It's difficult to tell what about von Braun is real history and what is revisionist. In von Braun's favor is the notion that he was a Nazi by convenience only, and that he ran afoul of the Nazi leadership on more than one occasion. To his detriment he appears to have consented to the use of slave labor under atrocious conditions to build the V-2. How one views von Braun is typically determined more by how one feels about Nazism than the specific actions of von Braun himself. He was neither ardent nor reluctant.
While it's true that the Russians employed ex-Nazi rocket scientists in their own space program, the Russians studied the Germans' work and then let them go home. The Germans who surrendered to the Americans went to the U.S. as essentially permanent prisoners of war.
The ex-Nazis were not necessarily held in high regard. It is generally believed that the U.S. would have orbited a satellite before Sputnik if the Germans had been allowed to participate. The Germans were excluded because Eisenhower did not want the first U.S. satellite launched on a "German" rocket, no matter how American the Jupiter was.
It is clear, however, that Wernher von Braun played an irreplaceable role in the race to the moon.
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