"ZE ROCKETS GO UP! WHO CARES VERE ZEY COME DOWN! ZATS NOT MY DEPARTMENT"
- Werner Von Braun
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
"ZE ROCKETS GO UP! WHO CARES VERE ZEY COME DOWN! ZATS NOT MY DEPARTMENT"
Some might say he's hypocritical
He'll just say he's apolitical
That's clever. Yours?
Haha no, I wish. The person I'm replying to and I are both referencing a song by the ever-brilliant Tom Lehrer
Actual quote from Von Braun:
The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet
Yeah he built the V2s, but it does generally seem like he was happier when he could use his talents for good rather than evil.
he was happy enough to use slave labor to build his death machines.
the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, while a further 12,000 laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.
incredible man, truly.
Fitting since the US's treatment of native Americans is what inspired the nazis
Like taking in a student.
yeah, the soviet's problem with the nazis was that nazis wanted to kill them all and they were of the opinion that that would hurt.
the US's problem with the nazis was that they challenged anglo hegemony. not quite as big a difference of opinion. no wonder they rehabilitated the nazis.
We did this with all sorts of fucking Nazis. We were far too kind and should have hung a fuck of a lot more of them.
Same thing goes for the fucking slavers after their failed rebellion.
Would you like to have a guillotine as birthday present?
Killing Nazis and slavers is justice. The fact that Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis outlived Lincoln is a travesty.
Or we could try to be more civilized.
It's easy for someone who isn't a victim of a capital or war crime to say, that the death penalty should be ostracized.
That makes my respect for Robert Badinter even greater:
His father was captured in the 1943 Rue Sainte-Catherine Roundup and deported with other Jews to the Sobibor extermination camp, where he was murdered shortly thereafter.
...
Robert Badinter (French pronunciation: [ʁɔbɛʁ badɛ̃tɛʁ]; 30 March 1928 – 9 February 2024) was a French lawyer, politician, and author who enacted the abolition of the death penalty in France in 1981.
I know this is a polarising topic. So I don't expect you to agree with me on this. The other way around... same. So let's just look at it as exchange of point of views. You show me your heroes, I show you mine.
It's "great" seeing people trying to defend these nazis in the comments
well, they only did an oopsie i joined the nazi party by accident and took part in genocide oops. it's not like they were commies or something really bad.
It's not just the scientists. Check out Erich von Manstein. NATO commanders routinely attended the birthdays of this Wehrmacht general, and behind the scenes he was the unofficial commander of the WestGerman military for years.
some of those nato commanders were former nazi colleagues of manstein, so this should not surprise anyone...
Soviets: "We will choose Korolev's design even though it is less effective because it is politically unacceptable to base our space program on a Nazi design."
America: "Yoooo, Herr SS-Sturmbannführer you're up! Do your thing! What's a little slave labor between friends eh?"
Joe Stalin signed an agreement with Hitler and would have kept it if the Nazis hadn't invaded.
There was actually a song talking shit about von Braun. I'm not sure which year it was form
Wernher von Braun by Tom Lehrer 1965
Space shuttle crashes into London
NASA guy: woops, sorry, force of habit.
Did those scientists have much choice about joining the Nazi party? And, once in the US, didn't some of them contribute significantly to the NASA space program? Why the hate then?
Some were party leaders...
Which ones?
If you would like to read more about this, here are some articles:
It's controversial. A lot of old science comes from abhorrent backgrounds. Life consists of various shades of grey. A lot of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" happened during the following Cold War.