Von Braun

[Henry]

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And
let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue!"  But Nazism enslaved and was unjust.

All deaths, particularly against randomly targeted civilians, e.g. the
rockets and... oh, yeah, the camps!, caused by the Nazis/Axis in support of
their pure purposes of the final solution and admitted goal of a world-wide
dictatorship, were too many, and are incomparable to the deaths, even
thousands more than necessary,  wrought by the Americans/Allies in their
however impurely purposed fight against them.  That's what I believe, and
FWIW, I don't think that my readings of TRP in general, and GR in
particular, lead me to believe that TRP thinks otherwise, but your mileage
may vary, particularly if you are so deconstructioanal as to suggest that
intent cannot be known, and is therefore irrelevant.  

HENRY MUSIKAR
Information, Media, and Technology Consultant

http://www.urdomain.us/kcuf.htm  

-----Original Message-----
From: Monte Davis
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 4:49 AM
To: 'Henry'; 'Pynchon Liste'

Henry M writes:

> It's been noted before, but it bears repeating, that Doc Von 
> Braun, who it can be argued is the central historical figure 1995 
> of GR, was lampooned in Tom Lehrer's song...

Couldn't let this pass, as I'm just revising some passages of my own about
WvB -- and as I've laerned a lot in exchanges with Michael Neufeld about the
complex displacement and scapegoating around WvB's roles. (It's worth noting
that as a historian/curator at the Smithsonian, Neufeld was involved in the
1994 brouhaha about their exhibit on the A-bombing of Japan:
http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF2003/Klein/Klein.html .),
A few propositions about von Braun as symbol:
1. What was unique about von Braun was less what he did than that *we* then
wanted his and his team's expertise, and *we* made him a Cold War hero. The
Third Reich used slave labor -- technicians and skilled craftspeople from
across occupied Europe, POWs and Jews -- throughout its military and
civilian industries, not just at Nordhausen. There were many factories
(making bombs, bullets and boots as well as A4 rockets) where people were
worked to death and casually killed as slackers or saboteurs. And there were
thousands of German engineer/managers in those industries who knew that as
well as von Braun did. Only a handful of them were tried for war crimes or
caught up in the selective and superficial "de-Nazification" process -- in
practice, because *we* needed such people less as moral examples less than
we needed their skills in rebuilding West Gemany as a staunch ally against
the USSR.

2. Nothing substantial in von Braun's background was hidden: most pieces of
the Peenemunde and Nordhausen story had emerged by the early 1950s,
especially in accounts published in the UK, France and Belgium, and in
Germany itself. What happened in the US was less deception on von Braun's
part, or suppression by officialdom, than "hey, look over here" distraction
by more up-to-date and palatable stories: von Braun as the Huntsville
missile man keeping us in the ICBM race with the Soviets... von Braun as Dr.
Space on Disney TV, explaining that what rockets were *really* good for was
travel to the Radiant Realm... Von Braun as architect of the Saturn V that
would get us to the moon on time.     

3. Technological death from above, as massively and quickly and efficiently
as the state of the art would allow, was firmly entrenched in military
planning everywhere long before WWII began -- arguably more so in the UK and
US than anywhere else, because they had greater resources to substitute a
few men in bombers for a lot of infantry with guns. On all sides, the
initial *theory* was to strike precisely at enemy forces and at the "sinews
of industry." But because field forces and tank factories and munitions
plants and shipyards tended to be (a) small hard targets and (b) well
defended with flak and fighters, all sides managed to convince themselves
(if all you've got is a hammer...) that smashing cities and slaughtering
civilians was the next best thing. Hitler poured resources into the
V-weapons only after his bombers could no longer strike at the UK; the RAF
and USAAF spent three years in a crescendo of city bombing because that was
all we *could* do until we were prepared to invade. It's all in the timing.

Yes, the bad guys "started it" with Guernica and Nanjing and Rotterdam and
the Blitz -- but my goodness, didn't we finish it in style with Hamburg and
Dresden, Tokyo and Hiroshima? And having defeated the fascists, with their
callous disregard for human life, didn't we follow up WWII by making
"massive retaliation" -- multiple high-speed Holocausts delivered on demand,
first by bombers and then by missiles -- the centerpiece of our strategy,
_ultima ratio regum_ for our time?  

Yes, von Braun (via Pokler and Weismann & co, in that unique Pynchonian
offstage-but-omnipresent way) is a "central historical figure" in GR. But so
are Major Marvy and the RAF pilots (what do you think they were *doing* over
Lubeck?) and feisty, wrath-of-God Harry Truman.

I'm not saying that von Braun didn't bear moral responsibility, as did
Bomber Harris and Curtis LeMay, all the gang at Los Alamos, and Rosie the
Riveter turning out those B-29s. I'm saying  that there's a persistent
temptation to stop at the level of Tom Lehrer snark (and it *is* a funny
song)... to pat ourselves on the back for having finally recognized the
death-dealing technocrat among us (hey, just like 'Marathon Man' and 'Boys
from Brazil'). It's much nicer to think about the evil but comfortably
receding Nazi past than to think about how much of it might have been part
of the Greatest Generation, too... how much of it survived and flourished
(by our deliberate choices, not by Wernher's malign hypnotic skill)  -- into
the Cold War...  and how much of it might still be part of the GWOT present.

Won't get fooled again, foax, right? Right? Anyone? Bueller?