The common portrayal of the situation is that WvB had to join the NSDAP or face dire consequences at worst or merely not be able to work on rockets at the least. This is how his apologists seem to remember it. But from what I understand, he actively sought out the Nazis for what they could do for him. He wanted to develop rockets he didn’t hesitate to cozy up to the Devil to further his goals. Young Werner was just one of many promising young scientists trying to work on their fields. There was nothing special about him to make the Nazis court him. But he went out of his way to court the Nazis. Whether or not he liked their policies or was horrified by the use of slave labor, he still joined the Nazis for his own desires.
Do we have consensus then. Average Nazi (even by rank and deeds, but still Nazi), who got a second chance, to put Americans on ze Moon? Not so black and white, eh. Controversial for sure.
Generation or so before him, another German guy by name Fritz Haber had very similar problem.
Basically, do means justify goals? Sometimes.
This topic was thoroughly covered in the book “Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun”, by Bob Ward. Both sides of the viewpoint are evenly presented and extensively referenced.
While Von Braun is commonly depicted as “head of Germany’s V2 program”, in fact he was a twenty-something whiz kid who was solely head of the R&D program in Peenemünde, not the manufacturing facility hundreds of miles away in Mittelwerk.
When visiting the Mittelwerk facility to check on quality control of the final V-2 product, he observed the slave laborers’ primitive living conditions. This appalled him but he had no authority over that. These events are all referenced and corroborated from multiple sources in the book.
He knew that workers were being treated inhumanely. He appealed to his superiors – not on moral grounds which he knew was useless – but arguing this would cause high failure rates in the V-2. This did no good.
You should listen to Tim Lehrer’s song about Werner Von Braun; entertaining and informative.
“Once the rockets are up,
who cares where they come down?
That’s not my department”
Says Werner von Braun"
(imagine this sung with a German accent)
By the way, was he from a military family? that “von” is an honorific that makes me think he was.
As some wag pointed out here: his autobiography was titled “I Aim For The Stars” and should have been subtitled “But Sometimes I Hit London”.
But, the big question in any such regime, including the Nazis, is - how important was it to career advancement to join the ruling party organization if you wanted to advance beyond a front-line desk job in your place of employ? I assume the Nazis like the Soviet communists had political officers in assorted organizations, and certainly expressing any negative feelings about the party, government, or ideology would stall a career except perhaps unless the person were extremely talented. Did they need to join? Where is related information on that aspect?
I think you paint yourself into the same corner that ElvisL1ves did when you posed that question that way. You asked:
- How important was it to career advancement to join the ruling party?
- Would not joining stall his career?
- Did they need to join?
You are both asking this question vis-a-vis his career. You are both asking, if he pushed back against slave labor, torture, killing and brutality would his career suffered? As if there is a potential answer to that question that would have been acceptable in allowing him to be a party to these brutalities if his career would have taken a hit. Is that really what you are considering? Would you starve to death a few hundred employees if you’d become a VP in your company?
The much more difficult question you could have asked, which neither of you did, would have been if he lived in North Korea and he and his entire family would have been tortured to death. Or if his nation was under the threat of a totalitarian regime that would have subjugated he and his nation to a potential lifetime of torture and cruelty. Those would have been harder questions to tackle.
But when you both look to balance the treatment of slave labor on the one hand with career advancement on the other, the experiment is frankly disgusting.
So you too don’t really know what you would have done, either.
Nobody knows what they would have done unless they’ve actually been in that situation. That doesn’t mean we don’t know what we should do, and it’s not what von Braun did.
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience…
You too may be a big hero
Once you’ve learned to count backwards to zero.
Well, it’s two things…
Would his career suffer?
Would his life suffer?
Or basically, how much enthusiasm did someone have to show or feign to succeed, or to avoid repercussions to their life and safety?
I remember reading what some people wrote about talking to Russian scientists in the days before glasnost. While others like Solzhenitsyn were making the news, one fellow mentioned that fellow physicists told him - “We don’t have to enthusiastically follow the party line, we don’t even have to worry about expressing our true opinions to our friends; we just have to avoid going public and embarrassing the regime.”
There are degrees of totalitarianism. Anyone who remembers the hype about the Patriot Act or invading Iraq can appreciate that the intensity is higher in times of war.
About the “von” thing. That was an indicator of nobility, which his family had belonged to prior to the end WWI and official titles were abolished (but such prefixes could be kept as part of a name).
WvB’s father Magnus von Braun was essentially a baron.
He supported the Kapp Putsch in 1920. This was an attempt by ultra-conservatives to overthrow the Weimar Republic and restore things back the way they were.
Another supporter was a young Adoph Hitler who tried flying to Berlin to help out. But his pilot, Robert von Greim, messed up and landed at the wrong airport. Despite this von Greim was long a favorite of Hitler. E.g., in the last days of the Reich he appointed von Greim to replace Göring as head of the Luftwaffe.
Magnus von Braun later served in notable positions in the government, and helped to favor people of his status. But once Hitler came to power, despite quite a bit of common ground, that ended. People like Magnus often really liked Hitler.
von Braun’s older brother served as a diplomat in the Nazi era and was a party member. The youngest brother Magnus also became a rocket scientist and was sent to Mittelwerk where he directly worked with the slave laborers. Also joined the US rocket efforts. Once his past became publicly known, in 1983 he gave up his US citizenship and returned to Germany.
In short, it seems that the father and two brothers were also happy to work for or support Nazi policies, why would Werner be an exception?
“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 Werner von Braun”
"You too can be a hero
When you’ve learned to count backwards to zero
In German or English I know how to count down
And I’m learning Chinese, says Werner von Braun
“Call him a Nazi, he won’t even frown
Hah–Nazi, schmazi, says Werner von Braun”
In post #45, md2000 mentions the title I Aim For The Stars and the joking subtitle But Sometimes I Hit London. This joke comes from the 1960 movie I Aim at The Stars. This is a fairly favorable biography of Von Braun. See the discussion here:
“Don’t say that he’s hypocritical. Say, rather, that he’s a-political. ‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down. That’s not my department’, says Wernher Von Braun” (Tom Leherer)
Post 18 beat me to it, I see; however, it is a good song and deserves to be sung twice. The extra fun part about the recording was that Lehrer made it sound like a sort of children’s song. You can just about visualize Von Braun with a propeller beanie on his head and large ears sticking out.