General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why Were 10,000 Nazis Given Safe Haven in US? Kinda creepy, where are they now? [View all]OldDem2012
(3,526 posts)Von Braun was a member of the SS even though he stated he was forced to join for political reasons. Von Braun also knew slave labor picked from the Buchenwald concentration camp worked in the factory producing parts for his V-2 rocket program. More people died producing the rockets in his factory than those killed by the rockets themselves. The US took in the German scientists because of what they knew and what they could produce. Quite simply, we were willing to sacrifice our stated ideals for the sake of technological progress in the field of rocketry.
Additionally, we took German Major General Reinhard Gehlen who served as chief of the German Army's military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front in World War II. Immediately following the end of the war, he was recruited by the United States military to set up a spy ring known as the Gehlen Group to be directed against the Soviet Union. The Gehlen Group employed up to 10,000 former SS, SD and Wehrmacht officers, all seeking revenge on the Soviet Union. This spy organization later became a branch of the CIA after 1947 and drove many of our beliefs about the capabilities of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Gehlen eventually became head of the West German intelligence apparatus and served as the first president of the Federal Intelligence Service until 1968. Again, we sacrificed our ideals for the sake of gathering what amounted to be tainted/slanted intelligence.
And yes....they would have made very good right-wingers in the US, and would have been accepted with open arms by those who supported the Nazis during the early years of WWII, people like Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker among many others.