Posted on 02/06/2008 3:02:13 AM PST by the scotsman
He was a rocket engineer working for the Nazis, helping create one of the most terrifying weapons of the Second World War.
But the infamy of Klaus Riedel would surely have been lost to all except historians of Hitler's atrocities but for the bizarre decision by a German town to name one of its schools in his honour.
Riedel was head of the V2 laboratory at Peenemunde on the Baltic, where the so-called "wonder weapons" which killed nearly 3,000 Britons in the closing months of the war were designed.
In all, the rockets claimed 30,000 lives in Europe and Southern England. And it is reckoned 20,000 slave labourers at the underground factory of Mittelbau-Dora in central Germany died making the rockets.
But Riedel's grim contribution to the 2,386mph V2, which carried a ton of high explosive and was meant to bring Britain to its knees, seems to have been ignored by councillors in Bernstadt, eastern Germany, where the old Middle School has become the Klaus Riedel School.
The decision has caused anger in Britain and left many Germans aghast. Henry Bellingham, the Conservative justice spokesman, condemned Bernstadt's "insensitivity".
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
It don’t make you sessesh!
Ah good. I’m glad I’m not sessesh...
"Don't Mention the War!"
“You started it!”
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