as an Untersturmführer (Second lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Major). Von Braun later claimed that these were simply technical promotions received each year regularly by mail. Work under Nazi regime In 1932, Von Braun received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute of Technology in Berlin, Germany. During a period in 1931, Von Braun attended the Technical Institute in Switzerland. During this time in Switzerland, Von Braun assisted Professor Hermann Oberth in writing a book concerning the possibilities of creating and manufacturing liquid-propellant rockets. Shortly after this, Von Braun founded his own private rocket development business in Berlin, through which made the first rocket fired by gasoline and liquid oxygen. In 1932, having caught wind of Von Braun's rocket business, the German Army connected with Von Braun to pursue basic missile research and weather data experimentation. Von Braun said that the German Government financed the development of test stands and facilities for experimentation in Darmstadt, Germany. In 1939, Von Braun was appointed a technical advisor at Peenemunde Proving Ground on the Baltic Sea. In 1933, von Braun was working on his creative doctorate when the Nazi Party came to power in a coalition government in Germany; rocketry was almost immediately moved onto the national agenda. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who then worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at Kummersdorf. Von Braun was awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy in physics (aerospace engineering) on 27 July 1934, from the University of Berlin for a thesis entitled "About Combustion Tests"; his doctoral supervisor was Erich Schumann. However, this thesis was only the public part of von Braun's work. His actual full thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket (dated 16 April 1934) was kept classified by the German army, and was not published until 1960. By the end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two liquid fuel rockets that rose to heights of 2.2 and . Von Braun continued his guided missile work throughout World War Two, and met with Adolf Hitler on several occasions, being formally decorated by Hitler twice, including being awarded the Iron Cross. At the time, Germany was highly interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939, German scientists occasionally contacted