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 YouTube. Contact information may be found at www.HAL5.org. Copyright © 2019 Dick Curtis and Blake Hudson; all rights reserved.

Видео Return to Peenemunde Germany - September 1991 канала Huntsville Alabama L5 Society HAL5