The Race for Space
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Race for Space |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 53 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK unchecked |
| Rod | |
| Director | David L. Wolper |
| script |
Laurence E. Mascott , David L. Wolper |
| production |
Jack Haley Jr. , David L. Wolper |
| music | Elmer Bernstein |
| cut | Philip R. Rosenberg |
| occupation | |
The Race for Space is an American documentary from 1959 that deals with the then current race into space .
content
At the beginning of the documentary, journalist Mike Wallace welcomes the viewer and begins to explain what the “Race for Space” will really be about. This contest between the United States and the Soviet Union is not just about propaganda and military progress. It is also about an idea that was dreamed of before the Cold War , about the journey to the stars. Space is the next frontier that humans will overcome to explore other worlds. The search for other forms of life, be man's fate, the next great adventure, the real race into space.
The rocket age began with the work of three rocket pioneers . In 1898 the Russian school teacher Konstantin Eduardowitsch Ziolkowski founded the science that should lead to space travel. Ziolkowski predicted that rockets would make space travel possible in the middle of the 20th century. He created plans for a space ship and coined the name "Sputnik", a Russian term for travel companions, for satellites that he foresaw. Soon after, an American named Robert Goddard began making rockets with liquid fuel, which was quite expensive. Goddard made his living as a college professor. In a pamphlet published shortly after World War I , Goddard claimed that it was possible to send scientific instruments to the moon. Due to the increasing range, heaviness and thus increasing danger of the rockets, Goddard finally relocated the rocket tests to Roswell in New Mexico . His developments in rocket technology resulted in over 200 patents . Copies of his granted patents were also sent to Germany. In Germany after the First World War there were a few idealists who believed in the dream of a journey to the stars and who founded an association for space travel , the chairman of which was the theoretician Hermann Oberth . One of these enthusiastic members was the young Wernher von Braun , who would later become one of the heroes of the American space program. The Germans experimented with missiles in many ways.
Like Goddard and many other scientists, the members with their association for space travel suffered from financial problems, so that the association was close to its dissolution. In this hopeless situation, a rescue offer came from Germany's best-known director Fritz Lang . The members of the association provided technical advice on the planned feature film Woman in the Moon , the world's first modern science fiction film . The film produced is characterized by realistic images of the rocket launch, in which the so-called countdown was used to increase the drama . The German rocket pioneers then spread this dramatic idea all over the world. In addition to paying with money, the club members were able to take film props from the film set with them, which they could use in new missile tests. After these funds had also been used up, the club members looked again for a donor. They found this in Adolf Hitler . The Secret State Police (Gestapo) are said to have given the members little choice. The Gestapo informed the members that they had to help the Wehrmacht or that they would be drafted to do the same work. In 1936, the secret rocket town of Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea in Western Pomerania was established for the development of long- range weapons .
During the Second World War , the scientists there developed the V2 under the direction of Wernher von Braun . The Allies learned about the new experimental weapon through a crash in Sweden, which was later followed by a crash in Poland. The said wreckage could be salvaged by the British. They continued looking for the place of origin of the flight object. In an aerial photo taken by an RAF bomber, they finally discovered the launch pad of a V2 and bombed Peenemünde on the night of August 17, 1943 . The attack shook the Peenemünde. Immediately after the attack, the Germans relocated the undamaged, important production equipment from Peenemünde by rail to the east German city of Nordhausen , to the underground facilities there . What the air raid on Peenemünde failed to achieve was almost a dream of Hitler's. He dreamed that the V2 would never reach England. Immediately he gave the order to end the V2 program. But Von Braun and his employees didn't want to give up. Immediately they edited a film that was supposed to demonstrate the successes of Hitler's V2 program so far. Only the successful rocket launch was used in the film. Von Braun himself acted as the narrator. The film was presented to Hitler in a private screening and changed world history. Hitler was so impressed by what he saw that he immediately resumed the V-2 program. Within a few months, V2 rockets brought destruction to London via space . However, the invasion of France was already underway, so that the V2 rockets could no longer cause war-critical damage. General Eisenhower later stated that if the Germans had perfected the V2 rockets six months earlier, the invasion of France would probably have been impossible. Western Europe was taken by the Allies, the hour of liberation had come. Germany was overrun and the Americans and Russians met on the Elbe. The military leaders, however, were already thinking further.
The V2 did not decide the Second World War, but it could still decide the outcome of a Third World War. A serious "race" for the V2 components from Nordhausen and the test equipment and scientists from Peenemünde ensued. Colonel Holger N. Toftoy, responsible for Ordnance Technical Intelligence in Europe, was of the opinion that the top scientists from Peenemünde who had developed the V2 were needed and should therefore be brought to the USA. Despite initially existing resistance in the US government, the top secret Operation Paperclip was initiated, which should make this possible. In Nordhausen, US soldiers managed to recover V2 technology and bring it to the established US zone before the Soviet troops occupied it. The USA and the Soviet Union had agreed on which areas of Germany were to be occupied. With regard to Peenemünde, the USA initially believed it had lost. Agents reported that Peenemünde had been destroyed and was empty and was already being controlled by the Red Army . The search for the scientists went on. Some important German scientists were discovered through roadside checks, but those actually wanted were not among them. What the US military did not know at first was that when the Red Army approached Peenemünde, Von Braun and his staff had fled to the mountains of southern Germany with plans and equipment. When they learned the war was ending, they contacted the US military. Due to the efforts of Colonel Toftoy, the US got the best V2 scientists and enough V2 rockets to start a small missile program in the United States. The Russians then succeeded in confiscating most of the V2 systems and a large part of the technicians. Basically, both sides started the race under the same conditions.
After the war, however, little was done in the United States to further develop the missile program. The US was devoted to destinations other than space, unlike the Soviet Union, where an intensive space program was launched. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a rocket that put the world's first satellite into orbit, Sputnik 1 . It was followed shortly afterwards by Sputnik 2 , with the dog Laika on board. Despite the low level of commitment, the USA would have been able to launch the first earth satellite two years before the Russians. But this task should first be taken over by a rocket that was completely redesigned in the so-called Vanguard project . It was only after the Sputnik shock and a false start of a Vanguard rocket that was supposed to transport the first US satellite in December 1957 that the long-standing Redstone rocket , which Wernher von Braun helped develop (in the form of a modified variant called Jupiter -C) to launch the first US satellite Explorer 1 into orbit on January 31, 1958 .
At the end of the film, a Soviet satellite image of the back of the moon from 1959 is presented. In addition, reference is made to the next step in the race, namely to bring a person into space.
background
The documentary was made as a co-production by Wolper Productions, the United States Department of Defense and the USSR Department of Culture, shortly after the so-called Sputnik Shock . US journalist Mike Wallace will guide the documentation . The interviewees include Esther Goddard, the wife of the late scientist Robert Goddard and Major General Holger N. Toftoy . The film, released in 1959, was nominated for the Best Documentary Film at the 1960 Academy Awards, but could not prevail against Bernhard Grzimek 's: Serengeti Must Not Die . A year earlier, The Race for Space won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival in the same “Best Documentary Feature” category .
Web links
- The Race for Space in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ When Hitler left the demonstration, as the documentation reports, he is said to have uttered “prophethically”: “From now on Europe and the world will be too small to limit a war with such weapons. Humanity will not be able to endure a war. ”(Translation of the English wording in the documentation:“ From now on, Europe and the world will be too small to contain a war with such weapons. Humanity will not be able to endure a war. ")
- ^ Document on The Race for Space of the US Central Intelligence Agency , accessed on: December 26, 2018
- ↑ See English Wikipedia: Holger Toftoy