Walter Dornberger (1895–1980) was a German engineer-general, the central administrator of the V-2 rocket programme and the architect of Germany's military ballistic effort. A volunteer in 1914 and a prisoner of war in France in 1918, he joined the Reichswehr after the armistice and was sent in the late 1920s to obtain an engineering degree at the Technische Hochschule of Berlin. From 1932 he led the German Army Weapons Office's secret work on rocket propulsion, first at Kummersdorf and then, from 1937, at the vast Peenemünde test centre, which under his direction became one of the most advanced technological laboratories of its time. There he recruited and shielded Wernher von Braun, defending him tirelessly against the interference of the Party, of Himmler and of the SS. At the collapse of the Reich he surrendered to the Americans with his team; after a two-year internment in Britain, he emigrated to the United States in 1947 under Operation Paperclip and continued his career at Bell Aircraft, contributing to several missile projects and to the Dyna-Soar programme. His memoir, published in German in 1952, made him one of the principal chroniclers of German military astronautics.