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A thought to consider is that Wernher Von Braun and some of his colleagues were at least as guilty as Speer on the slave labor issue, but there was never a thought of punishing them. Instead, they were given VIP treatment.
My dad was stationed in DC when Werner Von Braun arrived. He was popular on the party circut where he was known as "our nazi". We got the prize. The Soviets only got the paperwork.
There have been many questions about his knowledge and guilt. He couldn't have missed the slave labor on his way to work. But this simply demonstrates how easy it is to make exceptions....
Ironically, his dream when he began studying was spacetravel. He read and expanded the work of Robert Goddard. It was always about science to Von Braun. In the end he got to persue his dream and be lauded for his work.
Ironically, his dream when he began studying was spacetravel. He read and expanded the work of Robert Goddard. It was always about science to Von Braun. In the end he got to persue his dream and be lauded for his work.
As Mort Sahl said, he reached for the stars but sometimes he hit London.
I have a question for history buffs. How did we history appreciators get assigned to the noun "buff" as our all purpose descriptive? We could have been history fans, history boosters, history aficionados, history zealots, history hounds or history adherents. We could have been capsulized as "Histies" ala "Trekkies" or taken on a macho image as "Historybusters."
I wonder when 'buff' started. Such terms rise and fall. Around the turn of the century, baseball fans were called 'cranks'. (Obviously, in some ballpark environments little has changed.)
I thnik taht many at the general staff level realised taht Hitler was a problem when he stopped the push ofr the french atlantic coast which allowed so many of the brish EP fordce to esacpe dunkirk and after even that.Itbasically was changing the poverall view they had before starting the war on how it could be won.Fro thewn on Hitler made constant errors of judgement.There were now ever too many that knew their fate was aleady in his hands by the time you talk about.JMO
One thing I'd like to add is that the Germans of that time didn't have the benefit of hindsight that we have. And no one had a perfect understanding of what caused the war - it was widely believed that Czechoslovakia wanted to join Germany to be saved from communists (which is mostly true), that Poland attacked them (there was a false-flag operation, like 9/11 might have been), and so on. Most people thought the Jewish concentration camps were no less justified than the Japanese interment camps in America, the biggest difference being the numbers of Jews vs Japanese and the economic realities in those nations. Etc. So most Germans thought they had the moral high-ground.
Plus you gotta remember that most wars throughout history didn't conclude as definitively as WW2 has. It was commonly believed that a likely outcome would be: OK, we've made our point, let's go back to the way things were in summer of 1939.
And then there were the rumors about Germany building an atomic bomb, or some such overwhelming military innovation, and of course no news of the Manhattan Project.
I wonder when 'buff' started. Such terms rise and fall. Around the turn of the century, baseball fans were called 'cranks'. (Obviously, in some ballpark environments little has changed.)
You are certainly correct about the transitional quality of descriptives. In the first half of the 19th Century, if you were a "sucker" that meant that you were a supporter and it was not a negative term. People marched proudly with signs, and sang songs describing themselves as "Suckers For Polk" and it didn't mean that they had been duped or swindled. P.T. Barnum's famous "Sucker born every minute" did not reference people getting fooled, the 19th Century understanding would have been "There is a patron born every minute" or "Potential customer born every minute."
Very good example. I suspect that a great deal of slang floated around the hokey but entertaining world of Barnum.
I can think of many other examples. If we call someone a 'gay fellow' today, by and large we are not praising his outgoing nature. They used to call a man 'pud' (for "puddin'") to suggest that he was a soft touch, but probably today not so much. The difference there is that instead of wandering, the term completely fell out of use and then resurfaced with a very different meaning.
A thought to consider is that Wernher Von Braun and some of his colleagues were at least as guilty as Speer on the slave labor issue, but there was never a thought of punishing them. Instead, they were given VIP treatment.
I do not think there was any military institution or even large-scale private concern that was not utilizing slave labor. That's not to excuse it of course. However, Speer, as I recall, set up, organized and ran the program. So he was the one shipping them over to Von Braun. So a bit of a difference to say the least.
Now, Von Braun was certainly eligible for punishment. But let's be realistic. The USSR, the French and even the British, who suffered the most from the V2s, would have grabbed him up in a second. He had something to offer us. He plea bargained and cut a sweet deal. While it would give any country pause, any country would act rationally and bring him on board.
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