At Haus Ingeburg the rocket scientists had been using a network of German and Austrian intelligence sources to keep track of U.S. Army developments in the area. Von Braun and Dornberger knew that a unit of U.S. soldiers had set up a base at the bottom of the mountain on the Austrian side. The two men agreed it was best to send von Braun’s younger brother, Magnus, down the mountain to try to make a deal with the Americans. Magnus was trustworthy. He understood what could be said about the V-2 and what could never be said. Magnus von Braun had been in charge of overseeing slave labor production of the gyroscopes that each rocket required, and he understood why the subject of slave labor was to be avoided at all cost. He also was the best English speaker in the group.
On the morning of May 2, Magnus von Braun climbed onto a bicycle and began pedaling down the steep mountain pass through the bright alpine sunshine. Shortly before lunchtime he came upon an American soldier manning a post along the road. It was Private First Class Fred Schneikert, the son of a Wisconsin farmer, now a soldier with the Forty-fourth Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. When Private Schneikert spotted a lone German on a bicycle, he ordered the man to drop the bike and raise both hands. Magnus von Braun complied. In broken English, he tried explaining to the American soldier that his brother wanted to make a deal with regard to the V-2 rocket. “It sounded like he wanted to ‘sell’ his brother to the Americans,” Private Schneikert recalled.
Private Schneikert escorted Magnus von Braun farther down the mountain so he could speak with a superior at the Forty-fourth Division’s U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) headquarters, located in Reutte, just over the border in Austria. There, CIC contacted SHAEF headquarters in Versailles, which contacted a CIOS team. The CIOS Black List for rocket research included one thousand names of scientists and engineers slated for interrogation. Wernher von Braun was at the top of that list.
It was May 2, 1945, and although Hitler was dead, the German Reich had not yet surrendered. Allies feared members of a fanatical resistance group, the Werewolves, were lurking in Bavaria, planning a final attack. Thinking that the von Braun brother could be part of a trap, the Counter Intelligence Corps told Magnus to go tell his brother Wernher to come down and surrender himself. Magnus headed back up the mountain with the news.
At the Haus Ingeburg ski resort, Wernher von Braun and General Dornberger had selected a small group to join their deal-making team. They were Magnus von Braun; General Dornberger’s chief of staff, Herbert Axster; the engine specialist Hans Lindenberg; and the two engineers who had hidden the V-2 documents inside the D?rnten mine, Dieter Huzel and Bernhard Tessmann. The men stuffed their personal belongings into three gray passenger vans and headed down the Adolf Hitler Pass. Heavy snow gave way to driving rain.
When the group of seven arrived in Reutte later that night, they found First Lieutenant Charles Stewart doing paperwork by candlelight. Their welcome was, by many accounts, warm. “I did not expect to be kicked in the teeth,” von Braun told an American reporter years later. “The V-2 was something we had and you didn’t have. Naturally, you wanted to know all about it.” The rocket scientists were served fresh eggs, coffee, and bread with real butter. Fancy, but not quite as good as what was being provided at Haus Ingeburg. The scientists were given private rooms to sleep in, with pillows and clean sheets. In the morning, the press had arrived. The “capture” of the scientists and engineers behind the deadly V-2 was a big story for the international press. The group posed for photographs, and in the pictures they are all smiles. Von Braun boasted about having invented the V-2. He was “its founder and guiding spirit,” von Braun insisted. Everyone else was secondary to him.
Some members of the Forty-fourth Division Counter Intelligence Corps found von Braun’s hubris appalling. “He posed for endless pictures with individual GIs, in which he beamed, shook hands, pointed inquiringly at medals and otherwise conducted himself as a celebrity rather than a prisoner,” noted one member, “treat[ing] our soldiers with the affable condescension of a visiting congressman.” Second Lieutenant Walter Jessel was the American intelligence officer originally in charge of interrogating von Braun. His first and most lasting impression was the lack of remorse. “There is recognition of Germany’s defeat, but none whatsoever of Germany’s guilt and responsibility.” So confident were von Braun and Dornberger about their value to the U.S. Army, they demanded to see General Eisenhower, whom they called “Ike.”