Nazi remarks anger rocket team pioneer

The Huntsville Times ^ | Monday, October 16, 2006 | SHELBY G. SPIRES

[Condor 63]

Don't confuse German rocket scientists with Nazi war criminals who have been tried and punished, a key member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's rocket team said Sunday afternoon.

Dr. Konrad Dannenberg, 94, who came to America at the end of World War II, was responding to recent criticism that the scientists came to America as war criminals and only turned to space pursuits as a way to avoid Allied prisons.

The German V-2 program was developed as a long-range guided missile by von Braun and his team at Peenemunde in northern Germany, where the missiles were launched against England, but Allied bombing forced production into a massive underground factory called Mittelwerk, located near Nordhausen, Germany. Nazi leaders used death camp laborers for some of the Mittelwerk construction work tasks; conditions were harsh and many died.

"I admit that this program was shameful and inhuman, and I definitely do not want to defend it. Those are things, sad actions, we oldtimers of course regret happened," said Dannenberg, referring to other German rocket team members. "None of us really supported this use of concentration camp labor."

[PzLdr]

Excuse me. Werner von Braun was a STURMBANNFUEHRER in the SS, and he apparently was quite familiar with the slave labor used to build, and staff the Nordhausen concentration camp V2 rocket building facility.

Like Albert Speer, the John Dean of Nazi Germany, von Braun avoided punishment because of his class and education. He was brought to the U.S because he was of use. He was a cut rate Klaus Barbie with a slide rule.

[steve-b]

Oh, puh-leeze. Just count yourself lucky that you escaped justice because you were useful to the victors, and don't push it with your pretentions that it was anything else.

[onedoug]

I'm grateful for their contribution to American space science, but this guy still doesn't seem to have much of a conscience.

[Al Simmons]

"I'm grateful for their contribution to American space science, but this guy still doesn't seem to have much of a conscience."

Hard to teach an old dogs new tricks. Being a Nazi required that you either have no conscience or that you surpress it. Ditto for modern-day 'Holocaust-deniers'.

[dfwgator]

"Mein Fuhrer, I can valk!!!"

[TET1968]

I agree....The guy was extremely lucky, I don't think he should push for a rewrite.

"The man who said "I'd rather be lucky than good" saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

Match Point

[VOA]

Well, the Nazi rocket engineers were no angels, some were maybe devils.
But just for myself, it will be a great "if" of history as to what would
have happened if they'd ended up working under Moscow's orders...
would we have gathered enough talent to overcome their work for Communists?

For another interesting read on how far wrong brilliant PhDs and MDs
went under Nazism, here's a link to the book:
The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust
by Heather Pringle
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Plan-Himmlers-Scholars-Holocaust/dp/0786868864/sr=1-1/qid=1161016697/ref=sr_1_1/102-8867009-0839316?ie=UTF8&s=books

It's interesting in it's own right. And it's relevant to this thread
because the after-war careers of the Nazi scientists is also detailed.

[RicocheT]

In a totalitarian state, people are servants of the state and even good people can be forced to do bad things. Nazism, Fascism, Communism, Radical Islam, etc all had horrors done by otherwise common men.

The answer is never to raise up government to the point it is superior to its citizens. What we have and hope to keep in the USA is a rare gift from God.

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

This all reminds me of one of my favorite little known songs from the 1960's.

---

Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown,
"Ha, Nazi, Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town,
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.**

You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.

[Al Simmons]

Any link to the tune? Humor is always the most devastating way to attack someone. The line about widows and cripples really sums it up, doesn't it?

[PzLdr]

The one I remember is the takeoff on his autobiography title: "I Aim at the Stars", which was "I Aim at the Stars. But All I Hit Is London".

[Schweinhund]

Politics preferring usefulness before morality. How sobering.

[SJackson]

Oh, puh-leeze. Just count yourself lucky that you escaped justice because you were useful to the victors, and don't push it with your pretentions that it was anything else.

Exactly. The issue isn't that these men would have been prosecuted at Nuremburg, or by the post war German government. Rather than many of them, certainly SS members posted at labor camps would have been inelegible to enter the US, and ineligible for citizenship. Most of the world would have been open to him. He should be thankful he had a skill which prompted the US to bypass our immigration laws rather than rationalizing his behaivior in Germany. My guess when the paperclip archives are declassified, hopefully after all these individuals have died, we'll discover some unpleasant things about their backgrounds.

[Hegewisch Dupa]

Factually speaking, Speer served time. It can obviously be argued if it was enough time, or if 'prison' was harsh enough, but he didn't avoid punishment. And certainly no one higher on the Nazi totem pole than Speer admitted, like he did, that 'of course we knew what was going on.' Again - I am not saying it excuses him - just saying what happened.

[Ready4Freddy]

The Rooskis had plenty of their own Nazi rocket scientists. Good thing that ours were as good, or better, than the ones the Rooskis snagged.

But just for myself, it will be a great "if" of history as to what would have happened if they'd ended up working under Moscow's orders... would we have gathered enough talent to overcome their work for Communists?

[VOA]

The Rooskis had plenty of their own Nazi rocket scientists.

Precisely.
So that's why I raised the "what if" of whether we'd have gotten
a good enough group together here to compete with a USSR team
that also included that Germans the USA plucked up at the end of WWII.

I'm mildly optimistic that we would have, given the way the Manhattan
Project succeeded and speed with which some of the aviation projects
were generated under the pressure of fighting Germany and Japan.

The USA made some moral compromises...I just hope it was kept a
minimum. And that we eventually get a good look at what really transpired

[SlowBoat407]

The song was by Tom Lehrer, who also gave us "The Vatican Rag", "National Brotherhood Week", and another song about the Multilateral force, the name of which escapes me, but has the line:

"Heil (hail) the wehrmacht
I mean the bundeswehr
Hail to our loyal allies
M-L-F, will scare Brezhnev
I hope he is half as scared as I."

[PzLdr]

Speer gave Saukel quotas [and orders] for the slave labor Speer needed for German industry. Saukel filled those quotas, per Speer's orders [ Speer was, after all, the Minister of Armaments].

Saukel was sentenced to death at Nuremburg for carrying out Speer's directives. Speer got 20 years. Why? It appears that Speer's breeding and education [architect] greatly impressed at least some of the Nuremburg judges [especially the Brits] more than Saukel's blue collar background and basic education [ Interestingly, Saukel was the prisoner most vocally concerned with the welfare of his family]. That plus the Dean like apologia didn't hurt Speer with the court. But it wasn't justice. And the same is true for Sturmbannfuehrer von Braun.