Another smasher by Breuer, who specializes in thrilling reports of
WW II spycraft and warfare (Geronimo!, Sea Wolf, Hitler's
Undercover War - all 1989, etc.). World War II? What docs that have
to do with the moon? Quite a lot, especially in Breuer's version:
Fully half of his text is a dramatic account of German rocketry in
1939-45, when Nazi scientists, led by the young and brilliant
Wernher von Braun, developed the V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 rockets
that rained terror in the skies of England. Plots and counterplots
abound as the Nazis set up their missile shop in Peenemunde and the
Allies try to knock it down (at one point launching 4000 airmen and
nearly the entire British air force in a massive raid), while von
Braun, who dreams of extraterrestrial travel, complains that his
rockets are landing "on the wrong planet." Himmler arrests von
Braun; Speer frees him; Hitler goofs by aiming V-2s at London
instead of port cities; as the Third Reich collapses, von Braun and
150 engineers surrender to bewildered GIs, explaining that they
want to help America land on the moon. Meanwhile, Stalin's troops
pull off "the most far-reaching and bizarre mass kidnapping in 20th
century Europe," sealing entire cities and combing them for rocket
experts (20,000 fall into the net) to ship to Mother Russia. The
space race is on. Breuer runs professionally through the postwar
decades, from early White Sands testing to Armstrong's boots in the
lunar dust, but this part of the story has been told before
(although Breuer confirms that von Braun was ready to launch a
satellite months before Sputnik put egg on our face, but was
blocked by military squabbling). Crackerjack war adventures - and,
in this case, the moon's the limit. (Kirkus Reviews)
Race to the Moon is a suspenseful thriller about the 30-year clash
between the United States and the Soviet Union to be the first to
put a man on the moon. This true account is heavy with intrigue,
espionage, and controversy. Beginning with a 1961 pledge by
President John F. Kennedy to plant the Stars and Stripes on the
lunar surface by the end of the decade, the story flashes back to
the first days of World War II. At that time, England was tipped
off by a high Nazi official that the Third Reich was developing
revolutionary long-range rockets. This same source clandestinely
provided documents that shocked British scientists: The Germans
were 25 years ahead of England and the United States in rocket
development! And then, in September 1944, 60-foot-long V-2 rockets,
for which there was no defense, began raining down on London,
causing enormous destruction and loss of life. Even while the
fighting was still raging in Germany in the spring of 1945, a
handful of young U.S. Army officers scored a colossal coup: They
connived to steal 100 of the huge V-2s that had been found in an
underground factory. They were dismantled and slipped by train out
of Germany, destination White Sands, New Mexico. Then began a
no-holds-barred search for German rocket scientists in the chaos of
a defeated Third Reich, with the Americans and British on one side
and the Russians on the other. Within weeks of the close of the
war, Wernher von Braun and 126 of his rocket team members were
corraled, shipped to the United States, and began working secretly
on missile development. At the same time, the Soviets literally
kidnapped other German rocket scientists and sent them to Russia to
continue their space work. In the years ahead, Wernher von Braun
and his German rocket team, nearly all of whom became naturalized
citizens of the United States, collaborated with American
scientists to overcome enormous space achievements by the
Soviets--and bungling by Washington politicians--to send Neil
Armstrong scampering about on the moon in 1969.
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