"Morality" in *GR*

[jbor]

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>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>
> Overseeing Pokler's & "Ilse's" lives, playing with them both as pieces on
> his chess-board, is Blicero.  And Blicero has his ultimate goal in mind
> early on.

Are you sure?

     But in the spring, he did see Weissmann again. ... He seemed to have
   aged ten years, and Pokler hardly recognized him.
     "There isn't much time," Weissmann whispered. "Come with me."
     ....
     He wanted a modification worked into one rocket, only one. Its serial
   number had been removed, and five zeros painted in. ... Pokler knew
   immediately that this was what Weissmann had been saving him for: this
   was to be his "special destiny". ... He never saw Weissmann again.
     The first week in April, with American units supposed to be arriving at
   any moment ... (431-2)

Sounds to me more like a rush job with the Reich's defeat imminent. We don't
get Weissmann's pov in Pokler's story. And when we do, when we see Blicero
playing "happy families" with Gottfried and Katje early on in the war (and
the book), there's no hint of the quasi-Crucifixion that will be enacted
with the 00000 at war's end. Though, it *might* be why Weissmann has
persevered with Pokler, vouched for him despite his erratic behaviour, all
along. At least, that's how Pokler reconstructs it. Back when they first
met, *Major* Weissmann was merely "one of several grey eminences around the
rocket field" -- Army bureaucrats whose job it was to apportion funding to
the VfR -- and even then it appeared, from Pokler's (retrospective?) pov,
that he had taken Pokler "for granted":

     Weissmann was as sure of Pokler's role as Pokler was of Leni's. But
   Leni left at last. Pokler might not have had the will. (401)

> This is why he guilt-grooms, S&M-conditions, Pokler for years and
> years.  Think how many other Pokler's Blicero must have managed over the
> years to accomplish his personal pet-project...

But isn't the suggestion -- the official, American, "Nuremberg" suggestion,
at least -- that the entire Nazi war machine (and not just the OOOOO) was
down to a dozen or so men? And that von Braun, Pokler and co. are thereby
exonerated?

What do you make of the scrawled handwriting on Pokler's last travel permit
to Zwolfkinder?

     Where the dates should have been, someone had written, almost
   illegibly, "after hostilities end." On the back, in the same hand
   (Weissmann's?) a note to Pokler. *She has been released. She will meet
   you there.* (432)

Pokler sees this as "payment", proof that Weissmann had been guilt-grooming
and conditioning Pokler for all those years. Pokler *has to* believe this.
But, if this *was* the case, why would Weissmann have bothered? The war is
lost, the rocket is built: if Weissmann was really some evil conniving
monomaniac, why would he take the time to organise these papers, behave so
honorably? Couldn't this be the simple act of kindness that it seems?

best