He wasn't just a member of the NSDAP, he also joined the SS. He's on the record suggesting the use of forced labour of concentration camp prisoners to build his rockets. That's at least an 8/10 on the Nazi scale. Don't whitewash his past just because he went on to build the moon rocket.
It's also interesting to see how much more apologetic the English Wikipedia article on von Braun is compared to its German counterpart.
> Well, the choice was basically,
> * Become a member of the Nazi Party
> * Death
No it wasn't. This is what Nazi's say to excuse their decisions and behavior. There were millions of people in Germany in both industry and the military who were not Nazi's and survived just fine.
Note that unlike Von Braun many other Germany scientists and weapon designers were not members of the Nazi party (let alone enthusiastic members)
Becoming a Nazi and joining the party is what a person consciously did either because they believed in the ideology or they wanted to collaborate to further their careers.
Van Braun being washed of his Nazi part is a conscious part of a US government propaganda campaign as Von Braun having safe haven in the USA in the 1950s was very controversial at the time. It's as simple as the USA overlooking his Nazi past and excusing it (and actively covering it up) because the cold war necessitated it.
edit: forgot to mention, Von Braun wasn't just a member of the Nazi party - he was a member of the SS - there is zero feasible explanation for becoming an SS member. There is also the small matter of the war crimes he took part in with the enslaved labor at his factory in Peenemünde.
>Van Braun being washed of his Nazi part is a conscious part of a US government propaganda campaign as Von Braun having safe haven in the USA in the 1950s was very controversial at the time.
I honestly thought this was common knowledge amongst people who know who Von Braun was.
He was a Nazi collaborator and party member in full blood. As you noted, explaining his actions with the camps he ran would be an interesting exercise for any apologist.
> There were millions of people in Germany in both industry and the military who were not Nazi's and survived just fine
Well, let's talk about that. How many of those millions who were both in both industry and the military AND ALSO were rocket scientists?
> Note that unlike Von Braun many other Germany scientists and weapon designers were not members of the Nazi party (let alone enthusiastic members)
For example? I'm not here to post up your argument.
> Becoming a Nazi and joining the party is what a person consciously did either because they
> believed in the ideology or they wanted to collaborate to further their careers.
It's not apocryphal to say that full German citizens not persecuted for the racial background joined the Nazi party to escape suspicion of infidelity to the Führer's master plan of Aryan takeover, especially if you were an intellectual. Let's bring up another member of the Nazi party: Oskar Schindler. Tell me your criticism of Mr. Schindler. Was he acting in a purely selfish way?
> There is also the small matter of the war crimes he took part in with the enslaved labor at his factory in Peenemünde.
OK, let's talk about another German with the scientific mind whose knowledge and genius was enough to kill thousands of people: Albert Einstein. Do we blame him for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cold War, and the tens of thousands of live nuclear warheads? His choice was similar: Death (as a Jew in Germany), or help make the A Bomb. Should he have chosen, "Death"?
> For example? I'm not here to post up your argument.
Easy as looking at the other V programs. Fritz Gosslau was the designer of the V1 - not a Nazi. August Coenders was the chief designer of the V3 - also not a Nazi. Robert Lusser worked on engines - not a Nazi (ended up at NASA). Hans von Ohain, designer of the jet engine and worked on the ME232 - not a Nazi. Walter Thiel was the head of the research lab at Peenemünde - not a nazi. Klaus Riedel worked on the rocket with Von Braun - not a Nazi.
All of Von Braun's deputies also weren't Nazi's (at least in the research part, I think it is fair to say that his subordinates in the SS were Nazi's).
It would actually be easier to list those of the Wehrmacht and in science / industry who were Nazi's (or were sympathetic to them) - since most certainly were not. Most famously that would be Albert Spier, the Krupp family, Erich Schumann of the nuclear program, Göring, etc.
Most of the military high command weren't Nazi's (or technically, sympathetic to the Nazi's since it was illegal to be both in the military and a member of a political party). They despised Hitler, as they despised Bizmark before him - because the German military had always been famously independent of civilian leadership and its own organization. Hitler taking the reigns of military strategy was the antithesis of how these guys had been bought up and trained.
> Tell me your criticism of Mr. Schindler.
He was a Nazi, until he changed sides. He assisted the takeover of the Sudetenland with his spying.
Schindler regretted his actions and worked against the Nazi's. Von Braun never did that - he just tried to minimize his role. Plus even Schindler never joined the SS.
None of those designers had to join the Nazi party or SS because Von Braun did it for them. He was told he had to suck up to Himmler to protect the program. He was obviously ambitious and it suited his ambition well, but he was also protective of his team.
And Von Braun ended up being arrested by the Gestapo for perceived disloyalty. Hitler only approved his release after Speers entreaties that Von Braun was indespensable.
>It's not apocryphal to say that full German citizens not persecuted for the racial background joined the Nazi party to escape suspicion of infidelity to the Führer's master plan of Aryan takeover, especially if you were an intellectual
This is simply false, as the other poster has given you many examples of. This is once again straight out of propaganda and an attempt to normalize Nazi war crimes.
>OK, let's talk about another German with the scientific mind whose knowledge and genius was enough to kill thousands of people: Albert Einstein. Do we blame him for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cold War, and the tens of thousands of live nuclear warheads? His choice was similar: Death (as a Jew in Germany), or help make the A Bomb. Should he have chosen, "Death"?
Huh? What are you talking about? Albert Einstein was not forced to help J. Robert Oppenheimer. He returned to the US in 1933 and stayed there as a professor after his property was seized by the Nazis in Germany and they put a death mark on his head. Six years later in 1939 he agreed with Hungarian scientists to warn the US of German atomic weaponization research, and he himself made these choices, leaning on diplomatic favor to do so.
It was only a year before his death that he admitted it was a great mistake; but felt justified in the time he made the decision given the alternative of the Germans developing the weapon first.
I really have no idea where you are getting your alternative history facts, but they are not only incorrect but often run counter to what actually occurred.
> Albert Einstein. Do we blame him for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cold War, and the tens of thousands of live nuclear warheads?
Well, no. He had nothing to do with any of those things, except for signing a letter that someone else wrote, telling Roosevelt about the possibilities of nuclear fission. He didn't discover fission, and was never part of the Manhattan Project, or post-war and cold war nuclear weapons research and development.
>Van Braun being washed of his Nazi part is a conscious part of a US government propaganda campaign as Von Braun having safe haven in the USA in the 1950s was very controversial at the time. It's as simple as the USA overlooking his Nazi past and excusing it (and actively covering it up) because the cold war necessitated it.
First I've ever heard of that. Do you have any proof of that? If it was very controversial, there's sure to be articles and discussions about it, right?
Two books cover it extensively, Apollo[0] and Red Moon Rising[1] - I can't remember the exact date, but at some point even Albert Einstein wrote a letter opposing Von Braun.
By the mid-50s his history had been all washed over and forgotten, and it wasn't until the 90s that the issue was broached again.
There is no reason for the coverup to continue today or for anybody to still believe it - there is a lot of testimony about Von Braun overseeing hangings and the deaths of thousands of slave workers. Had he not been useful for other purposes it is almost certain that he would have hung at Nuremberg.
Aside from the serious history stuff that you haven't even tried to find, it was the topic of a song by Tom Lehrer, America's greatest political satirist:
Von Braun became an SS member when told he had to to protect the program. He was obviously ambitious and it suited his ambition well, but he was also protective of his team.
And Von Braun ended up being arrested by the Gestapo for perceived disloyalty. Hitler only approved his release after Speers entreaties that Von Braun was indespensable.
>Well, the choice was basically,
> * Become a member of the Nazi Party
> * Death
That's not true. No more than 10% of the German populace were Nazi party members at any given time. In fact, it was illegal for soldiers to join political parties until after the war started, and even when they were allowed to join most of them didn't.
Of course joining the party is always your ticket to wealth and power in a totalitarian system, so it's not surprising an administrator like von Braun would be a party member even if he was completely disinterested in the party ideology. It's also not surprising he joined the SS when pressured directly by Himmler to do so. Himmler wasn't the kind of guy you said "no" to.
To all accounts he supported the party in the '30s because the Nazis were promising to reverse the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles. And he probably soured on the party by the time he was arrested and accused of sabotaging the program he was running (for which he could have been shot).
Clearly he knew what was going in in Mittelwerk. How much culpability you assign is an open question.
And it's not surprising he didn't off himself or hide after the war. He had something very valuable to offer whomever took him in, so that's not very dispositive as evidence of innocence.
The choice was becoming a member for cozing up with all the important decisionmakers of the time or giving up getting any of that incredibly fancy (at the time) rocketry research funded. He clearly loved his rockets, to the point where he did not mind becoming a nazi for them, or a yankee or whatever other affiliation that might have allowed him do do his research.
I think what you're saying is "because the choice was become a Nazi or death, he became a Nazi but was also not a Nazi"
Uh. Others below disagree with the "or death" part and back up with citations, but ignoring that, the statement is not particularly logical on its own terms.
I'm sure that Nazis have arrested errant Nazis from time to time. Being arrested by a cop doesn't mean that you cannot be a cop yourself. And it seems like the Nazis paranoia levels were high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Arrest_and_r...
That's just evidence that he needed to be a party member and SS member to protect himself and his team. Because he wasn't more cooperative with Himmler, he got arrested under charges that Himmler trumped up.
To make a bad analogy: Werner von Braun running the US spaceprogram is about as controversial as making Osama Bin Laden the building inspector for NYC after 9/11.
I don't know if he aligned with the Nazi goals necessarily but he certainly loved his rockets enough to look over the fact that tens of thousands of forced laborers worked under terrible conditions for his toys and thousands of people died in Britain.
