The first artificial object to reach space was a Nazi weapon of war, and the man who designed it later became chief architect of the rocket that carried Americans to the Moon. This deep dive confronts the dual legacy of Wernher von Braun, from his Prussian aristocratic childhood, cello lessons, and a confirmation-gift telescope to the Hermann Oberth book that forced a math-averse teenager to master calculus and the 1928 rocket wagon that got him arrested in Berlin. It follows his path into German army funding through a Treaty of Versailles loophole, his Nazi party and SS membership, and his role as technical director at Peenemunde developing the liquid-fueled, gyroscope-guided V-2 that crossed the Karman line.

The episode does not look away from Mittelwerk, where roughly 12,000 concentration camp prisoners died building the V-2, more than t ...