Dr. Werner Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was born in 1912 in Wirstz, Prussia and from a young age dreamt of spaceflight. A teenager, von Braun joined the German Spaceflight Society then subsequently carried out research on the military application of rockets for Capt. Walter Dornberger from 1933-forward until the SS took over V-2 production and usage. By 1937 he had become Technical Director of Peenemunde's Rocket Research Center and later was given the rank of SS Captain although he had no military service. Research started in 1933 with the A-1 and soon reached the A-5 which dealt with gyro stabilization, then back to concentrating on perfecting the A-4 series that would become the V-2 missile. Peenemunde was built from 1936-1941 and was bombed heavily by the RAF mid-war. von Braun's dreams of spaceflight were never realized at Peenemunde but his designs for an orbital weaponized space station* and manned V-2s through EMW survived the war (the latter influencing the X-15). 5200 V-2s were made in WW2 and it was the world's first ballistic missile with a range of 205 miles, climbing the skies at Mach 3 and having a terminal velocity of Mach 6 with a 1-ton Amatol warhead. V-2s were fired at France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain. It was used as a reprisal weapon for the Allied bombing campaign over Germany. By 1945, the V-2 firing s were coming to an end by March and only the test A-4b of the planned A-9/A-10 ICBM had flown. von Braun was captured by the US Army in May 1945 after a frantic search for him and other German rocket scientists. The US got the lion's share of German rocket tech which of course led to interceptor rockets first, then ICBMs, and finally von Braun's Saturn V which took men to the moon. It is interesting to note that von Braun DID research solid fueled rockets also but rejected them as inferior to liquid-fueled (other firms made solid boosters for German WW2 SAMs).

*the space platform demanded by Hitler was the third design of the planned Sun Cannon secret weapon designed to be placed in a 4000 mile orbit and with a huge parabolic mirror would burn forests and cities of Germany's enemies. It was impractical. The former sun cannon designs were for an Olympic-sized stadium weapon like a massive mirrored array to cast blinding sunlight waves against US day bombers. LW pilots wearing special protective goggles would then pounce on them from higher altitudes! This also was impractical; instead, a small version of the sun cannon was built that had a rotating platform mounted on a truck with 4 parobolic high-grade polished mirrors mounted on them and manned by 4 men on top. The concentrated light was again aimed at bombers but was not effective, just annoying. Two Bf 109s in 1945 tried to hit a blinded bomber but were blinded themselves and could not concentrate on the target. They were forced away by waist gunners! FYI