Magnus Freiherr von Braun (10 May 1919 – 21 June 2003) was a German-American chemical engineer, Luftwaffe aviator, rocket scientist and business executive. A highly-regarded member of the Nazi Party, in his 20s he worked on Germany’s guided missile development and production at the Peenemünde Army Research Center and the Mittelwerk from 1943-1945.
At age 26, he emigrated to the United States via Operation Paperclip, where he worked for some years at Fort Bliss. In 1955 he began a new career as a senior executive with Chrysler's missile division, later moving to automotive products. He retired to Arizona in 1975, where he died in 2003. He was the younger brother of Sigismund and Wernher von Braun.
Early life von Braun was born in Greifswald, Pomerania, to Magnus Freiherr von Braun and Emmy von Quistorp. His politician father moved the family to Berlin in 1920, where the three boys "lived in a bubble of upper-class privilege, with a butler, servants, and a grand piano."Neufeld, Michael J (2007). Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 17. Magnus attended primary school at Berlin's prestigious French Gymnasium prior to finishing his secondary education at the Hermann Lietz-Schule boarding school in Spiekeroog. He joined the Nazi party upon graduation and subsequently served as a Spiekeroog Hitler Youth leader."Affidavit of Membership in NSDAP of Magnus v. Braun," 2 June 1947, National Archives, College Park, MD, RG330, JIOA Case Files, MvB Jr file. Magnus moved to Munich in 1937 to attend the Technical University of Munich. He studied chemistry and posted excellent grades, receiving his master's degree in 1940 in organic chemistry, and subsequently became an assistant to Nobel laureate Hans Fischer.Neufeld (2007). p.153.
Unlike his older siblings, Magnus experienced a National Socialist adolescence. His brothers can be seen as having joined the Nazis for reasons of professional advancement; Magnus signed on for the ideology. His politicized early years naturally influenced his character. Even well after the war, Magnus stood apart from his friendly and gregarious brother Wernher by his displays of arrogance and aristocratic pretension. This was duly noted by Army officers who kept files on both von Brauns after their 1945 arrival in the United States. One Fort Bliss Counterintelligence Corps agent took such a dislike to Magnus that sometime in 1948 or 1949, he wrote in his file that the youngest von Braun was a "dangerous German Nazi", adding that "his type is a worse threat to security than a half a dozen discredited SS Generals."FBI report, 2/28/49, FBI FOIA MvB Jr.; MvB Jr. card file entry, c. 1948-1949, in INSCOM FOIA MvB Jr.
The two younger von Braun brothers shared an enthusiasm for aviation, and like Wernher, Magnus also took up sailplane flying as a teenager. In October 1940, as the war entered its second year, the newly minted chemist and glider pilot was promptly drafted into the Luftwaffe. There he learned to fly multi-engine aircraft, and became proficient enough at instrument and night flying to be assigned as an instructor, temporarily avoiding frontline service. In mid-1943, as the Allied bombing campaign intensified and German aviator losses soared, Magnus received orders to train on fighter planes. At this point, Wernher stepped in and used his influence to get his younger sibling discharged from the air service and hired as a civilian chemical engineer at the Nazi rocket research center near Peenemünde. This move likely spared the younger von Braun's life, as German fighter pilots suffered staggering losses during the last two years of the war.Neufeld (2007) p.153; Flavell-White, Claudia (2017). The Chemical Engineer. "Magnus von Braun - Rocket man." 24 November 2017. Online at https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/cewctw-magnus-von-braun-rocket-man/
Peenemünde Army Research Center Once he checked in at the secret base on the Baltic, Magnus was initially assigned to the propellant development section of the Wasserfall antiaircraft missile, due to his chemical expertise. His brother Wernher was then the wunderkind 31 year-old technical director of the entire facility, orchestrating hundreds of engineers and thousands of workers to produce the world's first liquid-fueled rocket able to reach outer space. Magnus arrived just before Operation Hydra, the first air raid against the installation carried out by British bombers during the night of 17–18 August. He and his brother survived unhurt. After the Peenemünde raid, and in light of other devastating 1943 attacks against German war factories, it became obvious to the Nazi leadership that serial production of their new rocket weapon, which the scientists called the A-4 but soon better known as the V-2, needed a location safe from enemy bombs. Addressing these concerns, Wernher von Braun chaired a meeting at Peenemünde on 25 August 1943, where underground tunnels were first considered to mass-produce the A-4/V-2.
The meeting notes still exist, and they also mention using concentration camp prisoners, thus providing the first documentary link of slave labor and the von Braun brothers. At this meeting, Wernher, his deputy Eberhard Rees, and five others debated the merits of using "caves" near Saarbrücken, Germany for missile production: "The workers for the middle and center section manufacture previously planned for VW [the pilot production plant in Peenemünde] can be drawn from the prisoner camp F1. The German supervisory personnel will go along with them."WvB Protokoll, 25 August 1943, in National Air and Space Museum, FE732 That same day, Magnus flew his brother and the rest of this group to Berlin in a Ju-52 to discuss the initiative further at the Reich Chancellery on 26 August, with top Nazi industrial officials Albert Speer and Hans Kammler in attendance.Bode, Volkhard and Gerhard Kaiser (2008). Building Hitler’s Missiles: Traces of History in Peenemünde. Ch. Links Verlag. p. 57. (Wernher served as co-pilot on the big three-motored transport plane, but he could not command it himself as he lacked a multi-engine rating.)WvB pilot log, 1943-1944, in WvBP-H, file 700-17; Speer office chronicle, 26 August 1943, in Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, R3/738, S.10
Immediately following this Berlin conclave, Magnus flew his brother to have a look at the Saarbrücken caves on 29 August, and then on to the town of Nordhausen in the Harz highlands of Thuringia the following day for a personal inspection of the future site of underground missile production.WvB pilot log, 1943-1944, in WvBP-H, file 700-17 The brothers spent three full days at Nordhausen, returning to Peenemünde on 2 September. Although exactly what they did and whom they met with there is unknown, Wernher certainly must have entered the former gypsum mines located just three kilometers away for the first time. There, two enormous galleries had been bored into a large densely wooded hill that locals called the Kohnstein. Germans had been digging into the Kohnstein's limestone for gypsum since 1917, but in the 1930s these small mining affairs were connected into one big cavity, which the Nazis used to store strategic reserves of fuel, fats and oils. The barrels had now been removed, and the subterranean space stood temporarily empty.
The director of Peenemünde was there to plan how to refit this massive underground space for rocket production. The first shipment of 107 concentration camp workers from Buchenwald arrived inside the Kohnstein on 28 August, before the von Braun brothers reached Nordhausen. The laborers were there to expand the tunnel system for missile manufacture. Wearing black-on-gray striped uniforms and guarded by grim Nazi SS overseers.Volkhard (2008). p. 65; Béon, Yves (1997). Planet Dora: A Memoir of the Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age. Westview Press. p. XII; Bode (2008). p. 65; Neufeld (2007). p. 157.
Initially, prisoners inside the Kohnstein slept underground on stacked bunks as they excavated, and never saw daylight. There they endured filth, poor food, damp cave walls, cold temperatures, and choking airborne dust constantly replenished by round-the-clock blasting. This last also made sleep for off-shift enslaved workers very difficult. Later, an above-ground concentration camp was established called Dora, initially a subcamp of Buchenwald. As the makeshift Dora facility rapidly grew—it would eventually top out at 40,000 inmates–the prison was administratively detached from Buchenwald in October 1944 to become the independent "Konzentrationslager Mittelbau-Dora."Mayer, Jürgen (2019). Die Mittelwerk GmbH: NS-Raketenproduktion der V1 und V2 in Mittelbau-Dora. Verlag Rockstuhl. p. 43. Magnus did not then realize it, but in about a year's time he would be assigned to this subterranean factory space, where he would spend the final nine months of the war managing enslaved Mittelbau-Dora laborers.
As the A-4/V-2 rocket weapon transitioned from development to production in the latter part of 1943, key personnel from Peenemünde began migrating to the Mittelwerk, starting with Magnus's future supervisor Arthur Rudolph in September. Rudolph's initial title at the underground works was Director of Manufacturing and Assembly. In the spring of 1944, he would be promoted to the management board, and given additional responsibility for the rocket's control system sub-assemblies.Mayer (2019). p. 41, 48. Back at Peenemünde, Magnus was detached from his chemical work on the Wasserfall project in October 1943 to permanently become his brother's personal assistant and pilot.Neufeld (2007) p.186. There were many manufacturing problems at the Mittelwerk over the winter of 1943-1944 due to rushing cutting-edge technology into mass production, and Wernher needed to make frequent visits to the trouble-plagued assembly line. Magnus flew his brother to Nordhausen again in October, November, January, and February.Neufeld (2007). p.159-160, 168; Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1995). The Nazi Rocketeers: Dreams of Space and Crimes of War. Stackpole Books. p.126. By this time the facility had been incorporated and given the bland name of Mittelwerk GmbH (Central Work Ltd).
Gestapo arrest Right on the heels of the February trip, a dramatic and important event for the brothers took place. When Magnus flew the Ju-52 from Nordhausen back to Peenemünde on 21 February, there was an order awaiting Wernher to meet with SS leader Heinrich Himmler at Himmler's field headquarters near the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. At this meeting, Wernher politely declined Himmler's proposal to inject additional funding into the missile program if the young professor would agree to a control transfer from the army to the SS. von Braun's bold rejection of the deal set in motion a power play by the Reichsführer-SS, who was not often refused something he wanted. One month later, Himmler ordered the arrest of Magnus, Wernher, and fellow rocket specialists Klaus Riedel and Helmut Gröttrup, and also Hannes Lüersen, owner of a Zinnowitz home near Peenemünde. The Stettin Gestapo carried out the arrest, probably on 22 March 1944. Charges included defeatism, sabotage, and a treasonous scheme-in-the-making by Wernher to fly off to England with the rocket plans!Neufeld (2007). p.170.