Space Race (2005) s01e01 Episode Script

Throughout history to leave the Earth was an impossible fantasy.
Then two great scientists had one all-consuming passion, to be the first into space.
Sergei Korolev.
We can launch a manmade moon, a satellite into orbit around the Earth.
Released from the gulag to take the Soviet Union into space.
His rival, Wernher von Braun, space pioneer, visionary, haunted by his Nazi past.
Go, baby, go! I have long seen my purpose in life as the promotion of space flight.
I have opened the gates to the heavens.
Their dream caught in a global struggle between two super powers.
What is the delay? Can no one tell me? Their vision beyond the capability of technology.
Another rocket as powerful as the Saturn and we will lose.
Fail and we don't go to the moon.
The greatest adventure in history, and only one of them can win.
At the end of World War II, Nazi Germany faces catastrophic defeat.
In a final bid for victory, Hitler orders the launch of a new secret weapon.
Fire.
The V2, V for Vengeance, is the most powerful rocket the world has ever seen.
Reaching over four times the speed of sound it soars halfway into space before hitting its target.
Hitler's terror weapon takes just six minutes to travel the two hundred miles to London.
There is no defense.
This is a weapon the allies soon realize they must have.
Major Robert Staver, American intelligence, has been ordered to a top secret briefing on the V2 by the British.
Who's the brains behind all this? Dr.
Hans von Braun.
Wernher.
His name is Dr.
Wernher von Braun.
And where are the rockets based? Von Braun runs his operation from Peenemunde, on the German-Baltic coast.
We bombed the place in August last.
Didn't manage to knock it out.
But there's no point in another raid.
The Soviets will capture Peenemunde any day now.
The Nazis have pretty much perfected the thing.
I'd say they've got at least a twenty-five year lead over the rest of us.
General Toftov of US Technical Intelligence, has orders to capture the V2 at any cost.
The Americans realize if Von Braun's rocket is combined with their own new top-secret weapon - the atom bomb - they will create the most terrifying weapon in history.
There's a hell of a lot we don't know yet.
Technical stuff.
Fuels, propulsion systems.
But the Pentagon want this weapon.
It has potential well beyond this war.
We can't afford to leave without it.
Everyone will want it and that includes the Soviets.
How do I fit into all this, sir? Well, I want you to capture von Braun and his rockets before the Reds do.
The race to capture von Braun has started.
But the Soviets are already ahead.
They're closing in fast on his rocket research base at Peenemunde in Northern Germany.
And as they advance through Poland they make an important discovery.
they have found the shell of a V2 left by the retreating Germans.
Ivan Serov, Colonel General in Stalin's ruthless Secret Police, is leading the hunt to find von Braun.
What is it doing here? They moved some testing here after Peenemunde was bombed.
So, what have these fascists managed to do that our Soviet engineers have not? Achieve power.
A rocket this size ha-has enough power to lift a tractor hundred kilometers into the sky.
Ours can only, uh, lift a bag of, uh, sugar half that distance.
All this is to be packed up and sent to Moscow.
No one else is to learn about it.
Yes, sir.
Close to von Braun's rocket research base, old and young flee the brutal reprisals of the advancing Soviet troops.
Those able body refuse to fight for Germany risk execution by fanatics in Hitler's SS.
Von Braun's rocket group has been ordered to stay and fight.
But desperate to save his secrets from the Soviets, has given instructions to retreat.
Doctor von Braun.
All but the most essential documents are to be destroyed.
Doctor von Braun.
Herr Doctor.
Forgive me, Herr Doctor the printers have made bad error with the stationery.
The paper for the movement orders is headed with a V not a B.
It reads V-Zed-B-V.
The SS are sure to pick it up at the checkpoints and they'll think we're deserting on forged papers.
Idiots.
Sir, may I make a suggestion? We could make the V stand for vorhaben rather than B for battalion.
Well done.
Answer only to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler.
Sounds good.
Don't you think, Grottrup? No, I don't.
It'll get us executed by the SS.
And what would you rather do? I have ten conflicting orders on my desk.
Ten telling me to stay, to go, to stay, to go, conflicting.
All of them promise death by firing squad if I disobey.
It's better we stay here.
And what reception do you think the Red Army had in mind? Do you really think I'm going to throw all of this away, do you? Everything we have struggled to achieve is in these drawings.
Our only hope is to go south and keep them safe until all this is over.
Von Braun takes the chance that the SS do not spot the error.
His plan is to evacuate Peenemunde and travel south into Central Germany, establishing a new base close to the factory where the V2 rockets were mass-produced.
he must save his precious documents: blueprints that would lead mankind into outer space: radical designs for long-range rockets, manned space-capsules.
Is this all? The culmination of a lifetime's obsession.
Ever since his childhood von Braun had dreamt of space exploration.
He was inspired by scientist Hermann Oberth whose ideas were visualized in the 1929 film, Woman in the Moon.
With multi-stage rockets and Earth orbits, here was a vision of a new era of space travel.
I imagined a trip to the moon.
Inter-planetary travel.
Here was a task to dedicate one's life to.
Not just to stare through a telescope of the planets but to soar through the heavens and naturally explore the mysterious universe.
I knew how Columbus felt.
To realize his dream, von Braun joined amateur rocket groups.
The Nazis soon spotted his engineering genius Hitler's Rocket Unit, keen to develop new weapons, tempted him with lavish funds.
He didn't resist.
In nineteen-thirty-eight he joined the Nazi Party.
And later, to secure his future in rocket research, accepted the rank of major in the SS.
The convoy heads south to the V2 factory.
If von Braun is caught traveling on false documents he and his engineers will be shot.
We can't wait all night.
Can't you see it's under Reichter's orders? I have no mention of V-Zed-B-V, only B-Zed-B-V.
Hello? Hello? What is your name? I need the names of all those who dare to obstruct our efforts against the enemy.
Your name.
For my Fuhrer.
(speaks German) Von Braun's move puts more distance between him and the Soviets.
But it brings him closer to the Americans, who are advancing rapidly towards central Germany and into the sights of Major Staver.
Major Staver, sir.
Intelligence reports convoys leaving Peenemunde heading south.
Where are our boys now? Coming in from the west, close to Bonn, sir, not far away.
- And the Soviets? - Nowhere near, sir.
Good.
We can only be days from von Braun.
Let's go.
Just one step ahead of the allies, von Braun arrives at his new H.
Q.
, a house once owned by a millionaire Jew.
He's determined to further his research on rockets for manned flight, not just the V2.
the move suits not only von Braun, but also his superior, SS General Hans Kammler.
He's under orders to ensure the V2 seizes victory for the Reich.
- Heil, Hitler.
- Heil.
Thank you, Huzel.
Why has the move from Peenemunde taken so long? Well, we had I expected your operation here to be up and running by now.
Production at the V2 plant has not been disrupted by our move.
And how many rockets are being produced exactly each day? Around thirty-five.
I want the figure doubled.
But we have no You and your rockets have cost us a lot of money, von Braun.
Himmler expects results.
The Fuhrer expects results.
I'm an engineer, not a factory manager.
And I am not responsible for that production plant.
Tread carefully, Herr Doctor.
Very carefully.
All future projects and research are cancelled with immediate effect.
But we are very close to production on You will concentrate only on the V2.
Heil Hitler.
Heil.
By March nineteen forty-five, the Soviets have advanced to the outskirts of Berlin.
Hitler is in their sights.
But they are no closer to capturing von Braun.
It's a desperate setback for General Lev Gaidukov and Colonel General Ivan Serov of the Secret Police.
The Americans haven't caught von Braun yet.
But if they do? If they do, I will enlist our own team of experts to unpick the German secrets.
And who exactly? I will need names for Comrade Stalin.
Please.
Send in Comrade Glushko.
I've asked him for some suggestions.
Valentin Glushko is Russia's leading rocket engine specialist.
Sit down.
So, Comrade Glushko, who do you suggest should lead such important work? Why do you hesitate, Comrade Glushko? There's someone, not an obvious choice.
He's been imprisoned for anti-Soviet activity, Sergei Korolev.
So you suggest and entrust such a vital task to a criminal? Huh? Why was he in prison? Because I denounced him.
The man Glushko denounced has been in a Soviet gulag for six years.
He's Russia's top rocket scientist.
His name, Sergei Korolev.
Was this your confession? Korolev is a genius.
In nineteen-thirty-three, before his arrest, he and a small group of engineers sent up Russia's first liquid fuel rocket.
His technical prowess matches von Braun's and he shares his vision of one day traveling to the moon and the furthermost points of the cosmos.
Korolev worked closely with Glushko.
Together their talents promised the Soviets a leading role in space exploration.
But then Stalin stamped on Korolev's dreams.
Under torture Glushko and other engineers denounced Korolev.
All were forced to confess to false charges of sabotage.
Sentenced to ten years hard labor in the gulag, Korolev joined innocent millions executed or imprisoned in Stalin's purges.
his ambitions for space exploration seemed a hopeless memory.
Until suddenly, with the urgent need to develop a Soviet rocket programme, KOROLEV's expectance is needed.
On glushko's recommendation, he is released and ordered to Germany.
SS General Kammler has reports that American tanks are just twelve miles away.
Von Braun, collect your top men.
One small case each.
No wives, no children.
At dawn a train will take you south to the Alps.
You are to destroy all your blueprints and documents.
Every last one.
Anyone failing in these orders will be shot! Heil Hitler.
Huzel.
Take the most valuable documents and hide them.
Where? Under disused mine.
Take Riedel with you.
There must be hundreds close to here in the mountains.
And seal them up.
And join us in the Alps.
Yes, Herr Doctor.
Von Braun's assistant, Dieter Huzel, will be shot if he's caught hiding the documents.
They hold von Braun's vision for the future of space travel.
On Kammler's orders, the top five hundred scientists head south to the Alps.
While von Braun retreats to the Alps, American forces arrive in the area close to his abandoned headquarters.
Scouts soon discover a V2 mass production plane, cut deep into a mountainside.
They drive into several kilometers of interconnecting tunnels where over five thousand V2s have been mass-produced.
On the south side of the mountain the American's find Camp Dora, run by the SS to supply slave labor to the factory.
Six thousand bodies lie left unburied by the SS.
Later, when mass graves are excavated, the death toll will reach twenty-five thousand.
More have died building von Braun's V2 than have been killed by the rocket itself.
SERGEI KOROLEV arrived at the Soviet High Command, Germany.
Welcome, Comrade Korolev.
Come in, come in.
Uh, Comrade Glushko you already know.
The two of you are to work together.
Glushko on rocket engines.
You Sergei Pavolich will be chief engineer and work directly to me.
Comrade Glushko has some information for you.
We are to set up a research and design bureau here in Germany.
You must find out everything you can about these rockets.
We can be sure the Americans will be doing the same.
Old allies can become new enemies.
Who is this man? Wernher von Braun, chief designer of the German rocket program.
In the Alps, diehard SS are preparing to make their final stand.
In these last desperate weeks everybody is seen as a potential traitor.
Come in.
Dieter.
The documents are safe? They are well-hidden, sealed in a disused mine.
- Does anybody know? - No one.
Good.
Because now we have no friends.
The SS have orders to shoot us if Germany loses the war.
You're certain of this? Look, they are fanatics.
And we are the bearers of an entire engineering site.
They will kill us rather than let us be captured.
The Americans strip the V2 factory of parts and engines for a hundred complete rockets.
Major Staver organizes the largest movement of materials for the whole war.
But the Americans may lose their prize.
General TOFTOV arrives with news that Germany is to be divided between the Allies.
By less than a few miles, this factory falls into Soviet control after the war.
Soviet control? How long have we got here? Not long.
A month.
Sir, it's gonna take over a hundred rail cars to get all this stuff out.
The bridges are down and we've got a month? It is time, gentlemen, for us to execute our orders.
Get down, get down.
Don't, don't shoot! Stop and get off the bike.
and put your hands slowly in the air.
Drop the bike! Drop it! Hands up.
Don't shoot.
M-My name is Dieter HUZEL.
I am member of the V2 rocket group.
We are at hiding, two kilometers from here.
This is the BBC Home Service.
Here is the news.
The end of the war in Europe was officially announced by Mr.
Churchill at three o'clock this afternoon in a broadcast from Ten Downing Street.
He said Von Braun comes out of hiding, gambling that surrender to the Americans will give the chance to continue his life's mission.
The representative of the German High Command and government signed the Act of Unconditional Surrender Tell me about your rocket work at Peenemunde.
Where to start? It was for the war, obviously.
But for us, the V2 as a weapon was just one application of the technology.
We were looking far beyond into the future.
We had other rockets at the theoretical stage.
We have made the drawings for the A-9, piloted rocket by six hundred kilometers in seventeen minutes and make a controlled landing from upper atmosphere.
And were to prove in a pressurized cabin under two or three stage booster rockets, we could achieve velocity that would balance down to the pull of the gravity.
Could I have some paper, please? And the capsule would orbit the planet without any power, in the same way as the moon does.
The duratopm of the orbit would be as little as nineteen.
Scientific research, astronomy.
The implications are endless.
The space platform will be absolutely illustrated.
Find a docking station that will otherwise.
That will leave Earth's orbit altogether and explore other planets.
Now, please, the development of rockets in the right hands we have consequences that are revolutionary for civilization.
Were you ever a member of the National Socialist Party? Yes, I was.
And the SS? Yes, I held the rank of major at the end of the war.
But I never wore the uniform and as an engineer I was employed But you were a member and you met with both Heinrich Himmler and Adolph Hitler.
On a few occasions.
You are aware of the existence in the V2 mass-production plant here? I was not involved.
I worked in research and development at Peenemunde.
I came here a few weeks before we were ordered south.
But you saw the conditions.
Don't you imagine someone else would have done the work if I had refused? Failing to investigate any possible war crimes, the Americans seized their chance to take Von Braun's core team and one hundred V2s to the United States.
There are some rocket engines, pieces of guidance equipment, but we have not found any technical drawings.
I want this plant put back into production, immediately.
But Comrade General, without any technical data It will be possible.
Korolev and Glushko take over von Braun's abandoned quarters.
Being in the den of the fascist beasts, it's not so bad.
You know you'd make a perfect capitalist boss.
There is no need to denounce me again, Valentin Pavlovich.
Once is enough.
Yes.
I know it was you.
The NKVD, they told me.
Don't you think they told me who was my accuser? They told you it was me? The Americans drop the first atomic bombs in Japan.
Now the Soviets face a terrifying new threat.
The Americans have both the nuclear bomb and von Braun's rocket technology.
Von Braun and over a hundred twenty-seven of his top engineers arrive in America.
Under constant military guard, they are being escorted to Fort Bliss, a remote Army base in the Texan desert.
The news that the German engineers have been brought to the States sparks public outrage.
One senator protests, I never thought we would have to import these Nazi killers to defend our country.
Some have committed war crimes more serious than those for which other Nazis have had to hang.
In villages around the V2 factory, the Soviets make a desperate appeal for any engineers who did not leave with the Americans.
Slowly, some come forward.
And then the Russians have a major success.
One of von Braun's most senior engineers, Helmut Gottrup joins Korolev's team.
He gets a V2 engine working.
It's only a small step.
But he agrees to oversee the task of drawing-up a new set of blueprints - assured he can stay in Germany.
But Serov has other orders from Stalin.
I want you to arrange a special banquet.
You can say it is to reward the colonel's efforts.
good food, plenty of vodka, but no Russian is to drink.
Dear comrades.
Dear German colleagues.
Tonight on behalf of the Soviet administration in Germany I'd like to thank you all.
To the success of our rockets, let's celebrate.
At three, Servo's plan goes into action in the morning.
The engineers, too drunk to resist, are easily deported with their families.
The train is the first of ninety-two that will carry rocket parts and specialists to Russia.
Comrade Stalin will see you now.
Be brief.
Look him directly in the eye when you speak.
The future of von Braun and his team is now also uncertain.
This is impossible.
We are just prisoners here.
I've argued your case, von Braun, believe me.
America has our designs, our blueprints, our best engineers and does nothing.
The War Department have decided to develop planes and submarines to deliver the bomb.
They will regret that decision My men are beginning to wonder if the future would not have been better working for Stalin.
If that is all.
Stalin did not offer his hand.
I could not tell whether he approved of what I was saying.
he listened, paced up and down, hardly taking his pipe out of his mouth.
He said it was imperative we learn as much as possible from the Germans.
He then asked that on improving the range.
I told him we could.
He asked whether it could reach America.
You told him yes.
But how? With what? In run-down factories outside Moscow the Germans start re-producing technical drawings for the thousands of V2 parts.
It takes over two years before they painstakingly compile a new set of blueprints.
But Korolev worries that he cannot fulfill Stalin's ambitious demands with this now aging technology.
The day arrives for the launch of the first Russian built V2.
Serov has orders to send daily reports directly to Stalin on Korolev's progress.
I want to know who is responsible.
I want to know now.
The faulty relay would be Comrade Ginsberg's responsibility.
Give me that man.
He does not appear to be here at the moment, comrade.
Then you're responsible, Korolev.
- Yes, hello.
- Korolev? Comrade Serov.
Hello.
No more failures.
Hello? Copying the V2 is getting us nowhere.
Even if we manage a successful launch, it's obsolete.
I have an idea.
To improve the design for a new look, lighter and more powerful, a detachable nosecone.
When the fuel tanks are spent, the nosecone detaches, the rocket pulls away.
Now lighter, it goes further and faster.
And we only have to design a nosecone to withstand the heat of re-entry.
But, I need you to get me more thrust from the engine.
I can give you more thrust.
I can increase the ratio of alcohol to liquid oxygen.
Let's build it.
I am the Earth and the wire is the pull of the Earth's gravity.
And we have a satellite.
While Korolev develops real rockets, von Braun is reduced to showing off models to the local Rotarian Club.
But if we increase the speed, the rocket will break free of the Earth's orbit and travels onward to the moon and planets.
Now, a manned satellite Excuse me, Dr.
von Braun.
Dr.
von Braun.
Uh, how do you respond to the American scientists who say that you should go back to Germany? Please, this is not an occasion for such questions.
Well, is it true that you were a Nazi and used slave labor to build your rockets? Well, Dr.
von Braun? These kind citizens have not come here to hear us debate such matters.
They've come to hear about an American future in space.
Yeah, well, these Americans are paying for your meal ticket.
And they have a right to know the truth.
I look into the future, not the past.
When good citizens like this will travel into space.
Later, SS files will reveal that von Braun himself selected slave labor to build the V2.
Evidence kept secret from the American public.
Korolev is now ready to test launch his new rocket.
With its lightweight design and detachable nosecone, it is the first that's Soviet-designed.
Korolev hopes the rocket will achieve twice the range of the V2.
If it does not, he could be returned to the Gulag.
It will take fifteen minutes before they hear whether the rocket has successfully hit the test target five hundred kilometers away.
It's a success.
We have confirmation it's a success.
We've done it.
We've done it, General.
For Gottrup and his team the launch marks the beginning of the end of their involvement in rockets.
Within three years they will face obscurity back in East Germany.
The Cold War race to space begins.
And the Soviets are winning - led by a former prisoner now so prized they fear the Americans may assassinate him.
Sergei Pavlovich, You're becoming as powerful and as important as your rockets.
You know what that means.
In the interest of state security, no one must know your name, your identity.
It must be as if you don't exist.
A long and productive life, Comrade Chief Designer.