MDDM18: German

[Nika Bertram]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002 Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:

> >"There, over the Evening, he will find, among the
> >Clientele, German Enthusiasts ..." (M&D, Ch. 30, p.
> >298)
> 
> >But what IS the deal with "German" here?

did a bit of google-ing here, and came up with that:
(from 
http://kajaklib.kajak.fi/opetusmateriaalit/HeiJuk/TLP/TEMPS/UKKOJA.HTM)


Braun, Wernher Magnus Maximilian, von
(23.3.1912- ), saks.-am. raketti-ins.
HENKILÖKUVIA:
"[1122] BRAUN, Wernher Magnus Maximilian, von, German-American rocket
engineer,
Born: Wirsitz, Germany (now Wyrzysk, Poland), March 23, 1912
The son of a baron, Von Braun was educated in Z?rich, Switzerland, and
in
Berlin. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1934 at the University of Berlin. As an
adolescent Von Braun had grown interested in rocketry through his
reading of
science fiction, and in 1930 he joined a group of German enthusiasts,
including
Ley [1079], who were experimenting with rockets. Some eighty-five
rockets were
fired, one reaching an altitude of a mile.
 In 1932 the German Army took over the program. Hitler came to power the
next
year and by 1936 was building a rocket research center in Peenem?nde on
the
Baltic. In 1938 a rocket with an eleven-mile range had been built. This
all
became deadly serious, for World War II soon began and rocketry had a
crucial
military purpose.
 Von Braun himself joined the Nazi party in 1940 and under his
leadership the
first true missile, carrying its own fuel and oxygen, was shot off in
1942. In
1944 the missile came into combat use, too late, fortunately, to win the
war for
Hitler. The weapon was the famous V-2 (the V stood for Vergeltung,
meaning
'vengeance'). In all, 4300 V-2s were fired during the war, and of these,
1230
hit London. Von Braun's missiles killed 2511 Englishmen and seriously
wounded
5869 others.
 It might have been worse but for Hitler's interference and his
suspicions of
Von Braun. For a short time he was even placed under the custody of the
Gestapo.
 At the close of the war Von Braun and many colleagues fled westward to
surrender to the Americans. He was quickly brought to the United States
(he

became an American citizen in 1955) and he at once placed his talents at
the
service of his new employer.
 He was the leader of the group at Huntsville, Alabama, that placed
America's
first satellite (Explorer I) into orbit on January 31, 1958, after four
months
of post-Sputnik American agony. He might have preceded Sputnik if he had
been
given the go-ahead, but he was as hindered by American policy under
Eisenhower
as he had been hampered by German policy under Hitler." (Asimov's Biogr.
Encyc.
(1978), n:o 1122)