Well, a large number of the team were captured by the Soviets, and that was the foundation of the Soviet space program. So basically you had Germans working on weapons systems against their coworker Germans from Germany. Except I understand [that] the [Soviets]—my understanding is that they observed, they recorded and documented all the knowledge [that] they could glean from those Germans that they had in their possession they’d captured, and then at some point they just released them back towards, you know, demolished Germany, because they wanted their own space program.
Okay.
And the reason that we probably ended up beating them in the space race [sic], okay, was because they did release their German team members and we kept ours here in the United States and let them go full development for the Saturn V missile to the moon.
[…]
So you’re saying [that] after World War II to [19]69, the Germans were running the show here?
Absolutely.
But they Americanized.
Dr. Wernher von Braun was running the show here.
Yeah, but they Americanized?
Yes. They were given naturalization citizenships.
Click here for events that happened today (July 3).
1934: At a Reich cabinet meeting they agreed on a law that murder without trial was lawful if done for the defence of the state. Meanwhile, in his Order of the Day, Reich Minister of War Werner von Blomberg praised his Chancellor’s soldierly decision and the exemplary courage used to wipe out traitors and mutineers of the Sturmabteilung.
1938: Kenkichi Ueda, Imperial ambassador to the Empire of Manchuria, arrived in Lushun to dedicate the ground-breaking ceremony of a grand Shinto shrine in Lushun, Liaoning Province, China.
1940: As the Luftwaffe aircraft bombed Cardiff in Wales, General Franz Halder, the Wehrmacht’s Chief of Staff, asked his staff to consider a ‘military blow’ in the east, to keep the Soviet forces at arm’s length.
1941: The Axis eliminated the Bialystok pocket in Poland, taking 300,000 prisoners, and Werner Mölders received Swords to his Knight’s Cross his Chancellor. Axis submarine Leonardo da Vinci sighted a freighter in the Atlantic Ocean at 1201 hours. At 1540 hours, the ship was identified as Portuguese freighter Carvalho Araujo. Alessandro Malaspina sighted a destroyer in the Atlantic Ocean at 1115 hours at the distance of 8,000 meters. She dove and was able to escape detection.
1942: As the Axis captured Sevastopol and the 4th Panzer Army crossed the Don River near Voronezh in Russia, the Third Reich’s head of state arrived at Poltava, Ukraine to meet with Fedor von Bock to discuss the offensive in southern Russia. The Axis’s 15th Panzer Division, 21st Panzer Divisions, and XX Motorized Corps attacked Ruweisat Ridge near El Alamein, Egypt, making little progress, but the Axis submarine U‐132 arrived in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence off Québec. Axis submarine U‐215 sank Allied ship Alexander Macomb (and its 9,000 tons of war goods for the Soviets) one hundred fifty kilometers east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts at 1230 hours; ten died but fifty‐seven lived. Allied armed antisubmarine warfare trawler HMS Le Tiger counterattacked and sank U‐215 with depth charges, massacring all forty‐eight aboard. Lastly, Tōkyō officially canceled the invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea.
1943: The SS took direct control of Drancy internment camp in Paris, installing Alois Brunner as the commandant, and Axis bombers attacked supply dumps on Rendova, Solomon Islands, but failed to cause significant damage. Köln suffered a heavy air raid, but the Axis launched Operation Citadel, aimed at encircling and destroying Soviet forces in the Orel‐Belgorod salient in the Soviet Union. (Soviet air activity had delayed this launch by one day.)
1944: At 0358 hours, having intercepted the intelligence that a Soviet offensive was to be launched on this day, scores of Axis aircraft attacked Soviet staging points in Finland, followed by an artillery bombardment.