FHC Presents: Two Searches for a Winning Weapon: The Manhattan Project and Germany’s V-2

Both Germany and the United States invested heavily in potential “wonder weapons” during World War II — indeed, in the same ones: rockets and nuclear explosives. But each chose to pursue one of these options over the other. Germany spent most heavily on rockets, at a level similar to U.S. expenditures on the Anglo-American Manhattan Project. This illustrated lecture will look for lessons to be found by comparing the two national programs, from their turn-of-the-century origins to their place in competing wartime technologies, and from their significance for postwar research to their merger into an essential Cold War military system: the nuclear- armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.

Doors open at 06:30PM, lecture begins at 07:00PM.

Admission is $20.00 for general public, $15.00 for FHC Members.