The Failure Of Hitler's V-II Rocket

At the end of the War World II, Germany faced “catastrophic” failure. In a final bid for victory, “Hitler ordered the launch of a new secret weapon” (Everest, Space Race)—the V-2 rockets, which “[took] just 6 minutes to travel 200 miles to London” (Everest, Space Race) and caused 134 people to die without any defense. Obviously, Hitler’s V2 Long Range Rockets were deadly. Hence, this attack soon drew Allies’, especially the Soviets’ and the Americans’, attentions. They realized that the V-2 rocket was the weapon they must have. And so both of the Soviet army and the American military intended to capture Wernher von Braun, the designer and the developer of the V-2 rocket. After Hitler’s death, von Braun surrendered to the Americans with his engineering team in order to escape execution by Germany’s secret guards. Later, those German scientists were sent to the United States. On the other side, since the Soviets failed to find von Braun, they appointed Sergei Korolev, a Soviet rocket …show more content…
Korolev’s R7 rocket armed with a nuclear warhead was powerful enough to cross continents and wipe out entire American cities. But for the maintenance of international peace, the Soviet Union chose to fight a invisible war against the United States. In this way, the space became one of the battlegrounds; the space race became one of the open contests between communism and capitalism. Since then, Korolev had been planing his next spectacular move: the first man into space. Therefore, a hunt for a spaceman was on. Across the Soviet Union, military experts searched for “cosmonauts” to match Korolev’s specification——“around 30, height below 170 centimeters, weight less than 70 kilograms” (Everest, Space Race), and with a broad smile. To confront the Soviet threat, “the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, had hastily put together a project to get an American into space” (Everest, Space