Dark Side of the Moon

[Monte Davis]

Dave Monroe links to:

Biddle, Wayne.  Dark Side of the Moon:
   Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race.
   New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009.

Not entirely unlike the last book of that title, way back in 2006:

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Moon-Magnificent-American/dp/0814719953/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258217529&sr=8-3

I won't repeat the full rant from last time around (IIRC, set off by Freeman Dyson in the NYRB), but it's hard to imagine anyone but a 25-year-old Norton editorial assistant or publicist being "stunned" or "haunted" to discover that 

(1) Von Braun and his lieutenants cared more about advancing rocketry than anything else
(2) The 1950s ballistic missile race built on Peenemunde expertise on both sides
(3) The 1960s space race couldn't have happened without technology from the 1950s ballistic missile race
(4) The space race was embedded in and largely (but not entirely) inspired by Cold War competition. Apollo was there to deliver on JFK's beat-the-Soviets promise, not to initiate a sensible course (in engineering and economic terms) for either exploration or exploitation of space.  

By the late 1950s, virtually every "revelation" of the last 50 years about WvB, the V-2 and the Peenemunde-Huntsville axis was already out there in print, in the UK and western Europe -- and in the US for those who cared, including nascent space junkies like me. I read to pieces, for example, my copy of

http://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Rocket-Weapon-Ballantine-Books/dp/0345062736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258218503&sr=1-1

This stuff was neither unknown nor suppressed; it was simply rolled over by the post-Sputnik juggernaut of enthusiasm and publicity for Our Rocket Scientists, Our Clean-Cut Astronauts, and Our Flag at Tranquility Base. I'm fine with retelling and reinterpreting history, whether pop or academic... but the "now it can be told" spin of books like this is bogus. Try "now we might be ready to listen."

 -Monte