# Spellbreakers Ep. 170: First in Space - A History of the German Space Program, Part I - The Early Years

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-5934327/spellbreakers-ep-170-first-in-space-a-history-of-the-german-space-program-part-i-the-early-years.md
Podcast: [Badlands Media](https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-5934327)
Published: 2026-06-13T04:15:22+00:00
Episode link: https://badlandsmedia.podbean.com/e/spellbreakers-ep-170-first-in-space-a-history-of-the-german-space-program-part-i-the-early-years/
Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/666f2x7vdx9rcbt6/Spellbreakers_ep_170_1_7pb07.mp3
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Duration seconds: 4744

## Resource

Forget the "well, actually" crowd. Yes, the Germans were central to the space race, and host Matt Trump is leaning all the way into it. In Part I of this new series, Matt traces humanity's first object to ever cross into outer space back to a test launch from Peenemunde on June 20, 1944, two weeks after D-Day, and the weapon it became, the V2. But the real story starts decades earlier with Jules Verne, whose 1865 novel "From the Earth to the Moon" predicted Apollo and Artemis with eerie accuracy, and inspired a young Transylvanian Saxon named Hermann Oberth to turn science fiction into the actual rocket equation. Matt also dives into the strange, tangled connections between Oberth, Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, and the silent film "Metropolis," and what that film really reveals about how the Nazis saw themselves. Next week, the warriors arrive: Wernher von Braun.

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## Transcript

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