# 3 The Beginnings of Rocket Research
Hardly known is the fact that the first rocket prototypes up to the V1 were not developed and tested in Peenemünde, but in Brandenburg. It was only later, after the Nazis seized power in the 1930s, that the rocket testing facility was moved to the Baltic Sea to fire the infamous V1 and V2 at the British mainland.
The idea that the first rockets were tested here in secret is oppressive and captivating. Engineers like Wernher von Braun developed and tested weapons of mass destruction here, among other things.
The Soviets were considerably afraid of a resurgence of the Nazi dictatorship and therefore blew up most of the militarily important infrastructures and captured the construction plans of German rocket and armament research, which was the world leader at the time, even before the Americans. So the foundations were laid here for the first man in space by the Soviets and for the American Apollo moon mission.
I imagine how the engine prototypes were driven on rails through the forest to the respective test stands, how the scientists on site prepared the test procedures and how there must certainly have been misfires and explosions in the process. How physicists started the engines behind the protective concrete wall, between the technical equipment, looking through the small peepholes.
