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I suppose there are different levels of offensiveness. I place von Braun in a second tier class along with Speer, those who had no desire to advance Nazism, but were willing to cooperate with it in order to advance themselves. What divides the two men is post war utility. One got a couple of decades in prison, one was brought to the victor's nation and placed at the head of its rocket program.
As well as utility, another determining factor is fame. If von Braun's contributions make him a war criminal, then we would also have to view as war criminals, many German scientists. I've no idea who it was who invented the snorkel which allowed U-boats to run on diesel engines under water, vastly increasing their range and submersion time, but whoever it was certainly made a substantial contribution to the number of allied ships which were lost and seaman who were killed.
I have never heard it suggested that the snorkel inventer, or any other German scientist who contributed technological advances to weapons, was a war criminal, yet I cannot think what would distinguish this person from von Braun apart from von Braun's higher profile.
In the case of von Braun, it isn't generally suggested that his invention of the V2 was a war crime. What was, was the use of slave labor from concentration camps to build the V2's. Braun reportedly was intimately aware of what was going on in the camps and the torture of prisoners working in the V2 plant. There are even some accounts that he personally ordered people whipped, but those are conflicting.
Basically, it is obvious that von Braun knew what was going on, the question is how much influence and control did he really have over the process? I don't think he had much control over the use of slave labor, but he also didn't need to be so indirect about his knowledge of it. I think he did what many people did and just did his work. In his case, the Nazi's were letting him live his dream of building rockets, something he apparently often lamented about during that time as being used for war and not space exploration, to him everything else was secondary.
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Originally Posted by stillkit
Personally, I think every German who was an adult then must be measured against the life and death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and those like him.
Anything less than that is an unacceptable excuse.
If we set the bar that high, then virtually every adult German was a war criminal. I think the Germans have done an acceptable job in dealing with and acknowledging their collective guilt.
I lived in Huntsville, Alabama for a time. There was once a letter to the editor in the local paper from someone who was highly offended the civic center there was named for him. The writer was English and specifically mentioned the V2 bombings in their native country as the reason for their outrage over the naming of the Von Braun Civic Center. I believe the writer said they were alive and in London during the bombings.
If we set the bar that high, then virtually every adult German was a war criminal. I think the Germans have done an acceptable job in dealing with and acknowledging their collective guilt.
If the bar isn't set at the level of active, vocal and public opposition to the Nazi's, where should it be? At what point does one move from being a "good German" to a resister, from guilt to innocence?
The average German may not have known the exact particulars (and that's debatable), but they saw the slave laborers, the round-up of Jews, the disappearance of any opposition. They can't help but have noticed the strange and sudden absence of homosexuals, the mentally challenged, the cripples from their neighborhoods. They were not innocent. Though they may not have been actual war criminals, in the legal sense, they certainly bore a share of the culpability.
If the bar isn't set at the level of active, vocal and public opposition to the Nazi's, where should it be? At what point does one move from being a "good German" to a resister, from guilt to innocence?
The average German may not have known the exact particulars (and that's debatable), but they saw the slave laborers, the round-up of Jews, the disappearance of any opposition. They can't help but have noticed the strange and sudden absence of homosexuals, the mentally challenged, the cripples from their neighborhoods. They were not innocent. Though they may not have been actual war criminals, in the legal sense, they certainly bore a share of the culpability.
That I agree with and in the case of the average German, I think they did bear that guilt and they continue to do so today. Germany is rather peculiar in embracing its past and actively teaching and ingraining those mistakes and national guilt into future generations.
Basically, I guess the point I was getting at is should all Germans who were alive then forever be branded war criminals and denied a place in society? Should von Braun's achievements and contributions to this nation and the world as a whole be forever tainted by his complacency with what happened around him?
I don't necessarily think they should be. There are certainly "tiers of guilt" as Grandstander alluded to and I think von Braun may be more implacatable then the average German, but I also don't think his actions rose to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity as compared to someone like Himmler.
Overall, the concept of war crimes and crimes against humanity are rather ambiguous and if we cast the net wider to include people like von Braun, there are plenty of Allied commanders, leaders and scientists that would be firmly standing in that broader definition.
I lived in Huntsville, Alabama for a time. There was once a letter to the editor in the local paper from someone who was highly offended the civic center there was named for him. The writer was English and specifically mentioned the V2 bombings in their native country as the reason for their outrage over the naming of the Von Braun Civic Center. I believe the writer said they were alive and in London during the bombings.
By any chance do you know if there was a response from the people who worked with Von Braun at the Redstone Arsenel?
In the case of von Braun, it isn't generally suggested that his invention of the V2 was a war crime. What was, was the use of slave labor from concentration camps to build the V2's. Braun reportedly was intimately aware of what was going on in the camps and the torture of prisoners working in the V2 plant. There are even some accounts that he personally ordered people whipped, but those are conflicting.
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There isn't anyone in the same class as von Braun among the twenty four indicted at Nuremberg. There were eighteen who were party officials or governmental ministers, two high ranking military officers, three district Gauleiters...and one industrialist, arms manufacturer Alfried Krupp, indicted for his use of slave labor. (Krupp's trial was severed from the Nuremberg hearings when the judges ruled that his indictment had been made too close to the trial date. He was convicted at a later trial, but not sentenced to death.)
Indicting von Braun and holding him responsible for the use of slave labor would have been kin to indicting Krupp's chief engineer or the head of his research and development department....or any key figure in an industry which benefitted from the use of forced labor. That you only ever hear von Braun's name in association with such thoughts is what I meant by his fame and stature distinguishing him as a possible war criminal.
By any chance do you know if there was a response from the people who worked with Von Braun at the Redstone Arsenel?
If there was one I either didn't see it or have forgotten about it. I lived there 2002-3, so its been a while. I do recall that was a topic in the letters to the editor more than once, on both sides of the issue.
For what its worth, Huntsville, as a whole, leans a little more to the left than other parts of the state.
There isn't anyone in the same class as von Braun among the twenty four indicted at Nuremberg. There were eighteen who were party officials or governmental ministers, two high ranking military officers, three district Gauleiters...and one industrialist, arms manufacturer Alfried Krupp, indicted for his use of slave labor. (Krupp's trial was severed from the Nuremberg hearings when the judges ruled that his indictment had been made too close to the trial date. He was convicted at a later trial, but not sentenced to death.)
Indicting von Braun and holding him responsible for the use of slave labor would have been kin to indicting Krupp's chief engineer or the head of his research and development department....or any key figure in an industry which benefitted from the use of forced labor. That you only ever hear von Braun's name in association with such thoughts is what I meant by his fame and stature distinguishing him as a possible war criminal.
Krupp was a willing accomplice to Hitler, right alongside the likes of Albert Speer, Ferdinand Porsche, Willy Messerschmitt and others who profited from Hitler's madness and the slave labor their factories and shops used. They knew what he was doing and turned a blind eye to it as they went along for profit or professional and personal advancement. Figures like Von Braun did the same.
I suppose we could argue all day long about how deeply the cancer of Nazism should have been excised, but for me, it didn't go deep enough if it left out willing accomplices.
Krupp was a willing accomplice to Hitler, right alongside the likes of Albert Speer, Ferdinand Porsche, Willy Messerschmitt and others who profited from Hitler's madness and the slave labor their factories and shops used. They knew what he was doing and turned a blind eye to it as they went along for profit or professional and personal advancement. Figures like Von Braun did the same.
Krupp et al made fat profits from the use of slave labour. Is there any evidence that Von Braun did so? Afaik he only got his normal salary as chief scientist.
As others have noted no one was prosecuted for simply knowing what was going on. They had to have been personally responsible for it, ie been in charge in some way. That definition might have embraced General Dornberger, but not Von Braun.
There isn't anyone in the same class as von Braun among the twenty four indicted at Nuremberg. There were eighteen who were party officials or governmental ministers, two high ranking military officers, three district Gauleiters...and one industrialist, arms manufacturer Alfried Krupp, indicted for his use of slave labor. (Krupp's trial was severed from the Nuremberg hearings when the judges ruled that his indictment had been made too close to the trial date. He was convicted at a later trial, but not sentenced to death.)
Indicting von Braun and holding him responsible for the use of slave labor would have been kin to indicting Krupp's chief engineer or the head of his research and development department....or any key figure in an industry which benefitted from the use of forced labor. That you only ever hear von Braun's name in association with such thoughts is what I meant by his fame and stature distinguishing him as a possible war criminal.
I agree totally, I just wanted to frame exactly what people who critique him consider his crimes to be. It seemed the discussion might be tilting towards the invention of the V2 as being the "war crime".
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