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Post by margamatix on Sept 17, 2005 19:09:17 GMT -4
You think Von Brauns contributions are limited to putting men on the moon. . Say what?
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Post by skinbath on Sept 17, 2005 19:13:53 GMT -4
So you would throw away a chance to cure cancer to get "justice" (it seems to me like you really mean "revenge")? What a waste.. Just a point worth considering......under the laws of our society,crime is punishable and those responsible are usually held to account.......and re above quote,here`s a pertinent poser.... I have a cure for cancer........if I kill my wife am I allowed to get away with it?.........................(thank god I`m no longer married...the wife would`ve killed me for this ) A more recent example would go something like this...... If Osama Bin Laden had a cure for cancer do you think he should be free to walk the streets? In the drama,it`s plain that there is a race to capture Von Braun between the U.S and the U.S.S.R....the purpose being military advantage and nothing to do with space exploration etc.........hey,why spoil it for you..wait and see it for yourself, (edited to re-phrase)
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Post by voyager3 on Sept 18, 2005 9:10:17 GMT -4
There was certainly an element of "victor's justice" after WW2. Had the Axis won the war then people like Roy Chadwick would have been tried as war criminals. There was certainly a big political consideration in the Americans taking advantage of the Von Braun team, I thought The Space Race was a lot harder on Von Braun than many of the books or other documentaries that I've read and seen on the issue. In my mind the most objectionable person in the "Huntsville Germans" was Arthur Rudolph who had a much more direct role in the running of the Mittelwerk than Von Braun.
Perhaps we should consider what would have happened had the Soviets captured Von Braun, he would have been made to work on rockets for the Red Army in conjunction with Korolev and this may have given the Soviets an unassailable advantage over the West in missiles. The course of the cold war would have been very different.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 18, 2005 14:11:44 GMT -4
Von Braun was nowhere near as evil a person as Osama Bin Laden so I find the comparison a bit ridiculous. He may have been responsible for some bad things but I wouldn't have considered him a threat to society after the war. He wasn't likely to use slave labour in the US.
I just can't see much point in throwing away his talents --. that we have all benefited from --. just to punish him. Like I said before, it would have compounded the waste of the lives of the people who died in the labour camps if Von Brauns research hadn't been continued for peaceful purposes after the war.
I know I'm writing in english, so what's the problem?
Von Braun helped perfect rocketry and our understanding of orbital mechanics. We have used that knowledge for far more than just sending men to the moon.
For example, we have weather and communication satellites (or do you deny the existence of those too?) and those satellites would not have gotten off the ground without the rockets (or the descendants of the rockets) that Von Braun helped design.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Sept 18, 2005 15:18:44 GMT -4
There was a pragmatic decision made at the end of the War that not everyone implicated in the Nazi regime could be called to account: you can't put 90+% of the population on trial and the evil system percolated German life at every level. It is virtually certain that worse criminals than von Braun got away scot free, and lesser malefactors were severely punished.
Speer, Goering and Doenitz stood trial while Marshall, King, Pound, Harris and Arnold stood behind the judges. It could easily have been the other way around.
The main architects of the Final Solution either escaped justice or took it into their own hands. Von Braun was small fry by comparison: merely unscrupulous enough to use the system he found himself in to advance his own ends. There are people that bad in the White House, Downing Street, the Elyssée and the Kremlin; and doubtless a lot worse elsewhere
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Post by skinbath on Sept 18, 2005 17:51:02 GMT -4
Von Braun was nowhere near as evil a person as Osama Bin Laden so I find the comparison a bit ridiculous.. Well just to be clear here....I`d agree that from what I know,Von Braun was not in the same bracket as Bin Laden though to those in the death camps it hardly matters and it`s with this in mind I made a point.I don`t happen to believe he was a major Nazi (no pun intended).I disagree that there`s a literal comparison made with Bin Laden and neither have I made any judgment.I`ve just raised a point to be considered as your quote (not I guess,intended to be taken literally perhaps and taken to extremes by myself) implied that any misdemeanors on Von Braun's part should be overlooked due to his work and subsequent achievements;and unless I`m mistaken,he didn`t work on cancer research,( no I don`t mean to be flippant here) so perhaps the analogy made was not a good one.The point I made I stand by and this is not to suggest that you believe it is appropriate to murder and escape punishment, and yes,I would agree that we have all benefited from the work he began. It`s also true,that many of the lesser individuals were punished and those higher up the chain escaped.Many dark and evil deeds are overlooked,and it`s as true today as then,though whether these be for the benefit of mankind is debatable. I`d also make the point that were the axis powers to have gained the upper hand,there would have been no such thing as a trial.Summary justice and execution probably being the order of the day.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Sept 18, 2005 19:05:06 GMT -4
I just don't see how imprisoning or executing Von Braun would have benefited society or made up for his alleged crimes. He could do more good outside of prison and hopefully atone for his crimes in some small way. And it's not like he vanished upon reaching North America, his actions and whereabouts were known by the US government. He couldn't have began recruiting for a new Nazi party within the US without the government doing something about it.
I'm not religious, but I do believe "karma" is a good system to follow anyway. If his evil outweighed his good at the time of his death then maybe god judged him on it.
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Post by Jason Thompson on Sept 18, 2005 19:13:43 GMT -4
It's true that Von Braun is loathed in Europe
Excuse me, but that is a rather sweeping generalisation. I am European, and I do not loathe von Braun at all.
Furthermore, I believe it is baseless. Frankly I doubt if all that many people have even heard of him, much less formed an opinion.
You and your nearest and dearest may agree, but don't presume to apply your opinions to an entire continent, thank you.
This was a man who was directly responsible for the genocide of thousands.
Rubbish. He was placed in a position of authority in a facility that would use slave labour. Now what were his options?
Decline out of principle? OK, but what does that achieve? He gets put in prison for failing to obey orders, and might face execution for sympathising with what the upper echelons considered a bunch of inferior people, someone else does the work, and those same thousands of people die anyway. OK, his morals are intact but he has achieved nothing exdept his own imprisonment. He has made no difference.
I'm sorry but unless you can show me evidence that his actions were alone directly responsible for the deaths of slave labourers and that he could have made a material difference by refusing to work there I see no reason to loath him at all.
I suppose that British bomber pilots, who are indisputably directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of civillians in enemy occupied territory, should also be loathed? Imprisoned for murder? They just indiscriminately bombed whole towns and cities. Many of them have said at the time and afterwards that they actively enjoyed killing Germans. I even heard one man in interview say that his efforts were wasted because thousands of people survived the bombing raids he was on. Shouldn't they be tried and hanged?
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Post by skinbath on Sept 18, 2005 19:39:12 GMT -4
I just don't see how imprisoning or executing Von Braun would have benefited society or made up for his alleged crimes.. Personally I agree.I just wanted to make a philosophical point....i.e.. when do we say, enough....
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Sept 19, 2005 3:23:11 GMT -4
I don`t happen to believe he was a major Nazi (no pun intended). No apology is necessary: "Major" was actually a translation, as the SS had its own rank structure. Von Braun was a Sturmbannführer
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Post by colinr on Sept 19, 2005 4:12:45 GMT -4
You might want to keep in mind that Von Braun was also imprisoned - albeit briefly becaseu it was believed , probably correctly , that he was more intrested in research than in designing weapons ...
To say i have mixed feeling over his treatment is putting it mildly, I'm a model maker , and I refuse point balnk to build Anything that was operated by the Germans in WWII on general proncipals, and there are times when I think the A-bomb's first target should have been Berlin...
However Von Braun's contribution , while being key in the devlopement of a operational launch vehicle , was less involved in turning it into a viable weapon.. As for the slave labour element of his work- the details of his involvement in the selection process wasn't really made clear , was it as limited as "We need 10 engineers, skilled in metal work" or as involved as walking through the came and pointing to specific indivduals ... who knows! I don't - does anybody?
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Post by gwiz on Sept 19, 2005 8:43:57 GMT -4
Although this doesn't affect the question of Von Braun's culpability, if the resources expended on the V-2 has instead gone to increased production of the much cheaper V-1, the number of victims would have been much greater.
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Post by colinr on Sept 19, 2005 9:34:24 GMT -4
or for that matter a 4 engined heavy bomber in the Lancaster class - life could have a lot more difficult here in the UK
all the effort required to devlope a delivery system capable of landing 2000 lbs of high explosives, when a Lancaster could carry in excess of 6000lbs of high explosives ...
The number of stupid, in retrospect, made by the Third Reich undermine their percived efficency and military skill.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Sept 19, 2005 13:26:44 GMT -4
when a Lancaster could carry in excess of 6000lbs of high explosives ... Lancasters regularly carried 14,000lbs to Berlin. Maximum load was the 22,000lb "Grand Slam", used to demolish viaducts, canals and U-boat pens.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Sept 19, 2005 22:18:53 GMT -4
Really to determine Von Braun's true copbility you'd need to answer the following questions.
1) Would those that were selected have survived had they been rejected for the slave labour? If they would have been killed anyway, then he actually saved lives by selecting them.
2) Did he select people with the intention of them being killed?
3) Did he order any deaths or take any actions that would knowingly result in a worker's death?
4) Was he directly responsible for the conditions the workers were housed and forced to work in?
5) Did he have a any choice in the using enslaved labour or was that just the pool he had availalble to him
If you can't answer a definate yes, then you cannot claim any deaths were his fault.
While a little off topic, how would you view a Nazi Party member and the owner of several munitions factory who personally selected slave labour from the death camps around Germany? There is a monument to one in Israel and a movie was made about him. His name? Oskar Schindler.
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