Werner von Braun 🤝 Robert Oppenheimer 🤝 Albert Einstein
Germans/People of German descent that Changed world history forever and put a permanent threat of total annihilation upon humanity...
I see where you're coming from, but von Braun doesn't deserve to be mentioned next to these guys.
In reverse order, the first fled the Nazis and revolutionised our understanding of the universe. The second dedicated his life first to fighting the Nazis, then to regulate nuclear weapons. The third bombed London and was a literal Nazi.
"Once the rockets are up,
who cares where they come down?
That's not my department"
Says Werner von Braun.
Eh all three just wanted to do their research, von Braun wasn't really a nazi, hitler just came in handy for his dreams, and well... He did end up shooting people to the moon and safely back...
And tbh what he said regarding the rockets is true, and still holds truth for nowadays engineers and scientist, you make something for the government, exactly what they want precisely when they want it, everything else is not your business. There are a shit load of examples for that.
Albert made his famous equation E=mc² wich was the foundation of Oppenheimers work and that work was later put in Von Brauns Work...
In the end each of them did what they wanted to do. And objectively, the nuke should have never been invented.
Von Braun was a nazi just as much as Eichmann was. The only reason he went free after the war was that he had knowledge that was useful against the Soviets. He played an key role in the Third Reich war machine, and didn't regret it for a second.
The quote I wrote isn't something he actually said, or at least not in public. It's from the brilliant Tom Lehrer, rightfully calling out what a fucking soulless hypocrite he was.
