but also a notable exception among the cases it pursued at the time. Most of its cases concerned people from Eastern Europe who had entered the United States, presumably under false pretenses, under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and 1950. The OSI was founded largely by the efforts of Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who represented Brooklyn, New York, in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981. Holtzman had been approached by a constituent who claimed that “some of the worst criminals of the Holocaust were living in the United States.”39 As a member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugees, she investigated the allegations and found them true. She demanded a more effective entity than the INS to investigate potential war criminals who had illegally immigrated to the United States. In 1978, Congress approved the so-called Holtzman Amendment, which would create the basis for the deportation of Nazi war criminals living in the United States and the prevention of their reentry.40 Based on the new law, the OSI was created within the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division in 1979. The office hired historians and legal experts who could adequately pursue the investigation and trial of complex cases “decades after the event in question, and . . . in U.S. courts located thousands of

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miles from the scenes of the crimes.”41 The OSI investigates strictly for purposes of denaturalization and deportation, requiring proof that a defendant “ ‘ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion during the period of 1933–1945.”42 Eli Rosenbaum wanted to find out whether Rudolph fell into this category. Despite Sher’s initial skepticism, the OSI began an investigation and approached Rudolph for interviews in 1982 and 1983.43 Apparently, Rudolph was not particularly concerned, so he declined to retain a lawyer for the interviews, although OSI officials suggested he do so. When he did hire a lawyer after the OSI interrogation was complete, he chose an immigration attorney, not a criminal lawyer. Based on the interrogations, the OSI found that “Mr. Rudolph utilized slave labor in the presence of enforcing agents, i.e. SS officers; that he took the initiative to report sabotage to the SS; that he mercilessly utilized the labor pool to meet production quotas and; that he had the rank and authority which he used to participate in the persecution of the prisoners.”44 During the OSI interrogations, Rudolph described how he personally requested slave laborers for production efficiency purposes, but he insisted that he had supervised civilians only, not prisoners.45 He denied ever having reported sabotage to the SS, reasoning that he could not have proven sabotage, for any malfunctions could have been explained by the workers’ “clumsiness” or “inexperience” or a lack of proper training provided by the engineers. In addition, he was “not that close to the daily working.”46 He asserted that he never believed that sabotage had been carried out at the Mittelwerk and that the claim had been used as “an excuse for the incomplete design” of the V-2 rocket.47 Rudolph also explained that it would have been counterproductive to treat prisoners badly “because I relied on their output to keep the whole thing going.”48 He used a similar argument in asserting that he tried to make the prisoners’ lives better when he had the opportunity.49 Despite his declarations that he’d never believed in the concept of a superior Aryan race and that he joined the NSDAP only to avoid Communism, the OSI concluded that Rudolph “had long standing anti-semitic feeling[s]” and had been an “ardent” Nazi, as evidenced by his early membership in the NSDAP and SA (storm troopers)—in 1931 and 1932, respectively, before the Nazi Party ruled Germany.50

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The OSI investigators believed they had enough evidence to begin denaturalization hearings. They asserted that Rudolph’s “drive at the Mittelbau project was the synthesis of his blind hatred for inferior races and his drive for personal ambition.”51 In the final analysis, the OSI’s verdict was that “Rudolph’s wartime activities greatly exceeded what he indicated in his visa application,” and that his “use of forced labor and participation in the persecution of civilians would have resulted in the denial of his visa, if fully disclosed.”52 If it had come to a hearing and the OSI had been able to make its case, Rudolph would have been stripped of his American citizenship and deported based on the legal argument that he should never have “qualified for citizenship under the Fedorenko ‘prohibited activities’ standard.”53 When threatened with a denaturalization hearing, Rudolph signed an agreement not to contest the allegations, to leave the country, and to renounce his American citizenship. In return, the OSI promised not to commence litigation and granted that there was no basis to prevent Rudolph from receiving federal retirement, health care, and social security benefits. The agency also promised to release an agreedupon public statement only after Rudolph had relinquished his American citizenship, which is why the public did not learn about the allegations until mid-October 1984, after he no longer resided in the United States and the State Department had confirmed that he had renounced his U.S. citizenship.54 Since Rudolph had chosen not to tell anyone about the interviews except his immediate family, most of his colleagues in Huntsville were also unaware of his predicament until it hit the national news. T H E W AT E R S H E D M O M E N T

On October 18, 1984, newspapers around the nation announced that Arthur Rudolph had left the country and renounced his American citizenship because he was accused of having committed war crimes during World War II.55 According to the reports, the OSI claimed that, as the production manager of the V-2 rocket in the last years of the war, Rudolph had “participated in the persecution of forced laborers, including concentration camp inmates, who were employed . . . under inhumane conditions.”56 This news was shocking not only because of what it suggested about a member of von Braun’s German rocket team but because it implied that the procedures for bringing German scientists, engineers, and technicians to the United States at the end of World War II had not

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been as diligent as the government had claimed. The reports provided fodder for speculations that there might be more war criminals among the rocketeers residing in the United States. For the former Germans and Austrians who had made the United States their home for almost forty years, this meant that others among them might soon face similar charges. In fact, two other team members were approached by the OSI for interviews in the following years, but their lawyer was able to prevent questioning from taking place.57 Nonetheless, the results of the OSI investigation of Rudolph revealed that their status as heroes of national military and space programs ultimately could not protect the team members from always being considered “foreigners” who could lose their privileges as U.S. citizens even after several decades of citizenship and service to the country. As soon as the news broke, journalists began questioning the logic and implementation of the government-sanctioned military project that had provided Rudolph U.S. citizenship. On November 4, 1984, an article in the Los Angeles Times suggested that, based on declassified documents, U.S. intelligence already had reason to suspect Rudolph as early as 1947. The author of the article asked the next logical question, “whether U.S. intelligence officials closed their eyes to war crimes because of the pressure to bring top German scientists to America and prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union.”58 On November 25, a New York Times headline claimed, “Papers Show Saturn Rocket Chief Was Called ‘Ardent Nazi’ by U.S.”59 The newspaper had requested Rudolph’s files from the army’s Intelligence and Security Command in Ft. Meade, Maryland, under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In addition to showing that Rudolph had joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and the SA in 1932, his file contained a statement dated June 13, 1945, recommending his internment on the grounds that Rudolph was a “100 percent Nazi, dangerous type” and a “security threat.” One of the security reports indicated that he had initially been categorized as an “ardent Nazi,” which was later changed in a revised version without explanation.60 It did not take long for some of the same arguments that had been made in the first years after the announcement of the team’s presence in the United States to resurface. An editorial in the Washington Post on November 6, 1984, implicated the entire team by referring to its members as “the Nazi rocket experts.” The author condemned the decision to bring

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the Germans to the United States in the first place, which prompted several letters to the editor emphasizing the value of these rocket specialists’ work to the United States. This exchange reflected a rift in public perceptions of the German rocket team and revived some of the early criticisms of the military operation when it was first announced to the public in 1945–46.61 This time, the voices critical of the operation had a broader and longer-lasting impact, however. In April 1985, investigative journalist Linda Hunt published an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists titled “U.S. Coverup of Nazi Scientists.”62 Hunt had requested the declassification of government files related to Project Paperclip; in them she found material that she viewed as evidence that the U.S. government had conspired to cover up the importation of war criminals. In 1986 she reported her findings in a CNN series, and in 1991 she published a monograph, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990.63 Hunt’s accusations relied primarily on the revised security reports she found in many of the army files concerning the individual rocket team members. The obvious explanation seemed to be that there had been a deliberate attempt to conceal the importation of “ardent” Nazis and war criminals. While the existence of these revised reports was not public knowledge for a long time, the fact that both types of reports were kept—one set was even labeled “Revised Security Report”—indicates that there was no actual conspiracy to “cover up” these different evaluations—at least not for the long term.64 Historian John Gimbel has argued that the revised reports were created because of rapid changes in the political climate of the postwar years, which led to a significant policy shift that allowed those reviewing individual cases to be less judgmental about the specialists’ Nazi affiliations—“a shift from consideration of the candidates’ activities under the Nazi regime to judgments about their value to the United States and whether their presence constituted a threat to national security.” In the face of the more current threat of Communism, Nazism was considered a security menace “which no longer exists.”65 But whether there was a deliberate cover-up or not, Hunt had exposed the Machiavellian nature of Project Paperclip. While the Rudolph case and its implications had already changed public perspectives of Project Paperclip and the German rocket experts, the reunification of East and West Germany in 1989–90 added another dimension to the memory landscape. Now, facts about the Dora

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concentration camp and its horrors became much more accessible to the West.66 With the new public knowledge about the use of slave labor to produce the V-2 rockets and the reevaluation of Project Paperclip, journalists, academic and public historians, and documentary makers radically changed how they portrayed the German rocket development program in the United States. Descriptions of a clear separation between the responsibilities of the rocket team and the SS no longer seemed plausible once the experiences of concentration camp survivors were more publicly visible and the site where the atrocities were committed was more accessible. It became increasingly evident that the German rocket specialists must have known of the use of concentration camp laborers to build the V-2 rockets and that they had made practically no effort to disclose that aspect of their work, let alone express any regret over it. The key to the changed narrative was the juxtaposition of the memories that the rocket experts recounted with those of the Dora camp survivors. Tom Bower, a British investigative journalist, was one of the first to illustrate for the public what that looked and sounded like, thereby relaying what the OSI lawyer Eli Rosenbaum had experienced after reading The Rocket Team and Dora in succession. In 1987, Bower produced a BBC/PBS documentary, The Nazi Connection, which aired as a Frontline program in the United States. The documentary included contrasting interviews with Rudolph, von Braun, and Yves Béon, a Dora camp survivor who had worked in the V-2 production area. The broadcast illustrated the contradictions between their narratives about the conditions in the tunnels where the V-2 rockets were built, which effectively made both Rudolph and von Braun appear guilty, regardless of their assurances that they were not responsible for the conditions.67 They had clearly omitted important and shocking details about their work for the Nazi regime. Thus began an era of presenting testimony from the rocket specialists juxtaposed with testimony from concentration camp survivors who had helped produce the rockets. The choice to use these portrayals suggested that anyone exposed to them would come to the conclusion that the rocket specialists had, at a minimum, a darker past than most Americans had formerly believed. In 1990, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., underwent significant changes to include the impact of technology on society in the presentation of artifacts, that is, to apply a more critical and

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less celebratory lens to their exhibits in response to criticism from academic historians. This effort included dramatic changes to the museum’s exhibit of a V-2 rocket. Previously, the display had focused on the V-2’s role as a technological forerunner of long-range ballistic missiles and launchers of satellites. Its history under the Nazi regime was all but omitted. According to an article in the Washington Post, the new captions “ma[d]e it clear that the V-2 was an indiscriminate instrument of murder.” Images of Wernher von Braun briefing uniformed German officers, of the corpses of victims of the V-2 bombings in Antwerp, and of the “slave factories in which the missile was produced” placed the rocket, its history, and thereby its designers in a much broader social and moral context.68 In Hutchinson, Kansas, the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center went a step further in 1997, creating an exhibit for the V-2 with an explicit focus on the Nazi regime and displays illustrating the use of concentration camp labor.69 The 1990s and 2000s saw a new surge in monographs about von Braun and his team in the United States and Germany. The new publications reflected a debate over the meaning of the team members’ work for the Nazi regime and the use of concentration camp labor to build the V-2s, to which they owed their postwar reputation as valuable experts, which in turn led to their recruitment by the U.S. Army.70 Although American TV stations had been fairly quiet on the subject after the 1987 PBS Frontline piece, around 2000 they began airing more explicit documentaries again, which now always included references to the use of concentration camp labor to build the rockets for Hitler’s regime. A&E Biography aired a version of the BBC von Braun biography in 2000, and more documentaries followed on the History Channel (Nordhausen, Modern Marvels, 2002; Wernher Von Braun: The Rocket Man, Hitler’s Managers, 2005; Wernher Von Braun and the V-2 Rocket, Man-MomentMachine, 2006) and on the Public Broadcasting System (The Hunt for Nazi Scientists, Secrets of the Dead, 2008). MEANWHILE, IN GERMANY

If any specialists who are brought to this country are subsequently found to be listed as alleged war criminals, they should be returned to Europe for trial. —U.S. War Department General Staff Directive, July 194571

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After a preliminary investigation, Rudolph’s German citizenship was restored, and he did not stand trial in Germany for the war crimes the OSI had accused him of. This is not too surprising, since the German and American attorneys evaluating Rudolph and his activities in Nazi Germany had different goals. The OSI investigators were charged with investigating and, if it came to a denaturalization hearing, proving that Rudolph should be stripped of his American citizenship. Once Rudolph signed an agreement admitting to the agency’s accusations and promising to renounce his American citizenship and move to Germany, the OSI’s job was basically done. The U.S. investigators did not expect the German authorities to prosecute Rudolph, despite the “enormous record of facts.”72 They were aware of the challenge of prosecuting Rudolph under German law, where the statute of limitations for many Nazi crimes had expired.73 From this point on, their focus for the case was to make sure that the German government had access to all the material used in the OSI investigation and to ensure that Rudolph would not be able to enter the United States again. The German prosecutor, on the other hand, presumably would have had to prove “base motive” murder or accessory to such murder in order to convict Rudolph of any crime related to his work at Mittelwerk. According to the chief historian of the OSI at the time, these were “the only crimes of the Nazi period as to which the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany] statute of limitations has not been permitted to run.”74 After Rudolph renounced his citizenship at an American embassy in Germany and the OSI transferred the files it had collected for the case against Rudolph to the German Justice Department via the German embassy in Washington, D.C., in April 1985, the Hamburg prosecutor, Harald Duhn, began a preliminary investigation to determine whether Rudolph should be the subject of a criminal investigation. The goal was to determine whether there was any conclusive evidence to determine if Rudolph had been “a completely uninvolved observer” or, to the contrary, if he had forwarded sabotage reports to the SS—which would have prompted the SS to hold a public hanging of the accused prisoners, thereby presumably making Rudolph an accessory to murder.75 According to Duhn’s report, “The prisoners were guarded by SS Totenkopf units (‘Death’s Head’ units) but worked under the direction of

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German engineers and foremen. The allocation of labour was the duty of the work commander from the camp commander’s office but had to be approved by the ‘Labour Allocation’ department of Mittelwerk GmbH.”76 Accusations of sabotage were presumably commonplace; these, as well as the charge of a plot to stage an armed uprising and attempted breakouts, led to at least two mass hangings in front of prisoners, military personnel, and civilians.77 Civilians were not allowed to talk or interact with the prisoners except through SS officers or Kapos.78 Although several survivors had testified that they had been physically mistreated by civilians, including engineers and foremen, others reported that civilians had tried to help prisoners by bringing additional food from home or providing extra work breaks, although these acts of kindness were reported to a lesser extent than the mistreatment. Both types of interaction confirmed that not all civilians adhered to the rules and that there was some amount of leeway for civilians’ conduct toward the prisoners.79 Duhn’s report summarized the findings of the inquiry, which indicated that the testimony of surviving prisoners showed that several witnesses confirmed Rudolph’s own statement that he had observed a hanging, but that many did not know Rudolph at all, and those who claimed that he ordered “special treatment” (public hangings) for presumed saboteurs were unable to identify him in a photograph.80 Others made “statements regarding the accused which have to be treated with suspicion.”81 One civilian noted that “Rudolph had done a great deal for the prisoners and, for example saw to it that they were given additional food, which was prohibited,” and that “the SS were not to learn about this.”82 In the end, the investigator did not find enough evidence to try Rudolph for “base motive” murder in a German court. Implicitly questioning the willingness of the German prosecutor to pursue justice in this case, the chief historian of the OSI later noted that the German report “makes no mention of any of the captured German documents relating to Rudolph that are held in archives in the United States, Great Britain, and the Federal Republic of Germany.” He also noted that the transcript of a second interrogation of Rudolph in 1983 supplied by the OSI was not listed in Duhn’s report, suggesting that the documents and transcript were probably not consulted—had they been, they might have changed the outcome.83 While this may be valid

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Sculpture and plaque, located on the memorial square in front of the former crematorium, commemorating the inmates killed at Mittelbau-Dora, 2008. Author’s collection.

criticism, at this point it is impossible for an outside historian to retrace the decisions made in both countries exactly, especially since some of the documents the OSI used as evidence are not in the public domain.84 As in the United States, in Germany the image of von Braun and his team experienced major shifts, but evidently so did the way in which the courts ruled on war crimes cases. The West German press worshipped von Braun in the 1950s and 1960s, while East Germany went out of its way to vilify him.85 After the reunification of the two Germanys in 1989– 90, however, West Germans “discovered” the Dora camp, which prompted more German publications and documentaries addressing the relationship of the von Braun team to the camp.86 After the investigation of Rudolph, German courts implemented a new line of argument that did not require proof of “base motive” murder to convict a defendant. According to a BBC News report on the 2011 trial of John Demjanjuk, “Prosecutors had argued he was recruited by the Germans to be an SS camp guard and that by working at a death camp he was a participant in

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the killings. No evidence was produced that he committed a specific crime. It was the first time such a legal argument had been made in a German court.”87 One can only speculate whether the German investigation into Rudolph would have turned out differently if it had been conducted after these shifts in the perceptions of the rocketeers and in legal procedures concerning war criminals.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Huntsville

I’m not saying who is right or wrong. . . . But the Rudolph who has been characterized in this whole business of this deportation is not the Rudolph I knew. —Thomas Jack Lee, MSFC director1

when the front page of the Huntsville Times announced on October 17, 1984, “Former Saturn 5 Program Chief Accused of WWII Persecutions,” almost everyone in town would have recognized the local significance of this news.2 Since Wernher von Braun was the director of the center during those years and most of his upper management team consisted of his colleagues from Germany, even those who did not know the name of the accused would have probably guessed that the “Saturn 5 program chief” was one of von Braun’s colleagues from Germany. While the news about Rudolph affected few Americans outside Huntsville, it had quite an impact on the town Rudolph had called home for almost twenty years, even though he and his wife had moved to California to be closer to their daughter ten years previously.3 Whether the town’s residents knew him personally or not, the accused was well respected locally, if just for his association with von Braun as well as the army and NASA endeavors that had brought national attention and 16 4

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economic prosperity to many Huntsville families. His supporters’ initial shock and disbelief developed into many years of heightened activity to counter the allegations, including efforts to bring him back to the United States and restore the respect they felt was due him for his work on the Apollo program. Because of the Germans’ prominence in town, the local paper continually reported, usually uncritically, on the developments of Rudolph’s case and even requested his files from the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations using the Freedom of Information Act.4 In addition, letters to the editor displayed sustained interest and controversy even years after Rudolph passed away in 1996. Like other American citizens, most Huntsville residents probably did not know to what extent the German rocket specialists had participated in the Nazi regime and its organizations, or that slave labor had been used to build the V-2 rockets they had developed. At this point, only those with a special interest would have read The Rocket Team, let alone Dora, which had been published only a few years earlier. Previous histories of German rocketry had all but omitted the use of concentration camp labor, and the Huntsville Germans had certainly not volunteered information about it.5 After the long silence on these issues, the accusations against Rudolph seemed incongruous to many who had raised their families alongside the German rocketeers and their families. As the town tried to make sense of the events, the reactions ranged from casting Rudolph as the victim of overzealous bureaucrats to concerns that he was not the only one among the Germans with a “dark past” in Nazi Germany. Some residents even openly expressed anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Not surprisingly, responses to the Rudolph case seemed to depend on a person’s position vis-à-vis the Holocaust. Those whose families were affected by it had a very different reaction than did those who did not have a personal relationship to the regime’s victims. In the interviews, Jewish residents expressed sentiments I did not find among non-Jewish residents and vice versa. The case seemed to have barely resonated in the African American community, despite the fact that blacks would have been victims of the Nazi regime as well.6 Since black Germans made up a very small minority, most African Americans would not have had family members in Nazi Germany and may not have even been aware of the fact that black Germans existed before the end of World War II.

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The Rudolph case had its greatest impact on the German community, however. Some worried that the OSI investigations might not stop with Rudolph. In fact, Dieter Grau and Günther Haukohl had been contacted by the OSI soon after the news about Rudolph made the headlines, but after their attorney asked for information about the potential investigation, they were never contacted again.7 While many interviewees confirmed that the Rudolph case had a significant effect, most illustrations of how it affected the German community came from members of the second generation. They recalled their parents’ reactions in more detail and seemed to identify with their parents and Rudolph, contending that Rudolph was, like their parents, not guilty of any crimes. INITIAL REACTIONS

We had not the faintest idea that anything like this was brewing. —Erich Neubert, German rocket specialist8

As soon as the news about Rudolph broke, some local and national reporters collected comments from his former German colleagues, who quickly turned the charges against Rudolph on their head by suggesting that he was actually the victim.9 Konrad Dannenberg, Erich Neubert, Walter Wiesman, and Ernst Stuhlinger provided character references for the accused. According to a report in USA Today, Stuhlinger suggested that when the topic of the use of concentration camp labor for production at the Mittelwerk came up among friends, Rudolph’s demeanor demonstrated that he could not have been culpable of the alleged crimes: “ ‘Whenever there would be talk of the old times, and it came to that part, he was very silent, depressed about it. He said it was a sinister operation by the SS and he was glad when he could leave there. . . . Dr. Otto [sic] Rudolph . . . loved people and would be the last person to be cruel and sadistic.’ ”10 Confirming what Stuhlinger implied about who was in charge of the concentration camp laborers, the Huntsville Times offered a quote from The Rocket Team, stating, “Control was absolute over the prisoners, and their German co-workers could only communicate with them in the presence of SS guards.” Dannenberg similarly insisted on the distance between the SS and the engineers, suggesting that Rudolph was

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at best a witness of the atrocities committed by the SS, but certainly not a perpetrator.11 He speculated about Rudolph’s options under the circumstances at the Mittelwerk, concluding that he really had none: the SS was in charge of the forced laborers, Rudolph “had no influence with the SS,” and “if he had refused [to manage production] he might have wound up on the other side”—in a concentration camp—himself. Dannenberg believed that, contrary to the war crimes accusations, Rudolph had actually tried to improve conditions for the workers when he could.12 While his colleagues generally painted Rudolph as a humanitarian stuck in a difficult situation, some of Dannenberg’s comments added logic and reason to disperse any doubts about Rudolph’s innocence, albeit with a good measure of cynicism. In his interview with the Huntsville Times, Dannenberg noted that it was Rudolph’s “technical responsibility” to request additional laborers—he was presumably referring to the OSI’s accusation that “Rudolph personally participated in the procurement of concentration camp laborers to serve as slave laborers and, while working under the supervision of Rudolph and his subordinates, inmates perished in large numbers.”13 While the OSI interpreted Rudolph’s involvement in the procurement of concentration camp laborers as evidence that he perpetrated war crimes, Dannenberg used the defense that had become famous during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann by arguing that Rudolph had simply been fulfilling the requirements of his job. Resting his argument on the assumption that technology and the decisions made in its service are inherently apolitical, that is, not personal, Dannenberg referred to Rudolph’s “technical responsibility” to imply that he could not be faulted for his actions. Adding to this line of argument, Dannenberg explained in his interview with the Birmingham News that it was in Rudolph’s best interest not to work to death people who held skilled jobs, since “he didn’t want to lose people that he had brought up to par so that they really could do the job.”14 In contrast to his colleagues’ insistence on Rudolph’s humanitarianism, Dannenberg thereby characterized Rudolph’s motivations as calculated self-interest. Dannenberg also offered an explanation for why Rudolph had been accused of war crimes. Rudolph’s management style “may have made some people mad at him. And there may have been similar things in Germany.” This statement suggested that the accusations against

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Rudolph were potentially the result of a former subordinate’s act of petty revenge, not of hard evidence or valid testimony from concentration camp survivors. Supporting his assertion that the allegations were not credible, Dannenberg had already questioned the OSI’s death figure of twenty thousand, calling it “overstated.”15 While claims that official death numbers are exaggerated represent a classic form of Holocaust denial, most readers in Huntsville were probably not familiar with this tactic and had no reason to doubt Dannenberg’s claim.16 Although they had worked on the development of the V-2 in different capacities, none of those the newspapers interviewed had firsthand knowledge of how Rudolph conducted his work at the production site since none of them had worked at the Mittelwerk facility, the site of Rudolph’s alleged war crimes.17 Since the results of the OSI investigation were not available to the public, readers had no immediate way of verifying Dannenberg’s assertion that the OSI did not have a credible case against Rudolph. For all they knew, the OSI was similarly speculating and may not have been able to make a case if it had been forced to pursue a denaturalization trial. The statements from Rudolph’s colleagues may have sounded plausible to some readers because they echoed Rudolph’s own account. As soon as the news broke that he had signed the agreement with the OSI, Rudolph denied that this meant he was indeed a war criminal. On the contrary, according to the New York Times, he claimed that “accusations that he abused slave laborers were ‘completely untrue allegations.’ ” Confirming Dannenberg’s assertion, Rudolph further explained, “I tried to help the poor forced laborers to have their conditions improved. . . . I tried to do what was in my means of doing.” A Newsweek article quoted Rudolph stating, “I certainly never committed any crimes, not even a wrongdoing.” In an obvious effort to provide an example for his and his colleagues’ assertions, he later took the idea that he was the actual victim a step further. Speaking to the Associated Press, he related how he once gave the forced laborers working for him a twelve-hour break because they looked “very tired,” with the result that “my boss called me on the carpet and said, ‘If you do that again, I’ll put you in a concentration camp.’ ”18 Just as Dannenberg contended, Rudolph saw himself not only as a victim of the OSI’s investigation but as a former victim of his boss and therefore the Nazi regime as well.

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In order to explain why he did not fight the OSI charges while still in the United States, Rudolph stated that he wanted to avoid the strains and costs of a potentially lengthy trial and the media sensationalism his family would have been exposed to. In a later interview, Rudolph explained that he feared he might lose his pension in a trial or have to spend it on lawyer bills in order to contest the charges. Presumably, he also feared that his daughter’s citizenship might be affected by the outcome.19 It is likely that Rudolph was simply not confident at the time that he had a chance of winning a denaturalization hearing, since he did later pursue a nullification of the charges.20 FIGHTING BACK

I don’t think Huntsville would have let this happen to Arthur Rudolph. —Walter Wiesman, German businessman who came with the rocket team21

Most of Rudolph’s former colleagues and neighbors were outraged by what had happened to him and many tried to help clear his name so he could return to the United States. They saw the actions of the OSI as a form of betrayal because they felt grateful to the German team for its contributions to American rocketry development and believed that Rudolph deserved to be celebrated, not driven out of the country. Few claimed that he was completely innocent, but the main argument circulating among his supporters was that Rudolph had always been truthful about his work at the Mittelwerk and that the U.S. government knew everything there was to know before it made Rudolph a citizen and allowed him to work on highly prestigious national projects.22 Many were convinced that the OSI would not have been successful in its pursuit of Rudolph if Wernher von Braun had still been alive—a belief shared by Rudolph’s OSI investigator Eli Rosenbaum.23 His supporters also presumed that if Rudolph had still lived in Huntsville, he would not have signed the affidavit because he would have had the community’s backing.24 His German former colleagues immediately encouraged Rudolph to fight the accusations, in part because of their potential implications for

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others in the group. In addition to protesting the charges in interviews with the press, “23 former German rocket scientists . . . signed a letter asking President Reagan to reinstate Dr. Rudolph’s citizenship.”25 Speaking to the local and regional press, Rudolph’s daughter, Marianne, stated that the charges against her father were based on lies, while Eberhard Rees, who had followed von Braun as the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center from 1970 to 1973, explained that Rudolph was in too poor health to fight the charges at the time of the investigation. In a letter to the editor, Ruth von Saurma, who had worked closely with Wernher von Braun for many years, summarized the perspective of “former colleagues, friends and neighbors of Arthur Rudolph,” advocating a review of the case.26 Anticipating a future trial, some of the rocketeers and their family members even organized to raise money for a defense fund “for Dr. Rudolph or for anyone else on the team if the OSI brings charges against them,” while conducting their own research to find evidence that could exonerate Rudolph and seeking support from politicians to reinstate his citizenship.27 Rudolph also had many non-German supporters, for whom Rudolph’s later good deeds outweighed any wrongdoings in his past. Interviewed by the Birmingham News in November 1984, both Huntsville’s mayor, Joe Davis, and former NASA executive Harry Gorman found it troubling that the government had “waited 40 years before taking action against Rudolph, who meanwhile helped bolster this country’s defense and place Americans on the moon.” The headline of an article in the Washington Times in July 1985 featured a quote from retired army general, then Episcopal bishop, John B. Medaris, who simply reversed the accusations against Rudolph: “OSI’s Treatment of Suspected Nazis Called ‘Persecution Not Prosecution.’” Medaris suggested that “if there is anyone we owe fairness to, it’s these people [the German rocket specialists],” because of their work for the U.S. military and “the advancement of science.” The article included an image of the retired army general in a priest’s outfit, suggesting his moral authority both as a former military general and a Christian priest. Earlier that year, Medaris had already declared the accusations against Rudolph “unjust, immoral, and illegal” in an article in which he described his close relationship to von Braun and other leaders of the German team as former chief of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) at Redstone Arsenal.28

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While Medaris took a more offensive stance, fitting for a former army general if not a priest, others conveyed a sense of defeat and shame. James Murphy, Rudolph’s deputy at NASA from 1965 to 1969, later reflected the sentiments shared by many of Rudolph’s former colleagues: “It made me ashamed, very ashamed, that our country would have taken a man. Regardless of what may have happened before he came here, they had accepted him here. He had not only done his job, but he had really, in my opinion, done so much toward contributing to the wealth of this country.”29 Similarly conveying a sense of shame, Ed Buckbee, who was the director of the Space and Rocket Center at the time, explained how he interpreted what had happened to Rudolph: “We allowed him to come into our country knowing his background, allowed him to work to the top of our space program, retired him and congratulated him. Then, after we’d used all his capabilities, another branch of government decided to investigate him and punish him. . . . There is reason to be ashamed.”30 In an effort to make sense of this change in the government’s attitude and echoing Rudolph supporters’ sentiments, one local resident declared in a letter to the editor of the Huntsville Times that he believed that what happened to Rudolph was an act of revenge and “self-aggrandizement, which will not raise one martyr from their grave, nor advance our nation’s honor.”31 Like his German supporters, some of Rudolph’s non-German backers dedicated a lot of energy to gathering support for his cause and information to solidify his claims. In 1985, a group of 108 “associates and friends” signed a letter petitioning the president of the United States to restore Rudolph’s citizenship. A local stockbroker formed another group, separate from the Germans’, for Rudolph’s defense.32 Groups affiliated with Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. chimed in as well, charging that the OSI was receiving “misinformation” about Rudolph from the KGB and its East German counterpart and calling for the dismantling of the OSI because of its alleged affiliation with the KGB.33 That same year, Rees, who had succeeded von Braun as the MSFC director, and Frederick I. Ordway III, the coauthor of The Rocket Team, discussed Rudolph’s situation with the White House communications director Pat Buchanan, who declined to comment publicly.34 The following year, Medaris reportedly asked former members of the ABMA gathering for a thirty-year reunion in Huntsville to sign “a new round of petitions

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supporting German scientists under investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation.”35 In the meantime, Friedwardt Winterberg, a physics research professor at the University of Nevada–Reno, collected interviews from former Polish prisoners of war in support of Rudolph’s defense, which were later reviewed by the German prosecutor investigating Rudolph.36 In 1987, Hugh McInnish, Huntsville resident and engineer for the army at Redstone Arsenal, published a defense of Rudolph under the pseudonym Thomas Franklin titled An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph.37 Based on the author’s research and interviews with Rudolph in Germany, the book outlines Rudolph’s perspective on events. It includes transcripts of the OSI interviews conducted in 1983 as well as those carried out by the army in the mid-1940s. McInnish was later frequently cited in news articles about the Rudolph case and appeared on CNN’s Crossfire on July 11, 1990.38 In 1988, Ordway advocated for Rudolph to members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), arguing that the federal government should revisit the Rudolph case: one who had “performed important work for the space program and who was elected by his peers to a high grade of AIAA membership” was “being treated with gross injustice by a nation that prides itself on fairness.”39 It did not take long for local and regional politicians to demonstrate their support as well. Huntsville’s city council unanimously passed a resolution in September 1985 claiming that the U.S. government had violated Rudolph’s constitutional rights and should restore his citizenship. Copies of the resolution were sent to President Ronald Reagan, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and U.S. senator Jeremiah Denton of Mobile, Alabama. The council’s resolution undoubtedly reflected the broader sentiment in Huntsville that Rudolph was one of “a group of eminent German scientists who worked long, hard and faithfully in the service of our country” and that “the City of Huntsville is what it is today largely because of their work and influence.”40 According to an article published in July of that year, U.S. senator Howell Heflin of Tuscumbia and U.S. representative Ronnie Flippo of Sheffield stated that they were willing to listen to Rudolph’s defense, while U.S. senator Denton publicly referred to Rudolph as a war criminal and an “unsavory man.”41 Heflin later offered Rudolph to “push for a congressional hearing” on his case, and despite his professed sentiments, Denton wrote a follow-up letter to the

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Justice Department in 1986 to inquire about a FOIA request that Ordway had submitted in November 1984 regarding the Rudolph case.42 In 1989, the new mayor of Huntsville, Steve Hettinger, endorsed the city council’s assessment that Rudolph should be allowed to return to the United States, explaining to the Birmingham News, “He [Rudolph] was a part of our space program—a key element, an asset to that program—and I think that extends beyond all other considerations.”43 G O I N G N AT I O N A L , T H E N I N T E R N AT I O N A L

The contrast between the image of the Germans in Huntsville and Rudolph’s fate was particularly palpable during anniversaries related to von Braun or the rocket team’s work for the army and NASA. For example, the Huntsville Times observed the tenth anniversary of von Braun’s death with a celebratory article on his and the German group’s contributions to the town. This was published in 1987, the same year that McInnish’s biography of Rudolph appeared. It is not surprising that such anniversaries offered an opening to garner increased support on Rudolph’s behalf. While preparing a reunion to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the first walk on the moon, Rudolph’s supporters had finally found nationally influential supporters willing to back their cause and take the fight to the next level.44 No longer working for the White House in 1989, Buchanan was free to use his national prominence to call for a “Congressman of courage” to request a public hearing for Rudolph, explaining that “few can claim more credit for man’s journey to the moon than Arthur Rudolph” and lamenting that he was now “a man disgraced, stripped of citizenship, living in Hamburg, forever branded a Nazi war criminal by the nation that once exalted him and pinned medals on his chest.”45 U.S. congressman James Traficant from Ohio, who had previously defended John Demjanjuk—at the time a convicted war criminal awaiting execution in Israel—heeded Buchanan’s call.46 He began his crusade by declaring that “ ‘a powerful Jewish lobby’ ” was “trying to intimidate elected officials who might otherwise ‘agree with me that this whole case against Dr. Rudolph has no basis.’ ”47 In May 1990, Traficant spoke to members of the Friends of Arthur Rudolph at a dinner meeting in Huntsville and publicly urged Rudolph to return to the United States in defiance of the Justice Department and to demand an open trial.48 When he introduced a resolution in Congress later that month calling for an

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investigation into the OSI’s handling of Rudolph’s case, Traficant explained that he believed “that the OSI may have tampered with the civil rights of a U.S. citizen.” If Rudolph truly was guilty, Traficant argued, he was not being punished enough—he should not receive a pension or any other remuneration from the U.S. government.49 With this grandstanding, Traficant suggested that the OSI must not have real proof of Rudolph’s guilt; his punishment would have been harsher if the allegations were indeed true. Further claiming that “new evidence supports the theory that he [Rudolph] was railroaded by the Justice Department,” he asked that Buchanan’s article in the Washington Times be included in the record.50 Not long after, several of Rudolph’s prominent local supporters petitioned George H. W. Bush to intervene on Rudolph’s behalf during the president’s visit to Huntsville in June 1990. Among them were Mayor Hettinger, MSFC director Jack Lee, UAH president Louis Padulo, Alabama Space and Rocket Center (the former name of the USSRC) director Ed Buckbee, retired Teledyne Brown Engineering head Joseph Moquin, and two former Redstone Arsenal commanding generals: Lieutenant General Charles W. Eifler and Major General John G. Zierdt.51 Seeking more publicity and hoping to force the U.S. government to take action, Rudolph’s supporters created an international incident that summer. In July, Traficant and a contingent from Huntsville met Rudolph at the Niagara Falls border with Canada to challenge the denial of his entry to the United States. The ploy ultimately failed.52 The OSI had alerted Canadian officials of Rudolph’s plans, who then notified airlines in Germany not to allow Rudolph to travel to Canada. Despite these instructions, on July 1, 1990, Rudolph and his wife arrived in Toronto, where he was detained by Canadian immigration officials and then released, only to stand trial based on a new Canadian immigration law that included a provision forbidding war criminals to enter the country. This was the first time Rudolph’s case was heard in front of a court. He stayed to testify during part of the trial but returned to Germany in August. To strengthen the evidence against Rudolph, the OSI forwarded to the Canadian court copies of documents that historian Michael J. Neufeld had recently found in Germany. Those showed that Rudolph had recommended and helped to implement the use of concentration camp inmates for the rocket program.53 Rudolph’s supporters, however, claimed

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that one of the documents was forged.54 Nevertheless, the Canadian court finally ruled in January 1991 to permanently ban Rudolph from Canada because he had “aided and abetted . . . crimes against humanity.”55 Not deterred by this setback, local supporters continued their quest. Erroneously arguing that “investigations in the United States, Germany and Canada have found no evidence to substantiate the OSI’s charges,” they asked Senator Heflin to help in a petition for a hearing on Rudolph’s behalf at the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which he apparently did.56 Meanwhile, Rudolph filed a motion against the U.S. Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California seeking rescission of the agreement with the OSI. The motion was dismissed on grounds that the California court “is not empowered to compel the government to give Plaintiff the relief he seeks.”57 Rudolph filed another suit in 1995 “claiming that he was wrongly denied a visa to enter the United States in 1989 and the right to enter Canada in 1990. He asserted also that his civil rights had been violated during his OSI interviews.” That suit was rejected by the courts as well.58 Not surprisingly, Rudolph’s case also attracted outright Holocaust deniers.59 Huntsville resident Robert H. Countess was one of the most prominent among them.60 In his review of An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph, published in the Journal of Historical Review, which is notorious for Holocaust denial, Countess referred to the OSI investigators as “witch hunters,” described the Holocaust as a “present legend,” praised Hitler for having defended Germany against Zionism, which had supposedly “declared war on Germany,” and accused the author of the Morgenthau Plan of having planned the “genocide of Germans.”61 As a part-time instructor in the history department of the University of Alabama in Huntsville for a brief period in the mid-1980s, he required his students to read The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur Butz (in subsequent editions the book carried the subtitle The Case against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry).62 Countess invited the British holocaust denier David Irving and his French counterpart Robert Faurrison to give talks at the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library and the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1993 and 1994, respectively.63 Another Rudolph supporter, Martin Hollmann from Monterey, California, runs a website titled Scientists and Friends, under whose

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auspices he has self-published multiple books and distributed DVDs— all dedicated to the glorification of German scientists and engineers who came to the United States after the war, mainly under Project Paperclip.64 In his newsletter, he reproduces letters and e-mail correspondence with those who contact him, argues that the history of World War II and Germany’s part in it is taught incorrectly in schools, promotes publications by the Institute for Historical Review, and denounces books critical of the Germans who once worked for Hitler’s regime.65 At one of the lunches organized by and for the families of the German rocketeers I attended in Huntsville in 2006, Hollmann handed out copies of The Brainwashing of the German Nation by German native Udo Walendy, who was apparently in jail in Germany for his “revisionist history.”66 Despite his efforts and those of his supporters, Rudolph was never allowed to enter the United States again, but even after he passed away in January 1996, the campaign to clear his name continued. As an article in the Huntsville Times published in 2000 and an exchange of articles and letters to the editor in 2006 suggest, the “war over Rudolph still rages.”67 William E. Winterstein Sr. published a book in 2002, Gestapo USA: When Justice Was Blindfolded, which describes the OSI as having used “Gestapo methods” in the Rudolph case.68 Winterstein knew the members of the German rocket team when they were stationed at Ft. Bliss, where his army unit provided security and housing for the team. Placide D. Nicaise, an aerospace engineer who had worked alongside the German rocket team since 1958, published Huntsville and the Von Braun Rocket Team: The Real Story in 2003 through Hollmann’s Scientists and Friends. He argues that beginning with Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, NASA has always had a strained relationship with the Germans in Huntsville, which eventually led to a “purge of the Rocket Team,” concluding that “the shameful attempt to downplay the role of this team and to drive its members into exile on the basis of threat and innuendo is a dark chapter in American history.”69 R E V E R B E R AT I O N S

The support for Rudolph was not limited to those in Huntsville who actively tried to help him fight the allegations. For many who knew the German rocket team members as colleagues, neighbors, and often

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friends, the statements of Rudolph’s teammates from Germany about his role at the V-2 production site probably held more weight than those of the OSI investigators. In the interviews, some repeated the notion that the OSI investigation was primarily a result of a Jewish campaign, while others tried to rationalize Rudolph’s actions during the war by comparing them to their own life experiences. In the process, some trivialized not only Rudolph’s actions but the entire Nazi regime while suggesting that holding Rudolph accountable for his past deeds has much broader implications for American actions during times of war. Rod Moak, a Korean War veteran originally from Rome, Georgia, joined the ABMA in 1957 and worked with Rudolph for many years. Echoing sentiments others had expressed earlier in the local newspapers, he offered the following viewpoint during our interview in 2007: “I always thought that . . . it was very shabby the way the federal government treated him [Rudolph] after using him . . . taking all of his intelligence and working the program and doing such a marvelous job of managing the Saturn V program and then try to take his . . . I guess he was a citizen by then . . . his citizenship away from him. It was just . . . I think it was an overzealous Nazi hunter that did that.”70 Moak then described his primary reaction as disappointment: “It was terrible, you know . . . the whole thing was . . . just so disappointing . . . it just kind of hurts.” This phrasing underlines how much the U.S. government’s decision seemed to affect Rudolph’s friends and colleagues personally. It illustrates that some perceived the German rocket team as an integral part of the community, if not as a kind of extended family. As they tried to grapple with the implications of the accusations against Rudolph, some Huntsville residents compared his situation during the war to circumstances they were familiar with. Jimmie Taylor, a World War II veteran and former manager of the Russell Erskine Hotel in downtown Huntsville, compared the acts Rudolph is accused of with his own fallibility: “I think it’s a disgrace. . . . Look, I say I think of all of the sins I’ve done in my life. . . . I say, if Jesus Christ couldn’t forgive my sins, where would I be? . . . Now, are you going to go back and . . . get me for some little something that I did or somebody I associated with twenty years ago, and twenty years I’ve been working hard and everything like this? I think that . . . was . . . very much [a] ridiculous thing. . . . I don’t understand how they could do that. That’s politics. . . . Politics is

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terrible.”71 While Taylor’s emotional reaction was similar to Moak’s, he made the Rudolph case even more personal by trying to imagine himself in Rudolph’s shoes. In order to make that leap, he compared the war crimes that Rudolph was accused of to “some little something that I did” and invoked the widely hailed in America Protestant work ethic, suggesting that Rudolph should be forgiven in light of the “hard work” he performed for the United States. These sentiments extended even to the next generation. John Evans, an attorney who briefly served in the army and was once married to a daughter of one of the German rocket experts, admitted that he never met Rudolph and may not know enough about the case, but that he was nevertheless convinced that Rudolph was treated unfairly: I remember having sentiments of—I don’t know what Rudolph did . . . I mean, there was a war going on—slave labor [was] probably used throughout. I remember having a sense that I’m not willing to think that Rudolph did anything that maybe we didn’t do. When I say “We”—Americans didn’t do in the same situation—I mean wars are horrible and bad things happen in wars. And at some point and time it’s over and . . . I just . . . don’t know . . . enough about it to really make an intelligent comment, but I know emotionally I sort of felt like this thing went on ad nauseam. And . . . he suffered for it and maybe somebody else got some relief for it but I see him as being somewhat of a sacrificial lamb. . . . I didn’t know him . . . I mean, I never met him, but I just know he was one of that group.72 Evans was not alone in his assessment that Rudolph’s association with the group of German rocket specialists made him an unlikely suspect, which required a different explanation for why he was accused of war crimes. Combined with logic that compares the atrocities committed by Germans under Nazi rule with actions generally accepted during war, the only reasonable explanation seems to be that he was used as a scapegoat, a “sacrificial lamb.” There was nothing unusual about the views that Moak, Taylor, and Evans expressed. I heard similar sentiments from other white non-Jewish residents. While they reveal strong emotional ties to the German rocket

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team, these views also reflect the notion that the accusations against Rudolph were petty and vengeful. More important, these views reflect a fear that Americans could be held accountable for their past deeds as well if they apply harsh judgment to Rudolph. What would it mean, for example, if Americans were judged as harshly as Rudolph for their compliance with—and sometimes active enforcement of—slavery? What would it mean if southerners had to pay the equivalent price for their complicity with Jim Crow? In contrast to most white residents of Huntsville, many African American interviewees barely knew whom I was referring to when I asked them about the Rudolph case, but some were highly aware of its implications. When I asked about Rudolph, the conversation would either fall flat or turn into an abstract review of the correlations between the use of slave labor in Germany and the United States, implying that white Americans and Germans share a disturbing history.73 Even after decades of living in a legally integrated society, the limited contact between African Americans in Huntsville and the German group meant that Rudolph’s fate did not seem connected to their lives except as a reminder of two brutally racist systems. The Rudolph case elicited quite different responses again among the Jewish residents I interviewed. Like their white non-Jewish neighbors, they were shocked by the news that one of the German rocketeers was accused of war crimes, but unlike some of his supporters, none of those I interviewed doubted his guilt. During our interview, Margaret Anne Goldsmith said that she remembered making the connection between the German rocket experts in Huntsville and the atrocities committed under the Nazi regime for the first time when she learned of the Rudolph case: “When I learned about it . . . I was connecting the scientists . . . that they could have been part of all of that . . . that was a surprise.”74 The significance and emotional impact of the news was most apparent to those who had met Rudolph when he lived in Huntsville. Diana Polin recalled meeting Rudolph in his capacity as the president of Huntsville’s astronomy club, and she explained her surprise when she learned about the allegations against him: “Just in talking to him, [Rudolph] sounded like a real nice man . . . very polite and pleasant. . . . And then . . . we left in 1980 . . . to spend three or four years in . . . Washington. . . . When we came back to Huntsville I found out that he

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had been deported because he was . . . part of this slave labor. . . . So you can’t always judge a book by its cover, I guess. That was something.”75 Polin’s phrasing that she found out that Rudolph was gone “when we came back to Huntsville” illustrates how prominent the issue was in Huntsville compared to other parts of the United States. Like his German colleagues in their interviews after the news broke, Polin described Rudolph as sounding “like a real nice man,” yet that did not lead her to believe that he could not have committed the crimes he was accused of. Her statement that Rudolph “had been deported” also provided a different interpretation of the events. While supporters claimed that Rudolph had signed the agreement to leave the country and admitted his guilt only under coercion, the idea that he was “deported” suggests definitiveness. For Polin, there was no doubt that Rudolph had committed the crimes he was accused of. Polin’s husband, Howard, was apparently also surprised to learn about Rudolph’s move back to Germany but described a more volatile reaction to the news: “All I knew about him was that he was one of the Germans involved with the development of . . . the V-2. I didn’t know of his involvement with the slave labor. . . . He was one of the guys who . . . used their labor. Whether they were Jewish or not, I don’t know. . . . And as soon as they were no good to them, they sent them to the ovens. So that made me . . . I had no feeling about him but then when that happened, I said, ‘Send the son of a bitch back to Germany.’ ”76 Howard Polin’s comment about the use and murder of slave laborers is eerily reminiscent of the arguments used by Rudolph’s supporters who complained that the U.S. government took advantage of Rudolph’s expertise in rocketry and then accused him of having committed war crimes when he was retired. This unintentional allusion illustrates the immense discrepancy in perceptions of the Rudolph case, but also the sense of betrayal at both ends of the spectrum. Not everybody was completely surprised to learn about the possible connection of the Germans to the use of slave labor, but as long as there were no concrete accusations, it did not seem to cause much consternation or upset. According to Sol Miller, “We all knew . . . in the Jewish community, assumed that they had things in their past. But . . . a lot of the people in the Jewish community worked at NASA and Redstone, worked for them . . . worked with them.”77 Miller suggested here that working

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side by side with the Germans allowed some to ignore their questions, but that the Rudolph case confirmed their suspicions. While Goldsmith did not seem to have been suspicious of the German rocket team beforehand, learning about Rudolph’s alleged involvement in war crimes had broader consequences for her. She remembered how her perception of other members of the group changed: “They had a dark side that I hadn’t known before, I hadn’t been aware of. Yes, at that point I began, even though I was living away, but if I thought about the Germans here—and, of course, coming back to Huntsville, I think of that. I think all the time of that dark side, especially, I can’t remember her name. . . . Lovely lady—she’s on the symphony board. She is the wife of one of ’em, but every time I run into her . . . I see that dark side as well as the cultural, smart, everything else. . . . I know that dark side . . . that’s there, because they were there at that time.”78 The Rudolph case obviously alerted her to the fact that concentration camp laborers were among those who built the V-2 rockets. Just having “been there” seemed to make the other Germans suspicious as well, although it is not entirely clear where “there” is. Her uneasiness extended not only to the other rocket specialists and their wives but also to their children: I remember Marianne [Rudolph’s daughter] . . . if I saw her today and the fact that her father was who we found out later . . . my feelings toward her would be different. . . . So there’s a sense of mistrust . . . even with the next generation, after what I’ve learned. Although I just said, I mean, you can’t blame the second generation, but I think there’s quite mixed feelings. Every time I see Ursula, and I’m crazy about Ursula . . . and I buy pottery from her and she’s a neighbor. Ah, but every now and then, there’s just a little something that, that clicks and says . . . what did her father really do? What did he do on that team? Although it wouldn’t have been anything she did, but . . . I can’t just, it doesn’t go away.79 Not everyone responded in the same way. Buddy Miller distinguished between Rudolph and other members of the German community in Huntsville. He declared his support for the government’s handling of Rudolph’s case, on the one hand: “I felt that . . . he was a Nazi. That . . . he was part of the leaders of the missile assembly plants in the mountain in

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Germany, that he may have been responsible for the death of prisoners of war in that assembly plant. There were a lot of people who thought that he was being mistreated. I personally didn’t think so.” Yet, on the other hand, Miller did not automatically view the German community of Huntsville as tarred with the same brush: “Each person is responsible for their own sins. I can’t blame a father for the sins of his sons or brother or whatever. It didn’t really affect my feelings towards the whole community here.”80 While some members of the Jewish community seemed to have felt betrayed when they learned that the Germans in their midst had a “dark side” to them, they also learned more about existing anti-Semitism among Huntsville supporters of Rudolph. Sol Miller remembered letters to the editor published in the Huntsville Times on behalf of Rudolph: “A lot of people in Huntsville were just absolutely . . . horrified that they would bring up such things about this man and obviously, the Jews are behind it. The man in the Justice Department is a Jew and . . . there would be letters to the editor . . . in support of [Rudolph]. And . . . there were a couple of people in particular that . . . insinuate in their letters that this was a Jewish plot to . . . get back at these people.”81 For Miller, the Rudolph case had broader consequences as well. Yet to him, the question was not whether or not the Germans in Huntsville had a “dark side,” but rather whether or not they felt any remorse over what happened to the people who died while building the V-2 rockets. When I asked him how the Rudolph case might have affected Huntsville residents, he explained: I don’t think it really changed . . . I mean, I don’t think there was any groundswell here. . . . People . . . reconsidered their opinions about them. I mean, in rare instances people might have. I think maybe a lot of people in the Jewish community started thinking about it more. And just the fact that . . . they were so unremorseful even though it became obvious that they worked deeply in these conditions. Not that they could have done anything about it. But maybe they could have insisted they be given better rations or bring more in so they don’t have to work such long hours. . . . Maybe they could’ve done something that would have improved their lot. They could not have done

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anything to do away with the program. I don’t believe that. So it’s something I’ve given a lot more thought to since Rudolph.82 I encountered that same sentiment during a visit to the Etz Chayim Synagogue to find potential interviewees for my research. One member commented on the Germans’ failure to acknowledge the atrocities committed in the context of the V-2 rocket development. She was referring specifically to a documentary about a trip taken by a group of German rocket experts and some of their wives and children in 1991 from Huntsville to Peenemünde, which was broadcast repeatedly on Huntsville’s local TV station during the winter of 2006–7 and presumably had been aired multiple times in the past. Some of the comments made by members of the German group in this documentary were positively self-indulgent rather than remorseful.83 Jews were not alone in their assessment of the Rudolph case. Two members of the German rocket team I spoke to were convinced that Rudolph was guilty of the crimes the OSI accused him of. While Oscar Holderer simply stated, “I think he was treated fairly” when I asked him about the Rudolph case, Hans Fichtner’s response was somewhat reluctant but more detailed. Holderer never worked directly with Rudolph and knew him only as “some sort of project manager” who looked funny to him. Fichtner, however, knew Rudolph better: “The Rudolph case. . . . You picked the wrong subject and the wrong person on that, too, but all right, let me say it. I have been with Rudolph for a year in White Sands. And I have listened to many things Rudolph said and I have seen the correspondence on the high level about Mittelwerk, yeah? There is no doubt in my mind that he’s guilty. . . . And if he, Rudolph, took the easy way out and he went back to Germany, yeah? I think he got the better part of the deal. And all that has been done here by people of our group to defend Rudolph. I don’t know on what grounds, yeah? I wouldn’t.”84 John Rison Jones Jr., whose family had been in Huntsville since 1806, had yet another perspective, a unique one. Jones left the town in 1942 and returned in 1987 after having worked for the U.S. Department of State and the Upward Bound Program in Texas for twenty years. Before that, he served in the Army Specialized Training Program from 1943 to 1945 and was a member of the 104th Division that liberated Camp Mittelbau-Dora at Nordhausen. Jones was one of the few interviewees

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who linked the systematic extermination of Jews, “Poles, gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Ukrainians, those physically and mentally impaired as well as all opponents of the [Nazi] regime” to “the greater sin of the human presumption that some are ‘destined,’ ” and suggested that racial segregation was born out of the same “nadir of spiritual and human frailty.”85 During our interview, he explained that even though the experience of liberating Nordhausen always haunted him, he did not realize the connection to the German rocketeers in Huntsville until many years later. He explained that he had tried to deliberately suppress his memories until Hugh McInnish invited David Irving to speak at the local public library. David Irving spoke at the library here and I simply had had it up to my yazoo and simply stood up and said, “You’re a goddamn liar.” . . . I said, “You know, I was at Nordhausen—I spent a week at Nordhausen.” . . . “And I know of the other camps and, you know, Eisenhower said there were going to be fools like you and that’s why he had extensive coverage.” Well, of course I was booed and applauded and the whole thing. So I thought, “All right . . . it’s happened . . . let’s just open it up . . . and it’s going to be hard but let’s do it.” So I wrote an article for the Huntsville–Madison County Historical Society and essentially saying . . . I know what I saw and can verify what I saw.86 After his outburst and the publication of his viewpoint on denials of the Holocaust, the local Jewish Reform congregation asked Jones to speak about his experiences at Temple B’nai Sholom in 1994.87 In this speech, Jones described in detail the horrific site, where his division found “some 5,000 corpses, and some 6,000 others in various states of decay. . . . Those who were alive appeared to have been systematically starved to the extent that they could best be described as ‘bones wrapped in skin’ ”; he added, “No one was prepared for Nordhausen.”88 He explained why he decided to take on the difficult task of talking about his experiences during the liberation of Nordhausen by referring to Elie Wiesel’s statement: “For the dead and for the living, we must bear witness.” When he realized that there was a connection between the MittelbauDora camp and the German rocketeers, Jones decided to ask his friends

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among the first generation of the German community questions he had concerning the V-2 production site. But he hit a stone wall: “You simply cannot talk with them about it . . . unless, you know, there’s an urgent reason such as . . . Rudolph.” Yet despite his own experiences and the Germans’ unwillingness to talk to him about it, Jones was sympathetic to both Rudolph and his accusers. And when I asked him how he thought the Rudolph case had been handled, he recommended, “I think you better talk to the Jewish lawyers in Washington,” suggesting that the OSI investigators’ Jewish identity was decisive for the outcome of Rudolph’s investigation.89 What is more intriguing is that, while he believed in the necessity to “bear witness” to the Holocaust, he accepted the silence among the German rocketeers on the topic. Instead of assuming that this might indicate that they had something to hide or feel guilty about, he even minimized the severity of the accusations against Rudolph as he tried to imagine the implications for the German team and their family members. Referring to his friend Ruth von Saurma, he explained: “And . . . [I] just . . . can’t see Ruth as a member of the Hitler Youth.”90 Jones’s statements illustrated the difficulties in comprehending that people we know and respect could have been part of an evil regime. But they also minimize the crimes that Rudolph was accused of by using a woman and an organization for children as his example in this context instead of the Nazi Party, the SA, or the SS, of which many of the all-male rocket specialists had been members. Despite today’s common knowledge that women were very much part of the excesses of the Nazi regime, women and children are typically not considered to be aggressors, especially in times of war.91 There are other residents in Huntsville who disagree with the uncritical celebration of the German rocket team and call for a more nuanced reflection on its past. In addition to occasional critical letters to the editor of the Huntsville Times, the UAH history department began offering a public forum for critical discussion of the role of the German rocketeers in the use of concentration camp labor for the production of the V-2 rockets they designed for Hitler’s regime. In the fall of 1998, the history department invited Michael J. Neufeld to present his research on the rocket team’s work in Nazi Germany.92 Neufeld had interviewed many of the German rocketeers and found documents in German archives that had not been consulted in previous English-language histories written by

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the rocketeers themselves or by friends and colleagues. His book became the first account of the development of the V-2 rocket by a professional historian in the United States that was not only technically detailed but also described the use of concentration camp labor for the V-2 production in depth. While acknowledging that his description of their technical work was correct, some of the German rocketeers he had interviewed attended his talk at UAH and attacked him for his portrayal of their former workplace. Neufeld learned later that his critics viewed his work as sensationalistic and that rumors circulated that he was Jewish. In the meantime, he received nothing but positive responses to his publication outside of Huntsville and from the academic community.93 A few years later, in 2001, UAH cosponsored an exhibit and a series of talks on the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and V-2 rocketry complex. The exhibit offered visitors a look at photographs and artifacts from the camp’s memorial site in Germany.94 UAH put together another exhibit in February 2010, titled Dora and the V-2: Slave Labor in the Space Age, in collaboration with the Alabama Humanities Foundation. The accompanying and remaining permanent website explains that in Huntsville especially, the V-2 rocket is “remembered through the engineers who designed it, rather than the forced laborers who put it together.”95 This exhibit obviously intends to correct that. FALLOUT IN THE GERMAN COMMUNITY

While Huntsville locals who sympathized with Rudolph tried to imagine themselves in his position, those in the German community who had been in the first group to come to the United States before 1950 were worried about the real possibility of finding themselves in his shoes. Their responses to the Rudolph case were often very similar to those of their white Christian neighbors, but their frames of references and comparisons, of course, were quite different. Even those who had not been to the Mittelwerk could reflect on their own experiences of Nazi Germany, which provided the background for their understanding of Rudolph’s situation. Like Rudolph’s other supporters, most of the interviewees in the German community believed that Rudolph was fighting an anonymous and all-powerful bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. They portrayed him as the helpless victim of trumped-up charges by “lawyers trying to make a

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name for themselves,” who were presumably using questionable tactics to make Rudolph into a scapegoat and create fear among the Germans in Huntsville in order to silence them.96 Some interviewees suggested that one sole individual at the OSI was investigating Rudolph, creating the impression that the investigation was fueled by a personal vendetta. Germans and non-Germans claimed that the OSI was staffed primarily with Jews and contended that a presumably Jewish-owned, sensationalistic media vilified Rudolph. According to some, Rudolph was treated unfairly and had to prove his innocence instead of the lawyers having to prove his guilt. Those accusing him were supposedly following a political agenda, were part of a conspiracy, used incorrect information, and acted “holier than thou” in their efforts to make a political statement.97 The German wives had their own experiences in Nazi Germany and were more inclined to believe their husbands, who had worked with Rudolph, than the OSI investigators or other critics. Margarete (Gretel) Wagner declared with conviction, “I don’t think he [Rudolph] did something wrong at all. We were all surprised. I knew him . . . not very close but . . . I think this was not right what they did to him.” She and her daughter, Gudrun, explained that Gudrun’s father was particularly upset because he had worked in the same place as Rudolph, that is, in Nordhausen. Referring to Rudolph, he told them that “this is not true what they’re saying about him.” I frequently heard interviewees referring to Rudolph’s character as evidence that he could not have committed the war crimes he was accused of, reflecting the same sentiment expressed by some of the rocketeers who were interviewed right after the news about Rudolph’s move to Germany broke. In support of that estimation, Gretel Wagner pointed out that even their non-German neighbor, who had worked with Rudolph in Huntsville, “couldn’t believe it.”98 When I asked the first-generation women how the Rudolph case had affected the German community, the response was almost unanimous: “It was devastating.” Referring to the rocketeers, one widow said, “They felt like a little bit celebrated and special, . . . especially after the completion of the Apollo program, and that [the Rudolph case] completely deflated it.”99 Most did not convey whether they had actively supported the attempts to clear Rudolph’s name and bring him back into the country. Yet one widow explained, after stating that not only her husband but her

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daughter too had been active, that she did not think that trying to bring Rudolph into the United States through Canada was a good idea.100 Three of the first-generation male interviewees actively engaged in trying to clear Rudolph’s name. While Walter Jacobi seemed to feel mainly helpless and defeated, Walter Häussermann and another interviewee, both more prominent members of the German rocket team, were clearly still very upset. What was remarkable was that they each tried to invoke our common German background while talking about the Rudolph case, presumably in order to ensure my empathy with them and their point of view. When discussing the Rudolph case, Jacobi downplayed its meaning, stating, “This Rudolph case is one of those political statements which somebody needed to make them feel good. That’s all.” When I asked about the effect the Rudolph case had on the community, he answered in a mix of English and German: “We were just—sauer, wie man so schön sagt,” meaning that he and his colleagues were basically irritated.101 Fully cognizant that I would understand what he was saying, Jacobi implied that I would understand more than just his words. Maybe I would appreciate why they were so irritated too. Häussermann similarly related to me as if we had particular beliefs in common by assuming that I would be sympathetic when he explained, “People in Congress who supported the Office of Special Investigations and their accusations were mainly Jews . . . I have to say this. I followed it up very much. . . . And nobody wanted to talk against them. Do you know, the Office of Special Investigations achieved that 90 percent of their members were Jews?” When I asked him why he thought that was a problem, he replied, “Well, this was a matter of opinion at that time that one has to seek revenge for what happened to the Jews. . . . Arthur Rudolph has never done anything against a Jew. Nor anyone in our group here.”102 Realizing that I did not automatically agree that it was problematic for an allegedly high percentage of Jews to be working in the Office of Special Investigations, Häussermann compensated with assurances that this was a one-sided attack, echoing the notion that Rudolph was the real victim. What may be most remarkable in this context, however, is that most of the concentration camp laborers at Mittelbau-Dora were not Jews.103 The OSI was therefore not “seek[ing] revenge for what happened to the Jews,” nor was it accusing Rudolph of having “done anything against” Jews. The other interviewee simply tried to give me advice for

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how to deal with critics of the German community, telling me not to listen too much to one critic in particular, claiming that he was “chasing around wild rumors as if they were the truth.”104 The Germans who arrived in Huntsville after 1950 were aware of the Rudolph case, but most did not feel as connected to it as the earlier group. Describing the reactions in the German community to the Rudolph case, Hans Kennel indicated that he did not consider himself part of the affected group by stating, “Well, I would say . . . probably all were kind of annoyed at the way they treated Rudolph.” Kennel and Mario Rheinfurth both were not certain about some of the details of the Rudolph case, but echoed some of the statements made by members of the group that had arrived earlier.105 Heinz Struck was better informed about the details of the accusations against Rudolph and used his knowledge about the Nazi regime to explain why Rudolph might have been accused of having committed war crimes. He was sympathetic to both sides, however, and clearly not invested in Rudolph’s case, stating that it did not affect him.106 Susanne and Dieter Teuber, who were close friends with Häussermann, had been privy to all of his activities around the Rudolph case and therefore knew more details. While they clearly sympathized with Rudolph and Häussermann’s perspective that Jews at the OSI had “an ax to grind,” they too talked about the effects on the German community in a way that did not include themselves.107 Heidi Medenica was an exception among those who arrived later. For her, the Rudolph case was personal because she saw it in the larger context of how it reflects on all the German rocket specialists in Huntsville, whom she believed should be more celebrated for their accomplishments. Before discussing the Rudolph case, she explained, “Most of all, if I see a letter to the editor written by someone who has actually no real knowledge or information on the German scientists and label them as Nazis . . . I feel appalled by that.” To her, the accusations against Rudolph were based on the same lack of information: “Oh, well, now, the way Rudolph was persecuted. That’s beyond my belief that this could have happened. . . . It affects me personally where very much knowing that these are lies, hateful lies and totally lack in any correct information, and that is appalling to me. And . . . not to acknowledge what this person actually has done in his life work . . . for the good of the community.”108 Like

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non-German Rudolph supporters, Medenica believed that Rudolph’s later deeds outweighed his alleged crimes under the Nazi regime. Medenica’s sentiment that those criticizing the German rocketeers have “no real knowledge or information” represented a common thread among the German interviewees. Some pointed out that the OSI investigators were not at the Mittelwerk when Rudolph was there and had therefore not witnessed what happened, and that those who were there contend that the accusations are incorrect—thus pointing out the difficulty in navigating and judging the past based on witness testimony. While most of the Germans had not “been there” either, they were more inclined to trust their former colleagues’, friends’, and family members’ judgments of what had or had not happened. D I S B E L I E F , C O N F U S I O N , A N D S O M E U N C E R TA I N T Y

They circled the wagons, first of all. . . . They basically hunkered down and kept as . . . quiet as possible and were scared—they were very scared. —Thomas Luehrsen, son of a German architect who came with the rocket specialists, 2007

The second-generation interviewees were not usually worried that they might face a fate similar to Rudolph’s, although I did hear some speculations about that. Instead, most talked about the effects his case had on their parents. While the first-generation interviewees sounded largely angry, defeated, or defiant, the second generation remembered that their parents were primarily hurt and scared by the changes in how Rudolph, and by extension the German rocketeers, was portrayed in public after the OSI investigation. Peter Finzel noted, “My parents and most of the Germans were very bitter about” the way Rudolph was treated, while Tomas Friend remembered that the Rudolph case “sent a scare through the . . . German community” and that the German families considered it an attack on the entire group.109 The only member of the third generation I interviewed explained that her grandparents’ generation was worried that “if they could do that to Rudolph, what were they gonna find out about them? And . . . misinterpret.” She also noted that the case stirred

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up old memories: “I think the Rudolph stuff just in some ways felt like . . . bringing up a deep painful chapter of their lives that they thought . . . they had been able to put behind them.”110 Some evidently decided to withdraw. One interviewee remembered that her father “took his name off . . . the ownership of the house [and] put it in my mother’s name” as a security measure in case he had to suddenly leave the country or otherwise face serious trouble. Others began to decline interview requests for fear of how the interviewer might use their words.111 Their parents’ fears were not baseless. A Huntsville Times article published in 2000 quoted Eli Rosenbaum, who had led the Rudolph investigation, stating, “I can’t say who [or] what, but there are still individuals from the World War II V-2 missile program, and other Paperclip experts as well, who remain under investigation by our office.”112 Other media reports and publications additionally heightened the notion that all members of the team were under suspicion, if not investigation. Rolf Sieber remembered his father watching a TV program on Project Paperclip and proclaiming, “The way they’re talking, I’m a war criminal.” Klaus Dannenberg remembered that his father “cancelled his subscription to the Huntsville Times and never renewed it since then.”113 From their parents’ perspective, and usually also from the second generation’s own, the Rudolph case changed what it meant to belong to the German rocket team in the United States. Instead of celebrating their contributions to winning the space race and therefore raising America’s status in the world during the cold war, the media and other critics were now portraying them all as potential war criminals. As Thomas Luehrsen pointed out, this seemed particularly troubling after so many years of public celebration of the team: “So it was exactly the opposite—it was . . . these people were all Nazis and evildoers and they were smuggled in this country . . . it was just the opposite of the story that was spun for decades before then.”114 Many were confounded by this new version of the past. Ursula Vann contended that “some of the authors really are—it’s almost like rewriting history and not having been there in that war situation are trying to make Nazi criminals of all of these men who were—I’m sure most of them [were] totally apolitical.”115 Vann offered two common arguments among the white non-Jewish interviewees. For one, she believed that the rocketeers were “apolitical,” suggesting that because of the nature of their jobs

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they cannot be guilty because presumably only ideologues, so-called ardent Nazis, committed war crimes. The other argument concerned the question of what makes valid history. While Luehrsen acknowledged that history always has a perspective when he used the term spun to describe how earlier histories of the rocket team were written, Vann viewed the changes in the way the history was now written as an untruthful manipulation of the meaning of past events, created by people who could not possibly know what happened because they had not “been there.” Like many others, Vann assumed that previous historical accounts were correct and complete, presumably because they had been written either by eyewitnesses or by their friends and colleagues. What is missing from this assessment is an acknowledgment that there were other eyewitnesses to the events who had not been heard before. This assessment privileges the German rocket engineers’ memories over those of survivors of the Dora concentration camp, which were published later and, in effect, prompted new investigations into the rocket experts’ pasts, leading to new interpretations. While the Rudolph case appeared to have cast doubts upon the entire group of rocket specialists, it created suspicion among the German group toward the U.S. government as well, separate from the idea of a Jewish vendetta. Jürgen Haukohl thought it “raised a lot of suspicions among the Germans and maybe there was a level of trust lost of . . . the government.”116 There may not have been much trust in the government to begin with, though. The member of the third generation I spoke to remembered a general deep suspicion toward government in her family—presumably a defensive mechanism stemming from her grandparents’ experiences during the Nazi regime. When talking about the fact that her grandparents and other Germans did not want to be on the church roll of Huntsville’s Lutheran church, which they had helped found, she explained, “Well, I think it’s more that if your name is on a government list you can be taken off to a concentration camp . . . it’s a mistrust of government. . . . I guess in Germany you don’t have that separation of church and state, so that may have been a cultural misunderstanding about who had access to what. But I think that was just a self-preservation instinct that survivors developed. You know, I very much grew up with ‘Don’t ever give out any more information to anyone than you absolutely need to, if they have anything to do with the

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government.’ ”117 This statement not only implies a general suspicion of government among the first-generation Germans, which was apparently passed down two generations in this case, but also indicates their perception of being survivors of the war—victims in their own right—which is not only a common self-perception among the generation of Germans who endured the war but also stands in stark contrast to accusations of being potential war criminals.118 Most members of the second generation believed that their parents were victims of both the Nazi regime and the U.S. government. Gudrun Klauss, daughter of Gretel Wagner, explained that her parents’ generation interpreted the Rudolph case as part of a long history of treating the German community with less respect than it deserved: “There was a feeling of ingratitude. You used everything we had. The German NASA employees did not have all the same benefits as the Americans. There was a different setup. I remember my father going into this in detail one time. It made a big difference in their retirement. It was sort of like they were second-class citizens in some ways.”119 Klauss’s father may have been referring to a controversy concerning the retirement of many members of the German team, which several interviewees mentioned with a similar level of frustration. As the Apollo program came to an end, NASA carried out several reductions in force that affected the MSFC once it had finished its work on the development of the Saturn V rocket in the late 1960s. This effort led also to a diversification of the center’s research and development interests. In 1973, Rocco Petrone became the director of the MSFC and dismissed several key members of the German rocket team as he continued implementing the workforce reduction. While NASA officials explained that Marshall’s employees’ higher average age was the determining factor for the more severe reductions in force in Huntsville, the authors of NASA’s commissioned history of the MSFC found that “Marshall’s remaining members of von Braun’s German team bore much of the burden of reductions.”120 This would have meant that some team members had to retire before they had intended or take lower-level positions at reduced pay, either of which would have reduced the retirement benefits they expected. The years they had worked in Germany obviously did not count toward their retirement, further reducing their overall benefits compared to those of Americans in similar positions. Some of the German rocket specialists interpreted the workforce reductions as a

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means to force them out because they were German—presumably out of jealousy over their successes in the space programs. They had already interpreted NASA’s 1970 move of von Braun to a position in Washington, D.C., where he seemed to have less influence than at the MSFC, as a direct action against the team.121 In a 1976 article in the Huntsville Times, Häussermann explained, “There is a feeling in Washington against foreigners, particularly with whom they had been at war. . . . We have always been very much aware that there could be a strong feeling because of the German rocket leadership.”122 He interpreted supposed resentments toward members of the group from Peenemünde as expressions of American nativism and jealousy rather than a reaction to the team’s work for the Nazi regime. Many among the second generation believed that Rudolph was innocent because, as their parents explained to them, he did not have choices in the face of a totalitarian system. As Sabina Garrett understood it, “You were given assignments and you had to—you had to do certain things because if you didn’t, you would be shot.” Garrett, who was born in 1948 at Ft. Bliss, believed that those who judge Rudolph or any of the others in his generation simply do not understand how the regime worked, implying that otherwise, they would be more sympathetic: “That’s what people don’t understand. . . . ‘Well, why didn’t . . . your parents say no?’ . . . Well, if they had said no to something they would have just been shot by the SS right away . . . no questions asked. You had to comply and people forget and people here—most Americans don’t . . . really realize what a dictatorship is . . . you couldn’t say anything about anything.” Garrett’s father had told her a story to illustrate the predicament, which she offered as an example in our interview to illustrate her assertions: “One of his school friends came to his house one evening—late one night knocked on the door and he, my dad opened the door and his school friend was standing there in his SS uniform and he was trying to recruit my father to become an SS officer. And my dad said no, that he wasn’t interested in— in this, and this SS officer didn’t take that very lightly. He said, ‘Rudy . . . because of our background and because you were my school chum I’m going to let this go. But if that hadn’t been the case I would have hauled you in and that would have been the end of you.’ ”123 While Garrett clearly empathized with her parents, she distinguished their experiences from her own. Several among the second generation,

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however, seemed to identify more closely with their parents’ situation in Nazi Germany. Inge Allan applied the same logic as Garrett to her understanding of Rudolph’s situation, but talked about it as if she had shared her parents’ experiences: I don’t know what he [Rudolph] did or didn’t do, but I don’t really think it matters. He had no choice. He absolutely had no choice. I do not think that Americans can understand that because they’ve always had free press. We didn’t know what was going on . . . but if we had known, what would we have done, you know? . . . That was his defense. I think too that, yes, he had slave labor working for him. He had no choice. He was put there. It was there and he was told that was what he had to do. He did what he could to make it as good for them as he could, which wasn’t very good but he did what he could. And that’s not something that people here can understand.124 Born in 1937, Allan probably remembered some elements of her life in Nazi Germany, but she could not have had a full understanding of what it was like to live under a totalitarian system, let alone what the conditions at the Mittelwerk must have been like. Despite the fact that she was obviously recounting other people’s experiences and explanations, most likely her parents’, she seemed to have made them her own, distancing herself, like Garrett, from “Americans” who, she believed, cannot understand. Since Garrett was not yet born and Allan was too young to have memories that would allow her to assess the Nazi regime based on personal experience, their evaluation of Rudolph clearly has less to do with a better understanding of the Nazi regime than other Americans and more to do with their understandable desire as children to see their parents, who defended Rudolph, in the most favorable light possible. What is even more intriguing about Garrett’s and Allan’s notion that Americans cannot understand what it was like to live under a totalitarian system is that this argument is used in Germany between the generations: the generation that lived during the Nazi regime claims that younger Germans cannot possibly understand what that was like. In both cases, this is an effective way to quash criticism, but Garrett’s and Allan’s use of this argument illustrates that the American context allows the

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first- and second-generation Germans in Huntsville to bond in a way that would not be possible in Germany. The parents’ and children’s common German heritage brings them together when confronted by criticism from Americans. The fact that the parents are naturalized rather than native-born citizens, and therefore potentially susceptible to deportation procedures, may even be the driver for the children’s desire to support their parents’ view of the Nazi past and the Rudolph case. When Allan acknowledges that the situation for the concentration camp laborers “wasn’t very good,” she echoes what many Rudolph supporters said in his defense—that he tried to help when he could, but that his options were limited. These arguments allow the second generation to view their parents and Rudolph as victims alongside the prisoners who built the V-2s at Nordhausen. This is not uncommon. In Germany, many tried to claim their roles as victims in the postwar years and into the 1950s, and public debates on this issue reignited in the 1990s.125 The conceptualization of Germans who were not persecuted by the Nazi regime as victims of World War II is typically applied to the Allied bombing campaigns and postwar expulsions of Germans from Eastern European countries. The notion that Germans in positions of relative power over prisoners were limited in their options because they themselves were victims of a totalitarian regime—that is, threatened by possible sanctions—is somewhat different and based on a binary notion of how Germany’s society functioned under Nazi rule. It suggests that Germans were either Nazis or not, meaning that they were either perpetrators responsible for the persecution of Jews and other minorities or not. But the Nazi system of persecution was not that simple. The division of labor allowed for people to participate in the persecution of Jews and other minorities without believing in the goals of the Nazi regime. Most were trying to keep their jobs, enhance their income, or achieve career promotions. These “legitimate” motivations allowed them to carry out their work with indifference toward the overall goal of persecuting minorities. In the words of historians Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel, “While acting within these structures, helpers [of the ideological perpetrators] could share the illusion that, within [the] framework of their limited task, they were acting normally.”126 Rudolph’s own statement that his main concern was the successful production of V-2 rockets illustrates that his motivations were not necessarily ideological. Yet his need for job

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security affected those who were working for him. Many suffered and some died as a result. Like Garrett and Allan, Axel Roth believed that Rudolph’s accusers lacked understanding of the situation the rocketeers were in: “The people that . . . really hounded Rudolph and made him go back to Germany . . . they were young people in this country—they never lived in the kind of conditions that Rudolph . . . found himself in, and how do they think they would have reacted had they been put in the same position, you know? And . . . they would say, ‘Oh, I would never do that.’ . . . Baloney . . . I mean, yeah, probably one out of a thousand people would have stood up and said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and shoot me.’ Probably not even one in a thousand.”127 Relying on the notion common among the second generation that Rudolph would have been executed if he had tried to do more than he did to help the concentration camp laborers working for him, Roth turned Rudolph’s decision to not do more into a larger question about human behavior. He believed that the OSI’s standards of what constitutes a war crime are based on an ideal of humans that would make anyone a war criminal, given the right circumstances. Roth also offered another interpretation of the meaning of hierarchies in Nazi Germany by positing that crimes committed by those in higher positions have a mitigating effect on crimes committed by those in lower positions: “To me . . . the ones that actually . . . did some things—the ones that were the high-level politicians . . . do something to them. They did it with malice and forethought. The guys who were just in the middle or down below who—it was either them or us— . . . I don’t think . . . you can judge them . . . the same way.”128 In addition to relativizing crimes against humanity based on scale, Roth suggested that Rudolph was not in an important position of power, even though he was the production manager for the V-2, overseeing the work of thousands of civilians and prisoners. While most thought Rudolph had been treated unfairly, several members of the second generation were unsure of what to think or had mixed feelings about his case. They were torn between the accusations against Rudolph, their potential implications for other members of the team, including their own parents, and the memories their parents shared with them about living under the Nazi regime. One interviewee suggested that he was not sure he believed everything his mother had told

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him about Nazi Germany, while at the same time he thought that people who suffered under the regime were looking for someone to be punished for the atrocities committed. Another noted in context of the Rudolph case that his father and some others in the group were outright Holocaust deniers who claimed that the accusations against Nazi Germany concerning the Holocaust were Jewish propaganda. Thomas Luehrsen, who became a documentary filmmaker, wanted to use his professional skills to tell the story of his parents’ past in their own words. He wanted to “ask the hardest questions I could that I think American audiences or any younger generations would want to know about their positions and how they felt about the Nazi period and . . . how they positioned themselves.” Since he began his project around the time of the Rudolph case, some of his potential interviewees were concerned about how he would use their words. Much to the surprise of Luehrsen, whose father was a prominent member of the group, Ernst Stuhlinger, another prominent group member, sent him a questionnaire to fill out in order to decide whether to agree to an interview. Stuhlinger wanted to know what Luehrsen knew about the German rocket team and what his sources were. When Luehrsen indicated in the questionnaire that Tom Bower’s 1987 book, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Battle for the Spoils and Secrets of Nazi Germany, was one of his sources, Stuhlinger declined the interview with him, as did several others. Luehrsen was disappointed because, as he explained, “I had spent many times and days at their house, you know, playing with their children and doing stuff and joint family activities over my lifetime.” Despite these ties, he found that “when it came time for me to get to interview him, he treated me like any other press person who was asking for an interview in the wake of the Arthur Rudolph” case.129 Despite his experience, Luehrsen too was conflicted about how to evaluate the Rudolph case, explaining that he tried to imagine himself in the situation Rudolph was in. Much like some of the other Huntsville residents I spoke to, he compared the OSI’s concrete accusations against Rudolph to general complaints by younger generations that their parents and grandparents have done nothing to ameliorate today’s worldwide problems. What if his grandchildren someday hold him accountable for negative things happening in the world today, such as allowing people to die from AIDS or go hungry, or not acting to prevent the ozone layer from

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being depleted? Because he would have to admit that he did not do anything to stop some of these things from happening, he imagines that must be what Rudolph’s situation was: “You know, I think it’s an important question to ask of everyone. Did . . . each of you live up to your highest ideal? And I think the answer would be in most cases, ‘No, I didn’t.’ So . . . basically what they were saying to Rudolph when they . . . were prosecuting him is, ‘You . . . sinned . . . that many . . . decades ago and you haven’t paid the price.’ ”130 By removing the fact that the accusations against Rudolph are very specific, Luehrsen made Rudolph’s situation more relatable. Not only does the “sin” that Rudolph committed seem to be too long ago for prosecution, but since no one person can single-handedly end worldwide problems, this account suggests that the OSI expected the impossible of Rudolph.

“ A L L I T TA K E S I S T H E A C C U S AT I O N , A N D Y O U R L I F E ’ S H E L L ” Understanding what and how things happened under the Nazi regime is difficult for anyone studying the topic, let alone for those whose families experienced it—whether as victims, perpetrators, or observers. Negotiating how to interpret information available about this past is confusing and often overwhelming. One of the problems the Third Reich created for its survivors and their descendants is that there seems to be no simple victim/perpetrator binary. Those who were perpetrators in one context were often victims in another. The confusion intensifies when one has to grapple with accusations that turn a family member or a friend whom one has thought of primarily as a victim of the war into a perpetrator. Having to make sense of this in the context of the United States, where the Holocaust and Nazi regime are always considered the history of others, is particularly challenging.131 The Rudolph case naturally affected Huntsville residents differently depending on their relationship to the Holocaust and to Rudolph. While those I interviewed in the African American community were barely aware of the case, for some in the Jewish community it confirmed their suspicions about the Germans. The German rocketeers and their families feared that they might face a fate similar to Rudolph’s, while his other friends and former colleagues were outraged that the U.S. government would treat anyone of von Braun’s team in this manner. As one of the second-generation Germans explained in our interview, “I remember . . .

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not how scared they were but it really bothered them. They didn’t know— if you can go after that guy, who’s to keep them from going after me? All it takes is the accusation, and your life’s hell.”132 Many saw the Rudolph case as frivolous and yet another example of ingratitude and anti-German sentiments in the U.S. government. Most of those who knew Rudolph personally found it hard to believe that he could have committed war crimes. That accusation did not match their image of him, especially since he was part of the German rocket team to which the city and the country seemed to owe so much. In order to make sense of the accusations, many tried to find explanations that better fit their worldviews. Some believed that the charges were based on a lack of understanding of what life was like for the rocketeers during the Third Reich, and others suspected that a Jewish conspiracy was the motivator. Since the Nazi regime promoted belief in a Jewish conspiracy to justify its actions against Jews, this interpretation seems particularly disconcerting. It also assumes that the Holocaust is an issue that only Jews are concerned with—similar to the notion that issues regarding race in the United States only concern people of color. The irony of this assumption is heightened in this case because most of the victims at Mittelbau-Dora were not Jewish. Ultimately, the Rudolph case changed how the team would be remembered nationally. Instead of being celebrated only for their contributions to America’s military and space programs, to some, the German rocket specialists all now have “a dark side.” In Huntsville, however, their positive image seems hardly affected as the town continues to commemorate and celebrate members of the German team as local heroes. Here, their critics are still barely visible to outsiders, “but each year, the cheering section seems a little smaller. More and more people are inclined to look for the ‘whole story,’ not just the hero story.”133

Epilogue

Huntsville was reinventing itself as the Germans were reinventing their lives. —Comment from an audience member at a European conference after hearing a presentation on my research in 2008

huntsville’s admiration for the German team stands in stark contrast to the view of many in the rest of the world. Numerous Huntsvillians celebrate the Germans’ contributions to the economic, educational, and cultural transformation of the once small cotton mill town and believe firmly that the entire nation owes “a huge debt of gratitude” to “Wernher von Braun and his small team of German scientists [who] helped make the United States what it is today.”1 Some of these community members also believe that we should all therefore forgive and forget the rocketeers’ deeds under the Nazi regime. This demand is, of course, absurd, especially for those in the nation who lost family members and friends owing to the Germans’ work for Hitler’s Third Reich. But it seems even more preposterous for people who lost loved ones and only indirectly benefited from the U.S. rocket development programs. Sol Miller, who grew up in Huntsville, recalled how friends from England reacted to the town’s celebration of Wernher von Braun: “I have very dear friends who are English. . . . The first time they came to the U.S. to visit . . . Huntsville was in 1996, and I had given them directions to my house and they got a little bit turned around. They saw signs toward the tourist office, which at that time was in the von Braun Center. They got to my house and they said, ‘We couldn’t believe it! You named the civic center after von Braun!’ Of course . . . they have a completely different . . . their view of von Braun is the real World War II von Braun. And they were just very, very surprised.”2 So why does Huntsville still celebrate von Braun and the German team unabashedly despite our increased knowledge about the ramifications of 201

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their work on the V-2 rockets? And why did some townspeople respond so vehemently to the OSI accusations against Arthur Rudolph? Why did they feel so confident about the meaning of actions that took place in a time and place most of them had not experienced? The simple answer seems to be that von Braun and his team brought economic prosperity and fame to the former “watercress capital of the world.” But that does not really explain the worshipful descriptions of von Braun, the enormous efforts of Rudolph’s supporters to clear his name, and the strong emotional reactions I witnessed in interviews with his former colleagues and friends, or the condemnation of anyone who looks at the history of the German rocket team with a critical eye. Their German neighbors meant more to Huntsvillians. These responses that divide the world into those who are with us and those who are against us display the loyalty one might show for family members, but not for immigrants from a former enemy nation. Although people from all over the nation moved to Huntsville at the same time as the Germans, southern history and culture had shaped the community they were joining. Since the South was still ruled by Jim Crow laws, they all had to grapple with that. Using essentially the same reasoning many Germans used to explain their lack of intervention and resistance to racial policies under the Nazi regime, some of the Germans in Huntsville managed to view themselves as innocent bystanders and therefore absolve themselves from the need to take action against Jim Crow. Most of their white American neighbors did not intervene in the obvious injustices occurring around them either. According to historian James Cobb, southerners knew that “whites who spoke out against Jim Crow could expect physical threats and verbal abuse.”3 To the white Christian majority, the Germans and their families, with whom they were linked by similar histories and cultures, became like extended family members who were part of the transformation of Huntsville rather than transplanted foreigners. In the process of integrating into Huntsville, this “extended family” became a transnational mnemonic community, that is, a community with uniquely shared memories and identities that transcended the American and German national contexts.4 This “mnemonic community” did not, however, include everyone in Huntsville. That many in the African American community did not think they had anything to contribute to my story, that those I interviewed

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barely remembered the arrival of the Germans in Huntsville, let alone knew whether or not the Germans had a specific impact on the town, and that the interviewees essentially did not know who Rudolph was, means that they were not part of that “mnemonic community” that celebrates the German team. The facts that many associate the Germans with the World War II German POWs whom the town treated better than black citizens and that one interviewee saw a direct link, articulated by nobody else, between the use of slave labor in the United States and Nazi Germany are evidence that many African Americans in Huntsville form their own separate mnemonic community. The same holds true for members of the Jewish community, who kept it to themselves that some of them were wary of the Germans and typically had no doubt that Rudolph was guilty of the crimes of which he was accused. Thus, the divergent memories of the German team bring into sharp relief how the former physical segregation of blacks and whites and the discrimination against Jews by Christians are now reflected in the form of segregated mnemonic communities. The mnemonic communities are not only segregated, however; they also reflect local power relations. The celebration of the Germans by one section of the community and the relative silence from others not only affected public commemorations of the team but apparently also made some histories almost invisible. Reflecting on footage of the civil rights demonstrations in Huntsville that he saw in 1996, historian Jack D. Ellis noted in his introduction to Sonnie Hereford III’s memoir that in light of the local focus on Wernher von Braun and his German team, the history of “racial discrimination that had once been a central feature of the town’s history rated hardly a mention, and any role that black people had played in ending segregation peacefully and thus helping the city prosper as a center for investment and technology seemed largely forgotten.”5 Yet while Huntsville’s history since 1950 seems to be dominated by the impact of the German rocket team and the military and civilian endeavors associated with it, nationally the history of the German team has lost some of its luster. This undoubtedly is the result of changed power relations. As historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage explained, “Because power is central to the propagation of a version of history, changes in the relative power that groups enjoy invariably ha[ve] consequences for what

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and how they remember.”6 One could argue that the differences in how the German rocket team is publicly remembered in Huntsville as opposed to nationally reflect the relative power of the transnational mnemonic community in Huntsville vis-à-vis the nation. Nationally, the mnemonic group that celebrates the Germans and does not want their past in Germany to be emphasized has obviously less power than in Huntsville. Despite von Braun’s clout in Washington, D.C., when he was alive, his fans and Rudolph’s supporters were not able to prevent a change, for example, in how the V-2 rocket is interpreted at the National Air and Space Museum today. The repression of certain memories has everything to do with the meaning of those memories within the national context—the even larger family. Why else would it be so important how we tell the story of the Germans’ past? The cost of telling only part of the story of how the V-2 rockets were built, especially in a multicultural society, is that some voices are not heard. What seemed to be missing from most of my interviews with Rudolph’s supporters about his case and its implications was an acknowledgment of the crimes that were committed in order to advance the development of rocketry. Remembering the thousands of families that were affected directly and indirectly by the atrocities committed against their loved ones would be a first step in creating a more complete and balanced picture of the achievements made in space flight. Many of the victims and their families are, like the German rocketeers and their families, citizens of the United States, and their histories and memories demand recognition as part of this nation’s history. The fact that the German rocketeers achieved fame should not privilege their contributions over those of these victims, let alone their memories over those of the victims. And there are others to consider as well. According to a prosecution memorandum cited by an OSI accountability report, the circle of those affected by how we tell this story includes other scientists and engineers: “Deciding to refrain from seeking Rudolph’s denaturalization simply because of the work he performed for our government would, it can be argued, amount to a desecration of the memories of Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and other leading scientists who made at least equally substantial contributions to our nation—but who did so either after being forced by the Nazis to leave Germany or after

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voluntarily risking their lives to flee the introduction of Hitler’s racial policies in Europe.”7 In a 2007 interview with the New York Times, the vice president of Huntsville’s Chamber of Commerce described the town’s attitude succinctly: “The Nazi question ‘just doesn’t come up. . . . That was then, this is now.’ ”8 The tendency of many to want to leave the past behind received an additional boost from the space industry and its fascination with the future. But it also meant ignoring, if not erasing, the proverbial elephant in the room: Americans’ and Germans’ mutual histories of brutal forms of racism. By discounting the Germans’ former privileged positions under a genocidal regime, their white neighbors not only avoided uncomfortable confrontations with the people who seemed to have brought so much improvement to the community but were also assured that the Germans would not confront them about slavery and Jim Crow. The process of confronting the past under an inhuman regime is often difficult and painful. This is true for the families of the victims as well as those of the perpetrators or bystanders. But while the victims usually have no choice, the perpetrators do. It is not too surprising that oftentimes the perpetrators are not willing to do the necessary emotional work, especially if they continue to enjoy privileged positions in society. In the long run, however, this perpetuates the initial wrongdoings and continues to haunt everyone, even those who come later. Many of the German rocketeers and some of their family members are buried in Huntsville, and many of their widows and children still live in town or visit regularly. Some of them remain much invested in the public memory of their husbands and fathers, as do some of their friends and former colleagues. But the Rudolph case has allowed Huntsville to start grappling with the Nazi past of its prominent citizens. Maybe one day, this attempt at Vergangenheitsbewältigung concerning the rocketeers’ past in Nazi Germany will affect how Huntsville grapples with its history of slavery and Jim Crow. For just as the Rudolph case has forced many to reconsider, debate, and learn more about the fallout from the Nazi regime, the mistreatment of African Americans in a racially charged and segregated United States deserves the same reflection.

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NOTES

in t ro d u cti o n 1. “Bells, Cheers, Tears Greet Apollo Return,” Chicago Tribune, Jul 25, 1969. 2. Bernard Weinraub, “Festivities in Huntsville Have a German Flavor,” New York Times, Jul 25, 1969. 3. David H. Newby to Wernher von Braun, Jul 2, 1969, Wernher von Braun Papers, U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Ala. 4. For a description of Project Paperclip, see Clarence G. Lasby, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York: Atheneum, 1971); John Gimbel, “Project Paperclip: German Scientists, American Policy and the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 14 (1990); Michael J. Neufeld, “Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim: Looting and the Transfer of German Military Technology,” in The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook, ed. Detlef Junker, Philipp Gassert, Wilfried Mausbach, and David B. Morris, Publications of the German Historical Institute (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: German Historical Institute, 2004). For the Soviet postwar program, Osoaviakhim, see Asif A. Siddiqi, “Russians in Germany: Founding the Post-war Missile Programme,” Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 8 (2004); Asif A. Siddiqi, “Germans in Russia: Cold War, Technology Transfer, and National Identity,” Osiris 24, no. 1 (2009). 5. “Their Germans are better than our Germans” was a response to the successful launch of Sputnik in 1957 circulating in U.S. popular culture, implying that the German experts captured by the Soviet Union after World War II were superior to those captured by the United States. This sentiment was repeated in reverse in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, based on the 1979 book by Tom Wolfe and directed by Philip Kaufman, where a character based on von Braun suggested, 207

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

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“Our Germans are better than their Germans” to then-senator Lyndon Johnson in response to the launch of Sputnik. “Council Solidifies Von Braun Center,” Huntsville News, Feb 25, 1970. The term von Braun team takes on different meanings depending on context. It is used to describe the entire team working with von Braun, which includes thousands of non-Germans, but also, as in this case, to describe the German team that came to the United States with von Braun after World War II. For readability, I frequently refer to the main subjects of this research—the rocket team members and their family members who immigrated to the United States from Germany—as Germans, despite the fact that some of them were Austrians and almost all of them became American citizens as soon as they had the opportunity. This may seem to defeat the purpose of discussing their “becoming Americans,” but it also highlights the tentativeness of national identity, especially for naturalized citizens, whose citizenship can be revoked, unlike that of U.S.-born citizens. To learn more about how oral historians and ethnographers have analyzed the relationship between a researcher and his or her “live” subjects, see Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” 63–74; Katherine Borland, “ ‘That’s Not What I Said’: Interpretive Conflict in Oral Narrative Research,” 320–32; Kathleen Blee, “Evidence, Empathy and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan,” 333–43, all in The Oral History Reader, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998); Ivan Karp and Martha B. Kendall, “Reflexivity in Fieldwork,” 249–73, in Explaining Human Behavior: Consciousness, Human Action, and Social Structure, ed. Paul F. Secord (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982); Marie “Keta” Miranda, Homegirls in the Public Sphere (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). For some general works on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, see Philipp Gassert and Alan E. Steinweis, Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict, 1955–1975 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Peter Reichel, Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland. Die Auseinandersetzung mit der NS-Diktatur von 1945 bis heute, Beck’sche Reihe (Munich: Beck, 2001); Gavriel David Rosenfeld and Paul B. Jaskot, Beyond Berlin: Twelve German Cities Confront the Nazi Past, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008). While the term Holocaust is reserved by many for the extermination of European Jews under the Nazi regime, the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung includes grappling with the persecution, torture, and systematic murder of millions of people because they were considered inferior, they deviated from social norms, or they opposed the Nazi regime. Until the unification of Germany in 1989, this concept was used in West Germany only. East Germany had a very different

no t es t o p ag es

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

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approach to dealing with the Nazi past. For more on this subject, see Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Jeffrey Herf, “Politics and Memory in West and East Germany since 1961 and in Unified Germany since 1990,” in After Eichmann: Collective Memory and the Holocaust since 1961, ed. David Cesarani (London: Routledge, 2005); Siobhan Kattago, Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi Past and German National Identity (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001); William John Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich (London: Routledge, 2002); Jens Fabian Pyper, “Uns hat keiner gefragt.” Positionen der dritten Generation zur Bedeutung des Holocaust (Berlin: Philo, 2002). Susan A. Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (1997): 1378. The research on how Germans have been trying to grapple with the Nazi past within families and individually is vast. These are just some examples: Dan BarOn, Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich (German version: Die Last des Schweigens: Gespräche mit Kindern von NS-Tätern) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Claudia Seltmann Uwe von Brunner, Schweigen die Täter, reden die Enkel (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde, 2004); Michael Kohlstruck, Zwischen Erinnerung und Geschichte. Der Nationalsozialismus und die jungen Deutschen, vol. 22, Reihe Dokumente, Texte, Materialien (Berlin: Metropol, 1997); Stephan Lebert, Norbert Lebert, and Julian Evans, My Father’s Keeper: The Children of Nazi Leaders: An Intimate History of Damage and Denial (German version: Denn Du trägst meinen Namen. Das schwere Erbe der prominenten Nazi-Kinder) (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001); Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Nazi: Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, 3rd ed., Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2002); Harald Welzer, Robert Montau, and Christine Plass, Was wir für böse Menschen sind! Der Nationalsozialismus im Gespräch zwischen den Generationen, Studien zum Nationalsozialismus in der Edition Diskord, vol. 1, (Tübingen: Edition Diskord, 1997). Alexander Freund, “Dealing with the Past Abroad: German Immigrants’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung and Their Relations with Jews in North America since 1945,” GHI Bulletin 31 (2002). Thomas McCarthy, “Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the USA: On the Politics of the Memory of Slavery,” Political Theory 30, no. 5 (2002). Hans-Ulrich Stoldt and Klaus Wiegrefe, “ ‘Mountains of Guilt’: Spiegel Interview with the Historian Norbert Frei,” Der Spiegel, April 2005, 45. Patrick Hutton, “Recent Scholarship on Memory and History,” History Teacher 33, no. 4 (2000): 534; Francesca Cappelletto, ed., Memory and World War II: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berg, 2005). Linda Bayer and Juergen Paetz, “How Huntsville Grew: Boundary and Annexation Survey, 1810–1993,” Huntsville Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1993). Suzanne Vromen, “Maurice Halbwachs on Collective Memory,” American Journal of Sociology 99, no. 2 (1993): 511.

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19. Memory studies have only recently begun exploring transnational or transcultural memories. The current research focuses primarily on memories of migrants, whose reference points for remembering past events have changed after migration, and whose memories are different from those of their new neighbors, while sometimes shared with other migrants. For studies on the intersections of memory and migration in North America, see Vijay Agnew, Diaspora, Memory and Identity: A Search for Home (Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 2005); Julia Creet and Andreas Kitzmann, eds., Memory and Migration: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2011); Freund, “Dealing with the Past Abroad”; Christiane (Hg.) Harzig, Migration und Erinnerung. Reflexionen über Wanderungserfahrungen in Europa und Nordamerika, Transkulturelle Perspektiven (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2006); Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009); Michael G. Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991); Helmut K. Anheier and Raj Isar, eds., Cultures and Globalization: Heritage, Memory and Identity, Cultures and Globalization Series (London: Sage, 2011); Glynn Irial, and J. Olaf Kleist, History, Memory and Migration: Perceptions of the Past and the Politics of Incorporation, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 20. Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990, NASA Historical Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999). 21. Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995); Frederick Ira Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (1979; repr., Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003). 22. “Creating the Rocket City” was one of three panels recorded in 2003 by the Huntsville–Madison County Public Library as a contribution to the city library’s celebration of the centennial of the Wright brothers’ first flight. David Lilly, A Century of Flight: “Creating Rocket City” (Huntsville, Ala.: Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, 2003). The video depicts a panel of eight speakers, who were asked to talk about what brought them to Huntsville, how they arrived, what their initial impressions of the city were, and how the city had changed over the years. It was held in the auditorium of the main library and according to the organizer, David Lilly, “Advertising was mostly local radio station announcements as well as brochures and posters distributed at various locations.” When asked what the goal of the panel was, David replied, “I simply wanted to illustrate the profound impact, culturally, politically, and economically, the coming of the space program had on Huntsville. Having grown up in Huntsville during this time, I wanted to explore this unique story.” (E-mail correspondence, Oct 10, 2005.)

n ot es t o p ag es

11–20

21 1

23. The panel included a token African American speaker, and a scan around the room reveals not a single phenotypically African American audience member. 24. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 5–6. 25. There were very few people considered members of other ethnic or racial minority groups in Huntsville during 1950–70. And while the goal for this research was to be inclusive, it is not comprehensive. Its findings provide insight into some of the discourses that existed in Huntsville at the time of the interviews but do not reflect the sentiments of all of Huntsville’s residents who lived in the area at the time of the interviews or at the time of the events discussed here, let alone of the many residents who have moved to Huntsville since, or who were born later. 26. One person simply requested privacy; another was concerned that personal information might become compromising when publicized and withdrew after the interview; another claimed to have nothing of significance to offer my project; yet another doubted the scholarly value of my research and regretted the lack of evangelists among universities’ “professional doubters.” Only one of the people I solicited stated that the events that led to Arthur Rudolph’s move back to Germany and renouncement of his citizenship were the reasons for a refusal to be interviewed. According to this person’s perception of the events, “That incident also began with harmless stories.” 27. Monique Laney, “Review of Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun,” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2011). 28. I approached Bob Ward, who had recently published a biography of von Braun, but he was too ill at the time to talk to me. 29. Alessandro Portelli, “The Peculiarities of Oral History,” History Workshop 12 (1981): 99. 30. Paula Hamilton and Linda Shopes, Oral History and Public Memories: Critical Perspectives on the Past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), xv. 31. Ibid., 106. 32. I have not added the category “sexual orientation” because the interviewees seemed to imply that heterosexuality was considered the norm and that sexual orientation did not play a differentiating role among them. 33. Welzer, Montau, and Plass, Was wir für böse Menschen sind! 19. Translated by author. 34. Ibid., 20. 35. James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936–1990, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 197. See also Ann R. Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 231; Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ix.

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20– 21

36. The Mid-South Sociological Association’s journal Sociological Spectrum published an issue (vol. 23, no. 2, 2003) dedicated to immigrants in the New South with an introduction by Carl L. Bankston. See also Leon Fink and Alvis E. Dunn, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Mary E. Odem and Elaine Cantrell Lacy, Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); Ajantha Subramanian, “Indians in North Carolina: Race, Class, and Culture in the Making of Immigrant Identity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 20, no. 1 (2000); Julie M. Weise, “Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms: Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. South, 1908–1939,” American Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2008): 749–77. For an excellent documentary on current issues related to recent immigrants in the U.S. South, see Kim A. Snyder, Welcome to Shelbyville (K. A. Snyder Productions, 2011), video. Exceptions that deal with immigration to the U.S. South before 1965 are Rowland T. Berthoff, “Southern Attitudes toward Immigration, 1865–1914,” Journal of Southern History 17, no. 3 (1951); James W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, Harvard East Asian Series 63 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). 37. For more recent studies of transnationalism and migration, see Andoni Alonso and Pedro J. Oiarzabal, Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2010); Jørgen Carling, “The Human Dynamics of Migrant Transnationalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 31, no. 8 (2008); Rachel Ida Buff, “Transnational Visions: Reinventing Immigration Studies,” American Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2005): 1263–72; Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas, Global Diasporas (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000); David A. Gerber, “Forming a Transnational Narrative: New Perspectives on European Migrations to the United States,” History Teacher 35, no. 1 (2001); Peggy Levitt, The Transnational Villagers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Alejandro Portes and Josh DeWind, Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007). 38. Studies that do focus closely on the host community: Cathy Covell Waegner, Page R. Laws, and Geoffroy de Laforcade, eds., Transculturality and Perceptions of the Immigrant Other: “From-Heres” and “Come-Heres” in Virginia and North Rhine-Westphalia (Cambridge: Scholars, 2011); Leo R. Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008); Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 39. Reed Ueda, Postwar Immigrant America: A Social History, Bedford Series in History and Culture (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s, 1994).

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21–24

21 3

40. Examples of histories of immigrant scientists that focus on contributions to fields of expertise: Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969); Zuoyue Wang, “Transnational Science during the Cold War: The Case of Chinese/American Scientists,” Isis 101, no. 2 (2010); Ruth Schwartz Cowan, A Social History of American Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Mitchell G. Ash and Alfons Sèollner, Forced Migration and Scientific Change: Emigre German-Speaking Scientists and Scholars after 1933, Publications of the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). A notable exception that discusses the protagonist in context of immigration law in the United States to some extent is Iris Chang, Thread of the Silkworm (New York: Basic Books, 1996). 41. Following is a selection of publications honoring the German rocket engineers’ contributions to space exploration: Charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty, Scientific and Technical Information Office, Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations, NASA History Series (Washington, D.C.: Scientific and Technical Information Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1978); Roger E. Bilstein and Frank Walter Anderson, Scientific and Technical Information Division, Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915–1990, NASA History Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Management, Scientific and Technical Information Division, 1989); Roger E. Bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles, NASA History Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1996); Thomas Keith Glennan and J. D. Hunley, The Birth of NASA: The Diary of T. Keith Glennan, NASA SP-4105 (Washington, D.C.: NASA History Office, 1993). 42. Gimbel, “Project Paperclip,” 343. chap t er o n e . f r o m e n e m y a l i e n s to v al ued cit izens 1. Ernst Stuhlinger, “America and Germany: Evolution of a Friendship; German Rocketeers Find a New Home in Huntsville,” Sep 21, 1995, Huntsville, Ala., organization unknown (copy in author’s possession). This speech was also reproduced in the journal of Huntsville’s historical society: Ernst Stuhlinger, “German Rocketeers Find a New Home in Huntsville,” Huntsville Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1996). 2. “Memorandum for the Secretariat, State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee: Exploitation of German and Austrian Specialists in Science and Technology in the United States, from: Assistant Secretary of War,” Aug 1 1946, Army Decimal File, 1941–48, 319, 47, 991, National Archives, College Park, Md., appendix A: “Facts Bearing on the Problem and Discussion.” 3. Ibid., 452–53. See also Clarence G. Lasby, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York: Atheneum, 1971), chapter 2.

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25– 26

4. The initial military operation, Overcast, was established in July 1945. When the operation was renamed Paperclip at the end of the year, it was limited to bringing 350 specialists to the United States but expanded to 1,000 in September 1946. Since the program lasted well into the late 1960s under various names, it is difficult to determine exactly how many scientists and engineers were eventually brought to the United States under this operation. The estimated total number of specialists brought to the United States during the 1945–52 period, in which about 90 percent of the German and Austrian specialists were recruited, varies between 518 (Ciesla) and 642 (Lasby). See Burghard Ciesla, “German High Velocity Aerodynamics and Their Significance for the U.S. Air Force, 1945–1952,” in Technology Transfer out of Germany after 1945, ed. Matthias Judt and Burghard Ciesla (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996), 93–106; Lasby, Project Paperclip, 213. Lasby’s 1971 monograph is still the most reliable and comprehensive source on Project Paperclip, even though he did not have access to many now declassified files. See also John Gimbel, “U.S. Policy and German Scientists: The Early Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly 101, no. 3 (1986): 433–51; Michael J. Neufeld, “Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim: Looting and the Transfer of German Military Technology,” in The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook, ed. Detlef Junker, Philipp Gassert, Wilfried Mausbach, and David B. Morris, Publications of the German Historical Institute (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; New York: German Historical Institute, 2004); John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990). 5. John Gimbel coined the term intellectual reparations. See Science, Technology, and Reparations. Volker Berghahn has contested Gimbel’s notion of “intellectual reparations,” arguing that the technology transfer from Germany after 1945 needs to be seen in the context of a long history of GermanAmerican technology exchange, in which the United States had become the technological master and the postwar transfer from Germany must be seen as an exception to that rule. Berghahn, “Technology, Reparations, and the Export of Industrial Culture: Problems of the American-German Relationship, 1900–1950,” in Judt and Ciesla, Technology Transfer out of Germany after 1945, 1–10. 6. Navy locations included White Oak and Bethesda, Maryland; Philadelphia and Johnsville, Pennsylvania; Lakehurst, New Jersey; New London, Connecticut; and Point Mugu, California. Lasby, Project Paperclip, 248–65. 7. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” n.d. [1959?], Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, RG 319, entry 82 (NM-3), box 2674, National Archives, College Park, Md., 35. 8. Lasby, Project Paperclip, 9. 9. For a thorough study of the German rocket development program, see Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995).

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26–28

21 5

10. With von Braun’s help, Toftoy put together a list of 127, of whom most moved to Ft. Bliss. He had been assigned responsibility for the direction of the army guided missile program after the war. He worked on provisions to provide a safe place for the team’s dependents in Landshut, Germany, and later to bring the dependents to Ft. Bliss. Toftoy was also instrumental in working out the mechanism with the U.S. State Department that allowed the Germans to change their status from being under military custody to immigrants. A plaque in his honor placed in downtown Huntsville’s Big Spring Park refers to him as “Mr. Missile,” as he was locally known. Michael E. Baker and Claus Martel, “Major General Holger N. Toftoy,” Redstone Arsenal Historical Information, http://www.redstone.army.mil/ history/toftoy/toftoy_bio.html; Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990, NASA Historical Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999), 9, 11, 14. 11. See army files, RG 330, on Project Paperclip for individuals. For more details about the move from Germany to Ft. Bliss, see Frederick Ira Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (1979; repr., Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003), 205–19. 12. Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 12–13; Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 239. 13. “Summary of Functions of Exploitation Section for Strategic Intelligence School,” Mar 31, 1948, Army Decimal File, 1941–48, 319, 47, 991, National Archives, College Park, Md., 3: Background of Project Paperclip. 14. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 5, 74. 15. Ibid., section “Security and Control.” 16. Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, 237. 17. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 36; “Security Regulations for German Scientists, From: HQ U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence,” August 22, 1946, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Security Policy and Procedure for Project Paperclip, From: HQ U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence,” n.d., ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. 18. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 38. 19. For a more thorough description of the struggles between the government departments, see chapter “The Dossiers” in Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991).

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29– 31

20. The 1924 Quota Act is generally considered the most important law implemented to restrict immigration after 1882, although previous acts had already provided a preview of what was to come. 21. As historian Mae Ngai put it, immigrant groups were now being racialized “around whiteness, permanent foreignness, and illegality.” Black people of African descent were not even counted as part of the existing population, while people from Asian countries, who were ineligible for citizenship, were excluded from entering the United States in the first place. For a thorough analysis of the racist implications of the 1924 law, see Mae M. Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” Journal of American History 86, no. 1 (1999). 22. Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), 56. 23. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 81. 24. Wives and minor children did not have to register, but any dependents who were not blood relatives, such as stepchildren or adopted children, had to be registered. Ibid., 89. 25. The Displaced Persons acts of 1948 and 1950 already included a preference for displaced persons “possessing special educational, scientific, technological or professional qualifications.” Section 6(a) and (b), DP Act of 1948, P.L. 774, 62 Stat. 647. 26. Lasby, Project Paperclip, 78. 27. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 74. 28. I have not been able to determine what criteria the military applied to determine whether a person was an “ardent” Nazi or not. 29. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 10. 30. Ibid., 79. 31. Ibid., 46. This applied to security dossiers for each specialist and each of his dependents over fifteen years of age. 32. “HQ European Command: Staff Message Control, Ref. No. Wx-83711,” Aug 7 1947, IRR Impersonal Files, RG 319, entry 57 (UD), box 19, National Archives, College Park, Md. The U.S. forces initiated the denazification program in the immediate postwar period; it was replaced by the German Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism on Jun 1, 1946. The German version was written under close supervision of the American military authority. As John Gimbel points out, it was not uncommon for U.S. forces to circumvent their own denazification policies in Germany to employ people with needed skills. Gimbel also states, however, that those maneuvers pale in comparison to the policy evasions of Project Paperclip. John Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” International History Review 12 (1990): 445–47.

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32–35

21 7

33. Full title of the Meldebogen: “Meldebogen: Aufgrund des Gesetzes zur Befreiung von Nationalsozialismus und Militarismus vom 5.3.1946” (Registration Form: Because of Law of Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism of March 5, 1946), “HQ European Command: Staff Message Control, Ref. No. Wx-83711,” IRR Impersonal Files, 444–45; Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” 458. 34. See Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” 459–61, for a brief outline of the denazification process in Germany. 35. “Memorandum, Subject: Information Required for Immigration of German Scientists, From: Joint Chiefs of Staff, JIOA,” Apr 14 1947, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. 36. “To: Commanding General, Fourth Army, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, From: Intelligence Division, General Staff, United States Army “ Aug 11, 1948, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. 37. “OMGUS Security Reports for Paperclip Specialists and Dependents, To: Commander in Chief, European Command, From: JIOA,” Apr 14, 1948, General Correspondence, 1946–52, RG 330, entry 1A, 14, National Archives, College Park, Md. 38. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 7. 39. Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” 454. 40. “OMGUS Security Reports on Paperclip Personnel, Exploitation Section, Executive Office, ID,” Nov 28, 1947, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. 41. “OMGUS Security Reports for Paperclip Specialists and Dependents, To: Commander in Chief, European Command, From: JIOA,” General Correspondence, 1946–52. 42. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 81. 43. Cited in Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” 463. 44. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 86; “Memorandum, Subject: Immigration of Paperclip Specialists, From: Director of Intelligence, Department of the Army General Staff, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.,” May 17, 1948, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Memorandum for Director of Intelligence, Subject: Immigration of German Scientists and Technicians, WDGS, From: JIOA,”

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45. 46.

47.

48.

49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

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35– 36

Mar 21, 1947, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” 462. Most of the German team was housed at Ft. Bliss, but according to Dieter Huzel, about fifteen members of the team lived in barracks at the White Sands Proving Ground. Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), 216. In our interview, Hans Fichtner stated that he lived at White Sands for a year and a half. Hans Fichtner, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 3 2007, Fichtner residence. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 75, 92–94; “Memorandum to Chief of Administrative and Liaison Group, ID, GSUSA, Subject: Status of Persons Brought to the United States under Paperclip Program, From: JIOA,” Jul 26, 1949, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Procedure for the Immigration of the Dependents of German and Austrian Specialists by Preexamination,” n.d., ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Report–Part I, A. Conference at Fort Bliss Relative Security on Public Relations Aspects of Project Paperclip, B. Conference at Juarez, Mexico, Relative Immigration of Three Special Aliens,” Nov 1947, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Information upon Which to Base an Investigation of Paperclip Activities at Fort Bliss, Texas and White Sands, New Mexico,” n.d., ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. Report based on conference and meetings on Nov 4, 5, and 6, 1947. Refers to Aug 21, 1946, letter from chief of ordnance, reporting Jungert and Helm incident. “Basic Personnel Record: Hans Deppe,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: DEPPE, RG 330, entry 1B, box 29, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, RG 330, entry 1B, boxes 1–187, National Archives, College Park, Md.; File: Fleischer, “Return of German Specialist and Dependents to Germany,” Aug 1, 1947, and File: Axster, “Special Report 14 March 47.” Konrad Dannenberg, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 13, 17, 2007, Dannenberg residence. “To: Officer-in-Charge, Ord Res & Dev Div Subo (Rkt), Ft. Bliss, Texas, Subject: Immigration Status of Paperclip Specialists, From: W. J. Durrenberger, War Department,” Jan 16, 1950, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Memorandum for Executive, ID, GSUSA, Subject: Exploitation of German Scientists, From: JIOA,” Oct 13, 1947, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md.

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36–37

21 9

54. “OMGUS Security Reports on Paperclip Personnel, Exploitation Section, Executive Office, ID,” ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48. I am not providing the names of those specialists who at one point were considered a potential security threat or who experienced delays in the issuance of their visas due to derogatory security reports because I believe it would cause more harm than good to publish the names without a closer investigation of the exact circumstances of each individual. While the information is publicly available, publication could potentially cause upset to the individuals and/or their families, who may or may not be aware of this. 55. Delbert Clark, “Nazis Sent to U.S. as Technicians,” New York Times, Jan 4, 1947; “Letter from Rabbi S. Wise to Secretary of War, Robert Patterson,” Apr 14, 1947, ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. 56. “Information upon Which to Base an Investigation of Paperclip Activities at Fort Bliss, Texas and White Sands, New Mexico,” ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, and “To: Commanding General, Fourth Army, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, From: Intelligence Division, General Staff, United States Army,” ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48. See also “Subject: The Axster Couple (Formerly Usedom, Pomerania), From: USAF, Captain, Berlin,” Mar 25, 1948, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. 57. “Subject: The Axster Couple (Formerly Usedom, Pomerania), From: USAF, Captain, Berlin,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. 58. “Letter to Chief of Ordnance, Subject: Immigration of Paperclip Specialist Herbert Axster, From: James P. Hamill,” Feb 24, 1950, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. 59. “Letter to Commanding General, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Subject: Paperclip Personnel Herbert and Ilse Axster, From: Laurin L. Williams, GSC,” Oct 7, 1948, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. 60. “In Re: Kurt Heinrich Debus and Herbert Felix Axster, From: Assistant Commissioner, Inspections and Examinations Division,” Feb 12, 1953, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. 61. The Axsters had left Huntsville, Alabama, in 1951 for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Herbert Axster worked with a law firm until their departure in 1953. “Letter to Chief of INS, From: USAF Director,” Oct 22, 1954, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Letter to Office of the Chief of Ordnance, From: Herbert Axster,” Oct 8, 1954, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Letter to Chief of Ordnance, From: Ord Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” May 6, 1954, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B,

220

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

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37– 39

box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Office Memorandum to: Major Saxby, G-2, Subject: Dr. Herber Axster, From: J. M. Harrington, Ordhc,” May 18, 1954, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Subject: Return to Germany of Former Paperclip Employee—Dr. Herbert Axster, To: Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, From: Ordnance Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” May 6, 1954, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Subject: Immigration of Dependents of Kurt Debus, To: Chief of Ordnance, From: Ordnance Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” Jun 29, 1953, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. The attorney of the person Debus had accused requested that the execution of his punishment of two years’ imprisonment and payment of the court’s costs be postponed until after the war. He argued that the accused was considered an indispensable asset for the German war effort. See Debus’s deposition of the incident: “Geheime Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeistelle Darmstadt,” Dec 18, 1942, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md.; and “Request from Dr. Jur. Erich Dickow,” Apr 27, 1943, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. In a deposition attached to his Meldebogen (questionnaire) in his personnel file, Debus explained that he never became a full member of the SS, but remained an Anwärter (candidate for membership) until the war’s end because he was not a member of the NSDAP. “Letter to the Secretary of State, From: Secretary of the Army,” Jul 3, 1950, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Draft Letter to Congressman H. C. Fuller,” n.d., ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Reich Scientists Agree to Finish Projects for U.S.,” Sun, Oct 2, 1945. See also “Army to Bring Scientists Here from Reich,” Washington Post, Oct 2, 1945; “Nazi Scientists Coming to U.S.,” Atlanta Constitution, Oct 2, 1945; “Germans Will Aid U.S. War Research,” New York Times, Oct 2, 1945; “Germans Due Here to Aid U.S. Science,” Washington Post, Oct 3, 1945. Associated Press, “U.S. Employing German Brains, Patterson Says, Citing Rockets,” Washington Post, Mar 21, 1946. “German Scientists Develop Rocket Here,” New York Times, Mar 21, 1946. Ibid. Associated Press, “U.S. Employing German Brains, Patterson Says, Citing Rockets.” Ibid.

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73. “Army to Tell Its Use of German Scientists,” New York Times, Nov 13, 1946. 74. “U.S. Offers Citizenship to German Scientists,” New York Times, Nov 24, 1946; “1000 German Scientists Due to Come to U.S. with Families,” Washington Post, Nov 24, 1946; “U.S. Will Give Citizenship to German Experts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov 24, 1946. 75. “United States Gains Technical Aid from German-Austrian Scientists,” Nov 27, 1946, 002683, National Archives, College Park, Md.; Roy Gibbons, “Ex-Nazi Experts Work on Secret Weapons in U.S.,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec 4, 1946. 76. Frederick Graham, “Nazi Scientists Aid Army on Research,” New York Times, Dec 4, 1946. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid. 80. Lasby, Project Paperclip, chapter 5: “The ‘Profound Concern.’ ” 81. Ibid., 189. 82. “Letter from Rabbi S. Wise to Secretary of War, Robert Patterson,” ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48. 83. Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, Contemporary American History Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 84. See Lasby, Project Paperclip. On the public relations management of Project Paperclip see especially chapter 4: “Paperclip: One Kind of Containment.” 85. Asif A. Siddiqi, “Germans in Russia: Cold War, Technology Transfer, and National Identity,” Osiris 24, no. 1 (2009); Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Knopf in association with the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2007), 232. 86. Gibbons, “Ex-Nazi Experts Work on Secret Weapons in U.S.” 87. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, 44. chap t er tw o . h un ts v i l l e be c o m e s the “ ro ck et cit y” 1. There had been some diversification of the South’s population since the Civil War, but the more radical changes to its makeup did not occur until the second half of the twentieth century. Carl L. Bankston, “New People in the New South: An Overview of Southern Immigration,” Southern Cultures 13, no. 4 (2007); Harry L. Watson, “Southern History, Southern Future: Some Reflections and a Cautious Forecast,” in The American South in a Global World, ed. James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 29, 280; R. Celeste Ray, “Ethnicity,” in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 17–18. 2. James C. Cobb and William Whitney Stueck, Globalization and the American South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), xii; James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews, The American South in a Global World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 1. See also Dennis C.

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3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

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Rousey, “Aliens in the WASP Nest: Ethnocultural Diversity in the Antebellum Urban South,” Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (1992). Jim Crow refers to the system of racial segregation in the U.S. South beginning in the post-Reconstruction era of the 1890s. For a description of the Jim Crow system in the context of Alabama twentieth-century history, see Wayne Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, Modern South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 9, 14, 318–35. Elise Hopkins Stephens, Historic Huntsville: A City of New Beginnings (Woodland Hills, Calif.: Windsor, 1984), 36. The Planters’ and Mechanics’ Bank of Huntsville was later changed to Planters’ and Merchants’ Bank. Ibid., 32. St. Stephens was named the territorial capital in 1817. After Huntsville held the title of state capital briefly in 1819, Cahaba became the capital in 1820. Tuscaloosa then served as the state’s capital from 1826 to 1846, after which Montgomery became the permanent capital of Alabama. The boll weevil is an insect that decimated cotton-based agriculture in the South beginning in the early twentieth century, forcing many to move north and west in search of employment. In Alabama, the economic losses lasted for more than eighty years. Encyclopedia of Alabama, hosted by Auburn University, http:// www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Home.jsp. Stephens, Historic Huntsville: A City of New Beginnings, 85; Charles S. Bullock III and Janna Deitz, “Transforming the South: The Role of the Federal Government,” in The American South in the Twentieth Century, ed. Craig S. Pascoe, Karen Trahan Leathem, and Andy Ambrose (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 258–59. Michael E. Baker, Redstone Arsenal: Yesterday and Today, 6th ed. (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: U.S. Army Missile Command, 1995), 1–3. Kaylene Hughes, Women at War: Redstone’s WWII Female “Production Soldiers” (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: Historical Office, U.S. Army Missile Command, 1995), iii, 2, 10. Allen Cronenberg, Forth to the Mighty Conflict: Alabama and World War II (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 97, 191n12. According to the historian for Redstone Arsenal, there is no documentation of POWs in the arsenal’s archives. There is, however, in addition to the mention in Cronenberg’s monograph, anecdotal evidence from several of my interviewees, and Stephens’s book includes a photograph of POWs whom she identifies as German POWs in Huntsville. Stephens, Historic Huntsville, 108. Heinz Struck, one of the rocket specialists who moved to Huntsville in 1958, wrote in his memoir that the camp at Redstone was located on Dodd Road and that “the inmates were German Paratroopers from the 6. Parachute Regiment.” Heinz Struck, “1958. October. Emigration to the USA,” memoir provided to author by Struck during interview on Jul 24, 2007. Buddy and Sol Miller as well as Charles Ray also discussed the German POWs at the arsenals in our interviews. I. B. “Buddy” Miller, Dolores Miller, and Solomon Miller, interviewed by

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13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Miller residence; Charles Ray Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Ray’s office. In an article published in a local paper, Old Morgan County, Tom Carney notes that there is nothing left today that would identify the camp at Redstone Arsenal. The author claims that the basic camp was built in the summer/ fall of 1944 and was dismantled in the fall of 1945 when the last POWs were moved out. By March 1945 the POW camp was presumably holding twelve hundred POWs who worked in a rock quarry nearby, in road construction, “spraying for mosquitos in the malaria infested marshlands of the Arsenal,” or in infrastructure jobs related to the camp during the day. Tom Carney, “Stalag Redstone,” Old Morgan County, 1999. Baker, Redstone Arsenal, 6. Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990, NASA Historical Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999), 14. The arsenal was officially reactivated as the site of the Ordnance Rocket Center in June 1949. Redstone Arsenal retained the chemical ammunition mission until July 1956, producing “a major portion of all chemical artillery ammunition used by U.S. armed forces” for the Korean War. Baker, Redstone Arsenal, 6–8. Brigadier General Holger N. Toftoy, “The History of Army Missile Development,” 1956, Redstone Arsenal Archives, Huntsville, Ala.; Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 15; Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 75–76; Michael E. Baker and Claus Martel, “Biography of Senator John J. Sparkman,” Redstone Arsenal Historical Information, http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/sparkman/ sparkbio.htm; Michael E. Baker, History of Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville @ 2000: The Legacy of the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal; A Tribute to “Mr. Missile” Mg Holger N. Toftoy (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: Office of the Command Historian US Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command, 2005). Stephens, Historic Huntsville, 107. Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 14. Huntsville Planning Commission, ed., Preliminary Census Report: Huntsville, Alabama (Huntsville, Ala.: Huntsville Planning Commission, 1971), 8. Alice Tanner, “Panelist #2,” in David Lilly, A Century of Flight: “Creating Rocket City” (Huntsville, Ala.: Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, 2003). Loretta Spencer, “Panelist #8,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight. Max Rosenthal, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 12, 2006. Ibid. Maria Dempsey, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 2, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. The title of an article describing the changes Huntsville underwent after 1950 summarizes the contrasts succinctly: Paul O’Neil, “The Splendid Anachronism of Huntsville,” Fortune, Jun 1962.

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22. Frederick I. Ordway III, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Marriott Hotel, Huntsville. 23. Howard Polin and Diana Polin, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 26, 2007, Polin residence. 24. City of Huntsville, “Huntsville, Alabama: Space Capitol of the Universe,” 1959–60, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, Heritage Room; Alabama City of Huntsville, Huntsville . . . Reports to Its Citizens . . . (Huntsville, Ala., 1957). 25. Huntsville Planning Commission, Preliminary Census Report, 17. See also Huntsville–Madison County Public Library Archives, “Comparative Growth Rates: Huntsville, Madison County, Birmingham, Alabama; Source: US Census of Population 1920–1960,” 57. 26. Huntsville–Madison County Public Library Archives, “Comparative Growth Rates,” 65–66. 27. Charles “Chuck” A. Lundquist, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, UAH Archive. 28. Frank Williams, “Panelist #5,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight. 29. Ibid. 30. “Gunbelt” is a metaphor used by the authors of The Rise of the Gunbelt that refers to the locations of industry based on defense spending and Pentagon contracts, which form the shape of a belt in the southern states from the West to East coasts. Ann R. Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 31. Ibid., 7, 231. 32. Huntsville–Madison County Public Library Archives, “Comparative Growth Rates,” 65–66. 33. Ibid., 55. 34. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 177, 332–33. For county percentages, run online query on “Historical Census Browser,” University of Virginia Library, [Apr 10, 2008], http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/ county.php, Alabama County-Level Results for 1950; variables selected: “Negro Females,” “Negro Males,” “Total Females,” and “Total Males.” 35. Clyde Foster, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 19, 2007, Foster residence. 36. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 166–67. 37. For information about the dual system of education in Alabama, see the higher education desegregation case known as John F. Knight Jr., and Alease S. Sims et al. v. the State of Alabama et al., Civil Action no. CV 83-M-1676, “which began in Montgomery in 1981.” For a detailed historical overview of the “history of discrimination against African Americans in higher education” in Alabama, see Knight v. Alabama (Opinion) (1991). Information about the case and full-text PDF files of the opinions are available at http://knightsims.com/index.html. 38. Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 120. 39. Huntsville–Madison County Public Library Archives, “Comparative Growth Rates,” 66, Huntsville Planning Commission, Preliminary Census Report, 25.

n ot es t o p ag es 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

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Foster, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 338–39; Harvard Sitkoff, “The Preconditions for Racial Change,” in A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America, ed. William Henry Chafe and Harvard Sitkoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157, 63. “A Lesson for Us,” Chicago Defender, Feb 15, 1936; “War and Fascism,” Chicago Defender, Feb 22, 1936; “A Subversive Covenant,” Chicago Defender, Jul 10, 1937; “ ‘Bishop Blasts Nazis, Winks at Lynching’: Charge Made by Secretary of N.A.A.C.P.,” Chicago Defender, Dec 3, 1938; “Dr. Johnson Urges Racial Unity as Check to Nazism,” Chicago Defender, Dec 17, 1938; “Hitler Adopts U.S. Jim Crow Laws in Germany: Nazis Adopt U.S. Jim-Crow Rail System; Ape America in Move to Humiliate and Oppress Jewish Citizens,” Chicago Defender, Jan 7, 1939. James C. Cobb, “World War II and the Mind of the Modern South,” in Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World War II on the American South, ed. Neil R. McMillen (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 7; James C. Cobb, “From the First New South to the Second: The Southern Odyssey through the Twentieth Century,” in The American South in the Twentieth Century, ed. Craig S. Pascoe, Karen Trahan Leathem, and Andy Ambrose (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 5–6; “Alabama Moments in American History,” Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/ sec53qs.html. Encyclopedia of Alabama, “NAACP v. Alabama,” hosted by Auburn University, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1494. This demonstration was orchestrated between Wallace, the attorney general Robert Kennedy, and the Justice Department. It allowed Wallace to publicly denounce federal intrusion and to obstruct the process of desegregation, at least symbolically. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 353–54. The “Children’s Crusade” was a direct action event launched on May 2, 1963, when schoolchildren marched in downtown Birmingham. Timeline on Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, http://rg.bcri.org/gallery/; Alabama Department of Archives and History, “Alabama Moments in American History,” http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec53qs.html. For more on the international impact of the civil rights movement, see Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000). Theresa Power DeShields, “The Acquisition of Civil Rights in Huntsville, Alabama from 1962–1965” (M.A. thesis, Alabama A&M, 1965). Ray Jr., interview. Ibid. Foster, interview. Ray Jr., interview.

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56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. James C. Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936–1990, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 149. See also James C. Cobb, The South and America since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), chapter 3. 59. Cobb, The Selling of the South, 137–38. 60. Sheryll Cashin, The Agitator’s Daughter: A Memoir of Four Generations of One Extraordinary African American Family (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008), 132–35. 61. DeShields, “The Acquisition of Civil Rights,” 40–43. 62. Ibid., 44–45; Cashin, The Agitator’s Daughter, 141–45; Waymon E. Burke, A Civil Rights Journey (Huntsville, Ala., 1999), video. 63. DeShields, “The Acquisition of Civil Rights,” 45–46; Burke, A Civil Rights Journey; Cashin, The Agitator’s Daughter, 147. 64. Burke, A Civil Rights Journey. 65. Cashin, The Agitator’s Daughter, 152–53. 66. Ray Jr., interview. 67. DeShields, “The Acquisition of Civil Rights,” 54–55. 68. Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 208. 69. DeShields, “The Acquisition of Civil Rights,” 47–53. 70. Robin Conn et al., “Race Relations: The 1960’s,” Huntsville Times, Feb 13, 2000. 71. Lee Roop, “For White Kids, Integration Here Was No Big Deal,” Huntsville Times, Feb 13, 2000. 72. Clive Webb, “A Tangled Web: Black-Jewish Relations in the Twentieth-Century South,” in Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History, ed. Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press; Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2006), 192. 73. James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 48–51. 74. Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, 4–7. 75. Stuart Rockoff, “The Fall and Rise of the Jewish South,” in ibid., 287. 76. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 443–44. 77. Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, 3. 78. Ibid., 5; Gary Phillip Zola, “The Ascendancy of Reform Judaism in the American South during the Nineteenth Century,” in ibid., 160. 79. Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, 6. 80. Ibid.; Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 484. See also John Higham, according to whom, “The more wealthy and prominent Jews in the United States were of German background.” John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 278. Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, 15.

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81. Robert N. Rosen, “Jewish Confederates,” in Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil. 82. Zola, “The Ascendancy of Reform Judaism,” 178. 83. Eric L. Goldstein, “ ‘Now Is the Time to Show Your True Colors’: Southern Jews, Whiteness, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” in Ferris and Greenberg, Jewish Roots in Southern Soil, 135. 84. Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 181–84. 85. Webb, “A Tangled Web,” 201. 86. For restrictions enforced against Jews at American universities and in many professions after World War I, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, 278; Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 78–104. 87. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 6–13. See also official B’nai Sholom website, http://www.templebnaisholom.org/. 88. Some buildings in Huntsville still carry the names Goldsmith and Schiffman, and older residents are very familiar with the names. 89. Margaret Anne Goldsmith Hanaw, “5 Generations of Life: ‘My Family and the Huntsville, Alabama Jewish Community,’ 1852–1982,” Huntsville Historical Review 12, nos. 3–4 (1982): 21. For Rundbogenstil, a round arched style, see B’nai Sholom website, http://www.templebnaisholom.org/html/ history.html. 90. Margaret Anne Goldsmith, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Goldsmith’s office. 91. Miller, Miller, and Miller, interview. 92. Goldsmith, interview. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96. Miller, Miller, and Miller, interview. 97. There did not seem to be any particular reason for Sol to learn German, except that the rabbi teaching him happened to also know German and found that Sol had an aptitude for languages. Ibid. 98. Rosenthal, interview. 99. Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, 79. 100. Ibid., 88–89. 101. Polin and Polin, interview. 102. Apparently, even today not enough Orthodox Jews reside in Huntsville to form an Orthodox congregation: “We have one Orthodox family in Huntsville and, of course, they don’t attend either the synagogue or the temple . . . they arrange to go down to either Birmingham or to Atlanta for the high holidays. Or they’ll go to Israel.” Ibid. 103. Ibid. In this interview Polin also explains another feature of Judaism in Huntsville—the use of a shortcut when referring to either congregation: “It doesn’t have the differentiation any other place, but here in Huntsville,

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106. 107. 108.

109.

110. 111.

112. 113.

114. 115. 116. 117.

118.

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when we refer to the Reform we call it ‘the temple.’ When we refer to the Conservative, we call it ‘the synagogue.’ But those words are interchangeable.” Williams, “Panelist #5.” While the southern states’ difficulties in attracting new industrial investors has been linked to racial segregation, Cobb notes that the impact on a state’s industrial growth is difficult to prove. The Selling of the South, 44, 97, 136–38, 186. See also Markusen et al., The Rise of the Gunbelt, ix. Dewey W. Grantham, “The South and Congressional Politics,” in McMillen, Remaking Dixie, 24–25. Cronenberg, Forth to the Mighty Conflict, 2. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 392–96. See also official website of the Encyclopedia of Alabama: Daniel Hutchinson, “Encyclopedia of Alabama: World War II POW Camps in Alabama,” Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University, http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article. jsp?id=h-1418. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 135–45. For a brief overview of the impact of the military on Alabama during World War II, see “Alabama and World War II” on the Alabama Department of Archives and History website: Alabama Moments in American History, http://www.alabamamoments.state. al.us/sec53qs.html. See also Cronenberg, Forth to the Mighty Conflict. Watson, “Southern History, Southern Future,” 281; Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 207. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt, 148. For an example of the impact of NASA on a southern state, see William Barnaby Faherty, Florida’s Space Coast: The Impact of NASA on the Sunshine State, Florida History and Culture Series (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). Schulman, preface to From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt. Shelby G. Spires, “Innovative Huntsville Joins Newsweek’s List of Top ‘Hot Tech’ Cities,” Huntsville Times, Apr 24, 2001; Steve Doyle, “Huntsville Economy Gets Global Exposure,” Huntsville Times, Jul 29, 2009; “Welcome to Huntsville: It’s a Great Place to Live,” Inspired Living: Greater Huntsville Relocation Guide, Fall–Winter 2005. Ed Buckbee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan. 17, 2007, Marriott Hotel restaurant, Konrad Dannenberg attending. John Evans, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 3 2007, Evans’s office, conference room of Grace, Evans & Matthews. Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, 108–12. Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 117–25 (see comments by NASA administrator James Webb on hiring scientists, engineers, and top managers as well as minorities in the late 1960s). Michael E. Baker, Kaylene Huges, and James D. Bowne, Redstone Arsenal Complex Chronology, Part II: Nerve Center of Army Missilery, 1950–1962, Section B: The ABMA/AOMC Era (1956/62) (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: Historical Division, Secretary of the General Staff U.S. Army Missile Command, 1994),

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5; Baker, Redstone Arsenal, 10. For leadership positions held by German rocket team members at MSFC, see Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, appendix D: “Organization Charts.” 119. Baker, History of Redstone Arsenal. chap t er th r e e . “ i n e v e r th o ugh t o f h im as a f o reig ner” 1. Von Braun’s portrait is one of the only images at eye level, as passengers usually descend to the lower level once they pass his depiction. According to NASA’s website, the mural was unveiled in celebration of NASA’s fiftieth anniversary: “Spanning an 80-foot wall, the mural illustrates the importance of the Marshall Center to the Space Age, and depicts how Marshall is shaping the future of space exploration by helping to return humans to the moon.” http://www.nasa. gov/centers/marshall/multimedia/photos/2008/photos08–010.html. 2. Ed Buckbee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan. 17, 2007, Marriott Hotel restaurant, Konrad Dannenberg attending. 3. NASA-MSFC Retiree Association, 50 Years of Rockets and Spacecraft in the Rocket City (Paducah, Ky.: Turner, 2002), 12. 4. The title of this section borrows from a self-published memoir available at a local bookstore. Billy Stone describes his childhood encounter with the father of one of the German rocket team members who had moved to the area with his son’s family. Big Cove is a neighboring rural community of Huntsville. According to Stone, the German man “would roam the countryside almost daily, always wearing a backpack and an old floppy hat. Rumors ran rampant through the community that he was a spy and the Germans might invade Big Cove.” Stone further explains that “some of the country store’s front porch loafers thought it was too soon after WWII to trust the Germans.” Billy Stone, When the Germans Invaded Big Cove: The Old Spy Man (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2004), 57–58. 5. “Fort Bliss, Texas, Rocket Office to Be Moved to Redstone Arsenal: Involves about 900 Civilians and Soldiers; 100 German Scientists among Those Who Will Be Transferred Here,” Huntsville Times, Nov 4, 1949. 6. “Move Scheduled by GE Employes [sic],” Huntsville Times, Apr 3, 1950. These numbers do not seem to accurately reflect how many families moved to town in 1950 because of the rocket program. According to Redstone historians, personnel at Redstone increased from 1,505 in June 1950 to over 5,000 by June 1951. While there would have been some local hires, this increase indicates that a few thousand families moved to the area within one year. 7. “Fort Bliss, Texas, Rocket Office to Be Moved to Redstone Arsenal.” The number of German families varies among news articles. Other articles announce 130 German scientists with families: “Quarters of Guided Missile Area Set up at Redstone Arsenal: Major Hamill and Advanced Group Arrive,” Huntsville Times, Apr 16, 1950; “150 Redstone Families Here, Others Coming,” Huntsville Times, Jul 9, 1950.

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8. “Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon,” Huntsville Times, May 14, 1950. 9. Elaine Tyler May, introduction to Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 10. Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1962), 181. Ordway and Sharpe explain that SS Officer Kammler ordered the team to move to Oberammergau, where the SS would take over. According to the authors, once he arrived in Oberammergau, von Braun “set about getting his team out from under the guns of the SS. . . . As a result, 400 key men of Peenemünde were dispersed in 25 small hamlets and villages about Oberammergau.” Von Braun, who was lying in a hospital near Oberjoch to heal the arm he broke in a car accident, was worried that he “could be scooped up at any moment by the SS and hauled away as hostage or disposed of so that he could not be captured by the French said to be closing in on Sonthofen at the very moment,” which is why he was moved to Oberjoch. Frederick Ira Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (1979; repr., Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003), 186–87. 11. For details on von Braun’s arrest, see Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (New York: Knopf in association with the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 2007), 168–71. 12. This interpretation was repeated many times by von Braun supporters and used as evidence that von Braun was not a committed Nazi. It also served to illustrate how easily a person could be in danger if he or she did not comply with the totalitarian regime’s rules and objectives. 13. The American press initially published articles about the discovery of concentration camps in April 1945, including Nordhausen, explicitly linking the production of the V-2 rockets to the horrors discovered at the camp, but when the war crimes trial for Nordhausen took place in 1947, the U.S. press all but ignored it. Presumably, it “just seemed to be yet another trial.” Michael J. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War,” in Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference, ed. Steven J. Dick (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2008), 71. 14. “Lutheran Church Is Planned Here,” Huntsville Times, Apr 23, 1950; “GE Move Getting Well under Way,” Huntsville Times, May 21, 1950. 15. “Redstone Arsenal Work Authorized,” Huntsville Times, Jul 14, 1950. 16. “Newcomer Party of Welcome Set,” Huntsville Times, Jul 16, 1950; “2,700 Attend Newcomer Fete Despite Rains,” Huntsville Times, Aug 10, 1950. 17. “Redstone Set to Employ 500 Next 30 Days,” Huntsville Times, Aug 20, 1950. 18. Jimmie Taylor, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 1, 2007, Taylor residence. 19. Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 76; Erik Bergaust, Wernher von Braun: The Authoritative

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20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

76–81

231

and Definitive Biographical Profile of the Father of Modern Space Flight (Washington, D.C.: National Space Institute, 1976), 186. I heard the story from others as well while conducting my research in Huntsville. Alice Tanner, “Panelist #2,” in David Lilly, A Century of Flight: “Creating Rocket City” (Huntsville, Ala.: Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, 2003). Tanner’s mother may very well be referring to a specific history of relationships between Huntsville residents and personnel from Redstone and Huntsville arsenal. At the same time, this emphasis references stereotypes of military people as promiscuous and prone to carry sexual diseases as well as notions concerning class and status. Offering some insight into these notions, the following publications discuss perceptions of men and women during World War II: Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II, Contributions in Women’s Studies no. 20 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981); Marilyn E. Hegarty, Victory Girls, KhakiWackies, and Patriotutes: The Regulation of Female Sexuality during World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2008); Meghan K. Winchell, Good Girls, Good Food, Good Fun: The Story of USO Hostesses during World War II, Gender and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008). John Evans, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 3, 2007, Evans’s office, conference room of Grace, Evans & Matthews. Matthias Reiss, “Bronzed Bodies behind Barbed Wire: Masculinity and the Treatment of German Prisoners of War in the United States during World War II,” Journal of Military History 69, no. 2 (2005): 477n6. Reiss cites the following: Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 129–43; Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, American Moment (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 88–90. Margaret Anne Goldsmith, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Goldsmith’s office. See, for example, Daniel J. Goldhagen, Christopher R. Browning, and Leon Wieseltier, “The ‘Willing Executioners’ / ‘Ordinary Men’ Debate,” in Symposium on Daniel Goldhagen’s Book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, ed. Michael Berenbaum (Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Research Institute, 1996). I. B. “Buddy” Miller, Dolores Miller, and Solomon Miller, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Miller residence. Ibid. “Scientists Slate Oakwood Concert,” Huntsville Times, Nov 26, 1950. Lawrence Levine describes the emergence of highbrow culture and its association with the upper class in the United States in the late nineteenth century in Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988). Pete

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

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82– 86

Daniel explains that middle-class southerners tried to signal their superiority by distancing themselves from “white trash low culture”: Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C., 2000), 92–93. Gavin James Campbell describes the history of promoting classical music as the antidote to social and moral problems since the early twentieth century in his article on more recent measures in Georgia to expose embryos to classical music: “Mozart Went Down to Georgia,” Southern Cultures 6, no. 1 (2000). Tanner, “Panelist #2,” 1. Loretta Spencer, “Panelist #8,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight, 3. Italicized words denote an emphasis placed on these words by the speaker. Tanner, “Panelist #2.” “Huntsville Symphony Will Give First Concert,” Birmingham News, Dec 11, 1955. Bianca Cox, “Music Dialogue with Visiting Professor Inspired Dreger to Start Symphony Here,” Huntsville News, Nov 17, 1989. John Rison Jones Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 31, 2007, Jones residence. Charles “Chuck” A. Lundquist, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, UAH Archive. Marilyn Mercer, “Glamour’s Special Report: Young Family Life in a Space Age Boom Town,” Glamour, Jan 1961, 71. Copies of Wiesman’s résumé, speeches, and speeches about him are available at Huntsville’s Chamber of Commerce. Mike Marshall, “Wiesman Found a Home in Huntsville,” Huntsville Times, Jul 13, 2000. Miller, Miller, and Miller, interview. For a better understanding of von Braun’s image and impact on Huntsville, see Ward, Dr. Space. For descriptions of von Braun’s efforts to gain support for his work under the Nazi regime, see Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War; Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995); Ordway III and Sharpe, The Rocket Team. Buckbee, interview. Bob Ward, “Panelist #4,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight. Ben Graves, “Panelist #7,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight. Weldon Payne, “ ‘$3 Million Needed Now,’ ” Huntsville Times, Jun 20, 1961. UAH existed as an extension of the University of Alabama in varying forms since 1950. It was known as the University of Alabama Huntsville Center until 1968, after which it became independent and was renamed as the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Phillip Gentry, “If You Really Investigate UAH’s History, How It All Started and When and Why, You Might Decide That the Whole Thing Goes Back to 1943 and the Day Pat Richardson Was Hit in the Neck by a

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48. 49.

50.

51. 52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57. 58.

87–89

233

Softball,” University of Alabama–Huntsville, http://urnet.uah.edu/News/pdf/ UAHhistory.pdf. Frank Williams, “Panelist #5,” in Lilly, A Century of Flight. According to an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “the $10 million Alabama Space and Rocket Center” opened to the public on March 17, 1970. “Space Museum Opens March 17,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb 28, 1970. Buckbee, interview. For information on Bryant, see Ken Gaddy, “Encyclopedia of Alabama: Paul William ‘Bear’ Bryant,” Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article. jsp?id=h-1420. For Jordan, see Rich Donnell, “Encyclopedia of Alabama: Ralph ‘Shug’ Jordan,” Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1502. For more about the importance of college football in Alabama, see Wayne Flynt, Alabama in the Twentieth Century, Modern South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004). Max Rosenthal, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 12, 2006. Ernst Stuhlinger, “German Rocketeers Find a New Home in Huntsville,” Huntsville Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1996); Konrad Dannenberg, speaking in Buckbee, interview. Helen Brents Joiner and Elizabeth C. Jolliff, The Redstone Arsenal Complex in Its Second Decade, 1950–1960, ed. Historical Division (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: U.S. Army Missile Command, 1969), 3. Brigadier General Holger N. Toftoy, “The History of Army Missile Development,” 1956, Redstone Arsenal Archives, Huntsville, Ala. “Speech Held by Holger N. Toftoy at AOA Small Arms and Small Arms Ammo Division at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.,” Jun 2, 1959, “Paperclip,” H. N. Toftoy Collection, USSRC (copies provided by Michael J. Neufeld). See also Heinz Millinger, Über Peenemünde ins All: Erinnerungen Von 1939 Bis 1958 (Fulda: Hans-Georg Urbin, 2006), 35. Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990, NASA Historical Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999), 245; Michael E. Baker, History of Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville @ 2000: The Legacy of the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal: A Tribute to “Mr. Missile” Mg Holger N. Toftoy (Redstone Arsenal, Ala.: Office of the Command Historian US Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command, 2005). Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, 245. While Sparkman had been instrumental in the initial establishment of Huntsville Arsenal, he and senior senator Lister Hill had recently lost a bid for an air force aeronautical research laboratory for wind tunnel testing to Tullahoma, Tennessee, about an hour and a half north of Huntsville. Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, 15; Ward, Dr. Space, 75–76; Michael E. Baker and Claus Martel, “Biography of Senator John J. Sparkman,” Redstone Arsenal Historical

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59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

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89– 95

Information, http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/sparkman/sparkbio.htm; Baker, “History of Redstone Arsenal.” “Fort Bliss, Texas, Rocket Office to Be Moved to Redstone Arsenal.” H, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 10, 2006, H’s office. “Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon”; Cornelius Ryan, ed., Conquest of the Moon (New York: Viking, 1953); “Interview—with Top Rocket Expert Dr. Wernher von Braun,” U.S. News & World Report, Oct 18, 1955; William L. Laurence, “2 Rocket Experts Argue ‘Moon’ Plan,” New York Times, Oct 14, 1952; “Rocket to Moon Called Possible,” Oakland Tribune, Oct 25, 1954. While sending Explorer I into orbit could be considered a military function in the broadest sense and in the context of the cold war, the demonstration of this capability was also useful for many nonmilitary applications. The title of Neufeld’s biography of von Braun, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, makes the rare effort to stress the military dimensions of von Braun’s legacy. Ray Jr., interview. Taylor, interview. “Wernher von Braun,” 1945, IRR Impersonal Files RG 319, entry 57 (UD), boxes 76–81, National Archives, College Park, Md. As a supplement to the general interview, Dannenberg offered to review the list of team members on a picture taken of the team at Ft. Bliss. Here, he noted about twenty-three members of the team who left the army or later NASA to join other companies or the air force for various reasons, one of which was the offer of a higher salary. This trend was confirmed in interviews with other German family members. Mike Ward, “Big Dreams, Bigger Plans: Huntsville’s First Guidance System Launched an Economy,” Initiatives, Dec 2006, 24. Goldsmith, interview.

chap t er f o ur . be c o m i n g a m e r i c a n s 1. Ernst Stuhlinger, “America and Germany: Evolution of a Friendship; German Rocketeers Find a New Home in Huntsville,” Sep 21, 1995, Huntsville, Ala. 2. This number is based on a variety of lists I collected from different members of the German group as well as from the Paperclip files for individuals at the National Archives. “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, RG 330, entry 1B, boxes 1–187, National Archives, College Park, Md. 3. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender and Foreign Relations, 1945– 1949 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 78, 96, 100–101. 4. CARE stands for “Co-operative of American Remittances to Europe,” which began operating in 1946. “CARE enabled private citizens to donate relief packages to individual addresses in Europe. By 1947, sixty percent of all CARE packages went to Germany, suggesting a high level of personal connections matched by an equally high level of compassion toward Germans.” Ibid., 121. 5. Hanna Schissler, The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany, 1949– 1968 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).

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235

6. Brian C. Etheridge, “The Desert Fox, Memory Diplomacy, and the German Question in Early Cold War America,” Diplomatic History 32, no. 2 (2008). 7. Ibid. 8. Maria Dempsey relayed this complaint from a friend in Huntsville who was a member of the German group. Maria Dempsey, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 2, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. 9. Konrad Dannenberg, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 13, 17, 2007, Dannenberg residence. 10. According to the army’s personnel files at the National Archives, Otto F. Cerny, Werner Dahm, Krafft Ehricke, Dr. Walter Häusermann, Arno E. Heck, and Fritz H. Weber arrived in 1947–48. “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, RG 330, entry 1B, boxes 1–187, National Archives, College Park, Md. 11. Some of the rocket specialists contributed to the development of the V-2 rocket from other locations, such as universities and laboratories in Darmstadt, Dresden, and Hannover. 12. Michael B. Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile, Cambridge Centennial of Flight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 13. Some of the interviewees stressed the support they found in the group, while others noted that they felt like outsiders because they arrived a little later. For more about their lives at Ft. Bliss, see Frederick Ira Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (1979; repr., Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003), chapter 18, “V-2s in the Desert”; Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), chapter 19, “Operation Paperclip”; Susan I. Enscore, Operation Paperclip at Fort Bliss: 1945–1950, ed. Directorate of Environment Conservation Division, United States Army Air Defense Artillery Center and Fort Bliss, Texas (Champaign, Ill.: Cultural Resources Research Center, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories, 1998). 14. Some later arrivals described their lives in postwar Germany in memoirs: Christel Ludewig McCanless, “Lady Roofer to Librarian: From East Germany to Russia or America?” Huntsville Historical Review 27, no. 1 (2000); Susanne B. Teuber, Church Bells, Bombs, and Lilac Trees: Growing up in War-torn Germany (self-published, 2001). On conditions in postwar Germany, see Konrad Hugo Jarausch, After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945–1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); John Gimbel, A German Community under American Occupation: Marburg, 1945–52, Stanford Studies in History, Economics, and Political Science, vol. 21 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1961); Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2005). 15. Axel Roth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, Roth residence. 16. This sense of difference seemed to be prominent mainly among those who attended the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

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17. Notable exceptions included Ruth von Saurma, who moved to Huntsville with her husband in 1954 and held several jobs until she was hired by the army as a translator for the von Braun team in 1958, which developed into a civil service position as international relations specialist for the Marshall Space Flight Center’s Public Affairs Office. Oscar Holderer recalled that his first wife went to a trade school in El Paso and later found employment in a cotton brokerage firm. In Huntsville she worked for a concrete company and retired around the same time he did. Susanne Teuber worked for a dentist and later taught at a local high school. Peter Cerny recalled that his mother and another German woman managed a Vienna-style coffee shop in the Russell Erskine Hotel in downtown Huntsville in the mid- to late 1960s, where they sold coffee and pastries. Some of the women babysat to supplement their husband’s income. Ruth von Saurma, “Growing up in Huntsville,” Huntsville Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1996);’ “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58; Oscar Holderer, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, Holderer residence; Peter Cerny, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 1, 2007, Cerny residence; Dieter Teuber and Susanne Teuber, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 2, 2007, Teuber residence. 18. Germans do not typically differentiate between Christian denominations beyond Lutheranism and Catholicism, as is customary in the United States. 19. Axel Roth, “Panelist #1,” in David Lilly, A Century of Flight: “Creating Rocket City” (Huntsville, Ala.: Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, 2003). 20. Ruth G. von Saurma and Walter Wiesman, “The German Rocket Team: A Chronology of Events and Accomplishments,” Huntsville Historical Review 23, no. 1 (1996): 24. 21. Walter Jacobi and Käthe Jacobi, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Jacobi residence. 22. Gretel “Margarete” Wagner, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. 23. Jacobi and Jacobi, interview. 24. Hans Kennel, Margaret Kennel, and Mario Rheinfurth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 6, 2007, Kennel residence. 25. Ursula Vann, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Vann residence. 26. Roth, interview. 27. Heidi Medenica, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 9, 2007, Medenica residence. 28. Marlin’s Delicatessen was a restaurant and gourmet food store located in the Parkway City Mall in the late 1950s and 1960s (now replaced by Parkway Place Mall) owned by Rose Tunkle and Nathan Marlin. See Rabbi Brian Glusman note to the Etz Chayim community in Shofar, Sep 2009, http://www.etzchayim-hsv. org/shofar/September_09_shofar.pdf. 29. Schrader’s German mother had married an American who was stationed in Ft. Bliss at the same time as the German rocket team and moved to Huntsville

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30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

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237

in 1950 with the team. Dieter Schrader, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 6, 2007, Schrader’s restaurant. Elfriede Richter-Haaser, “My Story: Elfriede Richter-Haaser,” Elise Stephens Collection, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. Richter-Haaser’s memoir does not have a date. Based on the content, it must have been written after 1980. Interviewee A, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, A’s residence. Peter Finzel, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 30, 2007, Finzel residence. Sabina Garrett, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 26–27, 2007, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). Ibid. Susanne Blumrich, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 22, 2007, Hilten residence. The so-called Americanization of Germany and other European countries since World War II has been the topic of many studies. See, for example, Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Ralph Willett, The Americanization of Germany, 1945–1949 (London: Routledge, 1989); Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany, Studies on the History of Society and Culture 35 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Kennel, Kennel, and Rheinfurth, interview. Cerny, interview. German members of the Huntsville Symphony included Oscar Bauschinger, Hilde Blumrich, Josef Franz Blumrich, Barbara Geissler (second generation), Erich Görner, Esther Grau, Evelyn Grau (second generation), Elvira Heybey (second generation), Heinz Hilten, Anneliese Hölker, Rosemarie Juergensen (second generation), Werner Kuers, Helmuth Pfaff, Richard Rausch, Theodor Karl Vowe, and Albert Zeiler. Officers and trustees included Walter Wiesman, Ernst Stuhlinger, Eberhard Rees, and Ruth von Saurma. German members of the Huntsville Community Chorus included Dorothea Bedürftig, Georg von Tiesenhausen, and Magda de Beek. Medenica, interview. Wagner, interview. A, interview; interviewee K, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 19, 2007, A’s residence. Richter-Haaser, “My Story.” Richter-Haaser moved to Huntsville with her first husband, Robert Pätz. The book she wrote was titled Sightseeing Huntsville. Since I do not know when she wrote it, I am not sure which events she is referring

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44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66.

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1 04– 1 1 2

to—the launch of Explorer I or sending the first man to land on the moon— probably the latter. A, interview. Jacobi and Jacobi, interview. Richter-Haaser, “My Story”; A, interview. Richter-Haaser, “My Story.” Vann, interview. Teuber and Teuber, interview. Medenica, interview. Klaus Dannenberg, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 26, 2007, Dannenberg’s office. Finzel, interview. Alabama had not seen many German immigrants before the rocket team arrived, except in Cullman, Alabama, which was founded and settled by Germans in 1873, located about fifty-five miles south of Huntsville. Although Germans did migrate to the South following the colonial period, they moved mainly to Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas. Randall M. Miller, “Germans,” in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Ethnicity, ed. R. Celeste Ray (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Gudrun Klauss and Rainer Klauss, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. See chapter 2. Teuber and Teuber, interview. Cerny, interview. Kathryn Hilten, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 25, 2007, Hilten residence. Vann, interview. Blumrich, interview. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991). Teuber and Teuber, interview. Finzel, interview. Inge Allan, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 15, 2007, Allan residence. Blumrich, interview. For a discussion of the portrayal of Germans in post–World War II Hollywood films and TV series, see David E. Barclay and Elisabeth GlaserSchmidt, “Representations of Germans and What Germans Represent: American Film Images and Public Perceptions in the Postwar Era,” in Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776, ed. Publications of the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Tomas Friend, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Huntsville bookstore.

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239

67. I interviewed two couples in which the partners were both descendants of the German rocket engineers in Huntsville: Kathryn and Christoph Blumrich and Rainer and Gudrun Klauss. Susanne and Dieter Teuber could be counted as well, since Susanne moved to the United States with her parents, but she was an adult at the time and Dieter moved to join the rocket team. These marriages were clearly exceptions. 68. Garrett, interview. 69. Holderer, interview. 70. For German images of America during and after World War II, see Alexander Freund, Aufbrüche nach dem Zusammenbruch. Die deutsche NordamerikaAuswanderung nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, Studien zur historischen Migrationsforschung (SHM), vol. 12 (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2004), 98–103; Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich: Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung, 1933–1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997). 71. Stuhlinger, “America and Germany”; Stuhlinger, “Von Braun’s Team Comes to the USA,” Jan 31, 2006, Huntsville, Ala. (copy in author’s possession). 72. Finzel, interview. Garrett, whose parents did return to Germany for an extended time, made a similar observation about her parents missing a country that no longer existed. Garrett, interview. 73. Interviewee N, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 28, 2007, N’s workplace. 74. Allan, interview. 75. Finzel, interview. 76. Ibid. 77. Thomas Luehrsen, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Sep 24, Oct 3, 2007, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). 78. Kennel, Kennel, and Rheinfurth, interview. Germany experienced what many labeled an “economic miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder) during the 1950s—referring to the rapid economic growth in West Germany. Jarausch, After Hitler, chapter 3; Schissler, The Miracle Years. 79. “Huntsville Citizens Attending Citizenship Ceremonies,” Huntsville Times, Nov 12, 1954; “Citizenship Granted to 109: City’s Newest Citizens Are Happy Folks Today,” Huntsville Times, Apr 14, 1955; “Arsenal Germans Are Naturalized: 1000 Attend Ceremony,” Redstone Rocket, Apr 19, 1955; “With 102 Others von Braun Becomes U.S. Citizen,” Washington Post, Apr 15, 1955. 80. “Citizenship Granted to 109”; “Space Expert Pledges Allegiance to U.S., ‘People Who Read Bible,’ ” Nashville Banner, Apr 15, 1955. 81. “Space Expert Pledges Allegiance to U.S.” 82. “With 102 Others von Braun Becomes U.S. Citizen”; “Space Expert Pledges Allegiance to U.S.” 83. For this reason, some of the families did not visit Germany after moving to the States at all, or only much later in life. 84. Teuber and Teuber, interview.

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85. The proliferation of flags during the 2006 Soccer World Cup tournament in Germany prompted an outcry in the German media, which offered an example of the conflicted desire and unease among many Germans when confronted with displays of German nationalism. 86. Teuber and Teuber, interview. 87. Konrad Dannenberg, interview. While the rocketeers seem to have married German women in their first marriages, a few married American women in their second, such as Konrad Dannenberg, Heinrich Rothe, and Oscar Holderer. 88. Heinz Struck, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 24, 2007, Struck residence. 89. A, interview. 90. Thousands of Germans were affected by large population transfers out of central and Eastern Europe after World War II. For an overview of the large population transfers in Europe after World War II, see Hans Lemberg, “Reasons and Conditions of Population Transfer: The Expulsion of Germans from East and Central Europe and Their Integration in Germany and Abroad after World War II,” in German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, ed. Mathias Schulze et al. (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008). 91. Vann, interview. 92. Jacobi and Jacobi, interview; Hans Fichtner, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 3, 2007, Fichtner residence. 93. Fichtner, interview. 94. Holderer, interview. 95. Ibid. 96. Finzel, interview. 97. Ibid. 98. Cerny, interview. 99. Finzel, interview. 100. Dannenberg, interview. 101. Jürgen Haukohl, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Haukohl residence. 102. Ibid. 103. Roth, interview. 104. Luehrsen, interview. 105. Ursula Harscheid, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 13, 2007, Harscheid residence. 106. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). 107. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). ch ap t er f i v e . “ w e j us t d i d n o t m o ve in t h e s ame circl es ” 1. Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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2. Sonnie W. Hereford and Jack D. Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters: A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 6, 55. 3. Clyde Foster, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 19, 2007, Foster residence. 4. Hereford and Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters, 28. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 19. 7. Sonnie Hereford III, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 19, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Library, Huntsville, Ala. 8. Hereford and Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters. 9. Ibid., 26, 29. 10. Interviewee G, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 25, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. 11. Charles Ray Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Ray’s office. 12. Segregation was enforced regarding African Americans and Mexican Americans in Texas. In 1950, the El Paso urbanized area had a population of 136,918, of which only 2.3 percent was African American and approximately 45 percent Mexican or Mexican American. Wilbert H. Timmons, El Paso: A Borderlands History (El Paso: University of Texas at El Paso, 1990), 242; “Census of Population: 1950, Part 43: Texas,” 1952, National Archives, College Park, Md. 13. Germans were not the only ones to tell this “joke.” One of my non-German interviewees told a similar story about a black boy looking at a “colored” fountain, waiting for colored water to come out. Ruth Rothe, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, Rothe residence. 14. Axel Roth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, Roth residence. 15. Interviewee H, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 10, 2006, H’s office. 16. Ibid. 17. William Guttentag, “Nazi Prisoners Better Treated Than Negro Soldiers in South, Army Told,” Chicago Defender, Feb 12, 1944. 18. Alfred E. Smith, “Lena Horne Quits USO Tour in Row over Army Jim Crow,” Chicago Defender, Jan 6, 1945. See also “Crowd Negro GIs in Army Hospital Jim Crow Wards,” Chicago Defender, Dec 14, 1946; A Reader, “What the People Say,” Chicago Defender, Nov 6, 1943; “Nazi Prisoners Gloat as U.S. Nurses ‘Get the Works,’ ” Chicago Defender, Jan 20, 1945; Ben Burns, “Off the Book Shelf: GI Joe Meets Jim Crow,” Chicago Defender, Sep 22, 1945. 19. Tom Carney, “Stalag Redstone,” Old Morgan County, 1999. 20. Daniel Hutchinson, “Encyclopedia of Alabama: World War II POW Camps in Alabama,” Alabama Humanities Foundation and Auburn University, http:// encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1418. 21. Ibid.

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22. Hereford, interview. 23. “2,700 Attend Newcomer Fete Despite Rains,” Huntsville Times, Aug 10, 1950; “Invitations Sent for Civic Patry [sic],” Huntsville Times, Jul 17, 1950; “Newcomer Party of Welcome Set,” Huntsville Times, Jul 16, 1950; “Newcomers’ Civic Party Rescheduled for Aug. 9,” Huntsville Times, Jul 26, 1950; “Rain Will Not Halt Newcomer Outing Today,” Huntsville Times, Aug 9, 1950; “Chamber to Hold Barbecue Party,” Huntsville Times, Jul 23, 1950. The guest list included more than the German rocket engineers and their families. In fact, they were probably in the minority. Also invited were “incoming scientific personnel at Redstone arsenal, the contract companies, enlisted men and officers and their families.” “Chamber to Hold Barbecue Party.” 24. Elfriede Richter-Haaser, “My Story: Elfriede Richter-Haaser,” Elise Stephens Collection, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. 25. Heide Fehrenbach, Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005); Maria Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003); Yara-Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria, Zwischen Fuersorge und Ausgrenzung. Afrodeutsche “Besatzungskinder” im Nachkriegsdeutschland (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2002); May Opitz, Katharina Oguntoye, and Dagmar Schultz, Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992). 26. Fehrenbach, Race after Hitler, 10–11, 77, 81–83. See also “Racism, Sexism, and Precolonial Images of Africa in Germany” in Opitz, Oguntoye, and Schultz, Showing Our Colors, 1–76; and Tina Campt, “ ‘Resonant Echoes’: The Rhineland Campaign and Converging Specters of Racial Mixture,” in Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 31–62. 27. This perception was apparently still prevalent in the late 1950s. Recalling his service in Germany in 1958, General Colin Powell once stated that “[for] black GIs, especially those out of the South, Germany was a breath of freedom— they could go where they wanted, eat where they wanted, and date whom they wanted, just like other people.” Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins, 13. 28. Hereford, interview. 29. There exists little literature on what it means to be German in the United States after World War II. Novelist Ursula Hegi published oral histories with secondgeneration Germans who moved to the United States at different times in their lives and in relationship to the war. Tearing the Silence: Being German in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). Alexander Freund is one of the few historians investigating this subject. Freund’s research focuses on German immigrants to Canada and the United States. The experiences that Freund describes are very different from those I heard about. Among other things,

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30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

134–137

24 3

he found that many of his interviewees, who did not migrate as a group, were convinced that Germans were disliked and even discriminated against because of the Holocaust. “ ‘How Come They’re Nice to Me?’ Deutsche und Juden nach dem Holocaust in Nordamerika,” in Migration und Erinnerung: Reflexionen über Wanderungserfahrungen in Europa und Nordamerika, ed. Christiane Harzig (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2006); “Dealing with the Past Abroad: German Immigrants’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung and Their Relations with Jews in North America since 1945,” GHI Bulletin 31 (2002): 51–63; “German Immigrants and the Nazi Past,” Inroads 15 (2004). Dieter Teuber and Susanne Teuber, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 2, 2007, Teuber residence. Immigrants to the United States have historically tried to distance themselves from the African American population while aligning themselves with the white population in order to gain access to privileges not available to African Americans. The distancing from African Americans also occurs among phenotypically black immigrants, as Mary Waters illustrates in her scholarship. Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999). See also Karen Brodkin, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); David R. Roediger, Working toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White; The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005). Tomas Friend, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Huntsville bookstore. Friend’s parents were Edel and Willibald Prasthofer. In the interview, Friend explained that he and his wife took on a new last name when they married. In the process, he also changed his first and middle names. One interviewee said that her mother hired several black women who helped her clean the house and that she and her brother always had lunch with “whatever black woman was cleaning for that day.” Her father told her more recently that the black women initially planned to eat in the kitchen, not with the children, and that one of the women brought her daughter with her, with whom the interviewee played. Interviewee N, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 28, 2007, N’s workplace. Teuber and Teuber, interview. Oscar Holderer, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, Holderer residence. Germans who were adults during the Nazi period in Germany may not have known to what extent the persecution of Jews was being carried out, but there is no doubt they saw and would have often been part of the treatment of Jews and other minorities as second-class citizens or worse. Very few tried to intervene.

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37. Michael Smith, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 29, 2007, Smith residence. 38. Hereford, interview. 39. Smith, interview. 40. According to its website, Alabama A&M University opened in May 1875, which means that it had existed for eighty-six years when von Braun lobbied for UAH. 41. Foster, interview. 42. Ibid. 43. Susanne Blumrich, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 22, 2007, Hilten residence. 44. Gudrun Klauss and Rainer Klauss, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. 45. These types of explanations that cast a person’s behavior as “human” and therefore “natural” allow family members to empathize with the generation that lived under the Nazi regime, but also legitimize their behavior, rendering them blameless, i.e., innocent. Harald Welzer, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Nazi. Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust im Familiengedächtnis, 3rd ed., Die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2002). 46. Kathryn Hilten, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 25, 2007, Hilten residence. 47. The Nazi past has been a taboo subject among many Germans who were adults during this period. Many would not discuss the past at all or distorted it, thereby creating a more favorable image of themselves. Claudia Seltmann Uwe von Brunner, Schweigen die Täter, Reden die Enkel (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde, 2004); Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); Stephan Lebert, Norbert Lebert, and Julian Evans, My Father’s Keeper: The Children of Nazi Leaders: An Intimate History of Damage and Denial (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001); Welzer, Moller, and Tschuggnall, Opa war kein Nazi; Harald Welzer, Robert Montau, and Christine Plass, Was wir für böse Menschen sind! Der Nationalsozialismus im Gespräch zwischen den Generationen, Studien zum Nationalsozialismus in der Edition Diskord, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Edition Diskord, 1997). 48. Interviewee C, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, C’s residence. 49. Steve Watkins, The Black O: Racism and Redemption in an American Corporate Empire (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997). 50. Ursula Harscheid, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 13, 2007, Harscheid residence. 51. Hereford, interview. ch ap t er s i x . th e r ud o l ph c a s e 1. The term good Nazi has been used in contradictory ways. In the context of the von Braun team, the term seemed to be used simply to differentiate them

n o tes t o p ag es

2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

146–147

24 5

from “ardent Nazis,” but may have also been intended as a reminder of their contributions to U.S. military weaponry and later the space programs. They worked for the United States; ergo they were “good.” In denazification trials, the term has been used as an indication of loyalty to the Nazi Party, while in the film Schindler’s List, it indicated a person who was part of the Nazi system but showed compassion toward its victims. Author Van der Vat used it to emphasize the oxymoronic nature of Albert Speer’s self-perception. Dan Van der Vat and Albert Speer, The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer (Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin, 1999). See also Shepard Stone, “I Had to Join—I Was Never a Good Nazi,” New York Times, Dec 15, 1946; Frederic Morton, “Kristallnacht,” New York Times, Nov 10, 1978; Craig R. Whitney, “The German Premiere of Schindler’s List Brings Tears and Praise,” New York Times, Mar 2, 1994. The phrase the Good German is commonly used to contrast with the Bad Nazi. This was the result of the Office of War Information’s urging that the Hollywood film industry portray Nazis and Germans differently. Presumably the intention was to avoid the excesses of World War I propaganda against Germans. Daniel Leab, “Good Germans/Bad Nazis,” Der Kalte Krieg der Unterhaltung, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Summer 1992. The Good German is also the title of a movie released in 2006 that loosely deals with Project Paperclip, the V-2 rocket production at Mittelwerk, and the laborers used from the Dora camp. Steven Soderbergh, The Good German (Sunset Gower Studios), video. Construction of Peenemünde began in 1936 and the first employees arrived in May 1937. Michael B. Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemunde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile, Cambridge Centennial of Flight (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 62. Frederick Ira Ordway III and Mitchell R. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (1979; repr., Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books, 2003), chapter 4, “The Flowering of Peenemünde.” Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland, 64. The V-2 was known especially for its silent approach. Survivors report that as it descended faster than the speed of sound, they “would only hear the approach and sonic booms after the blast.” http://londonist.com/2009/01/london_ v2_rocket_sitesmapped.php. For technical details about the development of the V-2 rocket, see Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995); Walter Dornberger, V2 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1954). Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 2, 186–89; Jens-Christian Wagner, “Opfer des Raketenwahns: Zwangsarbeit in Peenemünde und Mittelbau-Dora,” in Peenemünde: Mythos und Geschichte der Rakete, 1923–1989; Katalog des Museums Peenemünde, ed. Johannes Erichsen and Bernhard M. Hoppe (Berlin: Nicolai, 2004), 43–47. Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962).

246

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1 47– 1 48

8. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 197–98; Jens-Christian Wagner, “Zwangsarbeit in Peenemünde (1939–1945): Praxis und Erinnerung,” Zeitgeschichte Regional: Mitteilungen aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 4, no. 1 (2000): 17. 9. Two more unfinished V-2 assembly sites, at Friedrichshafen and Wiener Neustadt, were also moved to the Kohnstein Mountain. Michael J. Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp (aka Dora),” in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, ed. Geoffrey P. Megargee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 966. The production site for the V-1 was later moved to the Kohnstein Mountain as well. 10. At one point the Dora concentration camp system included up to forty subcamps. Ibid. 11. Jens-Christian Wagner, ed., Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora, 1943–1945: Begleitband zur ständigen Ausstellung in der KZ-Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2007), 83. 12. Ibid., 28; Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp (aka Dora),” 967. 13. Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp (aka Dora),” 967. 14. Wagner, Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora, 78. 15. For survivor accounts describing their experiences at Dora, see Yves Béon and Michael J. Neufeld, Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age (Boulder: Westview, 1997); Jean Michel and Louis Nucera, Dora (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1980); André Sellier, A History of the Dora Camp, ed. and trans. Stephen Wright and Susan Taponier (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 2003). 16. The tunnels used as quarters for the prisoners during the reconstruction period were later used for the assembly of V-1 bombs, and other areas of the underground tunnel system were occupied by the Junkers Corporation for the production of jet engines. Wagner, Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora, 45, 48–50. 17. Ibid., 49. Mittelwerk was formed as a limited liability corporation, the “Mittelwerk GmbH,” under which the V-2 was produced from then on. 18. Senior Prosecutor Duhn, Duhn Report (Report on Preliminary Inquiry against Arthur Rudolph—Translated to English for the Dept. of Justice in Canada, Toronto, in 1990) (Hamburg: Regional Court, 1987), 3. 19. Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp (aka Dora),” 970. Neufeld estimates that about ten thousand deaths can be linked to the V-2 production. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 264. 20. According to Frederick I. Ordway and Mitchell R. Sharpe, about 30 percent stayed behind voluntarily. For details about the move south from Peenemünde and the efforts to save documents and matériel from destruction, see Ordway and Sharpe, The Rocket Team, chapter 13. For a personal account, see Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral. 21. For the circumstances and decisions to take that route, see Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich.

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149–151

24 7

22. Ibid., 260–65. See also the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the 104th Infantry Division, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article. php?lang=en&ModuleId=10006155. For more details about the RAF raid on the city of Nordhausen, see Gretchen Engle Schafft and Gerhard Zeidler, Commemorating Hell: The Public Memory of Mittelbau-Dora (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 43–47. 23. Michael J. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War,” in Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Conference, ed. Steven J. Dick (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2008), 71. 24. Michael J. Neufeld, “ ‘Smash the Myth of the Fascist Rocket Baron’: East German Attacks on Wernher von Braun in the 1960s,” in Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century, ed. Alexander C. T. Geppert (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 25. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program,” 83. 26. Willy Ley, Rockets and Space Travel: The Future of Flight beyond the Stratosphere (New York: Viking, 1947); Willy Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, rev. ed. (New York: Viking, 1957); Dornberger, V2; Wernher von Braun, “Reminiscences of German Rocketry,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 15 (1956); Daniel Lang, “A Romantic Urge,” New Yorker, Apr 21, 1951; Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral. Daniel Lang’s article was a profile of von Braun based on an interview with him. 27. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program.” 28. J. Lee Thompson, I Aim at the Stars (Columbia Pictures, 1960). 29. Tom Lehrer, “Wernher von Braun,” in That Was the Year That Was (Reprise, 1965). 30. Collier’s published a series of magazine articles about space exploration beginning March 22, 1952, of which several were authored or coauthored by von Braun. 31. Man in Space aired on March 9, 1955, Man and the Moon on December 28, 1955, and Mars and Beyond on December 4, 1957. Cornelius Ryan, ed. Conquest of the Moon (New York: Viking, 1953); Walt Disney, Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond, in Walt Disney’s Treasures (Walt Disney, 1955), video; Mike Wright, “The Disney–von Braun Collaboration and Its Influence on Space Exploration,” 1993, MSFC History Office, history.msfc.nasa.gov/ vonbraun/disney_article.html; Cornelius Ryan, ed., Across the Space Frontier (New York: Viking, 1952). 32. Michael L. Smith, “Selling the Moon: The U.S. Manned Space Program and the Triumph of Commodity Scientism,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983); Howard E. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), chapter 4, “Apollo: The Aura of Competence.” 33. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination, 96.

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34. Von Braun’s culpability remained a contested point over the years. See Michael J. Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor: Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility,” German Studies Review 25, no. 1 (2002); Ernst Stuhlinger and Michael J. Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun and Concentration Camp Labor: An Exchange,” German Studies Review 26, no. 1 (2003). 35. Ordway III and Sharpe, The Rocket Team. 36. Michel and Nucera, Dora. Published in French in 1975. 37. Eli Rosenbaum, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 30, 2007, Rosenbaum’s office. 38. Ibid. 39. Leslie Kaufman, “Haunted Hunters,” Government Executive, Feb 1993, 13. 40. For the full text of the Holtzman Amendment, see http://www.justice.gov/ criminal/hrsp/statutes/stats/holtzman-amend.pdf. 41. United States Attorneys’ USA Bulletin: Office of Special Investigations, vol. 54, 1 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for United States Attorneys, 2006), 3. 42. Ibid., 2. 43. The first interview was conducted in October 1982 and the second one in February 1983, according to the transcripts of the OSI interrogation published in Thomas Franklin, An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph (Huntsville, Ala.: C. Kaylor, 1987), appendices B and C. 44. Ibid., 347. 45. Ibid., 225. 46. Ibid., 307, 323. 47. Ibid., 238–39. 48. Ibid., 262. 49. Ibid., 254, 266–68. 50. Ibid., 195–96. 51. Ibid., 346. 52. Taken from the order granting the motion to dismiss Rudolph’s request for reinstatement of his American citizenship. Honorable James Ware, Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph vs. the United States Department of Justice, et al., in No. C 92 20116 JW, ed. U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (1993), n3. 53. Referring to U.S. Supreme Court, Fedorenko v. United States, 79-5602, 449 U.S. 490 (1981). Citation from an interview the OSI investigators conducted with Rudolph’s attorney in September 1983. See Franklin, An American in Exile, 346–47. 54. The date was set to be either June 1, 1984, or when Rudolph relinquished his U.S. citizenship, whichever came first. It took the government agencies involved a few months to process Rudolph’s renunciation. “Agreement between Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph and the United States Department of Justice,” 1983, Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations.

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155–159

24 9

55. “Rocket Designer Tied to Nazis,” Chicago Tribune, Oct 18, 1984; Walter Andrews, “Rocket Expert Forced to Leave U.S. Because of War Crimes Charges,” Washington Times, Oct 18, 1984; Ralph Blumenthal, “German-Born NASA Expert Quits U.S. to Avoid War Crimes Suit,” New York Times, Oct 18, 1984; M. J. Zuckerman, “Rocket Chief Admits Nazi Crimes,” USA Today, Oct 18, 1984. 56. Blumenthal, “German-Born NASA Expert Quits U.S.” 57. Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1991), 248. 58. Rudy Abramson, “Did U.S. Cast Blind Eye to Nazi’s Past?” Los Angeles Times, Nov 4, 1984. 59. Ibid.; Ralph Blumenthal, “Papers Show Saturn Rocket Chief Was Called ‘Ardent Nazi’ by U.S.,” New York Times, Nov 25, 1984. 60. “Arthur Rudolph,” 1945, IRR Impersonal Files, RG 319, entry 57 (UD), boxes 76–81, National Archives, College Park, Md.; “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, RG 330, entry 1B, boxes 1–187, National Archives, College Park, Md. 61. “The Nazi Rocket Experts,” Washington Post, Nov 6, 1984; Angelo J. Artuso, letter to the editor, “ ‘The Nazi Rocket Experts’: Other Views,” Washington Post, Nov 17, 1984; Marc T. Smith, letter to the editor, “ ‘The Nazi Rocket Experts’: Other Views,” Washington Post, Nov 17, 1984. 62. Linda Hunt, “U.S. Coverup of Nazi Scientists,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1985). 63. Linda Hunt, Nazi Coverup, a four-part series by CNN Special Assignment I-Team (CNN, 1986); Hunt, Secret Agenda. 64. See “Basic Personnel Records,” Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58. 65. John Gimbel, “German Scientists, United States Denazification Policy, and the ‘Paperclip Conspiracy,’ ” International History Review 12 (1990): 463. Gimbel cites “Director, JIOA, Memorandum for S. J. Chamberlin, 27 April 1948, USNA RG 319, box 1001, file 400.112 Research/014.32.” 66. Wagner, Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora. 67. Tom Bower and Janet McFadden, The Nazi Connection, in Frontline (PBS, 1987). For a description of the Frontline special, see Walter Goodman, “The Nazi Connection, on Frontline,” New York Times, Feb 24, 1987. Bower had made accusations similar to Linda Hunt’s in Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Battle for the Spoils and Secrets of Nazi Germany (London: M. Joseph, 1987). 68. Daniel S. Greenberg, “New Candor on a Nazi Aerospace Legacy,” Washington Post, Dec 8, 1990. See also Michael J. Neufeld and David DeVorkin, “Space Artifact or Nazi Weapon? Displaying the Smithsonian’s V-2 Missile, 1976– 2011,” Endeavor 35, no. 4 (2011): 186–95; Michael J. Neufeld and Alex M. Spencer, eds., National Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2010), 291–301. 69. Author’s observation during visit to Cosmosphere in December 2007. Unfortunately, the staff of the Cosmosphere was not able to provide information about the exhibit’s creation because the curator of that exhibit no longer worked

250

70.

71. 72.

73.

74.

75.

76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

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at the museum and no documentation could be found. E-mail exchange with current director and CEO, Christopher Orwell, Jan 2011. Béon and Neufeld, Planet Dora; Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich; Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War; Wayne Biddle, Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race (New York: Norton, 2009); Hunt, Secret Agenda; Ernst Stuhlinger and Frederick Ira Ordway III, Wernher von Braun, Crusader for Space: A Biographical Memoir (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1994); Dennis Piszkiewicz, The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995); Kenneth Mandel and Daniel B. Polin, He Conquered Space (Discovery Communications, 1996); Dennis Piszkiewicz, Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998); Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2005); Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland; Sellier, A History of the Dora Camp. Cited in Clarence G. Lasby, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 77–78. Franklin, An American in Exile, 344. In this context, the OSI officials also stated that they did not expect the French, British, or USSR governments to request Rudolph’s extradition from Germany as they presumably had no interest in prosecuting him. German law underwent several changes in regard to Nazi crimes after the end of World War II, always negotiating domestic and international political implications. For a summary article explaining these changes in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and Austria, see Annette Weinke, “ ‘Alliierter Angriff auf die nationale Souveränitat’? Die Strafverfolgung von Kriegsund NS-Verbrechen in der Bundesrepublik, der DDR und Österreich,” in Transnationale Vergangenheitspolitik. Der Umgang mit deutschen Kriegsverbrechern in Europa nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Norbert Frei (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). Peter Black, “Memorandum: West German Investigation of Arthur L. H. Rudolph,” 1990, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations, Washington, D.C., 2. Senior Prosecutor Duhn, Duhn Report (Report on Preliminary Inquiry against Arthur Rudolph—Translated to English for the Dept. of Justice in Canada, Toronto, in 1990) (Hamburg: Regional Court, 1987), 39, 65. Ibid., 3. Neufeld, “Mittelbau Main Camp (aka Dora),” 969. Kapo was a term used for prisoners who were selected to work as foremen at Mittelwerk. It is generally used to describe prisoners of the Third Reich who worked inside concentration camps in various low-level positions. Wagner, Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora, 119. Duhn Report, 10–18. A brief summary of Duhn’s report is also available in an article concerning Rudolph’s immigration trial in Canada in 1990. Brad Davis,

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81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

161–165

25 1

“Another Local Rocket Scientist May Be under Investigation,” Huntsville Times, Aug [?], 1990. Duhn Report, 2. Ibid., 29. Black, “Memorandum,” 2–3. See letter from OSI to German Embassy in Washington, D.C. Franklin, An American in Exile, 357. Michael J. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program.” Juergen Zimmer Harro Hecker, Der deutsche Weg ins All. Die Raketenmänner von Huntsville (West Hills, Calif.: American Television Network, 1992); Stefan Brauburger, Oliver Halmburger, and Stefan Mausbach, Wernher von Braun: Der Raketenmann, in Hitler’s Manager (Munich: ZDF; Loopfilm 2004); Christian Klemke, Alles war möglich: Das KZ Dora und die V-Waffenfabrik (1991); Norddeutsches Fernsehen—N3, “Dora—Expedition in die Vergangenheit: Auf der Suche nach der V2“ (1992), video; Torsten Hess and Thomas A. Seidel, Vernichtung durch Fortschritt. Am Beispiel der Raketenproduktion im Konzentrationslager Mittelbau (Berlin: Westkreuz, 1995); Jens-Christian Wagner, Produktion des Todes. Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001); Nordhausen, in Modern Marvels (History Channel, 2002), video; Karsten Uhl, “Deckgeschichten. ‘Von der Hölle zu den Sternen.’ Das KZ Mittelbau-Dora in Nachkriegsnarrativen,” Technikgeschichte 72, no. 3 (2005); Rainer Eisfeld, Mondsüchtig: Wernher von Braun und die Geburt der Raumfahrt aus dem Geist der Barbarei (Munich: Rowohlt, 1996); Jürgen Michels and Olaf Przybilski, Peenemünde und seine Erben in Ost und West: Entwicklung und Weg deutscher Geheimwaffen (Bonn: Bernard and Graefe, 1997). BBC News, “Nazi Camp Guard Demjanjuk Dies,” BBC News Europe, Mar 17, 2012.

chap t er se v e n . vergangenheitsbewältigung in h unt s v il l e 1. Cited in Philip Rawls, “Rudolph Exile Blights Reunion: ‘Many Believe This Is a Sad Day,’ ” Huntsville Times, Jul 18, 1989. 2. The news broke on United Press International Wire Service Wednesday afternoon (Oct 17), but the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, USA Today, and Birmingham News printed the news the next day. 3. Rudolph moved to Huntsville from Ft. Bliss in 1950, like most of the other German rocket specialists. He officially retired in January 1969 and moved to California in 1974. Rudolph retired only half a year before the Apollo 11 mission because of health problems. Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 157. 4. Brett Davis and John Peck, “Rocket Scientist Fights for His Name: Ex-Huntsvillian Rudolph, U.S. At Odds over His Nazi War Past,” Huntsville Times, Apr 16, 1995. 5. Michael J. Neufeld, “Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War,” in Remembering the Space Age: Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary

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6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

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Conference, ed. Steven J. Dick (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2008). Tina Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Moise Shewa et al., Black Survivors of the Holocaust (London: Afro-Wisdom Films, 1997); Hans J. Massaquoi, Destined to Witness: Growing up Black in Nazi Germany (New York: Morrow, 1999). Peter Cobun, “OSI Mum on German Scientists Probe,” Huntsville Times, Mar 4, 1986. Cited in “Can’t Believe Charges against Moon Rocket Designer, Friends Say,” Birmingham News, Oct 18, 1984. “Former Saturn 5 Program Chief Accused of WWII Persecutions,” Huntsville Times, Oct 17, 1984; “Colleagues Here Question Charges against Rudolph,” Huntsville Times, Oct 18, 1984; “Can’t Believe Charges against Moon Rocket Designer”; Kathy Seligman and Bob Dunnavant, “Nazi Charges Surprise Friends,” USA Today, Oct 18, 1984. Stuhlinger, cited in Seligman and Dunnavant, “Nazi Charges Surprise Friends.” Rudolph’s full name was Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph. The reporter probably misheard. “Colleagues Here Question Charges against Rudolph,” Huntsville Times, Oct 18, 1984, A-1; Dannenberg, cited in Neal Karlen and Theodore Stanger, “War Crimes and NASA?” Newsweek, Oct 29, 1984, 45. Dannenberg, cited in “Colleagues Here Question Charges against Rudolph” and in “Can’t Believe Charges against Moon Rocket Designer.” Dannenberg, in “Colleagues Here Question Charges against Rudolph”; OSI lawyer Eli Rosenbaum in Ralph Blumenthal, “German-Born NASA Expert Quits U.S. to Avoid War Crimes Suit,” New York Times, Oct 18, 1984. Dannenberg, in “Can’t Believe Charges against Moon Rocket Designer.” Ibid. For a short list of common beliefs among Holocaust deniers, see Richard J. Evans, Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 110. Of the rocket experts who were later brought to the United States under Paperclip, only a minority had visited or worked at the Mittelwerk production site, including Wernher von Braun, his brother, Magnus von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, Dieter Grau, Günther Haukohl, Erich Ball, Hans Rudolph Friedrich, Klaus Scheufelen, Werner Voss, and Hans Gruene. According to his wife and daughter, Hermann Wagner had also worked at the Mittelwerk. Senior Prosecutor Duhn, Duhn Report (Report on Preliminary Inquiry against Arthur Rudolph—Translated to English for the Dept. of Justice in Canada, Toronto, in 1990) (Hamburg: Regional Court, 1987), 6, 19, 21, 24–25, 27, 39–40, 45; Gretel “Margarete” Wagner, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. See also appendices in Thomas

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18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

168–170

25 3

Franklin, An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph (Huntsville, Ala.: C. Kaylor, 1987). “NASA Rocket Maker Denies War Brutalities,” Decatur Daily, Oct 20, 1984; James M. Markham, “Ex-Nazi Denies Role in Deaths of Slave Laborers,” New York Times, Oct 21, 1984; Karlen and Stanger, “War Crimes and NASA?”; Rawls, “Rudolph Exile Blights Reunion.” Markham, “Ex-Nazi Denies Role in Deaths of Slave Laborers.” See also Franklin, An American in Exile, 363–64. Claims that the OSI had threatened to take away Rudolph’s pension and retaliate against his family were incorrect. Instead of the OSI investigators, who did not have the authority to strip Rudolph of his pension, U.S. representative Bill Green from New York later threatened to pursue that option. Brett Davis, “OSI Said Eager to Open Files,” Huntsville Times, Jul [?], 1990. Rudolph retained his U.S. pension and Social Security benefits. He also kept the Distinguished Service Medal from NASA, despite a discussion in the U.S. House of Representatives to take it away. “Distinguished Service Medal Award Should Be Taken Away from Arthur Rudolph—Hon. Bill Green of New York, 100th Congress, 1st Session, H. Res. 164,” May 11, 1987, National Archives, College Park, Md. Citing Rudolph in Ralph Blumenthal, “Papers Show Saturn Rocket Chief Was Called ‘Ardent Nazi’ by U.S.,” New York Times, Nov 25, 1984. Franklin, An American in Exile, 141–42. Cited in Michael Hirsley, “Nazi Past Doesn’t Dim Support,” Chicago Tribune, Sep 24, 1985. Brett Davis, “New Evidence Damages Rudolph? Supporters Claim Information Supports Exiled Defense,” Huntsville Times, Jun 23, 1991. In our interview, Eli Rosenbaum stated that he believed that von Braun would have been able to impact the outcome of the Rudolph case. Eli Rosenbaum, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 30, 2007, Rosenbaum’s office. Hirsley, “Nazi Past Doesn’t Dim Support.” “Restoration of Citizenship Sought for Scientist,” New York Times, Apr 28, 1985. Dave Dooling, “Health Said a Factor in Rudolph’s Decision to Leave U.S.,” Huntsville Times, Oct 28, 1984; Ruth von Saurma, “U.S. Action on Rudolph Deserves an Explanation,” Huntsville Times, Nov 4, 1984; “Ex-NASA Scientist’s Daughter Says U.S. Bases Charges on Lies,” Birmingham Post Herald, Oct 25, 1984. Several of the interviewees mentioned the group of Germans and their members’ efforts to clear Rudolph’s name. The fund was named “oldtimer defense fund.” See also Peter Cobun, “Defense Fund Established for Rudolph,” Huntsville Times, Jul 21, 1985; Hirsley, “Nazi Past Doesn’t Dim Support”; Peter Cobun, “Lack of Funds Hampering Defense of ‘Oldtimers,’ ” Huntsville Times, Mar 5, 1986. Michael Jennings and Kent Faulk, “Lines Drawn on Issue of Rudolph,” Birmingham News, Nov 4, 1984; David Sellers, “OSI’s Treatment of Suspected

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29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42.

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Nazis Called ‘Persecution Not Prosecution,’ ” Washington Times, Jul 31, 1985; Peter Cobun, “U.S. Case against Rudolph ‘Unjust, Immoral’—Medaris,” Huntsville Times, Apr 25, 1985. Medaris had become a priest in the Anglican Church after retiring from the army. Paige Oliver, “Rudolph Is Still a Hero to His Friends, Colleagues,” Huntsville Times, Jan 13, 1991. Rawls, “Rudolph Exile Blights Reunion.” C. L. Bullard, “Nation’s Justice System a Paradoxical One,” Huntsville Times, Oct 26, 1984. Mark Williams set up the second fund, called Arthur Rudolph Defense Fund. Deborah Roop, “Second Group Forms to Support Rudolph,” Huntsville Times, Oct 2, 1985; Peter Cobun, “Reagan Reply Still Awaited on Rudolph Case Request,” Huntsville Times, Jun 13, 1985. Times Washington Bureau, “Right-Wing Groups Allege KGB Role in Rudolph Case,” Huntsville Times [?], Jun 14, 1985. Speaking to the press afterward, Buchanan declared that it was unlawful for him to comment on Rudolph’s situation. “No Position,” Washington Times, Oct 16, 1985. Robert Dunnavant, “Army Team Asked to Support Germans,” Huntsville News, n.d. [1986?]. Duhn, Duhn Report. Winterberg was quoted in a 1985 article stating that “several former Polish prisoners of war have come forward and agreed to testify in Rudolph’s behalf in a proposed congressional ‘oversight hearing’ into Justice Department actions in this case.” “Rudolph Defense Fund Is Started,” Associated Press, Jul 14, 1985. Hugh McInnish cited some of the interviews that Friedwardt Winterberg had conducted in support of Rudolph’s case in Franklin, An American in Exile, 150–53. Deborah Roop, “Von Braun’s Other Legacy,” Huntsville Times, Jun 14, 1987; Franklin, An American in Exile. Hugh McInnish published the story again under his own name: Hugh McInnish, “An American in Exile: The Arthur Rudolph Story,” Old Huntsville Magazine, Jan 3, 2006. Chief historian of the Office of Special Investigations, Peter Black, reported on McInnish’s appearance on Crossfire in a memorandum on the Rudolph case. Peter Black, “Memorandum: West German Investigation of Arthur L. H. Rudolph,” 1990, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations, Washington, D.C. Frederick I. Ordway III, “Rudolph Case Should Be Reopened,” AIAA Bulletin, Aug 1988. George Poague, “Council Resolution Urges Return of Rudolph,” Huntsville Times or Huntsville News, Oct 1, 1985. “Rudolph Defense Fund Is Started.” John Anderson and John Peck, “Heflin Offers Rudolph Help ‘in Any Way,’ ” Huntsville Times, Aug 17, 1990; letter from U.S. senator Jeremiah Denton to deputy assistant attorney general Honorable Mark M. Richard, Criminal

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43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

173–175

25 5

Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Feb 14, 1986, “Huntsville/Bio German Scientists—Rudolph,” Heritage Room, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. Robert Dunnavant, “Accused Scientist Should Return to Huntsville, Mayor Declares,” Birmingham News, Jan 26, 1989. Rawls, “Rudolph Exile Blights Reunion.” Patrick Buchanan, “Hero or Noxious Nazi?” Washington Times, Jul 17, 1989; Patrick Buchanan, “Justice at OSI Corral?” Washington Times, Jul 16, 1990. Rudolph supporter McInnish believed that the overturning of the 1987 case against John Demjanjuk in 1993 “may eventually help Arthur Rudolph” because it presumably proved that the OSI “put a noose around the neck of an innocent man.” Demjanjuk was later convicted of similar war crimes but died before serving his sentence. Greg Heyman, “Demjanjuk Case Said Parallel to Rudolph: Reversal of Conviction May Help Former Rocket Scientist,” Huntsville News, Aug 5, 1993; Martin Burkey, “Rudolph’s Supporters Renew Fight,” Huntsville Times, Nov 22, 1993; Phillip Taylor, “Rudolph Supporters Seek Federal Appeals Court Inquiry Extension,” Huntsville Times, Feb 27, 1993; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “John Demjanjuk: Prosecution of a Nazi Collaborator,” in Holocaust Encyclopedia, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article. php?ModuleId=10007956; Associated Press, “John Demjanjuk,” New York Times, May 12, 2009; BBC News, “Nazi Camp Guard Demjanjuk Dies,” BBC News Europe, Mar 17, 2012; Robert D. McFadden, “John Demjanjuk, 91, Dogged by Charges of Atrocities as Nazi Camp Guard, Dies,” New York Times, Mar 17, 2012. Robert Dunnavant, “Congressman Says Rudolph Targeted by ‘Jewish Lobby’: Urges Him to Fight War-Crime Charges,” Birmingham News, May 13, 1990. “Traficant Implores Rudolph to Return,” Huntsville Times, May 14, 1990. 101st Congress (1989–90), Resolution to Open a Congressional Investigation into the Arthur Rudolph Case, May 24, 1990. Dan De Vise, “Resolution Seeks Probe of Rudolph Case,” Huntsville News, May 25, 1990. John Peck and Paige Oliver, “Rudolph Is Detained in Canada: Ex-Saturn Chief Freed on Bond after 8 Hours,” Huntsville Times, Jul 2, 1990. Ibid. Judy Feigin and Mark M. Richard, The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, 2006), http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB331/ OSI_report_complete.pdf. John Peck, “Rudolph Document Forged?” Huntsville Times, Sep 20, 1990. David Bowman, “Rudolph to Visit Canada,” Huntsville News, Jun 6, 1990; John F. Burns, “War-Crimes Suspect Seeks to Stay in Canada,” New York Times, Jul 10, 1990; John F. Burns, “Citing Role in a Nazi Project, Canada Bars Ex-U.S. Scientist,” New York Times, Jan 12, 1991; John Peck, “Canada’s Delay Leaves Rudolph Stuck in Middle,” Huntsville Times, Dec 9, 1990; Peck

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56.

57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65. 66.

67.

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and Oliver, “Rudolph Is Detained in Canada”; “Canada Steps up Action on Alleged Ex-Nazis,” Washington Post, Mar 30, 1995; Brad Davis, “Another Local Rocket Scientist May Be under Investigation,” Huntsville Times, Aug [?], 1990; John Peck, “Testimony Ends in Rudolph’s Immigration Hearing,” Huntsville Times, Aug 10, 1990; John Peck, “Rudolph Departs Canada? Immigration Ruling Expected in a Month,” Huntsville Times, Aug 12, 1990; John Peck, “Canada Plans to Prosecute Lufthansa for Transporting Rudolph,” Huntsville Times, Sep 23, 1990. Marian Accardi, “Rudolph Backers Seek ‘Open Forum,’ ” Huntsville Times, Jul 5, 1991; “Ex-Nazi Scientist Tries to Renew Citizenship,” New York Times, Jul 21, 1991. U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Arthur Louis Hugo Rudolph v. the United States Department of Justice, et al., 1993; David Johnston, “Scientist Accused as Ex-Nazi Is Denied Citizenship,” New York Times, Feb 20, 1993. Feigin and Richard, The Office of Special Investigations, 337. I have discussed this problematic association also in Monique Laney, “Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph: Negotiating the Past in Huntsville, Alabama,” in German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss, ed. Mathias Schulze et al. (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008). For a short biography of Robert H. Countess, see the website of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust: http://codoh.com/library/authors/1508. Robert H. Countess, “Review: An American in Exile: The Story of Arthur Rudolph,” Journal of Historical Review 8 (n.d.); John Peck, “Rudolph to Seek a Public Hearing,” Huntsville Times, Jul 4, 1990. A. R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Richmond, UK: Historical Review, 1975). Notes covering the events provided to author by Jack D. Ellis. See also Jack Ellis, “ ‘Reflections on the Visit of David Irving to Huntsville,’ by Dr. Jack D. Ellis, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, University of Alabama in Huntsville,” Huntsville Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1993); John Rison Jones, “Historical Interpretation of Recent Events concerning the Validity of the Holocaust,” Huntsville Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1993). On Irving’s denial of the Holocaust, see Evans, Lying About Hitler. Hollmann’s father, Hans E. Hollmann, was one of the Germans brought to the United States under Project Paperclip. According to the website, he belonged to a small group that went to the Naval Air Missile Test Center at Point Mugu, Calif., in 1947. http://www.scientistsandfriends.com/. Martin Hollmann, “Letters,” Scientists and Friends 33 (2007); Martin Hollmann, “Letters,” Scientists and Friends 34 (2008). Walendy presumably violated German laws against publicly denying the Holocaust. Udo Walendy, The Brainwashing of the German Nation (Washington, D.C.: Barnes Review, 2003). Shelby G. Spires, “Von Braun Team ‘Prisoners of Peace,’ ” Huntsville Times, Oct 2, 2006; Shelby G. Spires, “Nazi Remarks Anger Rocket Team Pioneer,”

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68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

176–184

25 7

Huntsville Times, Oct 16, 2006; Kevin L. Bardon, “Ludicrously Sad,” Huntsville Times, Oct 6, 2006; Kevin L. Bardon, “No Prisoners of Peace,” Huntsville Times, Nov 1, 2006; Aloysius “Al” I. Reisz, “Without Merit,” Huntsville Times, Oct 12, 2006; John R. Scales, “No War Criminal,” Huntsville Times, Oct 13, 2006; Sr. Jewel W. Moody, “Waste of Time,” Huntsville Times, Oct 18, 2006; Jack D. Ellis, “Haunted Moon,” Huntsville Times, Nov 9, 2006; Brett Davis, “War over Rudolph Still Rages,” Huntsville Times, Jun 18, 2000. William E. Winterstein Sr., Gestapo USA: When Justice Was Blindfolded (San Francisco: Robert D. Reed, 2002); Hollmann, “Letters,” Scientists and Friends 33 (2007): 5–6; “Editorial: William Winterstein’s Mission,” Ventura County Star, Sep 18, 2009. Placide D. Nicaise, Huntsville and the von Braun Rocket Team: The Real Story, ed. Scientists and Friends (Monterey, Calif.: Martin Hollmann, 2003), 23–30, 36. Rod Moak, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 25, 2007, Moak residence. Jimmie Taylor, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 1, 2007, Taylor residence. John Evans, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 3, 2007, Evans’s office, conference room of Grace, Evans & Matthews. I discuss some of the implications of these comments in an article published in 2008: Monique Laney, “ ‘Operation Paperclip’ in Huntsville, Alabama,” in Dick, Remembering the Space Age. Margaret Anne Goldsmith, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Goldsmith’s office. Howard Polin and Diana Polin, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 26, 2007, Polin residence. Ibid. I. B. “Buddy” Miller, Dolores Miller, and Solomon Miller, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Miller residence. Goldsmith, interview. Ibid. Miller, Miller, and Miller, interview. Ibid. Ibid. Dick Curtis, Return to Peenemünde, WHNT Huntsville, 1991, video. Oscar Holderer, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, Holderer residence; Hans Fichtner, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 3, 2007, Fichtner residence. John Rison Jones Jr., “Speech Prepared for the Yom-Shoah/Holocaust Memorial Commemoration, Temple B’nai Sholom,” Apr 10, 1994, draft. John Rison Jones Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 31, 2007, Jones residence. Both John Rison Jones Jr. and Margaret Anne Goldsmith talked about Jones’s speech during the interviews. See also Dr. John Rison Jones: Witness to the

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Holocaust (Unedited) (Jewish Federation of Huntsville and North Alabama, 2006), video. 88. Jones, “Speech Prepared for the Yom-Shoah/Holocaust Memorial Commemoration.” 89. Jones, interview. 90. Ibid. 91. For many years, even women who had worked directly for the Nazi regime and were outspoken supporters of its ideology were not perceived as threats because of gendered stereotypes and the roles associated with women within the nation. Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender and Foreign Relations, 1945–1949 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 76. The demographics for Allied denazification procedures confirm this gender bias. Timothy R. Vogt, Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Germany: Brandenburg, 1945–1948 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 92. Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (New York: Free Press, 1995). 93. Michael J. Neufeld, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 21, 2007, National Air and Space Museum. 94. This exhibit was originally created by the museum associated with the Mittelbau-Dora Memorial site and had toured Europe before coming to Huntsville. The museum had invited renowned photographer Alvin Gilens to take pictures of the camp and its facilities for a local exhibit that opened in 1995 for the fiftieth anniversary of the camp’s liberation by American soldiers. “Discovery and Despair: Dimensions of Dora,” Historian: The Newsletter of the Department of History, the University of Alabama in Huntsville 5, no. 1 (2001). 95. Stephen Waring and Molly Wilkinson Johnson, “Dora and the V-2: Slave Labor in the Space Age,” UAH Department of Art and Art History and Department of History, Huntsville, Ala., http://www.dora.uah.edu/. 96. Ruth Rothe, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, Rothe residence. Rothe is the American widow of rocket specialist Heinrich Rothe. 97. Rolf Sieber, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 13, 2007, Collier residence. 98. Wagner, interview. 99. Interviewee A, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, A’s residence. 100. Interviewee C, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, C’s residence. 101. Walter Jacobi and Käthe Jacobi, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Jacobi residence. 102. Walter Häussermann, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 10, 2007, Häussermann residence.

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25 9

103. See chapter 6 for details on who was held as prisoners at the Mittelbau-Dora camp. 104. I am deliberately not using names because it could help to identify the interviewee, who did not give me explicit permission to use his name. Interviewee K, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 19, 2007, K’s residence. 105. Hans Kennel, Margaret Kennel, and Mario Rheinfurth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 6, 2007, Kennel residence. 106. Heinz Struck, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 24, 2007, Struck residence. 107. Dieter Teuber and Susanne Teuber, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 2, 2007, Teuber residence. 108. Heidi Medenica, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 9, 2007, Medenica residence. 109. Peter Finzel, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 30, 2007, Finzel residence; Tomas Friend, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Huntsville bookstore. 110. Interviewee F refers to herself as a member of the second generation, but since her mother was only ten years old when she came to the United States with her parents, I consider interviewee F to be a member of the third generation. Interviewee F, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 14, 2006, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). 111. Interviewee N, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 28, 2007, N’s workplace. 112. Quoting Eli Rosenbaum. Brett Davis, “Congress Debates the Future of the Nazi Hunters: OSI Forever?” Huntsville Times, Jun 18, 2000. 113. Rolf Sieber, quoting his father, Sieber, interview; Klaus Dannenberg, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 26, 2007, Dannenberg’s office. 114. Luehrsen, interview. 115. Ursula Vann, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Vann residence. 116. Jürgen Haukohl, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Haukohl residence. 117. F, interview. 118. Most of this paragraph was taken almost verbatim from my own publication, Laney, “Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph: Negotiating the Past in Huntsville, Alabama.” 119. Gudrun Klauss and Rainer Klauss, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. 120. Andrew J. Dunar and Stephen P. Waring, Power to Explore: A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960–1990, NASA Historical Series (Washington, D.C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA History Office, Office of Policy and Plans, 1999), chapter 5.

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121. Bob Dunnavant, “Forced Retiring Left Some Germans Bitter,” Birmingham Post-Herald, Oct 4, 1980; John Noble Wilford, “NASA Layoffs Hit von Braun Team,” New York Times, Sep 3, 1970. 122. Peter Cobun, “A Footnote Is Enough,” Huntsville Times, Aug 8, 1976. 123. Sabina Garrett, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 26–27, 2007, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). 124. Inge Allan, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 15, 2007, Allan residence. 125. Robert G. Moeller, “Germans as Victims? Thoughts on a Post–Cold War History of World War II’s Legacies,” History and Memory 17, no. 12 (2005). 126. Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel, Networks of Nazi Persecution: Bureaucracy, Business, and the Organization of the Holocaust (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), see especially introduction and chapter 18. 127. Axel Roth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, Roth residence. 128. Ibid. 129. Luehrsen, interview. 130. Ibid. 131. See notes in this book’s introduction for literature that investigates how families struggle to reconcile their family members’ narratives about their experiences with public narratives about the Nazi era. 132. Friend, interview. 133. Lee Roop, “Von Braun Team Members Still Ardently Defend ‘Our’ Germans,” Huntsville Times, Jun 18, 2000. ep ilo g u e 1. Jacquelyn Procter Gray, “Rocket Man: The Story of Dr. Wernher von Braun,” Old Tennessee Valley Magazine and Mercantile Advertiser, n.d. 2. I. B. “Buddy” Miller, Dolores Miller, and Solomon Miller, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Miller residence. 3. James C. Cobb, The South and America since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31. 4. Francesca Cappelletto uses the term mnemonic community to analyze common memories in communities that share experiences as victims of trauma. While I do not suggest that the experiences of German or American Huntsville residents should be referred to as traumatic events, they did experience positive and negative stresses as a community, which inform their “shared experiences, interests and identities.” Cappelletto further discusses how these shared experiences produce a sense of uniqueness among the community’s members. Memory and World War II: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford: Berg, 2005). 5. Sonnie W. Hereford and Jack D. Ellis, Beside the Troubled Waters: A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 1.

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6. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 8. 7. Judy Feigin and Mark M. Richard, The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, 2006), 338, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB331/OSI_report_complete.pdf. 8. Quoting the vice president of Huntsville’s Chamber of Commerce, Loren Taylor. Shaila Dewan, “Huntsville Journal: When the Germans, and Rockets, Came to Town,” New York Times, Dec 31, 2007.

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“HQ European Command: Staff Message Control, Ref. No. Wx-83711,” Aug 7, 1947. IRR Impersonal Files, RG 319, entry 57 (UD), box 19, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Information upon Which to Base an Investigation of Paperclip Activities at Fort Bliss, Texas and White Sands, New Mexico,” n.d. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. “In Re: Kurt Heinrich Debus and Herbert Felix Axster, From: Assistant Commissioner, Inspections and Examinations Division,” Feb 12, 1953. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter from Rabbi S. Wise to Secretary of War, Robert Patterson,” Apr 14, 1947. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to Chief of INS, From: USAF Director,” Oct 22, 1954. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to Chief of Ordnance, From: Ord Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” May 6 1954. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to Chief of Ordnance, Subject: Immigration of Paperclip Specialist Herbert Axster, From: James P. Hamill,” Feb 24, 1950. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to Commanding General, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Subject: Paperclip Personnel Herbert and Ilse Axster, From: Laurin L. Williams, GSC,” Oct 7, 1948. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to Office of the Chief of Ordnance, From: Herbert Axster,” Oct 8, 1954. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Letter to the Secretary of State, From: Secretary of the Army,” Jul 3, 1950. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Memorandum for Director of Intelligence, Subject: Immigration of German Scientists and Technicians, WDGS, From: JIOA,” Mar 21, 1947. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Memorandum for Executive, ID, GSUSA, Subject: Exploitation of German Scientists, From: JIOA,” Oct 13, 1947. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Memorandum for the Secretariat, State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee: Exploitation of German and Austrian Specialists in Science and Technology in the United States, From: Assistant Secretary of War,” Aug 1, 1946. Army Decimal File, 1941–48, 319, 47, 991, National Archives, College Park, Md.

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“Memorandum, Subject: Immigration of Paperclip Specialists, From: Director of Intelligence, Department of the Army General Staff, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.,” May 17, 1948. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Memorandum, Subject: Information Required for Immigration of German Scientists, From: Joint Chiefs of Staff, JIOA,” Apr 14, 1947. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Memorandum to Chief of Administrative and Liaison Group, ID, GSUSA, Subject: Status of Persons Brought to the United States under Paperclip Program, From: JIOA,” Jul 26, 1949. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Office Memorandum to: Major Saxby, G-2, Subject: Dr. Herber Axster, From: J. M. Harrington, Ordhc,” May 18, 1954. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “OMGUS Security Reports for Paperclip Specialists and Dependents, To: Commander in Chief, European Command, From: JIOA,” Apr 14, 1948. General Correspondence, 1946–52, RG 330, entry 1A, 14, National Archives, College Park, Md. “OMGUS Security Reports on Paperclip Personnel, Exploitation Section, Executive Office, ID,” Nov 28, 1947. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. 101st Congress (1989–90). “Resolution to Open a Congressional Investigation into the Arthur Rudolph Case.” Library of Congress, Congressional Record, May 24, 1990. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r101:E24MY0-B292. “The Paperclip Project: Its Concept, Implementation and Control,” n.d. [1959?]. Publication “P” Files, 1946–51, RG 319, entry 82 (NM-3), box 2674, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Procedure for the Immigration of the Dependents of German and Austrian Specialists by Preexamination,” n.d. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Report—Part I, A. Conference at Fort Bliss Relative Security on Public Relations Aspects of Project Paperclip, B. Conference at Juarez, Mexico, Relative Immigration of Three Special Aliens,” Nov 1947. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Request from Dr. Jur. Erich Dickow,” Apr 27, 1943. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Security Policy and Procedure for Project Paperclip, From: HQ U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence,” n.d. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1002, National Archives, College Park, Md.

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“Security Regulations for German Scientists, From: HQ U.S. Air Force Directorate of Intelligence,” Aug 22, 1946. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Speech Held by Holger N. Toftoy at AOA Small Arms and Small Arms Ammo Division at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.,” Jun 2, 1959. “Paperclip,” H. N. Toftoy Collection, USSRC (copies provided by Michael J. Neufeld). “Subject: Immigration of Dependents of Kurt Debus, To: Chief of Ordnance, From: Ordnance Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” Jun 29, 1953, Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Debus, RG 330, entry 1B, box 28, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Subject: Return to Germany of Former Paperclip Employee–Dr. Herbert Axster, To: Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, From: Ordnance Corps, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama,” May 6, 1954. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Subject: The Axster Couple (Formerly Usedom, Pomerania), From: USAF, Captain, Berlin,” Mar 25, 1948. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Summary of Functions of Exploitation Section for Strategic Intelligence School,” Mar 31, 1948. Army Decimal File, 1941–48, 319, 47, 991, National Archives, College Park, Md. “To: Commanding General, Fourth Army, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, From: Intelligence Division, General Staff, United States Army,” Aug 11, 1948. ACSI, G-2 (Intelligence) Decimal File, 1941–48, RG 319, entry 47B (NM-3), box 1005, National Archives, College Park, Md. Toftoy, Brigadier General Holger N. “The History of Army Missile Development,” 1956, 1–25. Redstone Arsenal Archives, Huntsville, Ala. “To: Officer-in-Charge, Ord Res & Dev Div Subo (Rkt), Ft. Bliss, Texas, Subject: Immigration Status of Paperclip Specialists, From: W. J. Durrenberger, War Department,” Jan 16, 1950. Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945–58, File: Axster, RG 330, entry 1B, box 5, National Archives, College Park, Md. “United States Gains Technical Aid from German-Austrian Scientists,” Nov 27, 1946. 002683, National Archives, College Park, Md. “Wernher von Braun,” 1945. IRR Impersonal Files RG 319, entry 57 (UD), boxes 76–81, National Archives, College Park, Md. in t erv iew s This is a complete list of the interviews conducted for the project. A pseudonym (e.g., interviewee A) indicates that the interviewee did not give permission to use his or her name. An asterisk (*) indicates that the interviewee was not directly quoted in the book. In quotations from the interviews, italics are used to denote emphasis by the speaker. A, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, A’s residence.

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Allan, Inge, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 15, 2007, Allan residence. B, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 16, 2007, B residence.* Blumrich, Christoph, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 26, 2007, Hilten residence.* Blumrich, Susanne, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 22, 2007, Hilten residence. Buckbee, Ed, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 17, 2007, Marriott Hotel restaurant, Konrad Dannenberg attending. C, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, C residence. Cerny, Peter, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 1, 2007, Cerny residence. D, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 16, 2007, D residence.* Dannenberg, Klaus, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 26, 2007, Dannenberg’s office. Dannenberg, Konrad, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 13, 17, 2007, Dannenberg residence. Dempsey, Maria, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 2, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. Dunar, Andrew, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 3, 2007, UAH history department.* Evans, John, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 3, 2007, Evans’s office, conference room of Grace, Evans & Matthews. F, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 14, 2006, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). Fichtner, Hans, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 3, 2007, Fichtner residence. Finzel, Peter, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 30, 2007, Finzel residence. Foster, Clyde, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 19, 2007, Foster residence. Friend, Tomas, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Huntsville bookstore. G, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 25, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. Garrett, Sabina, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 26–27, 2007, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). Goldsmith, Margaret Anne, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Goldsmith’s office. Gurley, Dorothy, and James E. Gurley, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Gurley home.*

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H, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 10, 2006, H office. Harscheid, Ursula, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 13, 2007, Harscheid residence. Haukohl, Jürgen, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Haukohl residence. Häussermann, Walter, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 10, 2007, Häussermann residence. Hereford, Sonnie W., III, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 19, 2007, Huntsville–Madison County Public Library. Hilten, Kathrin, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 25, 2007, Hilten residence. Holderer, Oscar, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 5, 2007, Holderer residence. Jacobi, Käthe, and Walter Jacobi, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 18, 2007, Jacobi residence. Jones, John Rison, Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 31, 2007, Jones residence. K, interviewee, and spouse*, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 19, 2007, K residence. Kennel, Hans, Margaret Kennel*, and Mario Rheinfurth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 6, 2007, Kennel residence. Klauss, Gudrun, and Rainer Klauss, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. Luehrsen, Thomas, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Sep 24–Oct 3, 2007, Lawrence, Kan. (phone interview). Lundquist, Charles “Chuck” A., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, UAH Archive. Medenica, Heidi, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 9, 2007, Medenica residence. Miller, I. B. “Buddy,” Dolores Miller*, and Solomon Miller, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Miller residence. Moak, Rod, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 25, 2007, Moak residence. N, interviewee, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 28, 2007, N’s workplace. Neufeld, Michael J., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jun 21, 2007, National Air and Space Museum. Ordway, Frederick I., III, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 20, 2007, Marriott Hotel. Polin, Diana, and Howard Polin, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 26, 2007, Polin residence. Ray, Charles, Jr., interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 17, 2007, Ray’s office.

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Rosenbaum, Eli, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Mar 30, 2007, Rosenbaum’s office. Rosenthal, Max, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, May 12, 2006, Etz Chayim Synagogue. Rosinski, Klaus, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jan 29, 2007, Collier residence.* Roth, Axel, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 12, 2007, Roth residence. Rothe, Ruth, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 9, 2007, Rothe residence. Schrader, Dieter, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 6, 2007, Schrader’s restaurant. Sieber, Rolf, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 13, 2007, Collier residence. Smith, Michael, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 29, 2007, Smith residence. Struck, Heinz, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 24, 2007, Struck residence. Taylor, James “Jimmie,” interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Aug 1, 2007, Taylor residence. Teuber, Dieter, and Susanne Teuber, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 2, 2007, Teuber residence. Vann, Ursula, interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 23, 2007, Vann residence. Wagner, Margarete “Gretel,” interviewed by author, digital audio recording, Jul 11, 2007, Wagner residence. Widow 1, interviewed by author, no recording, Dec 22, 2005.* Widow 2, interviewed by author, no recording, Dec 22, 2005.* Widow 3, asked that interview not be used.* n ew s p ap er a r ti c l e s Chicago Defender “ ‘Bishop Blasts Nazis, Winks at Lynching’: Charge Made by Secretary of N.A.A.C.P.” Dec 3, 1938, 5. Burns, Ben. “Off the Book Shelf: GI Joe Meets Jim Crow.” Sep 22, 1945, 13. “Crowd Negro GIs in Army Hospital Jim Crow Wards.” Dec. 14, 1946, 13. “Dr. Johnson Urges Racial Unity as Check to Nazism.” Dec 17, 1938, 3. Guttentag, William. “Nazi Prisoners Better Treated Than Negro Soldiers in South, Army Told.” Feb 12, 1944, 1, 4. “Hitler Adopts U.S. Jim Crow Laws in Germany: Nazis Adopt U.S. Jim-Crow Rail System; Ape America in Move to Humiliate and Oppress Jewish Citizens.” Jan 7, 1939, 1. “A Lesson for Us.” Feb 15, 1936, 16.

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“Nazi Prisoners Gloat as U.S. Nurses ‘Get the Works.’ ” Jan 20, 1945, 3. Smith, Alfred E. “Lena Horne Quits USO Tour in Row over Army Jim Crow.” Jan 6, 1945, 1. “A Subversive Covenant.” Jul 10, 1937, 16. “War and Fascism.” Feb 22, 1936, 10. “What the People Say.” Nov 6, 1943, 14. Huntsville News Bowman, David. “Rudolph to Visit Canada.” Jun 6, 1990, 1, A3. “Council Solidifies Von Braun Center.” Feb 25, 1970, 1. Cox, Bianca. “Music Dialogue with Visiting Professor Inspired Dreger to Start Symphony Here.” Nov 17, 1989. Dunnavant, Robert. “Army Team Asked to Support Germans.” N.d. [1986?]. Heyman, Greg. “Demjanjuk Case Said Parallel to Rudolph: Reversal of Conviction May Help Former Rocket Scientist.” Aug 5, 1993. Vise, Dan De. “Resolution Seeks Probe of Rudolph Case.” May 25, 1990. Huntsville Times Bardon, Kevin L. “Ludicrously Sad.” Oct 6, 2006, A12. ———. “No Prisoners of Peace.” Nov 1, 2006, A1. Bullard, C. L. “Nation’s Justice System a Paradoxical One.” Oct 26, 1984. Burkey, Martin. “Rudolph’s Supporters Renew Fight.” Nov 22, 1993. “Chamber to Hold Barbecue Party.” Jul 23, 1950, 1. “Citizenship Granted to 109: City’s Newest Citizens Are Happy Folks Today.” Apr 14, 1955, 1. Cobun, Peter. “Defense Fund Established for Rudolph.” Jul 21, 1985. ———. “A Footnote Is Enough.” Aug 8, 1976. ———. “Lack of Funds Hampering Defense of ‘Oldtimers.’ ” Mar 5, 1986. ———. “OSI Mum on German Scientists Probe.” Mar 4, 1986. ———. “Reagan Reply Still Awaited on Rudolph Case Request.” Jun 13, 1985. ———. “U.S. Case against Rudolph ‘Unjust, Immoral’—Medaris.” Apr 25, 1985. “Colleagues Here Question Charges against Rudolph.” Oct 18, 1984, A-1. Conn, Robin, David Person, Mike Salinero, Lee Roop, Keith Clines, David Prather, and John Ehinger. “Race Relations: The 1960’s.” Feb 13, 2000, 59–65. Davis, Brad. “Another Local Rocket Scientist May Be under Investigation.” Aug [?], 1990. Davis, Brett. “Congress Debates the Future of the Nazi Hunters: OSI Forever?” Jun 18, 2000, A1, A9. ———. “New Evidence Damages Rudolph? Supporters Claim Information Supports Exiled Defense.” Jun 23, 1991. ———. “OSI Said Eager to Open Files.” Jul [?], 1990. ———. “War over Rudolph Still Rages.” Jun 18, 2000, A8. Davis, Brett, and John Peck. “Rocket Scientist Fights for His Name: Ex-Huntsvillian Rudolph, U.S. at Odds over His Nazi War Past.” Apr 16, 1995, A1, A12.

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Dooling, Dave. “Health Said a Factor in Rudolph’s Decision to Leave U.S.” Oct 28, 1984, A-4. Doyle, Steve. “Huntsville Economy Gets Global Exposure.” Jul 29, 2009. “Dr. von Braun Says Rocket Flights Possible to Moon.” May 14, 1950, 1, 3. Ellis, Jack D. “Haunted Moon.” Nov 9, 2006, A10. “Former Saturn 5 Program Chief Accused of WWII Persecutions.” Oct 17, 1984, A-1, A-11. “Fort Bliss, Texas, Rocket Office to Be Moved to Redstone Arsenal: Involves about 900 Civilians and Soldiers: 100 German Scientists among Those Who Will Be Transferred Here.” Nov 4, 1949, 1. “GE Move Getting Well under Way.” May 21, 1950, 1. “Huntsville Citizens Attending Citizenship Ceremonies.” Nov. 12, 1954, 16. “Invitations Sent for Civic Patry [sic].” Jul 17, 1950, 1. “Lutheran Church Is Planned Here.” Apr 23, 1950, 1. Marshall, Mike. “Launching a Dream: Von Braun’s Surrender Pushed U.S. into Space.” Sep 24, 1995, A1, A7. ———. “Wiesman Found a Home in Huntsville.” Jul 13, 2000, A1, A4. Moody, Jewel W., Sr. “Waste of Time.” Oct 18, 2006, A10. “Move Scheduled by GE Employes [sic].” Apr 3, 1950, 1. “Newcomer Party of Welcome Set.” Jul 16, 1950, 1. “Newcomers’ Civic Party Rescheduled for Aug. 9.” Jul 26, 1950, 1. Oliver, Paige. “Rudolph Is Still a Hero to His Friends, Colleagues.” Jan 13, 1991, 1A, 3A. “150 Redstone Families Here, Others Coming.” Jul 9, 1950, 1. Payne, Weldon. “ ‘$3 Million Needed Now.’ ” Jun 20, 1961. Peck, John. “Canada Plans to Prosecute Lufthansa for Transporting Rudolph.” Sep 23, 1990. ———. “Canada’s Delay Leaves Rudolph Stuck in Middle.” Dec 9, 1990, 2B. ———. “Rudolph Departs Canada? Immigration Ruling Expected in a Month.” Aug 12, 1990. ———. “Rudolph Document Forged?” Sep 20, 1990. ———. “Rudolph to Seek a Public Hearing.” Jul 4, 1990, 1A–2A. ———. “Testimony Ends in Rudolph’s Immigration Hearing.” Aug 10, 1990. Peck, John, and Paige Oliver. “Rudolph Is Detained in Canada: Ex-Saturn Chief Freed on Bond after 8 Hours.” Jul 2, 1990, 1A–2A. Poague, George. “Council Resolution Urges Return of Rudolph.” Huntsville Times or Huntsville News, Oct 1, 1985. “Quarters of Guided Missile Area Set up at Redstone Arsenal: Major Hamill and Advanced Group Arrive.” Apr 16, 1950, 1. “Rain Will Not Halt Newcomer Outing Today.” Aug 9, 1950, 1. Rawls, Philip. “Rudolph Exile Blights Reunion: ‘Many Believe This Is a Sad Day.’ ” Jul 18, 1989, 1, 13. “Redstone Arsenal Work Authorized.” Jul 14, 1950, 1. “Redstone Set to Employ 500 Next 30 Days.” Aug 20, 1950, 1.

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Reisz, Aloysius “Al” I. “Without Merit.” Oct 12, 2006, A8. Roop, Deborah. “Second Group Forms to Support Rudolph.” Oct 2, 1985. ———. “Von Braun’s Other Legacy.” Jun 14, 1987. Roop, Lee. “For White Kids, Integration Here Was No Big Deal.” Feb 13, 2000, 64–65. ———. “Von Braun Team Members Still Ardently Defend ‘Our’ Germans.” Jun 18, 2000. Saurma, Ruth von. “U.S. Action on Rudolph Deserves an Explanation.” Nov 4, 1984. Scales, John R. “No War Criminal.” Oct 13, 2006, A8. “Scientists Slate Oakwood Concert.” Nov 26, 1950, 1. Spires, Shelby G. “Innovative Huntsville Joins Newsweek’s List of Top ‘Hot Tech’ Cities.” Apr 24, 2001, A1, A9. ———. “Nazi Remarks Anger Rocket Team Pioneer.” Oct 16, 2006, A1, A6. ———. “Von Braun Team ‘Prisoners of Peace.’ ” Oct 2, 2006, B1–B2. Taylor, Phillip. “Rudolph Supporters Seek Federal Appeals Court Inquiry Extension.” Feb 27, 1993. Times Washington Bureau. “Right-Wing Groups Allege KGB Role in Rudolph Case.” Huntsville Times [?], Jun 14, 1985. “Traficant Implores Rudolph to Return.” May 14, 1990. “2,700 Attend Newcomer Fete Despite Rains.” Aug 10, 1950, 1. New York Times “Army to Tell Its Use of German Scientists.” Nov 13, 1946, 5. Blumenthal, Ralph. “German-Born NASA Expert Quits U.S. to Avoid War Crimes Suit.” Oct 18, 1984, A1, A12. ———. “Papers Show Saturn Rocket Chief Was Called ‘Ardent Nazi’ by U.S.” Nov 25, 1984, A4. Burns, John F. “Citing Role in a Nazi Project, Canada Bars Ex-U.S. Scientist.” Jan 12, 1991, 2. ———. “War-Crimes Suspect Seeks to Stay in Canada.” Jul 10, 1990, A2. Clark, Delbert. “Nazis Sent to U.S. as Technicians.” Jan 4, 1947, 6. “Congressman Backing Scientist, an Ex-Nazi, Wants Him in U.S.” May 15, 1990, A10. “Ex-Nazi Scientist Tries to Renew Citizenship.” Jul 21, 1991, 15. “German Scientists Develop Rocket Here.” Mar 21, 1946, 10. “Germans Will Aid U.S. War Research.” Oct 2, 1945, 2. Goodman, Walter. “The Nazi Connection, on Frontline.” Feb 24, 1987, C18. Graham, Frederick. “Nazi Scientists Aid Army on Research.” Dec 4, 1946, 35. “John Demjanjuk.” May 12, 2009. Johnston, David. “Scientist Accused as Ex-Nazi Is Denied Citizenship.” Feb 20, 1993. Laurence, William L. “2 Rocket Experts Argue ‘Moon’ Plan.” Oct 14, 1952, 33. Markham, James M. “Ex-Nazi Denies Role in Deaths of Slave Laborers.” Oct 21, 1984, 8.

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McFadden, Robert D. “John Demjanjuk, 91, Dogged by Charges of Atrocities as Nazi Camp Guard, Dies.” Mar 17, 2012. Morton, Frederic. “Kristallnacht.” Nov 10, 1978, A31. “Restoration of Citizenship Sought for Scientist.” Apr 28, 1985, 24. Stone, Shepard. “I Had to Join—I Was Never a Good Nazi.” Dec 15, 1946, SM7. “U.S. Offers Citizenship to German Scientists.” Nov 24, 1946, 17. Weinraub, Bernard. “Festivities in Huntsville Have a German Flavor.” Jul 25, 1969. Whitney, Craig R. “The German Premiere of Schindler’s List Brings Tears and Praise.” Mar 2, 1994, C15. Wilford, John Noble. “NASA Layoffs Hit von Braun Team.” Sep 3, 1970, 1, 24. Washington Post “Army to Bring Scientists Here from Reich.” Oct 2, 1945, 2. Artuso, Angelo J. Letter to the editor. “ ‘The Nazi Rocket Experts’: Other Views.” Nov 17, 1984, A22. “Germans Due Here to Aid U.S. Science.” Oct 3, 1945, 13. Greenberg, Daniel S. “New Candor on a Nazi Aerospace Legacy.” Dec 8, 1990, A21. “The Nazi Rocket Experts.” Nov 6, 1984, A20. “1000 German Scientists Due to Come to U.S. with Families.” Nov 24, 1946, M4. Sellers, David. “OSI’s Treatment of Suspected Nazis Called ‘Persecution Not Prosecution.’ ” Jul 31, 1985, 2A. Smith, Marc T. Letter to the editor. “ ‘The Nazi Rocket Experts’: Other Views.” Nov 17, 1984, A22. Swardson, Anne. “Canada Steps up Action on Alleged Ex-Nazis.” Mar 30, 1995, A23. “U.S. Employing German Brains, Patterson Says, Citing Rockets.” Mar 21, 1946, 8. “With 102 Others von Braun Becomes U.S. Citizen.” Apr 15, 1955, 14. Regional Newspapers “Arsenal Germans Are Naturalized: 1000 Attend Ceremony.” Redstone Rocket, Apr 19, 1955, 1. Carney, Tom. “Stalag Redstone.” Old Morgan County, 1999, 2–10. Dunnavant, Robert. “Accused Scientist Should Return to Huntsville, Mayor Declares.” Birmingham News, Jan 26, 1989. ———. “Congressman Says Rudolph Targeted by ‘Jewish Lobby’: Urges Him to Fight War-Crime Charges.” Birmingham News, May 13, 1990, 13A, 15A. ———.“Forced Retiring Left Some Germans Bitter.” Birmingham Post-Herald, Oct 4, 1980, B-5. “Ex-NASA Scientist’s Daughter Says U.S. Bases Charges on Lies.” Birmingham Post Herald, Oct 25, 1984. Gray, Jacquelyn Procter. “Rocket Man: The Story of Dr. Wernher von Braun.” Old Tennessee Valley Magazine and Mercantile Advertiser, n.d., 5–14. “Huntsville Symphony Will Give First Concert.” Birmingham News, Dec 11, 1955. Jennings, Michael, and Kent Faulk. “Can’t Believe Charges against Moon Rocket Designer, Friends Say.” Birmingham News, Oct 18, 1984, 1A, 5A.

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———. “Lines Drawn on Issue of Rudolph.” Birmingham News, Nov 4, 1984, 1C. McInnish, Hugh. “An American in Exile, the Arthur Rudolph Story.” Old Huntsville Magazine, Jan 3, 2006. www.oldhuntsville.com. “NASA Rocket Maker Denies War Brutalities.” Decatur Daily, Oct 20, 1984. “Nazi Scientists Coming to U.S.” Atlanta Constitution, Oct 2, 1945, 5. “Rudolph’s Backers Debate Showdown: Congressman Raises Anti-Semitism Issue in Ex-NASA Scientist’s Deportation Case.” Birmingham Post-Herald, May 15, 1990, C2. “Space Expert Pledges Allegiance to U.S., ‘People Who Read Bible.’ ” Nashville Banner, Apr 15, 1955, 10, 16. Other News Publications and Services Abramson, Rudy. “Did U.S. Cast Blind Eye to Nazi’s Past?” Los Angeles Times, Nov 4, 1984, A1, A12–14. “Bells, Cheers, Tears Greet Apollo Return.” Chicago Tribune, Jul 25, 1969. Bryan, Dave. “Post-war American Engineers Worked in Tandem with Germans.” Associated Press, Aug 13, 2002. Buchanan, Patrick. “Hero or Noxious Nazi?” Washington Times, Jul 17, 1989, D1, D4. ———. “Justice at OSI Corral?” Washington Times, Jul 16, 1990, D1, D4. “Editorial: William Winterstein’s Mission.” Ventura County Star, Sep 18, 2009. Gibbons, Roy. “Ex-Nazi Experts Work on Secret Weapons in U.S.” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec 4, 1946, 18. Hirsley, Michael. “Nazi Past Doesn’t Dim Support.” Chicago Tribune, Sep 24, 1985, 18. “Interview—with Top Rocket Expert Dr. Wernher von Braun.” U.S. News & World Report, Oct 18, 1955, 36–42. Karlen, Neal, and Theodore Stanger. “War Crimes and NASA?” Newsweek, Oct 29, 1984, 45. Lang, Daniel. “A Romantic Urge.” New Yorker, Apr 21, 1951, 69–70, 72, 74, 76–84. Mercer, Marilyn. “Glamour’s Special Report: Young Family Life in a Space Age Boom Town.” Glamour, Jan 1961, 70–73. “No Position.” Washington Times, Oct 16, 1985. O’Neil, Paul. “The Splendid Anachronism of Huntsville.” Fortune, Jun 1962. “Reich Scientists Agree to Finish Projects for U.S.” Sun, Oct 2, 1945, 1. “Rocket Designer Tied to Nazis.” Chicago Tribune, Oct 18, 1984. “Rocket to Moon Called Possible.” Oakland Tribune, Oct 25, 1954. “Rudolph Defense Fund Is Started.” Associated Press, Jul 14, 1985. Seligman, Kathy, and Bob Dunnavant. “Nazi Charges Surprise Friends.” USA Today, Oct 18, 1984. “Space Museum Opens March 17.” Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb 28, 1970. Stoldt, Hans-Ulrich, and Klaus Wiegrefe. “ ‘Mountains of Guilt’: Spiegel Interview with the Historian Norbert Frei.” Der Spiegel, Apr 2005, 44–47.

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INDEX

African Americans in Huntsville, 7, 11, 51, 55, 59, 62, 64, 69–70, 89, 107, 126–129, 131–136, 139, 142, 203; Alabama A&M University, 51–52, 55, 128, 138, 244n40; businesses of, 56–57, 126; Cavalry Hill neighborhood, 126; community, 4, 12–13, 51, 53, 55, 58, 70, 73, 87, 128–130, 132, 136, 139, 144, 165, 199, 202; Councill School, 126–127; education, 51–52, 59, 69, 127, 139, 142; employment, 44–45, 51–52, 59, 126–127, 135–136, 139; and German POWs, 129–130; and Germans, 107, 128–130, 132–139, 141–144, 165; and Germany, 143, 242n27; living conditions, 127; and NASA, 128; population, 45, 52; Princess movie theatre, 127; residents, 44, 70, 130; and Rudolph case, 179, 202, 203, 243n33; Spring Park neighborhood, 126; Winston Street School, 127. See also Jim Crow Aldrin, Buzz, 151 Allan, Inge, 111, 114, 195–197 American-style consumerism, 96, 107, 111, 113

American way of life 37, 74 anti-Semitism: in Germany, 79, 80, 140; in Huntsville, 165, 182; in the South, 60, 61 Apollo 11, 1–3 Armstrong, Neil, 151 Associated Press, 168 Axster, Herbert and Ilse, 36–38, 41, 219n61 Ball, Erich, 98, 117, 119, 252n17 Bauschinger, Oscar, 237n39 Bedürftig, Dorothea, 237n39 Béon, Yves, 158 Birmingham News, 83, 167, 170, 173 Blumrich, Hilde, 237n39 Blumrich, Josef Franz, 237n39 Blumrich, Susanne, 102, 108–111, 140–141, 239n67 Boone, Horton, 136 Bower, Tom, 158, 198 Brozmer family, 65 Bryant, Bear, 87, 233n50 Buchanan, Pat, 171, 173–174 Buckbee, Ed, 68, 72, 86–87, 171, 174 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 157 Bush, George H. W., 174

293

294

in d ex

California, 25, 67, 145, 150, 164, 175 Canada, 31, 35, 174–175, 188, 242n29, 250n80 Cape Canaveral, 38 Cashin, Joan, 58 Cashin, John Logan, 58 Cashin, Sheryll, 58 Cerny, Otto F., 235n10 Cerny, Peter, 103, 108, 121, 236n17 Chicago Daily Tribune, 42 Chicago Defender, 53, 130 Ciudad Juárez, 35, 56 civil rights movement, Alabama, 54–55, 61, 68; Alabama Student Union, 55; antisegregation demonstrations, 54; Birmingham riots, 55; Children’s Crusade, 54, 225n49; Eugene “Bull” Connor, 54; desegregation, 224n27, 225n48; Freedom Riders, 54; Jews and, 59–61; Ku Klux Klan, 53; Montgomery bus boycott, 54; NAACP, 54; Rosa Parks’s arrest, 54; segregation, 50–51, 53–54, 57, 60–61, 67; Selma, 55; Sixteenth Baptist Church in Birmingham, 54; Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), 54; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 54–55. See also Wallace, George C. civil rights movement, Huntsville, 4, 10, 55–59, 73, 140, 203; Bi-racial committees, 55; Blue Jeans Sunday, 58; Community Service Committee (CSC), 55, 57, 58; Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 57; desegregation, 51, 53, 54–60, 139, 142–143; disenfranchisement, 69; and Germans, 140, 143; Mid West Stock Exchange, 58; segregation, 58, 70, 107, 125–132, 134–135, 137–140, 142–144, 184, 203; support from NASA, 59; White Citizens’ Council, 53. See also Cashin, Joan; Cashin, John Logan; Cashin, Sheryll; Hereford, Martha; Hereford, Sonnie W., III; Ray, Charles, Jr.

civil rights movement, U.S., 124; Brown v. Board of Education, 61; Civil Rights Act, 55, 126; Fraternal Council of Negro Churches, 130; Martin Luther King Jr., 54, 59 Civil War, in Huntsville, 45, 52, 61 cold war, 4, 6, 8, 10, 17, 30, 42, 50, 95–96, 116, 119, 149, 151, 191, 234n62; atomic bomb, 95; CARE packets, 95; Communism, 34, 42, 61, 89, 95, 116–117, 146, 154, 157; hydrogen bomb, 95; Russians, 37; Soviet Union (USSR), 3, 21, 25, 30, 40–41, 72, 95, 116–117, 119, 151, 156; and the space age, 50, 186. See also Sputnik Collins, Michael, 151 concentration camps, 75, 148–149, 152, 158, 168, 186, 192, 230n13; Auschwitz, 148; Bergen-Belsen, 149; Buchenwald, 147–148; Dora, 145–149, 152, 183, 192, 246n9; foreign laborers, 36, 146; Groβ-Rosen, 148; inmates, 5, 14–15, 42, 78, 137, 146–148, 150–151, 154–155, 158–159, 165–168, 174, 178–181, 185–186, 188, 195–197, 203; Kapos, 161, 250n78; Ravensbrück, 147; survivors (see Holocaust); Trassenheide, 147 Connor, Eugene “Bull,” 54 Cora (African American caregiver), 64 Countess, Robert H., 175 Cullman, Alabama, 238n52 Dahm, Werner, 235n10 Daniels, Roger, 29 Dannenberg, Klaus, 106, 122, 191 Dannenberg, Konrad, 36, 97, 118, 120, 166–168, 234n66, 240n87 Davis, Joe, 170 De Beek, Magda, 237n39 Debus, Kurt Heinrich, 37–38, 220n64 Demjanjuk, John, 162, 173 Dempsey, Maria, 48, 76, 235n8 Denazification, 6, 125, 216n32; trials, 245n1 Denton, Jeremiah, 172 Deppe, Kurt, 35

index Dinnerstein, Leonard, 65 Disney, Walt, 150 Dora (Michel), 151–152, 158 Dreger, Alvin, 83 Duhn, Harald, 160 Dunar, Andrew J., 11, 15 education: desegregation of Huntsville’s, 58; difference between German and Huntsville schools, 109–110; difference in education among Germans in Huntsville, 96, 98; dual education system, 51; German families’ attitudes toward, 109–111; in Huntsville, 81, 85–86, 88, 91, 110, 142, 201. See also African Americans in Huntsville Ehricke, Krafft, 235n10 Eichmann, Adolf, 167 Eifler, Charles W., 174 Ellis, Jack D., 203 El Paso, Texas, 3, 74, 99–100, 108, 121, 129, 236n17, 241n12; Riverton School, 109 Etheridge, Brian C., 95 Europe, 24–26, 28, 31–33, 35–37, 41–42, 60, 95, 133, 159, 205, 258n94; European cities, 1; European colonizers, 43; European command, 33, 36; European conference, 201; European context, 9; European countries, 237n36; European descent, 61; European ethnocentrism, 138; European Jews, 175, 208n10; Europeans, 103, 119; European theater of war, 25, 76, 77, 80; southern and eastern, 29, 42–43, 124, 147, 153, 196, 240n90; western, 29, 103 Evans, John, 69, 77, 178 Explorer I, 90, 144, 151, 234n62, 238n43 Faurrison, Robert, 175 Feldman, Gerald D., 196 Fichtner, Hans, 126, 183, 218n46 Finzel, Peter, 102, 106, 110, 113–114, 121–122, 190 Fleischer, Karl, 35 Flippo, Ronnie, 172

295

Fort Bliss (Texas), 3, 14, 26–27, 35–36, 39, 43, 88–90, 94, 97–100, 131, 176, 194, 215n10, 218n46, 234n66, 235n13, 236n29; William Beaumont General Hospital, 97. See also White Sands Proving Ground Forward (newspaper), 64 Foster, Clyde, 51–53, 56–57, 126, 138–139 Franklin, Thomas. See McInnish, Hugh Fraser, Arthur M., 83 Freund, Alexander, 7, 242n29 Friedrich, Hans Rudolph, 252n17 Friend, Tomas, 111, 135–136, 190, 243n32 Garrett, Sabina, 102, 112, 194–195, 197, 239n72 Geissler, Barbara, 237n39 General Electric, 46 General Telephones (GTE), 53 German families in Huntsville: adapting to American culture/English language, 100–102, 107–109; and African Americans, 125–126, 129, 135 (see also African Americans in Huntsville); and American citizenship, 99, 115–117, 121; Catholic, 99, 236n18; celebrations for, 131; children of, 82–83, 98–104, 107–115, 121, 123, 135, 139–142, 181, 183, 195–196, 198, 205, 216n24; and comparisons between United States and Germany, 117–118, 120; connections to Germany, 113–115; creating a home in Huntsville, 101–104; criticism of, 150, 189; decisions of to live in United States or Germany, 112–115; from East Germany or regions no longer part of Germany, 102, 119–120; effect of Rudolph case on, 186–200; encounters with racial segregation, 125–126, 129, 132, 134, 140–141; families that arrived later, 94, 100, 103, 115, 189; first impressions of Huntsville, 100–104, 108; as foreigners, 72, 78, 92, 144, 156, 194, 202; and German citizenship, 116–117; and German culture, 17, 81, 103–104,

296

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German families in Huntsville (continued) 109–112, 118, 121–122, 135–136; as a group, 103–108, 111–112, 115, 120–122, 124, 131–132, 134, 170, 172–173, 178–179, 181, 183, 188, 190, 192, 194, 198; Huntsville’s reception of, 90–91, 105–107, 134; interaction with Huntsville community, 99, 101, 103–105, 110–111, 132; and Jews, 123–124; leaving Huntsville, 102–103; missing Germany, 104, 114; as models, 117; national/cultural identities of, 107–108, 110–112, 115–124; negotiating Nazi past, 117–118, 140–142; previous perceptions of America, 103, 113; privileged positions of, 12, 22, 37, 40, 136–137, 139, 147, 150, 156, 192, 204–205; Protestant, 99; reception elsewhere, 106, 121; second generation, 11–15, 77, 102–103, 107–112, 115, 121–124, 141, 166, 181, 190–199; stereotypes of, 112, 122–123; women, 100–102, 104–105, 108, 113, 120, 236n17 German rocketeers: army contracts, 24–28; and Civil Service, 94, 99, 236n17; dependents of, 24, 27–29, 32, 35, 97, 99, 215n10, 216nn24,31 (see also German families in Huntsville: children of); as enemy aliens, 25, 27–28; exploitation of, 24–25, 28, 36, 41; living and working in Peenemünde, 146–147; marriage to American woman, 118, 120; in military custody, 24, 26, 35; perceptions of, 145, 157, 181; as resident aliens, 5, 28, 99; restrictions on movement and privacy rights, 28; retirement, 115, 155, 193–194; teaching at UAH, 104; under military observation, 28, 31–32, 37; U.S. media representations of, 150–151, 155–159; as valuable assets, 28, 146, 153, 159. See also German families in Huntsville; Project Paperclip

Germany, 3, 5–8, 10, 14–17, 20, 24–26, 28–32, 34–37, 39–41, 60, 62, 72, 79, 83, 90, 92, 94, 95, 97–100, 102–104, 109–110, 112–115, 117–121, 123, 125, 128, 134–135, 138–139, 147, 149, 151–152, 159–162, 164, 172, 174–177, 180, 182–183, 186–187, 192, 195–197; African Americans in, 130, 132–133, 143; American views of, 95, 112; East (German Democratic Republic), 41, 117, 119, 146, 149, 157, 162; good Germans, 245n1; history of, 10–11, 95, 123, 132–133; Kohnstein Mountain, 147; Landshut, 28, 42, 97–98, 215; Marshall Plan for, 95; Morgenthau Plan for, 95, 175; Nazi, 4–8, 10, 22, 53, 76, 78, 88, 96, 105, 118, 130, 136–137, 140, 145, 151, 165, 167, 179, 185–187, 193, 195–198, 203–205; Nordhausen, 75, 147–149, 183–184, 187, 196, 230n13, 247n22; Oberammergau, 75, 148, 230n10; occupation of, 95, 98, 133–134; Peenemünde, 14, 26, 97–98, 146–149, 183, 194, 245n2, 246n20; postwar, 6, 31, 98, 113, 115, 134; prewar, 115, 132; refugees from, 41, 153; West (Federal Republic of Germany), 42, 95–96, 115, 157, 160–161 Gimbel, John, 33, 157, 214n5, 216n32 Goldsmith, Margaret Anne, 62–64, 78–79, 91, 179, 181 Gorman, Harry, 170 Görner, Erich, 237n39 government, U.S., 4, 17, 24, 25–26, 30, 39, 95, 119, 157, 169, 172, 174, 177, 180, 192–193, 199–200; attorney general, 31, 172, 225n48; Commerce Department, 27; Congress, 29, 67, 153, 173, 188; Constitution, 95, 172; contracts, 59, 86; Defense Department, 67; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 31, 35; federal spending, 10, 58–59, 67, 69, 75, 91; jobs with, 10; Justice Department, 3, 25, 28, 30–32, 35, 37, 151, 153, 160, 172–174, 182, 225n48, 254n36; officials of, 37, 58; programs, 4–5; secretary of

index state, 31, 34, 37; State Department, 30, 32–33, 36, 40, 42, 155; Supreme Court, 54, 61, 248n53; War Department, 24–26, 28, 30–33, 35–36, 38–39, 42, 45–46, 159 Grau, Dieter, 166, 252n17 Grau, Esther, 237n39 Grau, Evelyn, 237n39 Great Migration, 43, 45, 51, 126 Great Smoky Mountains, 100 Green, Bill, 253n19 Gruene, Hans, 252n17 Gunbelt, 50, 224n30 Hager, Carl, 36 Harscheid, Ursula, 124, 142–143 Hart, Reverend George, 83, 116 Haukohl, Günther, 166, 252n17 Haukohl, Jürgen, 122–123, 192 Häussermann, Walter, 188–189, 194, 235n10 Hebrew language, 60, 64 Heck, Arno, 235n10 Heeresversuchsanstalt, 146. See also Germany: Peenemünde Heflin, Howell, 172, 175 Heller, Hertha, 108 Helm, Bruno, 35 Hereford, Martha, 58 Hereford, Sonnie W., III, 58, 126–127, 131, 137, 144, 203 Hettinger, Steve, 173–174 Heybey, Elvira, 237n39 Hill, Lister, 233n58 Hilten, Heinz, 237n39 Hilten, Kathrin, 108, 141 Himmler, Heinrich, 75, 147 Hitler, Adolf, 25–26, 33, 40–41, 72, 79, 81–82, 85, 132, 142, 147, 151, 159, 175–176, 185, 201, 205 Holderer, Oscar, 112, 120–121, 136, 183, 236n17, 240n87 Hölker, Anneliese, 237n39 Hollmann, Martin, 175–176 Holocaust, 6, 7, 9, 78, 80, 140–141, 151, 153, 165, 198–200, 208n10; denial, 165,

297

168, 175, 184, 198, 252n16; survivors, 40, 146, 149, 152, 158, 161, 168, 192; war crimes, 4–5, 43, 145–146, 153, 155, 156, 160, 162, 167–168, 178–181, 187, 189, 192, 200, 255n46; war crimes trials, 149, 230n13; witnesses to, 185. See also concentration camps Holtzmann, Elizabeth, 153 Hoover, J. Edgar, 35 Horne, Lena, 130 Hunt, Linda, 157 Huntsville, Alabama: airport, 71; Association of Huntsville Area Contractors, 59; ballet company, 81, 82; Blossomwood neighborhood, 101; Broadway Theatre League, 81, 83; BTA, 66; Calhoun Community College, 47; Chamber of Commerce, 1, 66, 68, 75, 85, 131, 205; Church Street, 56, 57, 127; connections between southern and Nazi pasts, 125, 136–137, 140–142, 144, 184, 202–205; cotton mill (town), 10, 47, 72, 126, 201; “Creating Rocket City” panel, 47, 50, 66; Darwin Downs neighborhood, 101; Economic Development Association of Alabama, 85; economy 3, 44–46, 50–51, 55, 57, 69–70, 85, 91; entertainment in, 50, 57, 102, 104, 130, 131; geography of, 101; Germans arrive in, 99–107; Grants (department store), 56; Holms Street, 56, 57; Huntsville Historical Review, 62; Huntsville–Madison County Public Library, 11, 47, 77, 83, 102, 127, 175, 184, 210n22; Huntsville News, 83; Huntsville Times, 59, 74–75, 81, 85–86, 89, 164, 166–167, 171, 173, 176, 182, 185, 191, 194; infrastructure, 49, 66, 74, 84; Kiwanis Club, 66, 87; Ku Klux Klan, 143; and Madison County, 44–45, 49, 51–52, 55; Marlin’s Delicatessen, 101–102, 236n28; Memorial Parkway, 47 (caption), 84; Monte Sano, 101, 110; Nelms Funeral Home, 55, 90; newcomers to, 46, 62, 64, 66, 71, 73–76, 84, 91–92, 98, 100, 105, 124,

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Huntsville Alabama: (continued) 131, 134; Oakwood College, 81; as an open community, 47, 99; poverty, 126, 143; race relations, 53, 55, 107, 126–129, 132, 134, 203; Randolph School, 142; Redstone Arsenal, 2–3, 10–11, 26, 44–46, 48–49, 51–52, 55, 70, 72–76, 80–81, 84, 88–89, 129, 136, 170, 172, 174, 180, 223n12; Rotary Club, 116; rural area around, 49, 52, 55, 67, 100, 108–109, 143, 229n4; Russell Erskine Hotel, 76, 127, 177; Sears department store, 50; Shoney’s restaurant, 142; social class, 105, 109, 144, 193, 231n30; space-related industry, 68; St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 81, 103, 110, 116; symphony, 81, 83, 103, 104, 181, 237n39; Tennessee River 44–45, 52, 89; Texaco service station, 76; Triana, 51–53; Unitarian Church, 55; University of Alabama, 54, 71, 72, 81, 86, 87, 104, 138, 175, 232n47; U.S. Space & Rocket Center (USSRC), 71, 87, 174; Welcome Wagon Society, 105; West Clinton School, 64. See also African Americans in Huntsville; Jews in Huntsville; military, U.S.: prisoners of war Hutchinson, Daniel, 131 Huzel, Dieter, 75, 218n46 I Aim at the Stars (film), 150 immigration to United States: denaturalization, 154–155, 160, 168–169, 204; displaced persons, 29, 41–42; Displaced Persons Act, 29, 41, 153, 216n25; Ellis Island, 98; Fedorenko v. United States, 155, 248n53; Germans’, 20, 23, 72, 238n52, 242n29; immigrants and African Americans, 124, 243n31; immigration and naturalization laws, 4, 20–22, 28–30, 35, 41–42; Immigration and Naturalization Service, 25, 31, 36; Johnson-Reed Act (Quota Act), 28–29, 216n20; McCarran-Walter Act

(Immigration and Naturalization Act), 37; nativism, 124, 194; policy, U.S., 25, 99; preference system, 20, 21, 30, 37; and visas, 30–37, 155, 175 innocence: of Germans during Third Reich, 34, 74, 244n45; of Germans with regard to Jim Crow: 134, 137, 202; innocent bystanders, 134, 137, 202; Arthur Rudolph’s role as V-2 production manager, 167, 169, 187, 194, 255n46 integration: of Germans into Huntsville, 4, 9, 12, 20, 71, 74, 92; racial, 58–59, 138, 142–143 “intellectual reparations,” 25, 214n5 Irving, David, 175, 184 Jacobi, Käthe, 105, 120 Jacobi, Walter, 188 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 124 Japan, 26, 39 Jews: academic quotas for, 62, 65; American Jewish Congress, 36; discrimination against, 60–61; European, 175, 208n10; Leo Frank lynching, 61; in the South, 59–61 Jews in Huntsville: B’nai B’rith, 62; B’nai Sholom Reform Congregation, 62, 66, 184; Conservative Judaism, 62, 65–66, 227–228n103; discrimination against, 203; Etz Chayim Congregation, 66, 183; and German families, 78–81; Orthodox Judaism, 60, 227n102; Reform Judaism, 60–62, 66, 184, 227–228n103; and Rudolph case, 179–183; synagogue/temple, 61–62, 64, 65–66, 183, 184, 228 n103; Yiddish, 64, 80 Jim Crow, 8, 10, 19, 44, 45, 53, 60, 61, 73, 107, 125, 126, 129, 130, 132, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 144, 179, 202, 205, 222n3 Johnson, Lyndon B., 126 Jones, Bob, 89 Jones, John Rison Jr., 44, 83, 183–185 Jordan, Shug, 87 Journal of Historical Review, 175

index Jungert, Wilhelm, 35 Jürgensen, Rosemarie, 237n39 Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, 159 Kennel, Hans, 189 King, Martin Luther Jr., 54, 59 Klauss, Gudrun, 106–107, 141, 193, 239n67 Klauss, Rainer, 107, 140–141 Kuers, Werner, 237n39 LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr., 171 Lee, Thomas Jack, 164, 174 Lehrer, Tom, 150 Los Angeles Times, 156 Luehrsen, Hannes, 84 Luehrsen, Thomas, 115, 123–124, 190–192, 198–199 Lula (African American domestic worker), 135–136 Lundquist, Charles A. (Chuck), 49, 83–84 May, Karl, 113 McCarthy, Joseph, 95 McCarthy, Thomas, 7 McInnish, Hugh, 172–173, 184; writing as Thomas Franklin, 172 Medaris, John, 170–171 Medenica, Heidi, 101, 104, 106, 189, 190 Meese, Edwin, 172 memory: distancing from the Nazi past, 117, 144, 194, 201; divergent memories of V-2 production, 152, 158; Germans in Huntsville remembering Germany, 112–120; Germans remembering Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s, 100–112, 132, 134–136, 139–143; landscape, 157; leaving German past behind, 8, 117, 205; memoirs, 75, 102, 104, 126–127, 132, 150, 152, 203, 222n10, 229n4, 235n14, 237n30; mnemonic community, 202, 204; and national narrative of German

299

rocketeers, 152, 200, 203–204; Nazi past as taboo subject, 141, 244n47; non-German residents remembering Huntsville in the 1950s and 1960s, 43–44, 47–53, 55–57, 59, 62–69; remembering families of victims of the Holocaust, 203–204; remembering past events after migration, 210n19; remembering the German rocketeers, 152; remembering the Germans as neighbors in Huntsville, 12, 71–73, 76–92, 128–133, 137–139, 143–144; remembering the Rudolph case, 177–195, 197–200; studies, 210n19; transnational, 9–11, 210n19; white people’s, 12 military, U.S.: air force, 25, 39, 50, 233n58, 234n66; armed forces, 31, 74, 223n12; army, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10–11, 14, 25–26, 28, 35–39, 42, 44, 46, 49, 55, 70, 72, 74, 77, 85, 87–91, 99, 108, 116, 130, 137, 146, 148–149, 151–152, 156–157, 159, 164, 171–173, 176, 178, 183, 215n10, 234n66, 236n17, 254n28; Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), 170–171, 177; basic personnel record (army), 31; civilian employees 25–26, 74; high commissioner for Germany, 37; Huntsville Arsenal, 45–46, 231n22, 233n58; investigation reports on German specialists, 31–32; Joint Chiefs of Staff, 26, 29–31; Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), 29; military-industrial complex, 50; navy, 25, 33; OMGUS, 32–33, 36; Ordnance Missile Development Division, 74, 89; prisoners of war, 46, 78, 80–81, 129–131, 147, 182, 203, 222–223n10; Redstone Arsenal (see Huntsville, Alabama); secretary of the army, 37; secretary of war, 31, 36, 41; security dossiers, 28, 31, 216n31; soldiers, 45, 53, 75, 130, 132–134; War Department (see government, U.S.); Wright Field, Ohio, 25, 39–40 Miller, Dolores, 64

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Miller, I. B. “Buddy,” 63–64, 80, 181–182, 222n10 Miller, Solomon, 79–80, 85, 180, 182, 201, 222n10 Mittelbau-Dora: Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial, 162; Mittelwerk GmbH, 137, 148, 152, 154, 160–161, 166–169, 183, 186, 190, 195. See also concentration camps: Dora; Germany: Nordhausen Moak, Rod, 177–178 Moquin, Joseph, 174 Murphy, James, 171 NASA, 2, 6, 11, 14, 44, 46, 48–49, 59, 68, 71–72, 87–88, 90, 112, 115, 128, 145, 151–152, 164, 170–171, 173, 176, 180, 193–194; Kennedy Space Center, 38; Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), 1–2, 11, 44, 70–71, 85, 128, 170; NASA-MSFC Retiree Association, 73 National Air and Space Museum, 158, 204 National security, 27–28, 30–31, 38–40, 157 Nazism and Nazis: ardent Nazis, 24–25, 28, 30, 33, 36–37, 97, 146, 154, 156–157, 192, 216n28, 245n1; “good” Nazis, 146, 153, 244–245n1; ideology, 30, 36, 79, 150; Nazi Party (NSDAP), 32–34, 36, 40, 154, 156, 185; NS Frauenschaft, 36; Nuremberg trials, 95; organizations, 25, 36–37; regime, 3–5, 7–8, 14–15, 17, 25–26, 29–30, 33–34, 36, 40–42, 74–76, 78–80, 85, 96–97, 112, 117–118, 120, 140–142, 144–145, 150, 157–159, 165, 168, 177, 179, 184–185, 189–190, 192–197, 199–202, 205; SS (Protection Squadron), 37, 75, 147–149, 151, 154, 158, 160–161, 166–167, 194; Third Reich, 78, 96, 117, 136–137, 142, 144, 199–201, 209; totalitarian system, 96, 194–196; Wehrmacht, 80; Werewolf (Unternehmen Werwolf), 42 Neubert, Erich, 166

Neufeld, Michael J., 11, 15, 89, 174, 185–186, New York Times, 1, 3, 36, 39–40, 156, 158, 205 Nicaise, Placide D., 176 Office of Special Investigations (OSI), 4, 6, 15, 43, 93, 152–156, 158, 160–162, 165–172, 174–177, 183, 185–191, 193–194, 196–200, 202, 204–205; formation of, 153–154; investigation of Arthur Rudolph (see Rudolph, Arthur) Ordway, Frederick I., III, 11, 15, 49, 152, 171–173 Padulo, Louis, 174 Pätz, Robert, 237n43 Petrone, Rocco, 193 Pfaff, Helmuth, 237n39 Pittsburgh Courier, 53 Polin, Diana, 49, 65–66, 179–180 Polin, Howard, 49, 65–66, 180, 227n103 Powell, Colin, 242n27 Power DeShields, Theresa, 55 Prasthofer, Edel, 111 Prasthofer, Willibald, 111 Project Paperclip, 3, 25–26, 29, 31–32, 35–36, 38–39, 41–42, 94, 145, 150, 152–153, 157–158, 176, 191; morality of, 30, 145; press releases, 42; prisoners of peace, 27; Project Overcast, 25–26, 214n4; protest against, 24–25, 40–41. See also German rocketeers; immigration to United States race, 4, 17, 22, 50, 154–155, 200; Aryan, 154; institutionalized/systemic racism, 45, 128, 139; interracial children, 132; racial bias, 20; racial caste system, 136; racial climate, 59, 140; racial diversity, 11; racial equality, 53; racial “etiquette,” 143; racial hierarchy, 134, 137; racial injustice, 7, 30, 54, 61; racial matters, 135, 141; “racial mixing,” 133; racial policies (Nazi Germany), 136, 202, 205; racial strife, 142. See also civil rights

index movement, Alabama: segregation; civil rights movement, Huntsville: segregation; Huntsville, Alabama: race relations Rausch, Richard, 237n39 Ray, Charles Jr., 55–57, 90–91, 143–144, 222n10 Reagan, Ronald, 170, 172 Rees, Eberhard, 170–171, 237n39 Reiss, Matthias, 78 Rheinfurth, Mario, vi, 103, 115, 189 Richter-Haaser, Elfriede, 102, 104–105, 132 rockets, 2–3, 15, 44, 59, 72, 74, 89–90, 99, 144; guided missiles, 3, 26, 36, 46; rocket development, 2–3, 6, 8, 10–11, 25–26, 44, 46, 49, 51, 53, 62, 73–74, 85–86, 88–89, 91, 95, 97, 116, 146–147, 158, 165, 169, 180, 183, 186, 201, 204; parts for, 152–153; Saturn V, 1, 3, 156, 164, 193; V-2, 3, 6, 21, 26, 39, 42, 97, 137, 145–152, 154–155, 158–159, 165, 181–183, 185–186, 196, 202, 204, 245n5 Rocket Team (Ordway III and Sharpe), 151–152, 158, 165–166, 171 Rosenbaum, Eli, 11, 15, 152–154, 158, 169, 191, 253n23 Rosenthal, Max, 48, 64, 88 Roth, Axel, 98–99, 101, 123, 129, 197 Rothe, Heinrich, 240n87 Rothe, Ruth, 258n96 Rudolph, Arthur, 4, 6, 43, 93, 145–163; Friends of (organization), 173; OSI investigation of, 6, 151–156, 168, 170, 177, 185, 187, 190–191; photo of, 27; response to war crimes accusation, 154–155, 160, 168–169, 174–175; war crimes accusation against, 4–5, 43, 145, 154–155, 160, 167–168, 178–181, 187, 189, 200 Rudolph, Marianne, 170, 181 Rudolph case, 4, 8–9, 11, 14–15, 42, 96, 144, 145–163; in California, 175; in Canada, 174–175, 188; in Germany, 159–163; and Holocaust denial (see Holocaust); national responses to, 155–159; reactions in Huntsville,

301

166–186. See also African Americans in Huntsville; German families in Huntsville; Jews in Huntsville Sahl, Mort, 150 Saturn V, 1, 3, 156, 164, 193 Scheufelen, Klaus, 252n17 Schiffman (family name), 62, 227n88 Schrader, Dieter, 102, 236n29 Seibel, Wolfgang, 196 Sieber, Rolf, 191 slavery, in the United States, 7–8, 10, 43, 45, 60, 126, 137, 179, 205 Smith, Michael, 137–138 social position, 20, 44, 70, 91, 98, 123, 130–131, 136–137, 139. See also German families in Huntsville; whites: white privilege South, U.S.: agriculture, 44–45, 51, 222n6; Bible belt, 44, 60, 116; culture, 136, 140, 143; Deep, 26, 44; economy, 67–68; southern hospitality, 106 Sparkman, John, 89, 233n58 Spencer, Loretta, 47, 82, 109 Sputnik, 3, 68, 151, 207–208n5 Struck, Heinz, 118–119, 189, 222n10 Stuhlinger, Ernst, 23–24, 94, 112–113, 120, 166, 198, 237n39 Tanner, Alice, 47–48, 77–79, 82 Taylor, James “Jimmie,” 76–77, 90–91, 177–178 Teledyne Brown Engineering, 174 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 46, 52 Teuber, Dieter, 105, 107, 117–118, 189 Teuber, Susanne, 110, 117–119, 134–136, 189, 236n17 Thiokol, 49 Toftoy, Holger N., 26, 46, 89, 215n10 Traficant, James, 173 Truman, Harry S., 33, 40–41, 89, 95 USA Today, 166 Vann, Ursula, 100, 105–106, 108–109, 119, 181, 191–192

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Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 6–8, 164–200, 205 victims: Germans as, 74–75, 165–166, 168, 177–178, 186, 188, 193, 196, 199; of Nazi regime, 25, 29, 40–41, 145, 150, 152, 159, 165, 200, 204–205 von Braun, Magnus, 148 von Braun, Wernher, 3, 5, 11, 15, 26, 35–36, 42, 68, 71–76, 98, 113, 116, 131, 150, 164, 169, 230n10; celebration of, 1, 71, 85, 149–150, 173, 201; civic center named for, 71, 201; criticism of, 42, 72, 137–138, 149–150; as director of MSFC, 170–171; influence on Huntsville, 81, 84–89, 92, 139, 202–204; move to Washington, D.C., 194; perceptions of, 88–91, 145–146, 159, 162, 201, 232n43, 253n23; photos of, 2, 27, 128; publications by, 150; and rocket team 1, 3, 23, 84, 105, 149, 153, 155, 193, 199, 208n6; and use of concentration camp laborers for V-2 rockets, 137, 151–152, 158–159, 248n34, 252n17; on working for the United States, 116–117 von Saurma, Ruth, 170, 185, 236n17, 237n39 von Tiesenhausen, Georg, 237n39 Voss, Werner, 252n17 Vowe, Theodor Karl, 237n39 Wagner, Hermann, 252n17 Wagner, Margarete “Gretel,” 187, 193, 252n17

Wallace, George C., 54, 57, 128, 139–140, 225n48 war: Double Victory Campaign, 53; Korean, 42, 76, 88, 95, 177; Korean War veterans, 177; World War I, 29, 133; World War II, 3–5, 7–10, 20–21, 23–25, 29, 41–42, 45–46, 53, 64–65, 67, 78, 80–81, 95, 112–113, 118, 130, 132–134, 137, 140, 146, 150, 155, 165, 176, 191, 196, 201, 203; World War II veterans, 53, 76, 177. See also Holocaust: war crimes Ward, Bob, 15, 76, 86, 92, 211n28 Washington Post, 38, 156, 159 Webb, James E., 59, 128 Weber, Fritz, 235n10 whites: non-Jewish Huntsville residents, 12–13, 21, 43–44, 46, 50–52, 55–60, 70, 73, 76, 78, 81, 87, 107, 126–130, 132, 134, 137–138, 140–141, 144, 178–179, 186, 191, 202, 205; white privilege, 61, 124, 127, 130–131, 137; white supremacy, 45, 53–54 White Sands Proving Ground (New Mexico), 26, 35–36, 39, 84, 89, 183, 218n46 Wiesman, Walter, 85, 166, 169, 237n39 Williams, Frank, 50, 66, 87 Winterberg, Friedwardt, 172, 254n36 Winterstein, William E. Sr., 176 Wise, Stephen S., 36, 41 Zeiler, Albert, 237n39 Zierdt, John G., 174