As is inevitable for a man who managed both the V-2 program for the Nazi regime and the Saturn V rocket development program for NASA, Wernher von Braun remains a controversial figure. As well as appearing as a character in Thomas Pynchon’s 70s classic Gravity’s Rainbow, von Braun has been the subject of numerous biographies and biopics, all with a different slant on the degree to which technology and ideology can be separated.
This debate has been reopened by a review of Wayne Biddle’s new Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race, to which the author replies here.