STORY 1. HOW IGNORING KNOWLEDGE CAN LEAD TO IGNORANCE.
Every nation has its character traits, which are called mentality. All the characteristics of mentality, virtues, and vices are reflected in folklore. And before you trust the one you want to deal with, you should study his folklore.
In the mix of Asian tribes that call themselves Russians, two vices have prevailed since the time of the first khans, feudal lords, and tsars – envy and arrogance. This contagious bacillus affects only beggars. Living in squalor, they suffer from envy of the successful, so they are ready to steal and kill to get out of the mud. These two vices were realized in the Soviet times of the dictatorship of the lower class. By stealing, betraying, and killing, these natives of the lower class began to call themselves the elite. And when they reach the top, they boast of their position and try to get rid of those who witnessed their past. And folklore speaks of such “from the mud to the princes”. And those who remain in the mud try to drag others down with them. They call this striving for social equality.
In Russian folklore, there is also such an expression: “The fish rots from the head”. For Soviet people, the head is in the Kremlin. All the leaders of the Kremlin come from the grassroots, so envy and arrogance live and thrive at the highest level. Soviet people suffered from envy when they saw the achievements of the bourgeoisie. They wanted the same but didn’t know how. The Kremlin leader Stalin, seeing the suffering of his people, asked the West to industrialize his country so that the Soviet people could become equal partners in the family of other nations. And the leaders of the world powers, America and Germany, believed. In 10 years, their experts performed a miracle, turning a poor backwater on the edge of Europe into an industrial power. But Stalin appropriated this miracle, announcing it to the whole world as a conquest of socialism. And to prevent the foreign specialists who created this miracle from telling the truth in the West, they were declared foreign spies and all were shot in the Gulag. For ignorance of Russian folklore, the West paid a high price. And Soviet people could now boast and not suffer from envy.
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STORY 2. FOUNDERS OF PRACTICAL ASTRONAUTICS.
From Wikipedia: “…To commemorate the achievements of the Soviet people in space exploration, a monument was unveiled on 4 October 1964 in Moscow. It is an obelisk 107 meters high, on top of which is depicted a plume left by a rocket. The base of the monument is surrounded by bas-relief figures of people – scientists, engineers, and workers creating space technology. At the base of the obelisk there is a monument to the great Russian scientist, the founder of cosmonautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky…”.
In May 1998, NASA astronaut Andrew Thomas, on board the orbiting Russian space station, pointed his finger out the porthole and declared ‘Astronauts Day’. And the whole world wept with gratitude. With this innocent plagiarism, the astronaut showed his ignorance of the history of the organization that sent him into space. ‘Astronauts Day’ had been declared 56 years earlier.
The Treaty of Versailles ultimatum to Germany after World War I forbade offensive weapons. However, nothing was said about ballistic missiles. Simply because they did not exist and the scientific world did not know anything about these weapons yet.
In 1931, a secret laboratory was opened in the small town of Kummersdorf, near Berlin. Its first engineer was twenty-year-old Werner von Braun.
Synopsis: Werner Magnus Maximilian von Braun was born in 1912 in East Prussia, in the German Empire. He belonged to an aristocratic family and inherited the title of Baron. His mother, Emmy von Quistorp had both lines of ancestors going back to royal families. Von Braun was educated musically and could play works by Bach and Beethoven from memory. He played violin and piano from an early age and initially dreamed of becoming a composer. In 1930 von Braun entered the Technical University of Berlin, where he joined the “Society for Space Travel” and worked in a group to develop a liquid-fuelled rocket engine. This subject fascinated him for the rest of his life. After graduating in 1932, von Braun continued his studies at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. He worked on the development of rocket weapons and dreamed of space travel.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, the young scientist’s rocket developments immediately attracted the Führer’s attention. In 1934, von Braun was awarded a doctorate in rocketry by the University of Berlin. His dissertation, dated 16 April 1934 and entitled ‘Constructional, theoretical and experimental approaches to the problem of building a liquid-fueled rocket’, was classified and not published until 1960. In May 1937, the first ballistic missile was test-fired from an island in the Baltic Sea. Tests continued and the rocket grew like a demon, gradually sprouting claws. By March 1942, it weighed one ton and carried a deadly payload capable of destroying several city blocks. On 3 October 1942, the rocket launched vertically, entered space, and attacked its target.
On that day, the project manager, German General Dr Walter Dornberger, recorded the historic moment: “Our rocket opened the way to space. For the first time, we used space as a bridge between two points on Earth. This day, 3 October 1942, can be considered the first day of a new space age!”
(NASA astronaut Andrew Thomas, who found himself in space in May 1998, apparently did not know this, nor that the first director of his organization was Werner von Braun, who had built a space rocket in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s).
Hitler authorized the mass production of the ‘Vergeltungswaffe-2 ballistic space rocket, known in Soviet military documents as the FAU-2. Werner von Braun was personally awarded the title of Professor by Hitler. Two rockets were fired at London in early September 1944. The first fell in a wood a dozen miles from the target. The second hit a target in the western part of the British capital, causing 11 buildings to collapse and severely damaging many more. The mystery was that no one could understand the cause of such a massive explosion. The national press reported that it was a coal mine gas explosion. It was the beginning of Hitler’s ‘Operation Penguin’. The mystery continued, there were 22 more explosions that month, 85 in October and 154 in November, after which the German command announced the bombing of London with its secret weapons. From space, the rocket entered the Earth’s atmosphere at three times the speed of sound – it was like a clap of thunder. Then there were seconds of deathly silence, in which no one could know where this death would fall.
HOW DID THIS GET TO THE AMERICANS?
Hitler did not want a war with America. Too many American companies (over three hundred) had invested their millions to strengthen Germany’s power. Hitler forbade his submarines from operating in American territorial waters. He would have dealt with his enemies in Europe on his own, but then the Japanese came in and reshuffled the deck. Don’t trust the Asians! Hitler realized this too late and lost the war with America.
In the last two years of the war, diplomats and the highest echelons of Reich power tried to negotiate an armistice with America. After the failure of Hess’s mission, the Führer had given up hope of making peace with Britain. He understood America’s desire to deprive Britain of imperial power, to take possession of its colonies in Southeast Asia, rich in raw materials and rare metals. The bombing of London with space rockets was a kind of demonstration of new weapons in an attempt to induce America into an armistice and alliance against Bolshevik Russia.
But America wanted to own the world without partners. It didn’t need another empire. Perhaps America was waiting for Germany to finish off Britain and wear itself out fighting the Russians. Besides, the president of the United States was the stubborn Roosevelt. His second term was ending on 1 January 1941. The U.S. Constitution forbids a third term. Power is a dangerous drug, and those who have it for a long time become dictators. And they play with the law as they please.
But Roosevelt was allowed a third term on the pretext that the European war involved new countries and became a world war, and during the war, the president did not change. He was ill, never left his wheelchair, or perhaps he was simply tired of the presidency. Either way, electing him to a third term was a violation of the Constitution. Also, the war was a European war and only became a world war after America entered it a year later, in December 1941.
When they started bombing England with space rockets, the Americans realized that whoever had such weapons owned the world. In the spring of 1944, German nuclear scientists were close to completing their atomic program, and the end of the war would have been different if the rocket had that charge. America realized that there was no time to wait. Despite huge losses, Anglo-American divisions landed in Normandy, opening up a third, northern front for the Germans. The second was opened in September 1943 with the capitulation of Italy.
On 13 June 1944, during testing, a Fau-2 missile changed trajectory and exploded in mid-air over southwest Sweden. A month and a half later, the British exchanged the wreckage of the crashed missile for several mobile radars. The resulting debris was shipped to the United States, to a laboratory in Annapolis.
During the war, the Americans set up their secret “Manhattan Project”, whose main task was to create an atomic bomb using German technology. After landing in Normandy, the Americans and British immediately went on the hunt for the Germans’ space and atomic labs. One of these special groups was commanded by Lieutenant Ian Fleming, best known as the author of the Agent 007 James Bond novels. I have written an essay about this amazing war romantic person, and it is published here on my website.
On 2 May 1945, Werner von Braun, an SS major (a rank equivalent to an army general) the inventor of the ballistic space rocket, and a group of scientists from his laboratory surrendered to the Americans in the Bavarian Alps.
He explained his action: “We know we have created a new weapon and now the moral choice of which nation we want to entrust our brainchild to is before us. We don’t want the world to be involved in a conflict like the one Germany was involved in. We are giving our weapons to those who are instructed truly by the Bible and with that we can be sure that the world will be best protected.”
Werner von Braun headed the Army’s Weapons Design and Development Service in the United States at Fort Bliss, Texas. He became an American citizen in 1955 and headed the program to develop the ‘Redstone’ intercontinental ballistic missile and the ‘Explorer’ series of satellites.
Since 1960, von Braun has been a US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) member and Director of the NASA Space Flight Centre. He oversaw the development of the ‘Saturn’ series of launch vehicles and the ‘Apollo’ series of spacecraft. In the United States, he is considered the father of the American space program.
HOW DID THIS GET TO RUSSIANS?
Under Roosevelt, there were more Stalinist spies in the American government than senators. These spies immediately became involved in the Manhattan Project, buying up Jewish physicists and officials for American dollars and Soviet rewards. The brainchild of this project, the Little Boy atomic bomb, was dropped on Hiroshima by a bomber. The Americans did not yet have a ballistic missile, so America needed the Germans’ secret space weapon at any cost.
Werner von Braun’s rocket engine documentation was stolen by Soviet spies and that’s how the Russians got the engines for the R-1, R-2, and R-5 rockets.
Allen Dulles was one of the key figures of American policy in Europe. He headed the Swiss-based intelligence center that later became known as the CIA. When the Russians were involved in the Manhattan Project, Dulles was the first to realize that the USSR was America’s enemy.
1) Kim Philby, was a triple spy, a specialist in dirty deeds. He worked for the Russians, the Gestapo, and the CIA. In 1950 he was sent to Washington as a representative of British intelligence. There he became interested in American nuclear projects. After gaining access to top-secret documents, Philby passed them on to Moscow – for money, of course. But greed ruined him. A year later he was sacked from British intelligence on suspicion of links with the Russians. His services were paid for with a one-off £4,000 severance package, the equivalent of a prostitute’s income. The money barely lasted a year, so he begged the Russians for more. The Russians helped the spy survive for a few more years by employing him as a correspondent for English newspapers in Beirut.
In 1963, Philby was to the USSR, where he received orders, accommodation, and a pension. But he was cruelly disappointed in the land of dictatorship. Soviet Russia proved far from the socialist paradise Philby had dreamed of in his Cambridge youth. From the memoirs of his Russian wife Rufina Pukhova: “Kim was disappointed by much of what he saw here. He was shocked by the sight of poor people in bad clothes. He realized that all the promises of building communism had not been fulfilled. Eventually, he realized that he had been mistaken. If he had seen Russia today, he would have been even more upset. There is now a huge gap between the rich oligarchs and the poor…”. Philby became a heavy drinker and died alone, completely forgetful.
2) Abel (Fischer). In 1948, Fischer was sent to the USA as a spy to gather information from sources working in nuclear facilities. He had the papers of Andrew Kajotis, a US citizen of Lithuanian origin (who died in Lithuania in the same year, 1948). He had settled in New York under the name of the paint artist Emil Goldfuss and had a photographic studio in Brooklyn as a cover. He bought information from the Cohen family, who were stealing nuclear technology from the Americans. Fischer’s work was appreciated by his bosses and in 1949 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1957, Fischer was arrested by FBI agents. During his arrest, he mentioned the name of his late friend Rudolf Abel. During the investigation, he categorically denied being a member of the secret service. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison, but in 1962 he was exchanged for an American pilot Powers. His reconnaissance plane was shot down near Sverdlovsk, and Powers was sentenced by the Soviet court to 10 years in prison for espionage. In Moscow, Fischer participated in the training of young illegal spies until his death on 15 November 1971 at the age of 69.
3) Husband and wife Rosenberg. These had a family business selling information about the American nuclear bomb to Soviet spies. In 1953, the couple was sent to the electric chair in New York City.
4) Husband and wife Cohen. Shortly after Fischer’s arrest, the Cohen family was also imprisoned. However, they were luckier than the Rosenbergs. They were exchanged in 1969, honored, and pampered in the Kremlin. They lived in a KGB dacha near Moscow, but they refused to learn Russian and refused to communicate with their relatives in the United States. The Cohens were depressed, living under Brezhnev’s totalitarian regime. They died without coming out of the depression.
5) The spy Gordon Lonsdale was also depressed after he was exchanged and sent to Russia. There he got drunk and one day, in October 1970, died accidentally while hiking for mushrooms, aged 48.
6) German Jewish physicist Klaus Fuchs joined the Communist Party in his 22nd year. He fled to the UK because he was sentenced to death in his homeland. At the University of Bristol, he obtained a doctorate in physics. From 1941, under the supervision of Professor Born, Fuchs worked with a group of nuclear scientists as part of the Manhattan Project. He sold his part of the research to the Russians. Fuchs also sold the documentation on the design of the atomic bomb to the Soviets.
As a result, the USSR was able to create atomic weapons astonishingly fast, in just 3 years. This aroused the suspicion of the British secret services, which in the course of the inspection came up with the mole. Fuchs sold to USSR information about the hydrogen bomb, which allowed them to begin work on its creation even earlier than in the United States. Fuchs was arrested, and sentenced to only 14 years, as formally England and the USSR were still considered allies. Fuchs was released in 1959 and lived in the GDR for the rest of his life.
It turns out that if those spies had not stolen secrets from the Germans and Americans, then the names of Korolev and many Soviet engineers who worked in the Gulag over the blueprints delivered to them would have remained unknown. To restore historical justice, the figures of all those spies and corrupt thieves should be bas-relief in Moscow on the monument of a 107-meter obelisk. In the upper honorable row.
The names of Soviet scientists and engineers who created (pardon me, copied!) atomic and hydrogen bombs, space rockets, and other flying, floating, and shooting mechanisms for the happiness of the Soviets with documents stolen from the Germans and Americans are secondary.
Tsiolkovsky, the founder of theoretical cosmonautics, would probably agree with this.
© Copyright: Walter Maria, 2020 Certificate of Publication No.220122901557
Very interesting subject, thanks for posting.