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Von Braun was far from the worse - although he directly contributed to the German war effort, and knew about death camps through the usage of slave labor, it is
by cdavid 16y ago
Von Braun was far from the worse - although he directly contributed to the German war effort, and knew about death camps through the usage of slave labor, it is generally acknowledged he did not have much choice.
Low-ranking nazi researchers, doing experiments on human, were never put on trial AFAIK. This was more pervasive in Japan, where most scientists from unit 731 were given pardon, and held highly respectable positions well after the second WW (e.g. M. Kitano who worked in the green cross group).
I was recently horrified to learn that figures related to how long does it take to die underwater, at high altitute, etc... were known from nazi experiments.
- jacquesm 16y ago> it is generally acknowledged he did not have much choice. Why didn't he have a choice ?
- daliusd 16y agoSome controversial background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Slave_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Slave_labor Answering your question: only von Braun could answer that. We can only guess that he might have been afraid to put his family to risk. If you read more about him you can find he was arrested by Nazis once. That might give some idea about fear atmosphere that he might have experienced. It is easy to judge when you already know who was bad and who was good in WW2.
- jacquesm 16y agoI already knew a thing or two about von Braun before this thread got started, what I genuinely wonder about is if we are just mixing up terms here. When you say 'he did not have much choice' I read that as 'he was forced to do this at gunpoint'. And even in that extreme case there are still choices, just not very many happy endings. There are plenty of scientists that would do the most unethical things if it means they get to work on their pet project. From that wikipedia article you quote there: "We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured." The hypocrisy in there is so thick it's almost comical.
- cdavid 16y agoI said much choice, maybe it is stronger than what I really meant (English is not my native language). He certainly had a choice, but there were accounts from witnesses that complaining about the usage of slave labors or conditions in death camps were not really accepted (as in you would at least put to jail if you would, which did not end well during the nazis) If you compare his behavior to e.g. doctors in Japan (who often came from the most prestigious universities in Japan, and were quite brilliant), who personally willingly tortured, killed, infected people, including young children, I would say there is no comparison. Some of those people supposedly took part of the biological american program after the second WW (still mostly classified AFAIK), and Japan does not even recognize the crimes yet I believe. [EDIT] One of the former member of Unit 731 used to tour in Japan (not sure if he still does) to explain the attrocities he commited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Yuasa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Yuasa. It is even more gruesome that what you could imagine from what you would usually know about nazi crimes.
- drinian 16y agoStill, presumably he had a choice not to support the war effort with his full technical abilities.
- srean 16y agoMuch as horrific that war crimes are, time to time it is perhaps important to remind ourselves that history is written by the victorious. Case in point the United State's human experiments on syphilis, radioactivity,forced malnutrition etc on the mentally ill, slaves, POW etc. In fact a popular defense during Nuremberg trials was that US doctors did these too. One can take some comfort in the presupposition that we weren't as bad as the bad guys. But had the Nazis won they would perhaps come to the same conclusion, the bad guys in that case would have been the allied forces.
- gordonguthrie 16y ago> knew about death camps through the usage of slave labor Um, he was Technical Director at Peenemunde - which was an assembly line in a tunnel (ie a single room) and which had gallows beside the assembly line on which slave labours were hanged. Oh, and he joined the SS before the war because Himmler headhunted him and told him he would guarantee funding for his rocketry work.