[EEGator]

He was a German, but not a Nazi.

[srmanuel]

If really research t

the guy was guilty of using massive amounts of slave labor, he was guilty of at least accommodating Nazi atrocities even if wasn’t part of the Nazi party

Should the USA have used operation paper clip to round up Nazi scientists to aid our scientific efforts, that is debatable but Werner Von Braun was at least a Nazi Sympathizer

[x]

Yes. He was a Nazi. Party member even.

[mware]

None, he was a Nazi. Lots of slave labor involved in his project. We got lucky and got him before Russia did.

[TheThirdRuffian]

"He was a German, but not a Nazi."

That's certainly the official Deep State line.

But I grew up in and around the area of New Mexico and West Texas where these guys worked, and my parents were very familiar with the PaperClip Nazis and worked with von Braun numerous times. He may have repented, but was very much a Nazi when captured.

Von Braun applied for membership of the Nazi Party on 12 November 1937, and was issued membership number 5,738,692. He lied about the year to the FBI.

In 1940, von Braun joined the SS and was given the rank of Untersturmführer in the Allgemeine-SS and issued membership number 185,068.

Here's a picture of him with Himmler:



His V2 program in Peenemünde used slave labor, at his urging. Robert Cazabonne, a French prisoner, claimed von Braun stood by as prisoners were hanged by chains suspended by cranes. Former Buchenwald inmate Adam Cabala claims that von Braun went to the concentration camp to pick slave laborers testified "the German scientists led by Prof. Wernher von Braun were aware of everything daily. As they went along the corridors, they saw the exhaustion of the inmates, their arduous work and their pain. Not one single time did Prof. Wernher von Braun protest against this cruelty during his frequent stays at Dora. Even the aspect of corpses did not touch him: On a small area near the ambulance shed, inmates tortured to death by slave labor and the terror of the overseers were piling up daily. But, Prof. Wernher von Braun passed them so close that he was almost touching the corpses."

[ptsal]

Bkmk

[Vermont Lt]

“ Von Braun had an ambivalent and complex relationship with Nazi Germany.[5] He applied for membership of the Nazi Party on 12 November 1937, and was issued membership number 5,738,692.”

From Wiki…

Von Braun was absolutely a Nazi. They used slave labor to build his rocket factories. Was he a war criminal? Probably not. But he was a Nazi and was very aware of the source of his labor.

But he built nice rockets. And the US needed nice rockets.

[LouAvul]

You’re wrong. He was a Nazi. And a member of the SS.

[GingisK]

No, he was indeed a NAZI. He joined in in 1937 so that the German military would fund his research. Later on he was railroaded into joining the SS. In spite of that, he was arrested by the Gestapo for saying his target should be the moon rather than England. Hitler intervened personally to get him released. Von Braun was not a particularly happy NAZI, but it was the only way to stay in that research program.