THE WINNING SIDE is based on the life of Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), Chief Rocket Engineer of the Third Reich and one of the fathers of the United States Space program. While the central facts, themes and characters are drawn from historical accounts, this is a work of dramatic fiction and liberties have been taken. For those interested in learning more about the history, I highly recommend Michael J. Neufeld’s Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Alan Riding’s And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris, Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon.
I would like to acknowledge and thank all of the actors who helped develop THE WINNING SIDE over the last four years: Lowell Byers, Sanjit De Silva, Peter Jay Fernandez, Melissa Friedman, Adam Gerber, Devin E. Haqq, Rhett Henckel, Brian Huynh, Sullivan Jones, Chris Myers, Jon Norman Schneider and Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.
"I propose to take our countrymen’s claims of American exceptionalism seriously, which is to say I propose subjecting our country to an exceptional moral standard. This is difficult because there exists, all around us, an apparatus urging us to accept American innocence at face value and not to inquire too much. And it is so easy to look away, to live with the fruits of our history and to ignore the great evil done in all of our names."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
