Ten years after entering the United States, Von Braun became a naturalized US citizen. He went on to work on the US Army intermediate range ballistic missile programme until this project was absorbed by NASA. Von Braun was appointed Director of the new Marshall Space Flight Center and was the chief designer of the Saturn V launch vehicle which was the rocket that launched the Apollo spacecraft. NASA said he was the greatest rocket scientist in history and his crowning achievement was the Saturn V rocket that led to men on the moon in July 1969. In 1975 Von Braun was awarded the National Medal of Science.
On 16 June 1977, Wernher von Braun died of pancreatic cancer in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 65. He had, after trials and tribulations, realized his dream. His experience and training in Nazi Germany had put an American on the moon, and his wartime adventures in designing weapons to aim at the Allies had given the American nation their lead in space.
CHAPTER 5
DOCTORS AT WAR
Medicine became a focus for secret science during World War II. Research workers were instructed to do all they could to find ways of improving the lot of the military, and to find innovative ways of saving lives. New treatments, super-drugs and extraordinary new surgical procedures and many other ways of saving lives and returning trained wounded soldiers to the front as quickly as possible were all developed during the war years. Yet the same specialities were also harnessed to produce new, lethal secret weapons of terrifying potential. Modern medicine owes much to the rapid research of World War II; yet many of the worst excesses were perpetrated by doctors.
Medical science had already shown that many chemicals have a burning, blistering or destructive capacity against human victims, and experiments to use them against soldiers during wartime date from World War I. Gas shells had been used by the British, the Germans and the French, among others. The choice of poison gases was wide, and they ranged from irritants that incapacitated and temporarily blinded the enemy, to gases that burned the body, destroyed the lungs and liquefied the tissues. First to be used in World War I was a tear gas, xylyl bromide. Most accounts state that this was first used in that war by the Germans in 1915, but it had been used by the French against German troops in August 1914 as the Germans were advancing through Belgium towards northern France. Within a year the Germans retaliated. They launched a well-planned attack by releasing their latest secret weapon, chlorine from gas cylinders, up-wind from the Allied positions at Ypres in April 1915. The Allies immediately condemned Germany for breaching the Hague Convention, with the British a leading voice of protest (though in fact it was the British who by then had the largest stockpiles of poison gas, ready for use in war). The Germans retorted that the Convention spoke only of projectiles — and they had simply unleashed the gas from containers. They added that the French had already used gas against their troops, without similar censure.
In any event, the secret was out and gas war had been officially declared. Within weeks, thousands of the chlorine gas cylinders had been installed by the British on the front line inland from Calais at Loos. But no mention was to be made of the word ‘gas’. The cylinders were called ‘accessories’, and the use of the ‘g-word’ was a punishable breach of the rules. The attacks were easy to launch — taps on the cylinders were simply opened and the gas rolled along with the breeze. Once launched, they were less easy to control, however; on the day in question the breeze shifted direction and most of the casualties of the first attack were British soldiers, rather than German. It was an historic example of what we now call, with bitter irony, ‘friendly fire’. The experience taught a crucial lesson: the gas could not simply be released by an army without compromising its own troops. After this episode, the gases were packed in artillery shells and the Hague Convention was conveniently ignored.
The Germans fired the gas in shells against the Russians in 1915 under the code name T-Stoff. These attacks failed, because the temperatures were low and the liquid did not vaporize as expected. It either lay on the ground, or was wafted back towards the German lines. Other tear gas agents were later used. They were a range of dangerous chemicals including ethyl bromoacetate, bromoacetone (known as BA), bromobenzyl cyanide (Camite), bromomethyl ethyl ketone (Bn-Stoff) and chloroacetone (Tonite). The Germans used them either singly or in combination under the general name Weisskreuz (White Cross). The name came from the identifying symbol that was stencilled on each shell.
Chlorine was brought into use as it acts as a disabling tear gas when used in small amounts, but kills painfully by destroying the lung tissues if inhaled in significant quantities. It is a heavy gas and rolls across the countryside, filling holes and trenches where the enemy might be in hiding. It forms a greenish-yellow fog with a penetrating, acrid smell and was also known as Bertholite. Chlorine reacts with the water in the body to produce hydrochloric acid which burns the lungs from within. Germany was the first to use this in World War I at Ypres; there are reports that it was last used in Iraq against coalition forces in 2007.
Phosgene followed, after being first used by the French in 1915. It was a similarly suffocating gas but did not produce coughing, like chlorine; as a result, more of it was inhaled by the victims. The effects also took longer to appear, and often more than a day passed before soldiers started to collapse. It was eventually used by both sides in World War I and was blended with chlorine to produce a mixture called White Star. The gas produced devastating effects by damaging the eyes, burning into the skin — even slight lesions are like frostbite — and causing the lungs to burn and fill with fluid. Sufferers from an attack drown from within. This was used in many weapons during World War I; it was later used against the Chinese by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938. Huge amounts of phosgene were stockpiled, ready for use in World War II, but in the event it was never employed. Hitler was the victim of a gas attack in World War I and resolved never to use it in war. He was well aware of the devastating consequences of retaliation by an enemy using phosgene and knew it would be a dangerous tactic to adopt, in case the Allies hit back with it.
The Germans did plan the manufacture of poison gas in the 1920s, in defiance of the international treaties, and negotiated with the Soviet authorities for the construction of a large chemical weapons factory on the river Volga at Trotsk. Britain similarly produced large amounts of poison gases for stockpiling during World War II. Had there been attacks by an enemy using chemical weapons during the war then the British stockpiles would have been speedily cleared for use. And since that war? Today there is phosgene everywhere, and in huge amounts, for it is an important product of modern-day industry. Phosgene is an intermediate compound in the manufacture of pesticides and plastics, and it is abundantly available in industrial cities throughout the world.
Mustard gas, or mustard yellow, produces burning blisters over the body. It does not cause an immediate effect, and the symptoms of poisoning often take hours to become apparent. The blisters are large and filled with yellowish plasma; they take a prolonged time to heal, cause great pain, and cannot be touched or treated. It was first used by the Germans at their campaign at Ypres in France during World War I (and was afterwards known as Yperite) and was then employed against the Russian Army by the British in 1919. Indeed, up to half the shells produced by both sides would have contained poison gases had World War I not ended when it did. Since that time mustard gas has been used by Spain and France against rebels in Morocco during the 1920s, by the Italians against Libya in 1930 and Ethiopia from 1935, by the Russians during their incursions in China during the 1930s, and by Japan against the Chinese prior to, and during, World War II. Early in the war years, the United States Chemical Warfare Service carried out mustard gas experiments on some 4,000 American troops. Many of them were volunteers who had conscientious objections to going to war, and they were offered the chance to take part in poison gas tests as an alternative to conscription. The tests went on until the end of the war, though the United States did not indulge in gas warfare during World War II. Germany carried out hundreds of experiments in which prisoners were deliberately disabled by the use of poison gases, including mustard gas and Lewisite, at the Natzweiler and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. Various experimental treatments were tried on the disabled and dying patients in the hope of finding ways of treating their wounds.