Return to Peenemunde Germany - September 1991

This video documentary was created in September 1991 to record the first return visit to Peenemünde, Germany, since the end of the World War II in 1945 by several surviving Wernher von Braun rocket team members and their families. Such a visit had only become possible after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 since Peenemünde had been part of the Russian occupied zone in what became known as East Germany.
Early on during World War II the Wernher von Braun team members had been pulled from all parts of Germany, universities and the military to be assigned to work on rocket development at Peenemünde, a small community northwest of Berlin on the Baltic Sea. In October 1942 after the first ever successful launch of a rocket into space, the German government pushed the A4/V2 into mass production. V2s were first fired at England in September 1944. However, with raw materials becoming scarce and Germany facing defeat, rocket development activities at Peenemünde and elsewhere soon terminated in March 1945 when Von Braun, and about 500 of his team, which included family members, fled to Bavaria to find Americans in order to surrender to them. This video reenacts some of this journey.
Permission was granted to Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5) by Dick Curtis to add the opening/closing texts for the video and to upload to KZbin. Contact information may be found at www.HAL5.org. Copyright © 2019 Dick Curtis and Blake Hudson; all rights reserved.

[@mjinnh2112]

Geez, you'd think 1942 in Peenemunde was just a fun day in peace time. Unbelievable the failure to mention in whose service and for what goals all this was destined for. Appalling.

[@Brommear]

If the RAF bombing raid hit a concentration camp, it is a little dishonest to claim not knowing what was going on. What you could have done in this situation is a different matter.

[@bartekmajewski2305]

The good old days of VHS video camcorders 😃.

[@Sportliveonline]

sensational

[@jamessteadman1328]

Gee whiz. Glad they are so happy. How many died making it? How many died under it? . Oh I'm so happy for them

[@GMTMicha]

geile aufnamen müssten nur noch deutsche untertitel sein

[@Robert-e5l1l]

Interesting footage, but entire video promotes the mythology that rocket scientists in Peenemünde were innocent dreamers of Space rather than knowing participants in Nazi crimes like slave labor. It also pushes a deliberate misinterpretation of von Braun’s March 1944 Gestapo arrest as being about his war-weapon hesitancy, rather than part of a power play by the SS to take over the missile program. Sigh. What should we expect? Huntsville AL still has a civic center named after von Braun, so this video is part of that same mindset, firmly convinced that Wernher’s anti-communist patriotism and moon landing achievements fully rehabilitate him from his Nazi past…

[@tasmedic]

A great documentary ruined by what appears to be a stereotypically affected, presenter. Irony of the story; Hess, probably killed no one. Tried to arrange a peace with Britain. Locked up in Spandau until he committed suicide there decades later. Von Braun, killed around 9000 people : soldiers, civilians, men, women and children with his indiscriminate V2 rockets born of Hitler's "total war" philosophy. Probably 12000 forced labourers also died building his projects. Lauded pioneer of the US Space program. The politics of expediency.

[@mutterschied]

That's what I call a REAL bloody irony, fella. Same as told us Rousseau, and later recalled Orwell: We human dipshits TEND TO forget that commies & nazis were on the top strictly via democracy.....

[@TeamMaxxlife]

He was a genius🫡 Science requires victims…

[@TheNoblot]

french politics 🤔 art & politics : 🎞👑🎶🩰🎨🖼🎭🎪🤗 Pink Floyd - Roger Waters: Us + Them Tour Live Show Washington DC Verizo. SMOKIN' VERSION - The Allman Brothers Band - In Memory of Elizabeth Reed...😉