Was America's Top Rocketeer a Communist Spy? The FBI Thought So 165
New submitter IMissAlexChilton (3748631) writes Frank Malina masterfully led the World War II effort to build U.S. rockets for jet-assisted takeoff and guided missiles. As described in IEEE Spectrum, Malina's motley crew of engineers and enthusiasts (including occultist Jack Parsons) founded the Jet Propulsion Lab and made critical breakthroughs in solid fuels, hypergolics, and high-altitude sounding rockets, laying the groundwork for NASA's future successes. And yet, under suspicion by the Feds at the war's end, Malina gave up his research career, and his team's efforts sank into obscurity. Taking his place: the former Nazi Wernher von Braun. Read "Frank Malina: America's Forgotten Rocketeer". Includes cool vintage footage of early JPL rocket tests.
White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Insightful)
A Nazi he was not.
Go read up on the history of Germany's rocket scientists. The majority were a buncha eggheads who thought it was cool they'd found someone willing to fund them, right up until they found themselves with guns pointed at their heads and explanations of what would happen to them or their families if they didn't succeed.
While it's s sad Frank Malina lost out on continued innovation in the JPL, put the blame where it belongs: The Feds and the Congresscritters who were so caught up in their witch hunts that they drove away the very brilliance that might've helped us not only take the space race to another level, but perhaps also avoid the stagnation imbued during the late saturn v and shuttle era.
Imagine if Skylab had stayed in orbit and been used as the basis of an ISS 20 years earlier.
The possibilities were endless. But as usual jackbooted thugs and politicos ruined them for their own careers.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority were a buncha eggheads who thought it was cool they'd found someone willing to fund them,
And willingly worked 12,000 "undesirables" to death.
put the blame where it belongs
Square on Frank Malina's shoulders for wanting to do something else.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
"The actual manufacturing was done by prisoners from the concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora. As the historian Michael J. Neufeld has documented, von Braun went so far as to handpick detainees with technical qualifications for this work. (The prisoners were worked literally to death. In all, about 12,000 died producing von Braun’s rockets; for comparison, the rockets themselves would kill an estimated 9,000 people, many of them civilians.)"
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Insightful)
We weren't there. Was he picking them like Schindlers List? Trying to save his engineering colleagues? Or was he hating on Jews? I dunno, the mans dead and history books are notoriously inaccurate with details like this. I'll let God judge him... if there is no afterlife then this arguments an exercise in futility.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Insightful)
You left out the third option. Was he just trying to stay alive and ignoring the conditions around him. It is very easy for humans to do that.
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Bullshit. He could have, in his important position, pressured for better conditions for the workers. He didn't. He didn't even express disgust privately. He oversaw the program and controlled details including selection of workers. He knew of the bad conditions the workers endured. He in no way tried to improve them. He just didn't care.
And that is how one is a good Nazi. He should have hung* just as the other war criminals.
(* I'm actually against death sentences but his crimes was worse than some that was
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The truth is probably a lot more complex, and honestly, much more human.
My guess is that he really wanted to make a spaceship, he got funding, got in over his head by showing dual use for his rockets, and then was pretty much co-opted into the war program.
He certainly was subject to arrest, and was arrested at one point. Only his particular position allowed him to avoid it becoming permanent. It is difficult to believe that after that, he was not actively trying to keep himself useful to the regime so tha
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An excellent characterization.
As I understand it, he was arrested for complaining that the war was not going well, which everyone knew but people in high places were forbidden to mention. His problem wasn't that the Nazis were Nazis, but that they were the losing.
As a technocrat under extenuating circumstances, he illustrates the worst moral worthlessness to which a technocrat can fall, and so should not be esteemed. He should never have been celebrated as an American hero.
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"Bullshit. He could have, in his important position, pressured for better conditions for the workers. "
Really? Even Rommel could not do that. He would have been killed as an example.
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Issues with this:
1) Just because von Braun may have had a hand in picking some workers does not imply he was fully aware of the conditions in Mittelwerk (location of the underground factories). Do you think he approved of his "hand-picked" technical workers being worked to death?
2) It's not like those slave laborers would have had blissful, easy existences in WWII Germany had they not been building V-2s. They were doomed in any case. There is nothing von Braun could have done about that. And Mittelwerk
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He knew, but he was trying to both make his dream come true, and also he understood that the regime was not one where he was unassailable.
He could have tried to sabotage the program, and the reality is that this is probably what he should have morally tried to do. Given the focus of the Nazi leadership on the rocket program, that would have almost certainly meant discovery and an untimely demise. So while that would have been the truly heroic path, it was also a death sentence. It also would have made a
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The kindest thing you can say about him was that he had tunnel vision. He was an ambitious man who did not find murderous slavery to be sufficient reason to just take orders. No one can be forced to lead as uniquely as von Braun or forced to fight so hard for control of a project.
Was his behavior understandable? Yes, if you believe he was blinded by obsession. Was it justified? Not by a moon shot.
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Well, it's a bit of a bridge.
You see, he could have just shot himself and thus spared the production slaves of the V2, of course you could easily argue that in such a case they would have just been sent to the gas chambers.
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Of course you need to remember that the US government was infiltrated with communist spies and sympathizers. You only need to look at Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Harry Hopkins and the Rosenbergs.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course you need to remember that the US government was infiltrated with communist spies and sympathizers. You only need to look at Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Harry Hopkins and the Rosenbergs.
Good luck getting Communism Deniers to admit this. I would be happy if we can get them to admit that Russian Communism was just as evil as Nazism.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is people like you keep mixing up Communism - an economic system - with the Soviet political system. It's about the same as claiming that capitalism is a government like the United States. The Soviet political system was corrupt as any seat of power will be.
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Your argument goes directly against the Communist idea, not saying it is in any way correct but you maybe should read a bit about the topic?
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As far as I can tell, Nazi Germany murdered innocent people at a considerably higher rate than the Soviet Union did, and being conquered by the Red Army wasn't as devastatingly bad as being conquered by the Wehrmacht. Overall, I have to rate the Nazis as worse.
Of course, there's still a lot of moral room between being horrifyingly evil (and the Soviet Communist Party certainly was) and the Nazi Party.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you need to remember that the US government was infiltrated with communist spies and sympathizers. You only need to look at Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Harry Hopkins and the Rosenbergs.
You know, it's sort of like terrorists today. We might have a few here (and we do, Boston marathon bombing) but see, most of us are NOT terrorist, but the way out government acts, there is terrorists under every bed. Not unlike how they acted in the "communist" scare days.
The problem? Our government, the USA doesn't care if it fucks over all it's law abiding citizens trying to stamp out a few "undesirables". They didn't care back then, they don't give a fuck today. That is the problem. They create these monsters why how they act, then want to punish us for it?
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You also have to remember that the US claims to be a Constitutional Republic which of course means that if the people and the several States (3/4s) decide to pass a Constitutional Amendment making the country communist, well that's part of freedom and democracy.
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Indeed. Strangely that fact tends to anger the anti-Communist fanatics.
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I don't think the substances that would allow me to imagine that are actually legal.
Seriously, by the time of the third occupancy crew Skylab was badly worn out on top of the damage caused by the loss of the heat shield. It would have been much more of a liability due to the amount of work required to resupply and refit it.
Where do you get this garbage? (Score:5, Informative)
You clearly have not read the appropriate NASA documents.
Skylab was in very good condition and NASA wanted to use it in conjunction with the shuttle, which was scheduled to be operational before Skylab fell into the atmosphere. The Shuttle was to be used to re-boost it, but two things happened: [1] solar activity was higher than expected (which affects the upper-most part of the atmosphere and increased the atmospheric drag on Skylab) and [2] the shuttle ended-up being too far behind schedule. NASA, realizing that shuttles would not be ready in time, studied launching an unmanned "tug" to dock with and re-boost Skylab so it would still be there on orbit and operational by the time shuttles were ready, but congress in the late 70's was as stupid as today - Congress did not fund this cheap solution, so we ended-up dumping $100 Billion and ten years of construction time into building ISS to get a similar orbital capability (Skylab had 320 cubic meters pressurized volume, that's more than the US part of the ISS). The shuttle could have then flown additions to Skylab (which had a docking adapter for multiple visiting vehicles). An enhanced Skylab would have had no Russian "entanglements", and had its own lifesupport and navigation capabilities.
Skylab was FAR from "worn out" and the damage from the launch was quite managable. The astronauts who closed it out left it ready for re-manning. When Skylab re-entered the atmosphere it did so under remote control from the ground, with its systems fully functioning until they were destroyed by the reentry. READ THE DAMNED REPORTS, which consist of hundreds of paged of excellent details, before misinforming people.
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Skylab was in very good condition and NASA wanted to use it in conjunction with the shuttle, which was scheduled to be operational before Skylab fell into the atmosphere. The Shuttle was to be used to re-boost it, but two things happened: [1] solar activity was higher than expected (which affects the upper-most part of the atmosphere and increased the atmospheric drag on Skylab) and [2] the shuttle ended-up being too far behind schedule. NASA, realizing that shuttles would not be ready in time, studied launching an unmanned "tug" to dock with and re-boost Skylab so it would still be there on orbit and operational by the time shuttles were ready, but congress in the late 70's was as stupid as today - Congress did not fund this cheap solution, so we ended-up dumping $100 Billion and ten years of construction time into building ISS to get a similar orbital capability (Skylab had 320 cubic meters pressurized volume, that's more than the US part of the ISS). The shuttle could have then flown additions to Skylab (which had a docking adapter for multiple visiting vehicles). An enhanced Skylab would have had no Russian "entanglements", and had its own lifesupport and navigation capabilities.
Skylab was FAR from "worn out" and the damage from the launch was quite managable. The astronauts who closed it out left it ready for re-manning. When Skylab re-entered the atmosphere it did so under remote control from the ground, with its systems fully functioning until they were destroyed by the reentry. READ THE DAMNED REPORTS, which consist of hundreds of paged of excellent details, before misinforming people.
Skylab was put into orbit in one launch. Using the shuttle to lift further components is silly- all it does is justify the shuttle. The shuttle is a Honda Fit compared to the 18-wheeler Saturn 5. Letting Skylab burn up may have been a "waste" but if you can launch more than 1/3 of the current ISS volume (currently at around 837 pressurized cubic meters) with 1 Saturn 5 rocket, an orbiting space station then becomes essentially disposable. Just launch another one.
Re:Where do you get this garbage? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, yes, I have.
NASA was (is) an organization of thousands of people - and cannot "want" anything. A small group of people, who had no funding, wanted to use Skylab in conjunction with the Shuttle, but that was just one of the dozens (hundreds?) of pie-in-the-sky ideas various groups within NASA generate on an annual basis. Very few space fanboys realize this and presume every single dammed one of those gotta-publish-something-to-keep-my-job studies and "plans" (was) is something "NASA wanted to do" no matter how ludicrous the idea was. Actually, the more ludicrous the idea the more the space fanboys love it, because it's just more ammo for their ignorant whinging about NASA's "failures". Ignorant because on top of not grasping the pie-in-the-sky nature of many of those "plans", they fail to realize that NASA is not an independent organism - but rather is a branch of the Executive Department and only does what the Executive approves and Congress fails.
What's interesting here is you claim Skylab would provide similar capability - but then rather than comparing capability, you compare volume. Thus, probably inadvertently due to gross ignorance, you reveal the shallowness of your knowledge. In reality, Skylab didn't have a fraction of *any* of the capabilities of the ISS. It doesn't produce as much power, could only support a much smaller crew, and wasn't equipped with but a fraction of the scientific equipment, etc... (Even though Skylab and the ISS have a similar volume, the ISS has almost six times the mass. There's a reason for that.) Nor, given the small diameter of it's hatches, could it have been reasonably refitted to provide significant extended capability. Raw volume is impressive, but it's no more useful than an empty house. It's useful stuff that make a house or a space station useful, and Skylab was grossly lacking in that department.
Yes, Skylab had a docking adapter for visiting vehicles. No, they weren't useful for adding additional modules. On top of lacking the structural strength, they had no provision for routing power, life support, data, etc. (Not without running cables through the already narrow docking tunnel - not that there was anywhere to hook them to on the Skylab end anyhow.)
No, they weren't "fully functioning". The third crew had to use a lashed up servicing system to replenish the freon loops in the air lock module (which were leaking). The also had to perform a spacewalk to install a back up set of rate gyros since the original set were failing. (Etc... etc...) Skylab was worn out, and it's equipment was beginning to fail even while the manned occupancy program was in progress.
A lot of people believe that Skylab was some lunar landing level program, and that in the same vein "tossing it aside" represented the loss of some grand capability. Nothing could be further from the truth. Skylab was a shoestring budget program subsisting on Apollo's leftovers and discards. (To the point where they had to take a hatch off an unused Gemini to provide an EVA hatch - they had no money to develop or build one of their own.) It had a minimal lifespan and modest scientific capability with no capacity for significant resupply, replenishment, refitting or extension.
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IIRC, Skylab was launched with pretty much all the consumables for the three missions, and no good way of replenishing them. It wasn't designed as a permanent space station. There was good reason for that: nobody knew how to build good living and working environments for zero-G. For example, panels and controls were designed for use from a sitting position, which turns out to be a difficult position in zero-G, and one area was designed without a coherent up and down, which was comfortable for only one
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Funny)
o/~ "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? [youtube.com]
That's not my department", says Werner von Braun o/~
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Insightful)
It inspired Fear, and a weapon of terror against civilian targets was the real requirement.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Funny)
And (Score:2)
And an almost fanatical devotion to physics.
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Except nuclear physics.
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:5, Interesting)
The V2 ... was not a success during the war
That is an understatement. The V2 had no significant military effect, but consumed enormous resources to develop, manufacture, and deploy. Freeman Dyson once described the V2 program as "almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament."
Re:White Werhner von Braun may be many things... (Score:4, Informative)
That simplifies is slightly.
The V2 was about as expensive as a top-end fighter jet (thought the only jets were top end then). So every V2 meant one less fighter in the air, except it didn't. The problem they had was a massive lack of oil for fuel which means the fighters couldn't fly. The V2s were powered by alcohol, and no one had planes able to run off the stuff then.
Also, if the Reich's nuclear bomb ambitions had worked out, the V2 would have provided an unstoppable delivery mechanism.
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Also, if the Reich's nuclear bomb ambitions had worked out, the V2 would have provided an unstoppable delivery mechanism.
Size of warhead of V2: 1000 kg.
Weight of the the first atom bombs: about 4000-4500 kg.
See the problem?
But anyway, V2 was a complete waste of resources. Developing it cost Germany more than the damage that they caused cost to Britain. That the nazis could have wasted the same amount of resources for jet fighters that they couldn't have used is not a particularly good argument in support of V2, as they might done something useful, instead.
For example, had they gone with anti-aircraft rockets they might have c
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The Reich had about a viable nuclear program as Iraq did after the US invaded them. They had literally no plans to even consider using creating a nuclear bomb. That is even outside the idea of devoting the resources to building and testing one.
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Hitler loved his outsized, but impractical weapons, like the V1 and V2 and the ever increasing size and complexity of his tanks like the Maus. The V2 team members weren't shot for the same reason that Hitler thought he had more divisions while he was in the bunker. Hitler was grandiose and not completely connected with reality.
Hitler just *knew* that the revenge weapons would work and turn the war to his side, despite realistic arguments to the contrary, so he wasn't going to do something as silly as shoo
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In simple terms the US used communism to implement its own version to control its citizens, we simply refer to it as propaganda, and it continues to this day now they are using terrorism, and this time they want to monitor everyone and every move they make whether they are a threat or just some brainless twit.
Just like we used Nazism to push millions of young men into government service.
Well no, sometimes the monsters are actually real. Look up the history of the Ukraine, and who started WWII in Europe by invading Poland, and the gulag, and...(I could go on and on but I need to get some sleep).
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But those who fight them should still take care not to become monsters themselves. It's hard to not see a frightening similarity between Hitler's attempt to take his country with him in the last days of the Fourth Reich, and the US's - and the USSR's - policy of taking the world with them - MAD - in the Cold War. How much of it was the superpower's own inherent evil, and how much was absorbed from Nazi Germany during the war?
That's one of the nastier aspect
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An aspect of Nazism managed to seep into the British Empire precisely because they were mortal enemies
I think you might have some of this the wrong way around. The British Empire had institutionalised racism and concentration camps in its colonies long before the Nazis existed.
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Not on the same scale. British concentration camps were very bad places, but much better than the Nazi concentration camps. The British, as a whole, had little regard for some of the lesser races, but they weren't determined to wipe them out in the millions. (Major die-offs in the British Empire were typically more lack of Imperial interest than hostility.)
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I don't think anyone actually had the idea that they wanted to take the world with them in quite the same way Hitler did.
Hitler actually ordered scorched earth tactics, the superpowers were initially convinced that you could win with nuclear weapons (like the US did against Japan), and by the time they got into a arms race, it was mostly mechanical up to the point that both sides eventually realized that they both had enough weapons that there was no way that a first strike could succeed.
Once they both real
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You mean how Woodrow Wilson screwed the Ukraine?
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The monsters often are real.
Germany started WWII in Europe by invading Poland. The Soviets joined in later, and in accordance with a treaty that they signed because Britain and France really weren't interested in a defensive treaty with the Soviet Union. The Ukraine is an interesting case: they at first welcomed the Germans as liberators, until Hitler pulled off the truly amazing feat of making Stalin look like the better choice. (Not for everybody: my next-door neighbor was apparently an officer in
Lessons for today's world (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how many innocent people today have had themselves and their careers ruined by the NSA/GCHQ/TLA and how as a result we have all suffered by not benefiting from their work.
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Yep replace paranoia over communism with paranoia over terrorism and we have the NEW USA.
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Yep replace paranoia over communism with paranoia over terrorism and we have the NEW USA.
To get to paranoia over communism you have to replace paranoia over nazism.
You think it wrong to call the concern about Nazism "paranoia"? It is similarly wrong to call the concern about Communism "paranoia". Communists killed a whole lot of people. They were equally involved in the invasion of Poland that started WWII in Europe. They killed millions in Ukraine through forced starvation. Name something the Nazis did and you can find the equivalent in Communism (except for developing nice cars like t
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You are aware that the implementation of communism is a breach of fundamental human rights?
Any one party system is a breach of fundamental rights.
I don't remember "property" in the "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" quote. Are you arguing that you have the right to property?
Re:Lessons for today's world (Score:5, Insightful)
You are aware that the implementation of communism is a breach of fundamental human rights?
Any one party system is a breach of fundamental rights. I don't remember "property" in the "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" quote. Are you arguing that you have the right to property?
The philosopher they were channeling had said life, liberty, body and property. Also the forerunner to the Declaration of Independence was the Virginia Declaration of rights which said "That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
Later of course property was included as fundamental in the Fifth Amendment which said "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and again in the Fourteenth Amendment which says "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
Property is so fundamental that it was one of the earliest rights recognized. The Magna Carta says, "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."
So yes, we all do have the right to property. It is fundamental.
Re:Lessons for today's world (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because I have the right to procrate, doesn't mean I will have children provided to me (by the government or private enterprise), should I demand them. Property is the same. You don't have a right to "have" property, but once you have it, it is yours.
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American historical revisionism at its worst.
The Magna Carta was not about recognising some magick human right, but a negotiation process between the monarch and landowners. In return for not fighting the the king, the king promised not to take away the nobles' little feudal empires. Property is referred to because it's what gave the noblemen power. The average Joe owned not a hole to shit in, let alone enjoyed rights.
The Founding Fathers were similarly businessmen who wanted to imagine they'd just made the
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They didn't include property in the Declaration because they were seizing the assets of British sympathizers (Tories) at that very time.
The hypocrisy in the government goes way back.
Re:Lessons for today's world (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Lessons for today's world (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how many innocent people today have had themselves and their careers ruined by the NSA/GCHQ/TLA and how as a result we have all suffered by not benefiting from their work.
In an environment where you can be punished for your beliefs, is intelligence really the evil?
It's not the information that's to blame, it's what people do with it, and the worse people are, the less they'll need.
Think of the worst people throughout history, and imagine them making less informed decisions.
McCarthyism, Salem witch trials, Inquisitions
See, the problem wasn't solid information regarding who's a communist, who's a witch, or who's Muslim, the problem was the people punishing you if they thought you smelled like one.
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McCarthyism, Salem witch trials, Inquisitions
One of these things doesn't belong here...
How many people were executed by McCarthyism? Sure, some careers were set back, but the same can be said of how we handle racism, sexism, and laws concerning homsexuality? People lose their jobs for speaking their minds due to fears the government will huge amounts of money to be taken from employers as a result of a lawsuit.
You have modern day examples of witchhunts but you choose one from 60 years ago. Why?
And the witches McCarthy were far more dangero
Useless toxic puffer fish for President (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah yes, like that dangerous playwright who was offered a way out if his wife, Marilyn Monroe, agreed to be photographed with McCarthy for political promotional material. That was one part of the witch hunt, in that case more accurately called a shakedown.
It was an utterly worthless grab at power by an immoral, corrupt and ultimately cowardly man who wanted to skew the political playing field in his direction when opposed by a large number of far more worthy candidates for President from both parties. It's just as well that he bit off more than he could chew by getting a lot of special favors for one of his friends in the military and then attempting to prove that General Marshall (of the Marshall plan and a lot of other things, such as running a big chunk of WWII) was a communist. His stupid stunt meant to send him into the White House was exposed for what it was - a power grab by a man who had achieved very little in his life attempting to drag down others who had and make himself look bigger.
So do you think he had a list of spies like he said he did? Why didn't he hand them over then? Wouldn't it be a bit like treason to have a list of foreign spies and not hand it over to law enforcement?
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I wonder how many innocent people today have had themselves and their careers ruined by the NSA/GCHQ/TLA and how as a result we have all suffered by not benefiting from their work.
I wonder how many innocent people had themselves and their careers ruined by Communists. I seen numbers over 100 million just for people murdered by Communists. The number of careers ruined is many times that - both by simple matter of Communism not working and by deliberate attempts to deprive people of education (see the Cultural Revolution and talk to my physics professor who spent his college years on a farm rather than learning physics and researching). .
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Let's look at the diplomatic history. Stalin was against the Nazis at first. When they became threatening, he looked for allies, since he felt (correctly) that a fair chunk of Western opposition to Hitler was "Let's you and him fight". The negotiations with Britain and France were going nowhere, as neither of those countries really wanted the alliance all that much. Realizing this, he changed Foreign Ministers from Litvinov to Molotov and formed an alliance with Germany. He didn't think that alliance
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It has been common for the government to have public executions without trial when an american citizen is known to say "bad things"
Saddam Hussein did a little more than just saying "bad things"
I wasn't aware that he was an american citizen.
Plus we didn't off him when he was murdering Kurds and other "undesirables", or when he started a revanchist war against Iran that resulted in several hundred thousand, possibly a million, casualties. He only got in the doghouse for seizing Kuwait, threatening the carefully engineered balance-of-powerlessness established in the middle east by the the allies after WWI.
another GNU link (Score:5, Informative)
I think this is the intended artice:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aeros... [ieee.org]
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I also found these written by Dr Malina in 1967 regarding search for during and after WWII
http://www.olats.org/pionniers... [olats.org]
http://www.olats.org/pionniers... [olats.org]
http://www.olats.org/pionniers... [olats.org]
von Braun didn't take his place (Score:5, Interesting)
von Braun didn't take anyone's place -- he created his own place in Huntsville. The work on rockets on the West Coast and other places in the US continued with little affect by von Braun. For example the Navy's Vanguard project which was supposed to launch the USA's first satellite was a parallel effort to the Army's efforts at Hunstville. And the Air Force developed the Atlas and Titan missiles in other parallel efforts. It just happened that when NASA needed big rockets for Apollo, the Saturn series developed by von Braun's team were the most suitable. Notably, precursors to Apollo, the manned orbital Mercury and Gemini missions, were launched on those Air Force derived boosters. The sentence in the summary is BS. And by all accounts, von Braun was agnostic towards the Nazis, neither a supporter nor a resister, disinterested in politics, but navigating the system he found himself by the time it was too late to get out -- yeah, I know it is more complicated than that, but I don't have a thesis to write here.
Van Braun built weapons for Nazis (Score:1)
It's pretty hard to claim you're "agnostic" or "not a supporter" when you build weapons for someone.
Re:Van Braun built weapons for Nazis (Score:5, Interesting)
There's actually a long story behind this, and Von Braun was actually arrested because Hitler suspected he was a traitor. Von Braun was a visionary who just loved rockets and wanted to land on the moon and colonize space. The Nazis were a funding means-to-an-end for his rocketry studies. After the Nazis tried to arrest him and his team, he escaped with some equipment and top scientists to defect to the allies.
So no, it's not at all accurate to speculate that Von Braun was a Nazi or into that whole ideology.
He used his expertise to con the Nazis into paying for his very expensive hobby.
Then he came to the USA, and played the same con on Congress to fund his continued work here. Congress thought they were getting ICBMs to wave at the Russians. Von Braun was getting a moon landing, and who gives a shit about politics.
Re:Van Braun built weapons for Nazis (Score:5, Insightful)
"So no, it's not at all accurate to speculate that Von Braun was a Nazi or into that whole ideology."
No, he was just a guy who used up the lives of prisoners to meet his ends. He may not have been an ideologue, but he was a sociopath.
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He made rockets out of prisoners?
You don't get to call someone a sociopath just as an insult; it has a technical meaning.
Re:Van Braun built weapons for Nazis (Score:4, Interesting)
Then he came to the USA, and played the same con on Congress to fund his continued work here.
So in your view von Braun was an amoral, self-agrandizing liar who was willing to actively engage in the selection of slave labour working in death camps to build rockets that killed thousands of strangers just so he could play with cool toys? Because that's what you're describing.
I say "self-agrandizing" because everything that von Braun wanted to do would have been done without him, without the 12000 dead slave labourers, without the 9000 dead British civilians.
I've had some pretty extreme scientific and technical ambitions in my time, but have somehow been able to realize many of them without killing people, and have given up the rest because: killing people. So I'm willing to pass judgment on von Braun in this respect: if he faced a choice between following his dreams and not killing people I'd have to say the latter is the far better choice.
Re:Van Braun built weapons for Nazis (Score:4, Insightful)
f he faced a choice between following his dreams and not killing people I'd have to say the latter is the far better choice.
It's very easy to say that when faced with threats against yourself or your family. We'd all like to believe that we'd do the right thing in the face of overwhelming adversity, but frankly you have no way of knowing what you'd do until it happens.
It is however easy to judge from behind the safety of a keyboard.
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He joined the Nazis when he didn't have to, and then later lied under oath about when he joined, saying he didn't join until years later when he did have to.
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Yes, he designed stuff for our enemy, but if I had lived in the civil war times I might have built something like the CSS submarine Hunley.
With slave labor, no less.
Yes people are limited by their culture and time, but not *that* limited. Braun deserves condemnation for using slave labor in WW2.
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The earliest American land barons and economists built the US economy on the backs of slave labour too.
When someone is monomaniacal they are spectacularly effective at achieving a set goal.
If their sponsors are sociopaths (Like the Nazi's first AND the US later - for von Braun), the results can be achieved breathtakingly quickly.
Neither the Nazis, nor the US had altruism as their goal when supporting von Braun. - This is known
Whether his goals where altruistic, may be up for speculation, although I think sp
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They can quit any time, and then do what? Beg for a job in another factory that's just as bad?
Chains are always the most effective when they're invisible. Slavery is a crude form of a few dominating the many. Our current society looks nicer on the surface, but the underlaying mechanic is still the same: exploitation based on coercion. We have simply hidden the violence needed to keep such a sys
He isn't the only one (Score:2, Interesting)
You should look up who is China's "Father of Rockets".
Hint: just like Malina, except he was ethnic Chinese and decided to go to Communist China instead of giving up his career.
Suspecting your top talent of being a spy, what a great way to kickstart advancement programs for your enemies!
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Him too? I had heard of Qian Xuesen (known in the USA as Hsue-Shen Tsien) who also was one of the founders of JPL and ended up founding China's space program as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q... [wikipedia.org] https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
Re:He isn't the only one (Score:4, Insightful)
However the FBI (Score:3)
And then they fell for the scam of the "lie detector" - or did they really fall for it or was Hoover just accepting yet another kickback before spending Government money?
What you see today is nothing like it was back then.
interesting, somehow I didn't even know this (Score:4, Informative)
Malina is pretty well known in some corners of CS for his work on kinetic sculpture and generative art, and for founding the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, along with its associated journal Leonardo [leonardo.info] . But I didn't know he did rockets earlier in his career.
Sick of Denialists (Score:2)
Re:Sick of Denialists (Score:4, Informative)
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border fences with guards who shoot to kill (Arizona, California border with Mexico)...
Wrong again on a couple of levels.
1. You may be too young to remember, but places like the USSR, East Germany and Cuba kill(ed) people trying to leave, not come in. And..
2. I know a border guard currently on duty. He is constantly told not to engage illegals and to stay away from specific parts of the border at certain times. And they spend a LOT of money and time giving health ca
Better a Nazi than a Commi (Score:5, Informative)
Best expressed by no one else than Harry S Truman, who, when a member of the congress complained about the huge amounts of former Nazis in the new intelligence agency the US was building up in post-war Germany (nowadays known as BND), simply replied: "I don't care if this Gehlen guy [first head of the agency, a former Nazi-general] is fucking goats - as long as he's helping us, we'll use him".
During the 2nd world-war, if you played your cards well in Germany, you could achieve a lot. Some people early on realized this and built a career on it that often continued after the war. If you had the support of "the system", you had almost unlimited resources at your disposal.
Von Braun used these resources because he had a vision, a dream - and he was crazy and ruthless enough to sacrifice anything to make his dream come true.
Like the above mentioned Gehlen, he was also bold enough to change sides when the right time had come - knowing that the work he had done and the ideas in his head were more interesting to the Allies than the rest of what had happened during the war.
People from the UK (where V2 rockets hit mostly) are usually furious when you mention the name - they'd have probably wanted to put him up for trial in Nuremberg and seen him hanging - but his work, his men and he himself were already too important by the time the court was setup - and the cold-war had already started.
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Gehlen took over Foreign Armies East (German Army intelligence) and the Germans started getting better information. His predecessor was woefully incompetent.
Gehlen then spent years downplaying Soviet capabilities, so the Germans were constantly being surprised by the Soviets doing something Gehlen had said they didn't have the strength to do.
After this miserable track record of getting the German Army surprised time and again, he switched sides and convinced people he was actually competent.
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Gehlen took over Foreign Armies East (German Army intelligence) and the Germans started getting better information. His predecessor was woefully incompetent.
Gehlen then spent years downplaying Soviet capabilities, so the Germans were constantly being surprised by the Soviets doing something Gehlen had said they didn't have the strength to do.
Still, it was more or less in line to what the top guy wanted to hear :-)
With that mind-set, he would probably also have succeeded in the GWB administration...
Communist == Spy in America? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it not possible to be a Communist - even in America - without automatically being a spy or traitor? In most of the world 'communist' means 'somebody whose political views align with Communism'; well, more or less. If it is possible to be Christian, Jew, Muslim, ... and still be a patriotic American, is it not possible to be a Communist, patriotic American? Or course it is.
'Communism' is, put simply, the idea that means of production should not be owned by any individual, but should belong to the community. Not the state - the community, whatever that means. Equating the state with the community is a highly artificial idea. Please note that communism in this sense does not mean that people can't have property, it just means that the means of production are owned by everybody - like in a cooperative, really. Or a family - and if anything is being touted as American these days, it is 'family values'; so communism is at the core of what it means to be American.
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You are of course right, but it is impossible to be a communist and not be at odds with the current establishment (your upper class overlords) of the US. It was genius to label socialism and communism as 'unamerican'. That way they could label all their political foes as traitors.
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There's big 'C' Communist and little 'c' communist. Those that adhered to the Communist parties platform (the one chaired in the former Soviet Union) were natually under suspicion as being agents of a hostile power. Little 'c' communists by rights should not have fallen into this category. But back in the McCarthy era, they didn't bother to differentiate between the two. And there was the possibility that adherents to the philosophy of little 'c' communism might be turned to do the bidding of the big 'C' p
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Totally wrecks everything at scales larger than that. Astonishing idiocy to try and apply to a country.
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I was on a wargaming mailing list for a time with a Communist. We'd talk about various things, and eventually I realized he was as patriotic as I was. We both wanted what was best for the country. We had considerably different opinions on what would be best, and our opinions differed a lot more on how to get there, but the basic aim was the same.
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There was a certain celebrated folk singer. Communist, of course. In May 1941, he and his group published an album of "Don't send our boys over there to fight for the plutocrats" songs, against any involvement in stopping the Axis powers from taking all of Europe. ("Und tomorrow, ze VORLD!")
On June 22, 1941, he pulled this "peacenik" album from distribution, and quickly started cranking out "We must arm, fight, and save the world from Hitler" songs.
So, what happened on June 22, 1941? There's a reason I
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Nazi Germany was gone, but Communist Soviet was very much alive and kicking. Loyalty to Nazi Germany would have been irrelevant.
Re:Nazis over Scientology (Score:5, Informative)
Where did it say he was a scientologist? They didn't even exist back them. You made that up to pump up your argument.
Jack Parsons was friends with L. Ron Hubbard for a time, and this friendship allegedly failed because Hubbard took off with a great deal of Parsons' money. Again allegedly, Scientology was founded with that money. Malina and Parsons are two major figures in rocketry who did various occult rituals with both Alastair Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard and basically the historical links between those last two are mostly links through the rocket researchers more than direct contacts.
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Occultist? You're scared he's going to spill state secrets to Satan? .
Not occultist, OP said oculist. You know, a 17th-century optometrist.