Wernher von Braun
At the same time, in the United States, one man is perhaps gloating a little more than the rest. He is the designer of the launcher Saturn V, the giant 111-meter rocket that carries our three astronauts. Wernher von Braun finally fulfills his childhood dream… but at what price?
This is an unexpected rendezvous with him that La Coupole and the Blockhaus d’Éperlecques are offering you. He’s not waiting for you in 1969, or even in 1961 when Gagarin made his first trip into Space, or even in 1957 when Sputnik emitted its first beep, but in 1942… during the Second World War.
In one photo, he seems to greet you with a smile and a disconcerting charisma. He’s not yet American, he’s German, has joined the Nazi Party and on October 3 has just developed the V2 rocket, a secret weapon designed to destroy London and turn the tide of the war. In order to launch the rockets, manufactured by forced laborers in the terrible Dora camp in central Germany, secret bases were built: the Blockhaus d’Éperlecques and then La Coupole. Fortunately, they never functioned – although rockets did leave from mobile bases – but they remain symbols of man’s folly, beacons on the dark side of the conquest of space, hearts still beating when those of the last living witnesses disappear
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