Ad Astra Per Certamen: A Brief Overview of Wernher von Braun and the Lessons That can be Taken Away from His Life by JUSTICE A. DARBY
Despite this, Wernher von Braun had a dark past that was intentionally hidden away by the US government as a means of being able to use him for their R&D (research and development) into ballistic missiles (Biddle, 2009, p. 145-147). Having grown up in Germany in the first half of his life, his career in rocketry was running parallel to the rise of the Third Reich and Hitler. These paths would begin to intersect after Hitler had risen to power in Germany in 1933 and began to take control of the government bit by bit. At that point, Wernher von Braun had been working with the army for about a year to complete his Doctorate in Physics by doing his thesis dissertations on liquid rocket engines (Neufeld, 2007, p. 68-69). This would culminate in him leading the development of the world’s first ballistic missile, the V-2, short for their codename of “Vergeltungswaffe Zwei” or “Vengeance Weapon Two” in English by the propaganda ministry in Nazi Germany (The National Air and Space Museum, n.d., para. 1). His rockets would go on to be used against the allies in WW2 (World War Two) with rather ineffective results. While it may have been ineffective, it was practically impossible to defend against due to the speeds at which it impacted its intended targets, the populace of Europe (The National Archives, n.d., para. 4-6). The building of the V-2 would lead to the deaths of 20,000 concentration camp prisoners at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp from which they died from a variety of causes (Biddle, 2009, p. xii)and about a further 5,500 people killed with a further 6,500 people being critically injured from V-2 bombardments (The National Air and Space Museum, n.d., p. 12). Despite his involvement with the V-2, it is hard to gauge how much of an involvement Wernher von Braun had with the Nazis and the labor camps.
For anybody studying somebody as controversial and mixed as Wernher von Braun, his life can give us a huge list of lessons from which we can apply to ourselves, live on, and recommend to others around us as well. These lessons can serve as a guide in which we can use to avoid the mistakes that tarnished both Wernher von Braun’s image and legacy as well. Some of us may still question why this should matter to ourselves when it is unlikely for any of us to commit the heinous crimes that Wernher von Braun potentially committed and why we should learn from his life when we know we are going to be nowhere near as successful, driven, or ambitious as Wernher von Braun, especially in a field as dense and draconian as rocketry. For that, it should be said that even if we are not going to be as influential as Wernher von Braun, the lessons from his life can still be applied in different forms. Each person is likely to have different life circumstances from their past that don’t correlate to events in von Braun’s life but could mirror situations he was in when he was alive that could correlate to events that could happen in our future, even if they aren’t as extreme. Even if it doesn’t apply to you, the lessons from his life can be applied to those that are close to you who are also ambitious, driven, or following a similar path. This begs the real question to be asked, what lessons should we take away from the life of Wernher von Braun?
For that, what should be taken away from Wernher von Braun’s life is that people are often complicated to analyze and that we should not allow ourselves to become blind by our own ambition to the point of losing our own morality through affecting the world around us by watching out for what situations we could be walking into, by looking at Wernher von Braun from many different perspectives to get a better idea on how to better judge complicated people, realizing that our actions today have impacts, whether positive or negative ones, from now and into the future, and we should commit to being held responsible for our actions no matter how tiny or large it may seem. If we wish to impact the world around us to a great degree, we should watch out for what affects our actions towards ourselves could ultimately lead to a situation in which we cannot do much. By analyzing all sides of who von Braun was, we attain better ways to gauge and approach tricky figures from history rather than ignoring one side, leaving us ignorant to a more encompassing truth or opinion. The consequences of our actions, whether good or bad, can echo into the modern day and should be looked out for in life. Lastly, we should take responsibility for the actions we have committed in life, no matter how big or small of an impact they may have had rather than ignore our moral implications in such matters.
Blind Ambition: The Dangers of Walking into a Dangerous Dilemma
In today’s society, it is a fair bet to say that a lot of us wish to be careful with what situations we walk into by thinking about it first before acting. Thus, the first spot Wernher von Braun failed to realize in his life from which we can learn from was in his dream to achieve greater heights for the greater good of humankind, he, without realizing it, had walked into a situation in which he committed many atrocities that would grip him for the rest of his life. While working for the army after getting out of university, the rise of Hitler would end up leading to him as head of a research facility in Peenemünde on the Baltic Coast. This would lead to his involvement in the creation of the V-2 that would later on kill tens of thousands of the prisoners who created them and the inevitable destruction they caused once launched that caused the further deaths to the civilians of Europe from which he knew that as the outcome. It is evident, though, that Wernher von Braun wasn’t a follower of Nazi ideology despite being involved with them heavily. He blindly followed the Nazis to further his career, committing atrocities without him knowing about the wider moral implications of what his work was doing, and how it affected the Holocaust. He couldn’t do much about the situation the prisoners of Mittelbau-Dora were facing due to Nazi secrecy, surveillance, and pressure and not without him being shot right on the spot for committing treason to the Nazi regime.
Without realizing the implications of what he was walking into, Wernher von Braun transitioned from working on rockets to fulfill his dream to creating weapons of war for the Nazi regime. During his last year of schooling at the University of Berlin in 1932, he was sponsored by the German army to research the theoretical limitations of liquid rocket engines. After graduating and Hitler’s rise to power, his thesis dissertation would be kept as a state secret and given the title of “Regarding Combustion Experiments”(Neufeld, 2007, p. 68). Over the next 6 years, von Braun’s growing experience in managing larger and larger teams of engineers and scientists would lead to him taking up a position as the leader of rocket development at Peenemünde that ballooned to a decent operation by 1939. At Peenemünde, he would develop the V-2 rocket which was tested by launching it into the Baltic Sea and recording the results of the experiments. Eventually, the V-2 would go on to be used by the Nazis and launched onto the populace of Europe during the waning months of WW2 (Teitel, 2013, para. 8-10). Without knowing it, von Braun had started working for a regime that was on its way to warring its way across Europe as he sleep walked into working for the Nazis.
Without a shadow of a doubt, it is going to be hard to find a reason that Wernher von Braun did not know what his weapons would do to those around him. In an interview done by Diane Tedeschi with Michael Neufeld, the author of the book “Werner von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War”, he stated:
He was in the underground plant at least 12 to 15 times. As I found out in the testimony that he gave for a war crimes trial in West Germany in 1969, he mentioned that he’d been through the underground sleeping quarters, which had been built in the tunnels in late 1943 for the concentration camp workers because the above-ground camp hadn’t been finished or hadn’t even really been started. And those underground accommodations were horrific. And he walked through that area and through the mining area. (Tedeschi, 2008, para. 3)
This shows that not only did Wernher von Braun know about the conditions that the laborers of the concentration were in, he saw them himself several times and admitted to it. It was said that, in a response to an assassination attempt, he had watched and ordered several prisoners to be flogged and hanged, but there is sufficient doubt that the order may not have been given by von Braun (Harress, 2017, para. 16). His weapons also went on to attack civilians all over Europe and affect the population there as well. In part of a quote by one of von Braun’s colleagues in a blog post by Victor Gamma (Gamma, 2021b, para. 7), his colleague said, “‘When the first V-2 hit London, we had champagne. And why not?”” From that, von Braun and his group indeed did know what their weapons were doing for the people of London and that of Europe.
The other thing worth noting in the quote in Victor Gamma’s blog post is von Braun’s colleague saying their justifications of doing what they did was because they “‘were at war, and although we weren’t Nazis, we still had a Fatherland to fight for’” (Gamma, 2021b, para. 7) and his colleague isn’t too far off, especially for Wernher von Braun. There is substantial evidence that while Wernher von Braun may have been in the Nazi party and the SS(Schutzstaffel), von Braun was not much of a follower of Nazi ideology. This does not mean that Wernher von Braun hated the Nazis, but he was, instead, fine with working with them, at least until near the end of the war when his views on them changed. To start, in 1933, he had joined the Nazi SS as a horseback rider. At that point, the SS hadn’t developed into what it would become known for in WW2, but was seen as an autonomously rising part of the Nazi SA(Sturmabteilung). The reasons for which he had joined and would later quit in between 1933 and 1940 are unknown since he never gave any account of why he did (Neufeld, 2007, p. 63-64). He got a message from Heinrich Himmler later on in 1940 to rejoin the SS as an “Untersturmfuerher” (lieutenant). Von Braun was hesitant, at first, before convening with his military superior Gen. Walter Dornberger in which he said that von Braun should join the SS or else the rocket development program could get damaged. It is from this reason that von Braun had to join the SS, not by choice, but out of fear that the program he had been leading could get tarnished (Neufeld, 2007, pg. 12-121). The same can be said for him and his Nazi party membership which follows a similar path. Going off of an article written by Michael Neufeld (Neufeld, 2019, para. 2), he stated that von Braun said he had only joined the Nazi party to protect his job in the Third Reich, showing that the similar reasons for why von Braun joined the SS also applied here as well. For von Braun, he wasn’t a follower of Nazi ideology as he only joined the SS and Nazi party out of fear of what it could mean for his dream.
What is still evident is that he took in the support of the Nazi regime without batting an eye or thinking twice about the implications. As said by Neufeld in an interview with Diane Tedeschi:
But at the beginning, one of the most interesting things I discovered in doing this was that he was obsessed with going into space personally. This dream he had from the 1920s onward was not just: Space is good for the human race, we should explore space. This was: I want to go into space … So this dream of flying into space was the thing that drove him, and it caused him to be all too willing to accept money and resources from whomever came along and said, “Here, build rockets. Just do it for us. Do it our way.” … Then the Nazis came to power, and things got better for the military. And Hitler gave more money to the army. And the whole rocket project took off in an amazing way. Everything as far as von Braun was concerned was just going great. (Tedeschi, 2008, para. 6-7).
No matter what, so long as Wernher von Braun got to work on what he loved dearly, he did not care. He wished to do the things that defined him as a person, regardless of what that regime was doing, which made him blindly fall into the hands of the Nazis to make weapons of war that lead to the deaths of thousands.
As stated earlier, if von Braun was coerced into joining the SS and Nazi party without much choice, it can also be said that he had no real options as far as relieving the horrible situation the concentration camp prisoners were going through though. When you are a person working for a regime that is considered one of, if not, the worst regimes in history for its brutality, it is unlikely that he could have done anything to help alleviate the problems the prisoners had been experiencing. By 1944, Wernher von Braun’s relation with the Nazi Regime soured. He was arrested by the Gestapo after making drunken remarks about how he wanted his rockets to go for the Moon rather than be used as weapons and about Germany’s likely defeat to the allies. Through the intervention of Albert Speer and General Walter Dornberger attesting to von Braun’s criticality for the rocket program at Peenemünde, they were able to get him released. Regardless, as a result of the 10 day arrest he had endured and likely from what he had witnessed of the concentration camp labor, it ended up being the last straw he had with the Nazi regime and he began to distance himself from it and Hitler. He wore his SS uniform more often towards the end of WW2, likely as a means of defense against the hardcore Nazis still around(Neufeld, 2019, para. 7). Going off of this, it can be concluded that Wernher von Braun did eventually figure out what situation he was in and the implications it had on him. If he was powerless against the Gestapo, he would have been pretty powerless against the Nazis for relieving the situation of the prisoners.
Wernher von Braun’s first huge mistake that we can learn from in his life is his failure to recognise the situation he had been walking into due to his blind ambition. After having worked for the army for a year to research the limitations of liquid rockets, Hitler’s rise to power would slowly end up having von Braun lead a rocket development facility at Peenemünde. There, his leadership would create the V-2, a weapon that ended up killing thousands of people in Europe and several thousand further from their construction from which he knew of their outcome. Despite working for the Nazi regime a lot, von Braun was not an adamant follower of Nazi ideology. Instead, he happened to have been more happy with following the Nazis blindly to further his research into rocketry. Due to the Nazis having von Braun and his team under their thumb, it is doubtful that von Braun could have been able to do much to help the prisoners of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp. From what is gathered, it can be well inferred that von Braun was, in the end, in a situation that he could do nothing about, and, for us, he serves as a great example of why we should watch where we end up going in our lives.
Both Sides of Same the Coin: Why Some People are Harder to Judge than Others
Throughout our lives, we find it easy for us to try and categorize things around us to make it easier for our minds to understand. When we try to apply that same logic of categorization to complicated people and start to try and ask ourselves if they fit more as one thing or another, the results of that thinking starts to become muddied and hard to figure out. That statement is true of Wernher von Braun as well. His past as both a Nazi and a hero of the American people is a mixed legacy that, if we want to conclusively try and get an answer that works the best for how to answer to the question, the best way that we can go about that is to analyze more than one specific angle of who he was. Not only should he be considered for who he was in both the spheres of a hero or villain, he should be analyzed for who he was as a person in everyday life ranging from his personality to his characteristics. At the end of the day, regardless of who he was, he was still human just like the rest of us.
As stated earlier, Wernher von Braun was both a member of the SS and the Nazi party. During his tenure with the Nazis, he developed weapons of war that killed thousands and didn’t care about the outcome of it so long as he could work on what he liked (Tedeschi, 2008, para. 6-7). His views of the Nazis would turn after he had gotten arrested by the Gestapo for 10 days, finally isolating him from Hitler. From this, it can be described that his time before and during WW2 shows that he was complicit in many horrible acts.
Von Braun and his team would get scooped up by the US Army in the last weeks of the war and get transported over to Fort Bliss, Texas in Operation Paperclip where they were put under constant surveillance. There and later on in Huntsville, Alabama after moving there in 1950, von Braun would work for the US Army in developing ballistic missiles like the Redstone and Jupiter missiles. In the 1950’s, von Braun began to appear in several articles in Collier’s Magazine and on Disney’s Man in Space to advocate for human spaceflight and going to the Moon (Dunbar, 2017, para. 4). His articles in Collier’s were also gone over by the Defense Department, showing that despite the loosening grip and security that von Braun and his team were put under, they still had to contend with the government (Biddle, 2009, p. 149-150). From his appearances in various media over the 1950’s, von Braun began to take on the form of a celebrity of sorts and became famous (Teitel, 2013, para. 14). When Sputnik was launched by the Soviets in 1957 and the US response with the Vanguard failed, von Braun rescued the situation for the US in the Space Race by successfully launching Explorer 1 aboard a Jupiter C three months later. With the Space Race quickly ramping up after the first flight of Yuri Gagarin, the first human to fly into space, von Braun was chosen to lead the US effort in the Space Race by landing people on the Moon by the end of the 1960’s, in which he succeeded, accomplishing his lifelong dream (Biddle, 2009, p. 151-152). From how events turned around for von Braun after the collapse of Germany, he was essentially given a second chance at redemption of sorts to achieve his dream. In this light, he did manage to turn his image around enough from his involvement in the Space Race that he was able to be given the view as the hero of the Space Race.
For Wernher von Braun, his personality as a human was as instrumental to his success as an individual as was his public image and work effort. In his grade school and college years, the biggest trait that made him stand out was his sheer amount of ambition and drive that was focused on getting to the Moon. He initially struggled in math and physics, but, by the time he graduated high school, he was ahead of everybody in his class, had been lecturing students in his math class, and was correcting the mistakes of his teacher in math (Neufeld, 2007, p. 35). When he began working for the German army after 1933, his charisma surfaced, which would go on to serve him well to convince many leaders, ranging from Adolph Hitler to the Presidents of the US, to fund his research into rocketry (Garza, 2019, para. 17). His most powerful characteristic of all has to be his curiosity which is what enabled him to be the way he was. In a foreword by John Glenn in the book “Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun” by Bob Ward (Ward, 2005, p. xi), he noted that on one of his first visits to Wernher von Braun’s home, he expected his small library to be filled with books in math, engineering, and the like because that was what von Braun was best known for. Instead, Glenn found that his library was filled with books ranging in subjects from geology to philosophy to religion and so on. When John Glenn mentioned that aspect of his library to him, he simply pulled out a book and began explaining it right then and there on what that book was on. His curiosity, Glenn noted, wasn’t limited to just his field of expertise but was practically expanded to anything and everything. For von Braun, the traits that made him who he was ultimately reflected in how he was perceived by others.
For von Braun, his characteristics defined how he interacted with people around him. Commonly, when he entered a social situation, he was always the center of attention, entrancing those around him with his immense intellect and influence. People ranging from Congressmen to the captains of industry and the Presidents of the US invited him over to dinners where he would do a similar thing of dominating the social sphere. His ability to effortlessly attract attention both had its benefits and drawbacks. This presented itself a lot in the form of fan mail and autographs. While some fan mail was generally people asking how they could become rocket engineers, others were downright weird. In a letter he got from a Massachusetts man, he said he knew “‘how to make an artificially conscious brain’” and that “‘he could make one in less than 10 years’”. He could make it possible for a person to be “‘on the Earth and the Moon at the same time’” and that all he needed to make it possible was for von Braun to help him get “‘several portable digital computers’ necessary for the task” (Ward, 2005, p. 5).
Commonly, he got tons of people asking for his autographs so much that he started to refer to it as “that plague”, but, still, he gave in to them as it served as great PR for the space program. No matter where he was, the back of a corner of a bar in New Zealand or the jungles of the Yucatan, von Braun would still get swarmed by people asking for his autograph(Ward, 2005, pg. 1-9). One of von Braun’s favorite autograph stories is best summed up in “Dr. Space, the Life of Wernher von Braun” by Bob Ward as follows:
Von Braun’s favorite autograph story concerns a talk he gave to a school in the United States in the late 1950’s. Afterward, he was surrounded by a group of teenage girls. One girl pressed forward excitedly asked, “Dr. von Braun, could I have two autographs?” “Well, yes,” he replied, signing the first of the two blank cards she offered. “But why do you need two?” The girl answered sweetly, “Because for two of yours I can… get one of Elvis Presley’s.” (Ward, 2005, p. 2).
Von Braun, during his years in the US, was the center of attention that developed from his characteristics.
Despite how much the media portrayed him as being intelligent, he still had his moments of struggle against even the mundane things. Whether it be because he forgot to put on matching socks, struggled to deal with fanmail, or absolutely had no idea on how to operating a VCR or color TV, he was as incompetent looking, at times, as he was a genius which his wife would attest to (Ward, 2006, para. 28). While he may have been successful and intelligent, he still fumbled like either one of us.
In analyzing von Braun, it may seem easy to try and classify him as either a visionary engineer or an opportunistic Nazi depending on the time frame at which you look at him from. Regardless of who you see him as, he was both the opportunistic Nazi and visionary engineer going by the sum total of all of his life’s failures and triumphs. His Nazi past shows that he was, in the beginning, someone who wanted to focus on what he liked best. Towards the latter half of his life, his common image as the leader of the Space Race starts to come through and we begin to see what he was like as a person in the US. His personality is what allowed him to succeed and thrive so well, but it must not be forgotten that he indeed was as human as either one of us. What can be gathered from him is an aspect that if we want to make a fair and balanced opinion of others, we must look at both sides of the coin in terms of a person’s life rather than one specific section.
Echos of the Past: How Our Actions in the Past and Present Affect the Future
Growing up in our early years, the consequences of our actions do not impact us as much as they do later down the line. For major figures in history, they can take that effect and magnify it to not only affect themselves but the millions to perhaps billions of people around the world that can continue to reverberate for many decades afterwards. Wernher von Braun serves as a great example of his impact on the world around us. When he was working in the United States, he amplified the voice of spaceflight onto millions of people across the world and convinced them it was a good idea to pursue spaceflight when, before, it was a voice that was being used to convince Hitler to fund von Braun’s creation. That voice still continues to this day and continues to inspire tons of people all over the world into fields involving spaceflight. There is, of course, the dark side of his work, the V-2, which became the precursor to many ballistic missiles across the world that culminated in the creation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs). When combined with nuclear weapons, ICBMs and IRBMs pose the threat of wiping out massive swaths of life on Earth if used.
If there was one thing Wernher von Braun excelled at when it came to his influence on those around him, it was his ability to convince those around him to fund his push into rocketry. Whether it was the President of the United States or the Führer of the Third Reich, he used his voice to try and convince both of them to fund his ventures and research. For Hitler, it was the funding of von Braun’s rocketry that would lead to the V-2, but he attained mixed results there that led to no increased priority but no cancellation (Neufeld, 2007, p. 111-112). For the Presidents of the United States, Congress, and the wider public, that voice would be used to get man to the Moon. His years of efforts in PR and championing spaceflight would come true as he was given the go to lead the development of the Saturn V (Garza, 2019, para. 9-10). For this effort, his voice was used majorly to propagate his ambitions onto others for both good and bad purposes.
Although Wernher von Braun may have perished in 1977, his vision of spaceflight still continues to live on. It has been long enough that many people around the world who became inspired by him growing up now work at the places he walked in. Those people, in turn, are now inspiring the next generation of the vision that von Braun had given them. Most critically, the organization that he was a part of in his Apollo days, NASA, continues to champion the goal of human spaceflight that von Braun advocated for many decades before (Dunbar, 2022). From this regard, the positive influence of von Braun’s vision reverberates to this day.
Von Braun’s influence on the world has not all been positive. From the ashes of WW2 and von Braun’s rocket development facility at Peenemünde rose a new terror. His team would be taken from Germany and transplanted into the US in Operation Paperclip were they would lead the development of the US’s first ballistic missile program. Using captured V-2 rockets from the war, von Braun and his team would develop the Redstone IRBM. His missile technology would also get captured and largely researched by the Soviets as well after they captured Peenumünde and the V-2 production plants, leading to their own development of IRBMs and ICBMs (The National Air and Space Museum,, n.d. para. 14-15). From his work, it led to one of the major components of nuclear weapons that could end our civilization as we know it if they are used.
For Wernher von Braun, it may not have seemed like it at first for him but his actions of developing rocketry to pursue a dream of his for a regime hellbent on wiping out the Jews will forever have implications on our modern world. His work and influence allowed him to create the Saturn V to take astronauts to the Moon in 1969, and, from his advocacy, ended up becoming the face of spaceflight in the 1950’s and 1960’s. His voice still persists on to this day to inspire many around the world and continues to live on in the form of NASA. Regardless, his early work on the V-2 would later set the groundwork for the ICBM and IRBM, weapons with costly implications for not only humanity but all life as we know it. From von Braun’s effects on our modern world and in the past, he is an example of how we as individuals can affect the world in many ways, both positively and negatively, and how it can echo into our modern day many years after we have died.
See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil: Taking Responsibility for Your Actions
Growing up, we start to take on more and more responsibilities for our lives. Whether it be to advance in a career or to simply live, it is unavoidable, and, thus, action is often required to fulfill responsibility. When it comes to moral responsibilities for our actions, we have to take responsibility for the consequences from which we have caused, no matter how much we distance ourselves from it or the size of the impact. For von Braun, his actions towards denying any personal involvement in the Holocaust after WW2 goes to show that as well. His actions in the Nazi regime started to immediately have implications as soon as he arrived in the US. While he eventually came around and admitted towards seeing the horrors of the concentration camps, he decided to take no personal responsibility for it. Regardless, while he never did take the moral weight of his actions, he still sympathized with the plight of the prisoners of WW2 after having realized how bad of an extent it had reached and the effect it had had on Germany and its people.
As stated earlier, von Braun knew about the conditions of the labor camps as he had walked through them several times. From them, the development of his weapons led to the deaths of tens of thousands in WW2. After the war and a delayed realization to what he had been implemented in, the actions of his involvement with the SS, the Nazi party, and the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp, his past would haunt him for the rest of his life. After Operation Paperclip had brought von Braun and his group to the US, 40 scientists, one of those being Albert Einstein, sent a telegram suggesting to President Truman that once the Germans had finished their work for the US they should be shipped back to Germany. Despite their complaints, it was ignored (Biddle, 2009, p. 147). Even as he left Germany for the US, he was still haunted by his actions with the Nazi regime.
When his rise to fame began to increase in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the public’s curiosity on the past of von Braun did as well. From it, they would start to realize that the, at the time, seemingly good natured von Braun was, in fact, a Nazi in the past. As said by Bob Ward in his book:
At his speaking appearances around the country, von Braun occasionally attracted protest groups and hecklers. Some shouted “Nazi” and “Sieg Heil.” The 1960 movie biography-I Aim for the Stars-drew comedian Mort Sahl’s addendum, “but sometimes I miss and hit London!”(Ward, 2006, p. 6)
His response to it was largely one of ignorance. For him, he had both humanity and his career to advance, especially during his time in Nazi Germany. In a reply he sent to a Alan Fox on his moral implications in the Third Reich and the Holocaust, he said he did “...not remember ever having heard of a single incident of an atrocity, let alone mass killing of civilians” in remembering the conversations he had with his colleagues in secret during WW2 on the Nazi Regime and the concentration camps (Ward, 2006, p. 228). This, however, contradicts what he said to a West German Court in 1969 were he admitted that he had seen the abhorrent conditions of the sleeping quarters at the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp 12 to 15 times. This shows that he refused to acknowledge that he knew about how bad it appeared. He still continued to work vigorously for the rocket program even after seeing the camp and his arrest by the Gestapo (Tedeschi, 2008, para. 2-3). Even if it turned out that he was right and that he didn’t know about how bad the situation really was, it still doesn’t excuse the fact he used the prisoners to develop the V-2 and did not take any personal responsibility for it. His ignorance towards admitting to what he had done personally in the Holocaust is what tarnished him forever.
Despite not taking any individual burden of blame, he still expressed sympathy for the Jews and the plights of the Holocaust. He took shame towards his ignorance and to what his home country had done. In the same letter von Braun sent to Alan Fox, he noted this:
As you know, the extent of the actual suffering and the criminal mass slaughter of the Jewish people became known to the world only many months after hostilities ended, and it was only then I learned of these things myself. I was deeply shocked and have ever since been ashamed of having been associated with that regime that was capable of such brutality…I know that our generation must accept our share of the guilt for what happened (Ward, 2006, p. 228).
For von Braun and his group, they indeed did feel horrible for the crimes his nation had committed towards the Jews. He admits that his people had to hold the burden for the crimes for which they had committed rather than ignore it. For this, it shows that he wasn’t a complete monster despite his earlier blindness working for the Third Reich.
For von Braun, his past in WW2 will likely be the thing that tarnishes his legacy the most. His past had already started haunting him the moment he began his rise in fame in the US and it would later lead to his legacy being forever damaged. While he never admitted any portion of the guilt towards his involvement in the V-2 production’s effects on the Jews, he still manages to redeem himself somewhat by admitting to the guilt of his ignorance of the Holocaust and his generation’s responsibility to shoulder the burden of it. It is from his mixed way of sharing responsibility and its effects in the modern day that shows us why we, as individuals, should take full responsibility for what we have done.
Conclusion
Wernher von Braun, from his legacy and impact on the modern world, can be seen as many things. From him, we can learn many lessons that we can apply to ourselves as individuals. Wernher von Braun’s life teaches us that people cannot be put in any one category but are rather difficult to analyze based on their legacy immediately and in our pursuit of fulfilling our deepest desires, we should not allow it to blind ourselves to the point we lose our morality. For the people around us that wish to influence the world greatly, we should not blindly follow others without knowing the implications of our effects from it. In order to truly know a person from the inside out, we must understand who they were from all sides of their being rather than taking the easy route by focusing and condemning them off of one area that isn’t representative of the whole. Our effects on this world today will have consequences to come, both good and bad, that will echo forward into time immemorial. Lastly, we should take full responsibility for the actions we commit regardless, no matter how seemingly big or small they may seem. It is for these reasons that Wernher von Braun can be a lesson to us in the modern day of mistakes we should aim to not make.
References
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JUSTICE A. DARBY is a first-year mechanical engineering major. Selected by Annette Hornung.