GR, V2, slave labor

[pynchonoid]

I'm still not quite sure why some folks get so nervous
when you start pointing out the referencs to the
Holocaust in GR, but that's OK. As I begin to read GR,
I assume -- from word of mouth about the book and what
I've read about it -- that the novel combines
fictional elements in a historical setting that
includes WWII, Von Braun & the Nazi rocket program,
etc., and sure enough, within the first few pages, 
the novel presents references to these historical
elements, direct and indirect; references many other
historical elements follow as the novel progresses. 

The simple suggestion I made back in '99, which
apparently still gives some readers the willies, is
that if you take the rocket to be central to the novel
(as many readers do), the rocket brings with it (in
history and in GR) the Holocaust-victim slave laborers
who built the rocket: no Holocaust, no slave laborers;
no slave laborers, no rocket; no rocket, no GR. Not
only does Pynchon give GR a scene of dead and dying
slave laborers - one of the most touching, many
readers testify, of Pynchon's writing -  it comes at
the climax of a major character's story arc; Pokler's
predicament is that of anybody who profits in an
economy where human beings are used as a disposable
resource. 

[...] A disturbing and little-known aspect of the Nazi
slave labor system was the involvement of big
business. Many of the most respected German
corporations had no scruples about using concentration
camp labor. A company’s decision to use slave labor
was voluntary. By the end of 1944, one half a million
ghetto and concentration camp inmates were chained to
hundreds of corporations. The greatest offenders were
either state-owned enterprises – such as BRABAG, the
Herman Goring Works, and Volkswagen – or munitions and
arms makers, such as Junkers, Messerschmitt, Heinkel,
Krupp, Dynamit Nobel, and Rheinmetall-Borsig. By 1943,
almost every major private corporation was complicit,
including BMW, AEG-Telefunken, Siemens, Daimler-Benz,
Schering, and the component firms of IG Farben, namely
Bayer, BASF, Hoechst, and Agfa. German divisions of
American firms were equally guilty, such as Ford and
General Motors’ Opel. [...]
-Forced Labor During World War II
Prepared By
The B'nai B'rith
Center for Human Rights and Public Policy
http://bnaibrith.org/ppolicy/holocaust_issues/forcedlabor100599.cfm

"By 1945, the factory system -- which, more than any
piece of machinery, was the real and major result of
the Industrial Revolution -- had been extended to
include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range
rocket program and the death camps, such as Auschwitz.
It has taken no major gift of prophecy to see how
these three curves of development might plausibly
converge, and before too long. Since Hiroshima, we
have watched nuclear weapons multiply out of control,
and delivery systems acquire, for global purposes,
unlimited range and accuracy. An unblinking acceptance
of a holocaust running to seven- and eight-figure body
counts has become -- among those who, particularly
since 1980, have been guiding our military policies --
conventional wisdom."
- Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?
The New York Times Book Review
28 October 1984, pp. 1, 40-41.
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html

  


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