Dez Reviews The Book 'Space Race' by Deborah Cadbury (2005)

"It will take 30 hours to get to the Moon and 24 hours to clear Russian customs officials there" - Bob Hope, 1959

The Cold War era has always been a favorite historical period for me, and within that, the Space Race has always been one of my favorite topics. Deborah Cadbury's excellent book, 'Space Race: The Epic Battle Between America and The Soviet Union For Dominion of Space,' takes the somewhat familiar framework of picking two key players, and through the telling and contrasting of their stories, attempts to tell the whole story of the period (at least from World War II through Apollo 11). "Space race" might be a misnomer, the book is really about the development of rocket science during this period. Fortunately for the reader, the two protagonists have fascinating life stories that at times read like spy novels. Ex-Nazi, ex-SS officer, designer of hell from the skies in the form of Hitler's V-2 rocket Werner von Braun became the unlikely and controversial (due to his past) hero for the Americans, while the mysterious and shadowy "chief designer" (as most of the world, including everyday Russians, never knew his name until his death) Sergei Korolev anchors the Soviet race for celestial domination. Both men have almost childlike enthusiasm and dreams of space travel (the description of Korolev's awe when touching and looking at the first satellite, Sputnik, is oddly quite touching), but the harsh realities of mid-20th century events intrude and make them compromise their otherwise pure motives, be it Hitler's Nazi Germany or Stalin's years of Terror. Von Braun is suave, sophisticated and has a certain darkness about him (I guess you would have to if you were SS), it is his story that draws you in at first. But by the end of the book, the real heart and soul, the real emotional connection is with the doomed chief designer, Korolev.

The first part of the book follows Von Braun during the last years of World War II. For the rest of his life, he denied supporting Nazi ideology and denied any direct link to slave and prisoner labor. Recently declassified documents, however, tell a different story. The chaos of the last days of Nazi Germany is captured wonderfully by Cadbury, as she writes about Von Braun and Hitler's V-2 team scrambling through the countryside, trying to decide whether they would rather be captured by Americans or Soviets, all the while avoiding SS death squads with orders from Hitler to kill all of his rocket scientists rather than have them fall into enemy hands. It reads like an adventure story.

My take on Von Braun: I do not think that he loved genocide. I believe him when he claimed he joined the SS not out of ideology, but as a way to get support for his groundbreaking research in rocketry. If those rockets happen to be loaded with warheads and reign death over London, then so be it. Von Braun, at the very least, had some indirect authority over the futuristic V-2 Mittelwerk facility that was hidden inside of a mountain and that used concentration camp slave labor. Tens of thousands of victims lost their lives at Mittelwerk. While he did not do any personal killing or did not oversee concentration camps, he knowingly benefited from the labor and did not raise any objections. His dreams of rocketry were too important. Too important to the Americans too. The military classified his war record in order to bring him and his team back to the States to kick start our own rocketry program. The Soviets also got some Germans to help start their rocket programs, but as my favorite quote from the film 'The Right Stuff' goes, "our Germans are smarter than their Germans." While Von Braun becomes a celebrity in the U.S. and was one of the most important early faces of the U.S. space program, while Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ give Von Braun the resources of Fort Knox for his development of the Redstone and later his crowning achievement, the Saturn V, his Russian counterpart Sergei Korolev has a much different experience.

ABOVE: Werner Von Braun was a hero to the American space program, the architect of our rockets through the Apollo moon landings. He had also been an SS officer and designed Hitler's devastating V-2 rockets. His links to Holocaust war crimes are still hotly debated.

Korolev, like many Russian intellectuals, got caught up in Stalin's purges and spent years in a Siberian gulag. He lost his marriage and for many years his relationship with his beloved daughter. Later he is miraculously released and allowed to lead the way for the Soviets into space. Many of us are well aware of the American side of this story, but one of the most captivating aspects of this book is the vivid telling of the Soviet space program. The "chief designer" and other players, like daredevil first man in space Yuri Gagarin, really come to life. Korolev is a man to be admired, not only winning the early battles of the space race, but doing so with less resources, dazzling McGyver-like creativity and all under the unpredictable and capricious leadership of Stalin and then Khrushchev. It is quite humorous how Khrushchev keeps demanding more dazzling "firsts" to embarrass the Americans, safety be damned. What is incredible is how Korolev (barely) pulls them off with great skill and luck, giving the Americans the impression that the Soviets were only months away from launching Death Stars, Imperial Cruisers and conquering star systems, when it was so not the case.

Take this typically haphazard re-entry story:

"In order to get to the orientation porthole, Belyayev had to lie across both seats. Leonov got out of the way, under the seat, holding on to Belyayev to keep him steady. The task completed, they scrambled back to their seats before firing the engine...reentry began. But as had happened so often before, the capsule did not separate from the instrument module. They were tied together, like a pair of old boots floundering through space. The gravitational loads on the men reached 10 g's...[they go way off course]...For four hours, there was no communication. Korolev had no idea that they were, in fact, safe but very cold, having landed in an area of thick forest in deepest Siberia, where they spent two freezing nights, the craft suspended between two trees above great drifts of snow."

Sometimes the Soviets weren't so lucky. In a launch pad disaster that Korolev played little part in, it is estimated that 150 Russian space program workers were killed. Political pressure was so intense to best the Americans, many corners were cut. The Russian general pushing the launch was sitting in a chair on the launch pad overseeing the work, and he too was burned to a crisp in the inferno. When Khrushchev questioned the designer who was in charge of that particular mission, his question was: "why aren't you dead?" This disaster was kept secret from the Soviet people for decades, yet more died than in all of the deaths combined in the American space tragedies.

ABOVE: The mysterious Soviet "chief designer," Sergei Korolev. Cadbury's book brings him to life, not only looking at his accomplishments, but following his riveting personal story. Unlike Von Braun's celebrity status in the U.S., his identity was kept secret from the Soviet people until his death. After his death, he was honored as a Soviet hero and is still revered by Russians to this day.

Overall, this book is a riveting tale of dreams, compromises, dark secrets and man's quest to break his earthly bonds. Cadbury also gives excellent and entertaining accounts of the first pioneers of space, not astronauts and cosmonauts, but the Russian dogs and American chimps who went first. The Mercury program is covered in amusing detail as well, a la 'The Right Stuff.' There is so much here, if this period interests you at all, it is a must read.

Dez Says: **** out of *****

ABOVE: Enos the space chimp. Enos was the second American space chimp, going up after the more famous Ham. Enos had a habit that was quite irritating and embarrassing to NASA. When on missions, he would masturbate in the capsule to pass the time. He also did it for delighted reporters at press conferences, earning him the nickname "Enos the...", well, you know.