As part of a secret initiative called Operation Paperclip, the U.S. government recruited former Nazi engineers, many of whom had worked on the V-2 rocket program, to help lead America’s postwar scientific efforts — especially in space and missile technology.
Von Braun, a member of the SS, played a central role in developing rockets for Nazi Germany using forced labor, and later became a key figure at NASA, leading the development of the Saturn V rocket that sent Americans to the Moon.
The moral complexity of this decision is still debated today: Can scientific progress built on unethical foundations ever be truly separated from its origins?
📽️ A source that dives deeper (documentary): “What if NASA’s space race was built on buried secrets — and Nazi scientists?” ➡️ Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY0JMjJp-yc
The entire space race was mostly between American nazi’s and Russian nazi’s.
Why the fancy apostrophe?
It’s the literary equivalent of lifting your pinky while drinking tea.
Not really, although that was clearly a popular impression created by the 1980s Right Stuff movie.
Both the US and USSR had the A4/V-2 rocket and both the US Redstone and USSR R-11/SS-1 “Scud” were grown-up and bug-fixed versions thereof.
The US kept the Operation Paperclip folks going throughout the program, leading to Von Braun’s team designing the Saturn V rocket, even though the Redstone Arsenal / Marshall Space Flight Center folks didn’t design some of the other rockets.
The USSR kept their Germans under a tight leash and every time they designed a rocket, they’d have the Soviet team design the same thing, they’d compare, and then after a few years, they sent back their Germans to live in obscurity because the Soviet team had gotten good enough.
Thus big rockets ended up being a German ex-Nazi party member, Von Braun and his Saturn V vs a Ukranian, Korolev and his N-1.
Thus, an astonishing number of rockets are based off of the A-4 design, many of them with the Scud as the middle step. And neither America nor Russia gets to really take credit for their chief designer, where obviously both men were mostly acting to provide structure to the giant armies of engineers who did the actual work (but doing it well, the USSR program really screwed things up after Korolev passed away). But there was a bunch of really neat bits of rocket science that the USSR did in the 70s-80s that was well above where the US was specifically because while Korolev was Von Braun’s generation, most of the newly taught Soviet scientists were not. Where, again, the real problem was that Korolev didn’t have any good successor leaders and the USSR was in a state of stagflation.
And you can say many things about the USSR space program, but they were significantly less “nazi” than the US program.
“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down. That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.
Damnit, I came here to post that exact quote
The quote so nice you commented twice!
Damnit, I came here to post that exact quote
Did you intentionally post this twice, or has Lemmy got the hiccups again?
happy cake day!
Lemmy hiccup but I’ll leave my shame on for all to see
I’m disappointed that this is news to anyone, but uplifted that someone learned history.
Relevant XKCD:
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that NASA’s web site bio of von Braun mentioned his WWII “contributions”.
Yeah, Huntsville was run by these guys. I probably know some of their grandkids.
And I thought I was alone on lemmy here.
Wait until you learn about Shirō Ishii
Starting outfielder for the dodgers?
There’s a compelling case that the nazis had a proto atom bomb with an early test.
Plus foo fighters. If you’re into that kinda thing.
If you like that, you’re gonna love “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen. I suggest this to everyone as an entry into deprogramming what was learned in US history class.
My boss was the child of a Paperclip scientist. The rushed immigration actually left them with improper status, and he tells a fun story about how they got that settled.
They are also the reason why trix cereal tasted a little fascist
?
Think about it. Those kids never let the Jewish rabbit have any of their trix. And those flavors!
I KNEW IT
