Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [48]
For von Braun, Einstein’s rebuke must have particularly stung. As a teenager in Germany, he had worshiped the theoretical physicist and had written to him, showing his own mathematical equations for spaceflight. Einstein had responded encouragingly, saying that von Braun would make a fine engineer. Now the Nobel laureate was questioning whether von Braun was even fit to be a citizen, much less a scientist.
American citizenship, though, was still far down the pike for von Braun and his German compatriots. As wards of the army, von Braun’s group was confined to a six-acre section of the base, kept isolated from other Fort Bliss personnel, and allowed no contact with the local population. “Daily life was quite regulated due to security requirements,” recalled Colonel William Winterstein, one of von Braun’s early military minders. “The dread that any of the German team may become involved in a public disturbance or accident hung over our heads at all times during those days before it was announced officially that they were in the United States.”
Eventually, the restrictions were loosened. In 1947, the thirty-five-year-old von Braun was allowed to return briefly to Germany—accompanied by armed guards—to marry his seventeen-and-a-half-year-old cousin, Maria. At Fort Bliss, security also gradually eased. Once a month, and then once a week, the Germans were bused to El Paso in escorted groups of four to spend a leisurely Saturday afternoon. They were issued IDs that read: “SPECIAL WAR DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEE. In the event that this card is presented off a military reservation to civilian authorities . . . it is requested that this office be notified immediately . . . and the bearer of this card NOT be interrogated.” The message was clear; the Germans were the property of the U.S. Army. And only under the supervision of armed MPs could they catch a screening of Zorro at the Palace Theatre, go shopping at the Popular Dry Goods Company Department Store, have lunch at the Hotel Cortez, or drink a beer at the Acme Saloon beneath sepia-toned photos of old gunslingers. The outlaw spirit of Wyatt Earp was very much alive in El Paso in the 1940s, and the place still had the rough-and-tumble feel of a frontier town. The streets were dusty and only partly paved. Pickup trucks and the occasional horse-drawn cart plied North Mesa Avenue. Pioneer Plaza swarmed with itinerant farmhands and migrant workers from Mexico. And the Parlor House bar district saw its fair share of fistfights between roughnecks and ranchers, freewheeling businessmen and fire-breathing preachers, who served notice on sinners from tow-away churches in mobile homes.
Wernher von Braun was not a natural fit in this mix. Born to an aristocratic family in 1912, he had been raised on estates in Silesia and East Prussia and in the family residence in Berlin. His father had served as a minister in the government that Hitler toppled. His mother, the Baroness Emmy von Quistorp, was of Swedish noble lineage, spoke six languages, and had been raised in England as a Renaissance woman with interests in astronomy and classical music. She passed her passion for astral and orchestral movements on to her son, who by the age of six had composed his first piano concerto and received his first telescope. In Peenemünde, which von Braun had selected as a research center based on the baroness’s recommendation, he pursued his love of music, playing cello in a string quartet of rocket scientists. His group had had its own private chamber in the Officers’ Club, Stuhlinger remembered: “His cello was accompanied by Rudolf Hermann’s and Heinrich Ramm’s violins, and by Gerhard Reisig’s viola,