Liebensraum Without The Bloodshed...

A recent question posed by my friend, and fellow historical thinker who writes under the sobriquet "Independent Voter," has posed a question on our common discussion board, The Cracker Barrel Philosophers, concerning Russia's decision to deny American astronauts shuttle service to the International Space Station by possibly not renewing the transport contract they have shared since 2011...The ultimate goal of space exploration by any nation, or any privately held enterprise is to afford suitable living conditions beyond the gravitational pull of Planet Earth...Such a quest has been imagined for centuries, but only in the last 50 years became a reality as American astronauts became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface...

This makes me wonder how different the space program might have looked if Germany's elected leader in the 1930's had not been a raving lunatic whose only goal was to populate the world with his imaginary "Aryan" race, but had still been obsessed with his idea of Liebensraum (living space) for Germans...In which direction would a peace-minded Adolf Hitler have looked if his view from Berlin had only included the surrounding European nations, plus the cold waters of the Baltic and North Seas?...Germany already existed built upon the rubble of the many smaller tribes and failed conquerors which had come and gone before, and the only untapped direction he could have found would have driven his gaze upwards and out from the bounds of gravity into outer space...

Far-thinking Germans had established the Society For Space Travel in 1927, and conducted their first successful rocket launch in 1930, three years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany...The later famous Werner Von Braun was an early member, and later was chosen by Der Fuehrer to execute the deadly V-2 program...Fortunately for the postwar US space exploration program, Von Braun was quickly shuttled into the western side of the Iron Curtain when it came time to divvy up the pool of surviving German scientists...But had Hitler chosen to array Germany's formidable military forces in a defensive manner directed mainly at the Red Horde to the east led by the equally, if not more insane and bloodthirsty tyrant Joseph Stalin, the considerable scientific talent available to him within his own borders could have been used to leap into the areas beyond the clouds rather than set Terra Firma awash in human blood...

The concept of lunar colonization has also inspired fictional depictions, some of an entertaining nature, and others of a sadder belief in a fantasy world...An escapee from the Hitlerian hell that Germany later became, filmmaker Fritz Lang directed the silent classic of 1929, "Frau im Mond" (Woman in the Moon), which dealt with moon colonization...Television of course inspired numerous series dealing with space exploration and habitation of other planets, notably "Star Trek" and "Lost in Space"...Fiction writers have long allowed space exploration to fuel their published tales...Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury have fired the imaginations of many readers, some of which went on to fulfill their dreams of stepping beyond the bounds of Earth, and into the limitless possibilities of space...

The founders of Germany's Society For Space Travel drew much of their inspiration from serving as technical consultants for Fritz Lang's work of film science fiction...Lang himself despised Nazism and all it stood for, wisely departing the country before his own Jewish family heritage could be discovered and held against him, and one of the Society's founders, Willy Ley, also successfully escaped the Nazi clutches, settling in America as a writer...Co-founder Max Valier experimented with rocket-powered cars and aircraft until one of his liquid-fueled rockets exploded on his workbench, killing him...The Society's driving force and other co-founder, Johannes Winkler, spent the remainder of his life in Germany designing rockets and RATO units for Junkers Flugzeug und Motorenwerke AG throughout the Nazi regime and until his death in 1947...The Society itself was disbanded in 1934, a year after Hitler assumed power along with his toadlings...

If however Hitler had been able to channel his energies for bloodlust and hatred for all things non-germanic into the truly innovative solution to liebensraum of populating non-earthly but inhabitable heavenly bodies, his legacy in world history might have taken an entirely different turn...Speculating on the might-have-been has more value than fueling the scripts of more Hollywood epics; it can also be used as a value lesson in combining conjecture over turning points in history with possible future opportunities, planning roadmaps for action in avoiding future calamitous wars...Successful military units always have strategic plans for all possible events, most of which are never used because only one such event presents itself...Preparation for the one which does occur is why we hypothesize over the merely possible...

If, after securing Germany's borders against a costly invasion from the east, Hitler had then seen the only real direction for expansion without bloodshed was skyward, the talent already present in Deutschland such as the previously mentioned Werner Von Braun and others in his Peenemunde V-2 team, plus the untapped ability of thinkers like Heinz-Hermann Koelle, whose flair for forward thinking was wasted as a pilot in Reichsmarschall Goering's Luftwaffe...Following the war Koelle's interest in rockets led him to re-form the Society For Space Travel, and through this association, and his attainment of a degree in mechanical engineering at the post-war University of Stuttgart, he was recommended by Von Braun to join the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency, culminating in his design for the Saturn I rocket, and its success in the Explorer and Apollo programs...

Such thinkers combined with the other aeronautical minds existing in 1930's Germany could have led to early settlement of the space frontier by humans, and secured Hitler's place in history as one of humanity's greatest leaders, instead of being remembered as a practitioner of genocide...Colonization beyond Earth's atmosphere might have become reality in his time instead of remaining a far off dream even in this day...But alas, Der Fuehrer was indeed a psychopath with a tunnel vision outlook focused only on reducing humanity to a godless, fair-skinned image with minds uniformly clouded with hatred...We can only hope to have learned the early warning signs of allowing such a costly error to go unchecked...

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