Ha ha!

It's at this point that I'd like to say that the Saturn V was a true Wonder of the World and it makes you appreciate how brilliant the Apollo program was and how it disgusts you to think of Percy and Sibrel running loose about society defaming the greatness of Apollo.

BTW Rudolph whatisname got knicked for his Nazi stuff. What about Von Braun? Was he involved in the same way?

I've heard conflicting reports of Von Brauns NAZI affiliation, I think what I've heard most often is that he was only affiliated enough to keep his job, and keep alive. However, I think we would have wanted him no matter what, 'cause if we didn't take him the Russians would have.

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.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Off the top of my head i believe the US only 'aquired' 50-100 german rocket scientists (Von Braun made a break for western Germany and took those with him) whereas the Russians collected close to 500 scientists giving them a massive boost.

hardly prisoners of war BTW when
-they decided to settle in USA and get US citizinship
-Were allowed to send for there wives to imigrate to US.

I always thought that the US got the cream of the crop though, the theoretical and experimental scientists doing the creative work. The Soviets got a lot of good men, but they were more on the technical side.

Correct me if I'm wrong though.

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

"Yours" Germans in the beginning were nothing, AFAIK. Not even POWs. They were brought to the US during operation Paperclip. When they were to be legalized, the Army did some trick. They arranged that they left in busses the US uncontrolled at the Mexican border. Behind the border, they turned around and this time immigrated into the US.
I don't know very much about "their" Germans. Yes, they let them go after some years, but until then they were less or more prisoners. But, this was true also for any soviet scientist who worked on secret projects...
I once saw a German book in the library, its title was "Rocket Slaves". I thought, it must be about the poor guys who had to build the V2 in Dora. But it was about "their" Germans. I was upset about the "occupation" of the term "Rocket Slaves" for people, who had some fate, but a much better one that the one at Dora. So I haven't read the book until yet.

Harald

Von Braun and his closest associates surrendered to the Allies (or more specifically, to the Americans) at Oberammergau. This was a negotiated surrender. So it may be overstating the case to call them prisoners of war. Sorry for that. In fact, von Braun's statements about the negotiated surrender indicate that he chose the Americans because they would be the most interested in helping him pursue his work.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

There's more about the role of German scientists and engineers in the Soviet space program in James Harford's biography of Sergei Korolev, "Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon".

IIRC, the Soviets kept the Germans separate from the team of Russians working on rocket development, preferring that the two sets work in parallel rather than collaborating. The idea was to encourage the growth of a completely Russian set of aerospace professionals, while having the Germans available to help provide boosts over particularly knotty technical problems until the home team had come up to the desired level of perfomance. The Germans were largely phased out of the program and sent home well before Sputnik.

Anyway, Harford's book is a wonderful read. I'd recommend it unreservedly.