HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND Those are the words written on a lunar plaque that, 65 years ago this summer, the three members of the Apollo 11 mission left behind on the moon, attached to the ladder of their lunar unit.
The other object they left behind, the American flag Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon’s surface, has not been seen in years and may no longer be there. The flag’s pole didn’t withstand the blast of Saturn V’s exhaust, when the rocket set out for its return trip to Earth. But the lunar plaque remains and to this day, reminds us of an extraordinary human achievement and of the sentiments that accompanied it: hope for a beautiful world, hope for unity, and hope for kindness and love.
What the plaque does not speak to is that American rocket science, or rather the expertise in aerospace engineering and astrodynamics needed to put a human on the moon, is connected to the invention of weapons of mass destruction and a nuclear arms race. Worst yet, we owe much of our rocket science technology and that of the first moon landing to Nazi Germany. Enter The Atomic Rocketeer (2024, 64 minutes), the third documentary by award-winning filmmaker, producer, and writer Larry Sheffield.
The film speaks to how Americans brought in scientists, who at the time were linked to the highest echelons of the Third Reich, to help our country in its efforts to win the nuclear arms race and, later, the Space Race, and to emerge victorious in what became known as the Cold War. The documentary premieres this weekend at SALA in Los Alamos, during the second annual Oppenheimer Festival, which runs Saturday, August 10, through August. Oppenheimer Festival 2024 (Los Alamos) Saturday, August 10, through August 31: Offers films, documentaries, lectures, interactive activities, and historic tours in Los Alamos.
More information at sala.losalamos.com/oppenheimer-festival-2024 .
The Atomic Rocketeer screenings: Noon and 6 p.m. Saturday, August 10; 1 p.
m. Sunday, August 11. $35 (lunch included); $45 (dinner included); free for SALA members.
Additional screenings: Thursday, August 15, to August 31, see schedule for times. In his first two films, Sheffield — who was born and raised in Alamogordo, about 78 miles southwest of Trinity Site — and his team used archival footage to tell untold stories about the birth of the Atomic Age in Alamogordo, Center of the World, Trinity 1945 (2020) and Oppenheimer After Trinity (2023), about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life after the world’s first atomic test in New Mexico and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sheffield’s second film won several festival awards, including Best Historical Documentary at the third Cannes World Film Festival in 2023. The Atomic Rocketeer ’s story of the impact on space science of the top-secret, post-WWII operation that brought some 1,600 rocket scientists from Germany to the U.S.
is not entirely new but is not widely known, either — even in New Mexico. Operation Overcast became known as Operation Paperclip, a reference to the paper clips used on the dossiers of the cases deemed most problematic. “Problematic” refers to the scientists who U.
S. officials kidnapped from post-war Germany and who also may have been war criminals, Nazi Party members, or even SS officers and had developed chemical and biological weapons — or in some cases, might’ve helped build rockets meant for annihilation. The New York Times and several other publications unveiled Operation Paperclip as early as 1946, but it wasn’t until the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998 that led to the declassification of U.
S. intelligence records that more Americans learned the truth. In 2014, investigative journalist and later Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen published a book titled Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Little, Brown and Company).
Sheffield uses rarely seen footage that shows this raw and dehumanizing period of history. “I wanted to talk about how those two inventions [the atomic bomb and rockets] converged,” Sheffield says, and to discuss its impact on the population and the activities in Alamogordo. “I wanted to stick with the facts and tell the story as it was.
A lot of this footage I found is in archives. It’s a treasure that’s sitting in a filing cabinet. If no one uses it, it won’t ever be seen.
” The Atomic Rocketeer is not an easy film to watch, but it allows viewers to face the truth and learn about the identities and activities of Operation Paperclip. “This is the only way we can talk about it and avoid history repeating itself,” Sheffield says. Some of the scenes may be difficult to swallow and were equally difficult for Sheffield to sift through and compile, especially the scenes that show footage of Nazi Germany.
“Those were the hardest 15 minutes for me,” Sheffield says. Viewers may find themselves cringing or needing a moment after the film to process the history and say, “How was that even allowed by our government?” The film also enlightens viewers about some of the German scientists who became part of Operation Paperclip, including Wernher von Braun, a noted aerospace engineer and proponent of space exploration who led U.S.
developments in rocketry and ultimately ended up working for NASA. The Atomic Rocketeer shows archival footage of von Braun in civilian clothes standing behind Hitler and in later footage wearing an SS uniform. Von Braun’s genius and scientific expertise are undeniable but the fact remains, as The Atomic Rocketeer points out, that von Braun, the man who led NASA’s development of the Saturn V rocket, was a Nazi.
The film reminds viewers to hold governments accountable and also to read, watch, and talk with people who may have different opinions. We cannot change or make amends for what we refuse to confront, and we cannot make a better, more empathetic society if we succumb to the Ostrich Effect — and when it comes to The Atomic Rocketeer , Sheffield doesn’t allow you to. “I want my film to open a conversation, like the one we’re having just now,” Sheffield says in a recent Zoom interview with Pasatiempo .
“We don’t need to agree, but we need to be able to talk about it.”.
