Huntsville, Alabama, is fiercely proud of its Rocket City nickname – earned for its crucial role in America’s space race success.
The city, which transformed in the 1950s from a cotton market town to the world’s foremost hub for space travel research, is home to NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, which led development of the Saturn rockets that put the first man on the moon.
But there is a dark side to the story of these epic achievements: many of the men who led the groundbreaking work were Nazis – recruited through a top secret operation after the Second World War.
The fascinating, and troubling, reality is often omitted from lessons about America’s victory in the space race against the Soviet Union. It is also something Huntsville continues to grapple with today.
There are those who say the ‘greater good’ outweighed the moral cost of recruiting members of an evil regime, allowing them to avoid justice in the process.
But others say bringing these men to the US was an inexcusable decision – compounded by the fact their Nazi backgrounds go largely unmentioned in lessons about America’s space history.
Hellbound and Down 