🤔If I told you that in 1944, Adolf Hitler ran the most sophisticated and successful space rocket program on earth, would that change your opinion of him? Should it?
Would that make you think Adolf was a rocket scientist? Or do you know that Wernher von Braun was the rocket scientist?
1/N
We see from this real example, that post world War II, after the Nazis were defeated, that Wernher von Braun kept making rockets, at the same pace.
It appears that the magic sauce, was "the world's best rocket scientists, with sufficient resources," not "fascist philosophy."
2/N
(Werner von Braun was a nazi. A rocket nazi is still a nazi. A nazi living in the country that helped defeat the nazis, is still a nazi. A nazi with a US government job, is still a nazi.)
When Hitler was being defeated, some people said, "Good! Hitler is bad for the world!"
Other people said, "Noooo! Now we won't walk on the moon! I have long dreamed of being interplanetary! Let Hitler keep building rockets!"
If you lived in 1944, which camp would you be in?
3/N
I would probably be one part of the team attempting to kill the hell out of Hitler.
If we do have principles and integrity as core values, I do not believe the worst of upbringing will destroy them. It will make our lives hell, but not transform us into bad.
Half of this country is into "f*** your feelings", cruelty, "send them back from where they came from". The other half has not been swayed into this. What baffles and frustrates me is the, what, 10% of undecided. Undecided about what? What is it to be decided?
Seems like a tough call to me. Yes, von Braun was a Nazi, in a situation in which NOT being one might have been detrimental to his plan of getting into space (at minimum).
The Soviets were totally gunning to vacuum up that talent, so I think Operation Paperclip (the recruitment effort) was oriented toward preventing that outcome.
There were indeed crafty American (and British) engineers who could have filled in, so I wouldn't see difficulty in reaching the moon, EVENTUALLY.
(I just know I'm going to get myself in trouble here, aren't I?)
The more interesting question to me (so far) is the guy who was responsible for PRODUCTION as opposed to research. I can imagine the German government coming to him and saying "here's a bunch of Jewish slaves. Use them to build your rockets. You don't have a problem with that, do you?"
(That guy did eventually get deported.)
@[email protected] @mekkaokereke
For anyone reading this who does not know the history:
Wernher von Braun was a party to Nazi war crimes and the deaths of 20,000 people at Dora-Mittelbau.
And yet we still have people trying to excuse his having been rehabilitated by the United States government, like in the post above.
@michael_w_busch @mekkaokereke Exactly.
Do I think if the Nazis had not taken control of his funding Von Braun would have joined the party? No.
Do I think he thought working slaves to death and live testing rocket technology with missiles conducting terror attacks on civilian targets were inconsequential side effects of his space exploration goals? Yes.
Do I think it was wrong for the US to rehabilitate his image and have him lead our own rocket program? It's complicated.
What's not complicated is that answering the question "Should we not have been at war with Germany because Hitler was enthusiastic about rockets?" with "That's a tough call" and an unrelated monologue about Von Braun sounds like falling back on an oft-repeated and under-considered talking point instead of actually getting the point of the question.
@mekkaokereke what’s the trigger for this? is this subtext about Musk? the Anthropic essay? something else?
idk, i guess i assume my reaction to all this is pervasive — ofc we wouldn’t support Hitler, but maybe people aren’t as good as i assume
@mekkaokereke It isn't so much that blowing up things and people is so bad, it's just that only certain people should be doing it. Oh, shit, Tom Lehrer did a song about that, too:
mekka okereke 
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