The Missile and Space Race by Alan J. Levine

Abstract

1058 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE sufficiency” (p. 229). The deliberately slow rate of changeover from coal-based to oil-based chemicals was, therefore, determined to a large extent also by concern over the risks of becoming dependent on imported raw materials. When the move toward oil did begin, it was influenced as much by external political and economic influences, such as the Cold War and the Korean War, as by the new direction of the international organic chemical industry. Prewar, wartime, and postwar successes in traditional coal-based processes, notably Fischer-Tropsch gasification of coal, Walter Reppe’s acetylene chemistry, and Karl Ziegler’s catalysts (which per­ mitted low-pressure production of high-density polyethylene), ac­ counted for some of the ongoing commitment to coal. These pro­ cesses were also admired outside Germany and influenced trends in the sharing and transfer of coal- and oil-based technologies as Ger­ many entered into a new world order increasingly dominated by a U.S. foreign policy that favored inexpensive petroleum. This encour­ aged breakthroughs in petrochemical research, and the eventual real­ ization in Germany that strategies relevant before 1945 were no longer appropriate. Stokes delineates the different approaches adopted by the major players through case studies that show how BASF and Bayer became involved in collaboration with outsiders (Shell and British Petroleum, respectively), while Hoechst decided to enter the petrochemical arena without embarking on joint ventures. The Hüls factory, which specialized in synthetic rubber and polymers, relied to some extent on state intervention. The case studies make clear how industrialists, bureaucrats, and politicians changed their ways of thinking in the decade and a half after 1945. Stokes also briefly draws attention to the situation in East Germany, but at the time of writing, insufficient archival material was available to enable effective comparisons. Minor criticisms of the book relate to occasional poor editing and proofreading, which are not in keeping with standards normally associated with this publisher, and the ab­ sence of a bibliography. These should not, however, detract historians of technology from what is a thoroughly researched and important study of one neglected aspect of Germany’s break with the past. Anthony S. Travis Dr. Travis is deputy director of the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Rainbow Makers: The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1993). The Missile and Space Race. By Alan J. Levine. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994. Pp. viii + 247; notes, bibliography, index. $55.00. Alan J. Levine’s book does something few have tried before. It deals with “the interplay between the development of space travel, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1059 the Cold War missile race, and the international politics of the quarter century following World War II” (p. vii). By combining discussions of the development of rocketry for military purposes with its applica­ tion to spaceflight, Levine makes clear a connection that is only im­ plicit in most treatments of the two topics. He alternates chapters on the development of rockets as weapons and of spaceflight, demon­ strating how they emerged in parallel, and how the U.S. space pro­ gram would have been delayed for years if converted rockets had not been available as the first space boosters. Levine also gives justified attention to early ideas about space planes and nuclear propulsion systems for spaceflight. But is the book a useful addition to the political and managerial history of space and rocketry? That is a hard question to answer. On one hand, Levine fills the book with a series of provocative statements and judgments, which, if valid, would challenge accepted explana­ tions. Here arejust a few examples. Early U.S. rocket engineers Frank Malina and Martin Summerfield “had been Communist sympathiz­ ers” (p. 8). “After their first role in sorting documents and giving advice, the Germans’ part in the American rocket effort [until the late 1950s] was small—not because they were not able, but because they were not used” (p. 13). “Europeans reacted much more strongly than people in the United States to Sputnik” (p. 64...