In 1965, Tom Lehrer wrote and performed both a song lampooning Wernher von Braun and a song about nuclear proliferation in which Alabama is a punchline. Would he and his audience have known that von Braun developed ICBMs in Alabama?

Oh man, now you've done it. *cracks knuckles* My apologies for the length of this in advance, but this is right up my alley.

Okay, so long and short of it - mostly yes and probably, though less well-known than the former. Wernher Von Braun was a fairly obscure former-Nazi who would have been known in some circles back in the immediate aftermath of WW2, but he really didn't become a household name until around 1955. I'll get into that in a moment, but for full clarification I'll spend just a couple of paragraphs to explain how he got here and why he ended up in the spotlight as he did.

Von Braun learned under Dr. Hermann Oberth, one of the three godfathers of liquid rockets and an absolute visionary. Together with some friends and fellow rocketry enthusiasts, von Braun spent the 1930s designing and tweaking these early model rockets to try and gain better range and efficiency in this burgeoning field. Keep in mind that most rockets these days use either hypergolics (an acid oxidizer and usually a very nasty fuel for high performance) or a more generic fuel (gasoline or kerosene) and liquid Oxygen, which was still VERY difficult to manufacture and store back then. Oberth, in fact, had put in a request with the U.S. Patent Office for a copy of any patents filed by Dr. Robert Goddard, the American (and one of the other "godfathers") rocket pioneer, in an attempt to keep pace with his improving designs. Oberth (and by extension WvB and team) was even brought in to advise on the early silent film Frau im Mond, one of the earliest to show what spaceflight might look like. In this movie we see for the first time ever the vertical assembly of a rocket, a crawler that takes it to a launchpad, the use of water for cooling and keeping acoustic levels low in launch, and a launch countdown (entirely for dramatic purposes!). After the models were used in the film, they were even donated to the rocket team who used them for actual test launches as well -- the team was in such need for funding in those days that they would work with anyone that would fund them.

Cue the early days of Nazi Germany, and the call for engineers and scientists to assist in the development of weapons for the upcoming war. Von Braun seems to have had little compunction in tying in with the war effort as just another means of maintaining funding, as the militaristic use of rockets were apparent and the funding offered was orders of magnitude higher than what they'd had access to in years past. Whether or not he knew his rockets would eventually be used to bomb civilians, or whether or not he cared, we have conflicting accounts. His actions through those years, however, lend to the narrative that Tom Lehrer would use in his song though.

In the waning days of WW2, as it became apparent that Germany would capitulate, the Nazi high command did everything they could to minimize defections of critical staff and personnel. Among these were the members of the rocket team at Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde and the nearby Mittelwerks factory. It was here that the dreaded wunderwaffe V1 (and vastly more importantly to WvB) V2 were built. Wernher, knowing how brutal the eastern front had been and correctly cautious of how the Soviets would treat any high-value targets captured in Nazi Germany, decided with his team and brother Magnus that their best bet for the future lay in defecting to the western forces. They covertly gathered as many documents and plans as possible and stashed them in a nearby mine, and Magnus was sent to make contact with the allies. Once their defections were accepted and terms had been agreed to, WvB and his team officially defected on May 2, 1945.

Two quick asides to add here -- Firstly, in addition to the team, the allies were also given information as to where the manufacturing and storage facilities were for the V2. The location was within the Soviet Zone, however, as agreed to by the British, U.S., and Soviet leaders years prior. A lone fast-thinking American officer decided to breach this line, as estimates put the Soviets still a week away, and he commandeered every train and train car he could in the area to assist in the removal of materiel from the facility. In all, 300 rail cars full of built and partially-built V2's were removed from the Mittelwerks and sent back to allied-controlled areas. When the Soviets arrived it was almost entirely barren.

Secondly, the British and U.S. had made agreements at the beginning of the U.S. involvement that they would share intel, both information and physical, during and after the war. As part of this agreement, many of these captured V2s which were complete were set up in northern Germany and Britain and launched for testing purposes in what was known as Operation Backfire. The first test launch in Britain, as the story goes, was delayed as the train car full of ethanol, which was used to power the rocket, was apparently "tested" by a majority of the scientists on both sides the evening prior, and everyone was too hung over the next day.

Okay, back to von Braun. So after Backfire, he and his team were sent to Fort Bliss near El Paso, TX where they were given some funding and assistants to train in rocketry, but really they were being sidelined and they started to recognize it. The U.S. strategy for post-war conflicts was still bomber-based, and development of a rocket to deliver a nuclear payload was deemed unnecessary if we'd already invested so much money in the B29 in the years just prior. Von Braun and his team developed their rockets dutifully but would never miss an opportunity to try and share their vision of what larger rockets could do with military brass. It wasn't until he teamed up with an architecture illustrator who had worked on designing the Golden Gate Bridge, a Mr. Bonestell, that he decided to instead try to sell his ideas directly to the American public.

It all happened in a flurry in March 1955. Colliers magazine, which had a weekly readership of 2.8 million, published their first of a series of themed magazines in a collaboration with WvB on what the future of human spaceflight might look like. The first magazine, titled "Man Will Conquer Space, Soon" was one of their best selling periodicals ever, and they ended up making a series of 6 over the next couple of years outlining all sorts of topics from space suits to living in the vacuum of space to micro-meteoroid orbital debris (MMOD) protection. These were written for the common laypeople to understand, and WvB was invited to follow up with this effort by appearing on Walt Disney's TV show "Tomorrowland" for three episodes, speaking directly to American households about all of the wondrous things that the future would hold for them as humans left Earth to live and explore in space. Needless to say, pretty soon there were calls for the US to begin working more on rockets and this helped kick off the rocket craze of the 1950s which led to beloved American shows like The Jetsons.