“Please send me references to the Von Braun history is you are so inclined.”
A lot of the background is from memory. It has been some 50 plus years since I was reading the biographies. I still have one of the books from 50 years ago, but it’s in a storage box buried in somewhere in storage where I haven’t seen it for the past 25 years. As I recall, there has always been a tug of war between the biographers who have lauded the man’s reputation and the critics who have labored to hold the man in ill repute for his role in the war. This prompted a lot of reading to learn more about the truth of the allegations pro and con.
Having read much about the criticisms, I was cautiously hopeful to learn more about the case when I had the privilege of serving as a host for Jesco von Puttkamer and some of his NASA colleagues at a conference. He was kind enough to answer some of my questions without taking offense. He was the source who alerted me to the problems Wernher von Braun and some of the other German rocket scientists faced when Hitler’s NAZI regime seized control off all private civilian aviation organizations.
Ever since then I have been irritated when I have seen critics cite the NAZI membership without also acknowledging the role of the NAZIs in controlling certain activities relating to aviation and never ending efforts to also take control of all rocketry activities as well. It seemed obvious that any responsibility Wernher von Braun could have had with respect to the victims of the NAZI slave labor would have to be established separately from the SS and NAZI activities that were clearly not necessarily voluntary or representative of the man’s personal viewpoints and actions. So far, it appears such credible evidence has not been forthcoming.
In addition to the such laudatory biographers as Frederick I. Ordway III, I also checked the FBI Reports published by the Huntsville Times. There is a multi-part series on the topic online from the Huntsville Times, IIRC.
To refresh my memory for this post I checked some of the Wikipedia articles to confirm some various points. With respect to the culpability for the slave labor at the Mittelwerk, see the Wikipedia articles for such topics as the Mittelwerk civilian manager and his trial, Georg Rickhey. More broadly, see the Dora Trial article. Note the various convictions and acquittals ranging from the SS officers to the prisoner Kapos. Also note how SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Schmidt was not prosecuted and served as a witness in the trial.
Ultimately it appears that only Wernher von Brauna and Magnus von Braun were privy to their thoughts, attitudes, and actions towards the slave labor. Unless some previously unknown documentation turns up someday, such information seems to have died with them. What we are left with then are their actions subsequent to the war.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I am now motivated enough to dig into Von Braun’s biography in order to learn his true history. As I mentioned before, I have always admired him. I am also now reading the documentation regarding the development of the Saturn V and Apollo. That is quite a saga. It is perfectly clear that our space program would not have amounted to much without Von Braun.