Originally Posted by
WHBM
When doing the tour of NASA at Cape Canaveral a few years ago, the tour guide was just a bit too complimentary for my liking about Werner von Braun, who devised both the V1 and V2, and was subsequently signed up by the US rocket/space/NASA programmes, and worked at The Cape. Not just him but various German former colleagues as well (apparently they all conversed among one another in staccato German during Cape launches). So I asked him in front of everyone else how the US would have felt if Osama Bin Laden and his team had been welcomed to Britain and given a substantial and well paid government job. Americans in the group then asked about the detail of the events.
I think they were a bit shocked. Guide moved us on quickly back into the bus and kept well clear of me for the rest of the trip. I wonder if it had been raised there before. Incidentally, the whole trip there highly recommended.
How did Von Braun escape the Nuremberg Trials ?
Von Braun's reputation was carefully crafted by the US Government during something referred to as 'Operation Paperclip' - he wasn't exactly alone, roughly 1,600 German scientists and engineers were brought to the US in the immediate aftermath of the war. There has always been some controversy about his involvement in the Nazi party - the accepted story is that he viewed it as a necessary evil - he would have rather worked on rockets for peaceful purposes but that wasn't an option, although some claim he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi party, only changing his tune when it was obvious that Germany was going to lose. BTW, I didn't think Von Braun had major involvement in the V-1, only the V-2.
That being said, why would Von Braun be any more responsible than any other German weapons designers? They were doing their job as they saw it - just like the people who designed the Spitfire or Lancaster, or the Rolls engines that powered them? Sure, the V2 was used as a terror weapon, but so was the Lancaster. When you start charging the people who design or manufacture the weapons of war with war crimes, you open up a pretty nasty can of worms. Comparisons to Bin Laden are rather unfair - Bin Laden would be more comparable to Hitler.
Personally, I view Von Braun as a brilliant rocket scientist and a bit of a personal hero for the work he (and his cohorts) did on the US Space program, but accept he had a seriously flawed background. Personally, I find his apparent indifference to the slave labor and working conditions at the Mittelwerk underground V-2 production facility more disturbing that his decision to perform what he stated he considered his patriotic duty in developing the A-4 (it was Hitler that renamed it V-2).