I’ve been trying to find this out. Wiki is pretty close on it, but says he was arrested by Himmler for a short period. Anyone have any knowledge of this?
Is it too late to edit your title? The name is properly spelled Wernher, and the von should be lower-case.
But more importantly, I really think you should add one more word, so it says, Wernher von Braun - Nazi or not, see?
Sadly it is too late for me to edit. Maybe a passing Mod could assist in the interests of clarification.
But why the “see”?
Soundalikes. Na-zi, not-see.
Which part were you curious about? Von Braun joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1937. He was arrested briefly in 1944. As Albert Speer put it in his memoirs:
Just as a note, in spite of Speer’s puffery here, the main voice asking him to be released was Dornberger’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
A link to the full lyrics of Tom Lehrer’s song.
There’s lots of Tom Lehrer on youtube 
Say rather that he’s apolitical
There’s also the joke about the movie biography of Von Braun which was entitled I Aim At The Stars. Mort Sahl suggested adding But Sometimes I Hit London to the title.
It’s not that he’s hypocritical,
it’s just that he’s apolitical.
Once the rockets go up,
who cares where go down,
that’s not my department
says Wehner von Braun
(from memory)
I doubt that Von Braun ever was a nazi. He came from aristocratic stock, and was a Christian. I think he used the war to advance his dream (manned spaceflight). Was he guilty of tolerating evil? Possibly (I am sure he knew that slave labor was assembling his V-2 rockets). But what could he do? Speaking out would have earned him a ticket to Dachau-and his amily would have been arrested as well.
It was hard to serve that nazis, and not lose your soul.
I think a pretty good definition of “Nazi” is “someone who is a member of the Nazi party”. He joined the Nazi party in 1937, as Captain Amazing said, therefore he was a Nazi.
Unless you prefer the Churchillian Naaawzi.
I suspect the OP’s real question is whether von Braun is eeeevil incarnate.
He was a member of the Nazi Party. He was arrested by Himmler, because Himmler wanted von Braun to transfer his work from the Wehrmacht Heeren (German Army) to the SS, and von Braun refused. Himmler threw von Braun in jail, Dornberger (the Army officer in charge of von Braun’s operation) protested to the “right people”, and von Braun was released. Dornberger surely pointed out that making a switch would slow down the war effort.
So Werhner was a card-carrying member. Was he a fanatical believer in the whole megillah? He wasn’t in the same class as Hitler, Goering, Himmler, or even Speer. He did know about slave labor building rockets.
Based on everything I’ve read, I think he was a detached opportunist who (like many of us) didn’t fully consider the impact of his loyalties. He wanted to build rockets to Mars (the Moon was just a stepping-stone), and the Army had money to give him. In exchange, he kept his mouth shut.
On the one hand, I can say it was a misguided and uninformed decision at best, and contributed directly to great evil. In 1937, though, nearly all Germans were very happy with their new economic prosperity and sense of pride after the Weimar years.
Von Braun might have thought that he was going to lead a new Germany into outer space. He chose to ignore the hate-filled, warmongering propaganda that the Nazis spewed from day one. By the time he saw his mistake, it was too late for him to do anything except refuse to continue the work. He would have been executed, but he would have stood for what was right.
Instead, his legacy is fundamentally flawed. He put the first US satellite into orbit, and he led us to the Moon. I would hope that he was driven to make up for his collaboration with the Nazis. It doesn’t excuse anything he did. He surrendered to us, and we should have locked him up the same way we did Speer.
Hermann Goering was an aristocrat. Many Christians fervently supported Hitler. The Nazi Party ran on a platform of “Kinder, Kirche, Kuchen” (Children, Church, Kitchen).
Many people lost their souls serving the Nazis. A few sacrificed their lives rather than lose their souls, and I’m not talking about the Army officers who rebelled against Hitler only when they saw that he was going to lose the war.
I don’t know what I’d do in the same situation, but if I decided to cooperate with evil, I wouldn’t excuse myself for it.
[ul]
[li]Was von Braun a member of the Nazi Party? Yes. It’s documented fact.[/li][li]Was von Braun like Hitler and the other monsters? No. At the worst, he knew about atrocities but did nothing. That’s evil, but not at the same level as dealing with your hatred of people by murdering them.[/li][li]Was von Braun evil? Oooh. Hard one. I vote “yes”.[/li][li]Should von Braun have been punished? Another hard one. I say yes.[/li][/ul]
As a general rule, and this applies to Nazi Germany, this applies to the Soviet Union, this applies to the People’s Republic of China, this applies to New York City under the Tammany Hall machine, this applies anywhere you have a single party that controls everything and dishes out favors and punishments based on loyalty, if you’re an ambitious person, if you’re looking for wealth, if you’re looking for advancement, if you’re looking for status, you join the party, regardless of how you feel about the stated goals of the party. You do this, because it benefits you and gives you privileges.
Like 633 Squadron said, Wernher von Braun wanted to develop and build rockets. If that meant joining the Nazi party and the SS, then he’d join them. If that meant building military rockets to launch at Britain, he did that. If that meant using slave labor to put them together, hey, the rockets were being made, and that was what he cared about. If the Nazis were oppressing Europe, it wasn’t von Braun’s concern. Except for having to spend a week in prison, they didn’t oppress him. In fact, they gave him money to build his rockets. So why should he concern himself with their actions as long as his life was comfortable and he could build his rockets?
Then at the end of the war, he was picked up by Paperclip, and the Americans wanted to give him money to build rockets, and so he became a loyal American. Why not? The important thing was the rockets, after all, not who he was building them for. Scientific progress benefits mankind, and rocketry research benefits mankind.
I get the impression that was his general attitude.
Pretty much everyone in any position of any power, Officer to Mayor, was a Member of the Nazi Party. Later in the war, it had as many as 8.5 million members. Every single office- Postmasters, Aldermen, likely even dogcatchers. Something like 10% of the total population, which means maybe 25% of the adult males.
Yep, which meant that something like 10% of the population of Germany were Nazis.