On this anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, it's worth revisiting the story of one of history’s most celebrated engineers—Dr. Wernher von Braun. Known as the visionary behind NASA’s Saturn V and the Apollo Moon landing, von Braun’s legacy is complicated by a darker chapter: his role in the Nazi V-2 rocket program, built on the backs of thousands of slave labourers in underground tunnels beneath a mountain in central Germany.

In the final years of World War II, the Nazis shifted production of their V-2 ballistic missile to a vast subterranean facility in the Kohnstein mountain known as Mittelwerk, supplied by the labour of prisoners from the Dora–Mittelbau concentration camp. These prisoners—political detainees, resistance fighters and people abducted from across Europe—were forced to work in inhumane conditions, enduring starvation, beatings, disease and death.

Over 20,000 prisoners died at Mittelbau-Dora, more than twice the number of civilians killed by V-2 rocket strikes. This grim death toll wasn’t a tragic by-product—it was intrinsic to the operation. American forces arrived just in time to prevent the tunnels from being sealed with the remaining prisoners trapped inside. And who visited these tunnels, inspecting rocket progress? Wernher von Braun.

On this anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, it's worth revisiting the story of one of history’s most celebrated engineers—Dr. Wernher von Braun. Known as the visionary behind NASA’s Saturn V and the Apollo Moon landing, von Braun’s legacy is complicated by a darker chapter: his role in the Nazi V-2 rocket program, built on the backs of thousands of slave labourers in underground tunnels beneath a mountain in central Germany.

In the final years of World War II, the Nazis shifted production of their V-2 ballistic missile to a vast subterranean facility in the Kohnstein mountain known as Mittelwerk, supplied by the labour of prisoners from the Dora–Mittelbau concentration camp. These prisoners—political detainees, resistance fighters and people abducted from across Europe—were forced to work in inhumane conditions, enduring starvation, beatings, disease and death.

Over 20,000 prisoners died at Mittelbau-Dora, more than twice the number of civilians killed by V-2 rocket strikes. This grim death toll wasn’t a tragic by-product—it was intrinsic to the operation. American forces arrived just in time to prevent the tunnels from being sealed with the remaining prisoners trapped inside.
And who visited these tunnels, inspecting rocket progress? Wernher von Braun.

The Engineer and the Camp

Von Braun, a brilliant Prussian engineer born in 1912, was obsessed with spaceflight from a young age. His dreams earned him a job with the German Army in 1932. After the Nazis came to power, his team at Peenemünde developed the A-4 rocket, rebranded as the V-2—the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. After Peenemünde was bombed in 1943, the V-2 program relocated to Mittelwerk.

Von Braun later claimed ignorance of the atrocities at Dora, stating he only visited the factory occasionally and didn’t witness the horrors directly. But documents, testimonies and his own letters tell a different story.

One particularly damning episode involved Charles Sadron, a French physicist and resistance member held at Dora. Von Braun personally offered Sadron a transfer to better conditions in exchange for his technical expertise. Sadron refused. Von Braun then wrote to the Buchenwald camp commandant asking for the reassignment of “intelligent prisoner specialists” and requested civilian clothes and privileges for Sadron. He signed the letter with “Heil Hitler”.
These are not the actions of a man unaware of the system. They are the actions of someone working within it—using prisoners as technical assets.

A (Nazi) Party Man

Von Braun joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1940, rising to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). He later downplayed these affiliations, claiming they were made under duress. While it’s true many Germans joined the party to keep their careers, von Braun’s postwar attempts to distance himself raise ethical questions, especially given his documented involvement at Dora.

His attitude toward the suffering around him is captured in the infamous satirical song by Tom Lehrer:

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
‘That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.”

While the Nuremberg Trials exposed Nazi war crimes, including the use of slave labour, von Braun never stood trial. He wasn’t even investigated. Why? Because his knowledge was too valuable.

By 1945, as Germany collapsed, von Braun and his team fled west, surrendered to U.S. troops, and were quietly ushered into Operation Paperclip—a covert American program designed to extract German scientific expertise while sanitizing war records. Intelligence officers scrubbed damning details from von Braun’s file, including his SS rank and knowledge of forced labour, attaching whitewashed summaries with literal paperclips.

President Truman had insisted no “ardent Nazis” be brought over. That promise was undermined. The Cold War had begun, and the Americans were eager to beat the Soviets at any cost.

The American Space Hero

In the U.S., von Braun became a citizen, advised Walt Disney on space-themed TV specials, and eventually joined NASA, where he spearheaded the development of the Saturn V rocket. When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, he was hailed as a hero. Newspapers dubbed him “father of the Saturn V,” and the past faded into a footnote.
But back in West Germany, trials for war crimes at Mittelbau-Dora resumed. Von Braun’s name surfaced repeatedly. He was eventually asked to testify—by phone. His defence? He had no control over labour. He was “just the rocket guy.”

In the decades after his death in 1977, historians began re-examining Operation Paperclip. When Arthur Rudolph, another NASA engineer and former Mittelwerk manager, was denaturalized in 1984 for his wartime actions, the question naturally followed: what about von Braun?

Historians like Michael J. Neufeld combed through declassified documents, revealing von Braun’s deep entanglement in the Nazi system. Survivors of Dora told their stories. The narrative shifted: von Braun was no longer a symbol of pure scientific idealism but a case study in moral compromise.

Was von Braun a visionary or a villain? A victim of circumstances?

He helped humanity touch the Moon. But he also enabled a regime that enslaved and murdered thousands. He accepted rank and honours from the Nazis, then reaped fame and fortune in the U.S. The legacy of Wernher von Braun forces us to confront a hard truth: history often celebrates achievement without fully reckoning with the cost. As we remember the principles laid down at Nuremberg—that no one is above justice—we must also remember those who never got their day in court.