One man faced the decision of who to
surrender to during WWII. Wehner Von Braun designed and headed up the
construction of Germany’s V-2 Combat Rocket was an amazing scientist. Near the end
of the war, he found himself near the city of Peenemünde, where he would be
captured by the Soviets if he did not take any action. He held a meeting with
his fellow scientists to consider whether they should surrender to the Soviets
or the Americans because they knew they would have to surrender to somebody,
and they decided that it would be better to surrender to the Americans.
So he developed fake documents and had him and his team of scientists transferred to Mittlemark, an area that looked like it would be taken over by the Americans.
On his way there, he was in a serious
car wreck. When he woke up in the hospital, he had them just set his arm so
that he could get out of there asap because he didn’t want to be taken by the
Soviets and wanted to make it to the Americans. He knew that a messed up arm
was far less worse than surrendering to the Soviets. Later, he would have to
have it rebroken and reset. But he made it to Mittlemark and waited for the
American troops to arrive.
The rest is history. After his
surrender to the Americans, Von Braun went on to develop the Jupiter – C rocket,
which launched America’s first satellite into space, and was the chief
architect of the Saturn V rocket, which took Americans to the moon.
