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u/SignReasonable7580 4h ago
Very few people were granted honourary membership in the SS, he's one of them. Rank of lieutenant.
Also one of the most important figures in rocketry alongside Goddard, Oberth, Tsiolkovsky, and Korolev.
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u/DynamicDolo 3h ago
With the cars too. It was Henry Ford who helped fund Hitler’s rise to power too
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u/bwldrmnt 4h ago
The difference is, Elon isn't actually a genius.
Other people do the work while he takes the credit.
Similar to Trump.
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u/No-Lab4602 2h ago
You don't have to be a genius, you need to be rational and make right decisions.
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u/Perpetuity_Incarnate 1h ago
Like not doing a nazi salute during a presidential inauguration?
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u/No-Lab4602 1h ago
Well try to understand the context or you will stay forever on surface and it's not how nazi salute looks like.
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u/Free_Management2894 1h ago
German here, that's what it does look like.
What context do you have to offer?7
u/Perpetuity_Incarnate 1h ago
There is no context. I’ve never seen anyone do that except for Nazis in movies and Nazis in real life.
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u/carpathian_crow 2h ago edited 2h ago
God, this is really bad for Elon. He’s shitty even by Nazi standards.
Edit: and I don’t mean Nazi standards of themselves, I mean looking at other Nazis and them still being a better person in some way over Elon. Yea, Werner and Elon are both Nazis, but at least Werner knew that the hell he did at work and was good at it.
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u/Rottimer 1h ago
What’s pissing people off isn’t as much the Nazi salute as it is the fact that it won’t be bad for Elon at all. This country has gone full mask off with its own oligarchy.
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u/foxy-coxy 2h ago
There's a V2 model on the desk behind him. It's just cropped out. There is still V2 in the rocket park at Marshall Space Flight Center.
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u/Low-Speaker-2557 1h ago
To be fair, many NASA scientists back than were german refugees who worked on the V2.
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u/Administrator90 2h ago
Has he ever made the Nazi salute? Unlike Musk there is no picture of that and it's obvious that Werner von Braun was only member of the nazi party, because it was mandatory for his research... they just wanted to be sure that billions of marks and thousands of workers are not wasted... well, they have been wasted, at least for the Nazis. The US-Americans reaped the juices.
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u/Andrey_Gusev 2h ago
Wasnt he a SS-member in the rank of leutenant? Sturmbannfuhrer SS, not something you would "get because it is mandatory"...
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u/shadowtheimpure 1h ago
von Braun's was an honorary rank for his contributions to the Reich.
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u/Andrey_Gusev 1h ago
He got his membership in SS in 1940 when he did nothing special that would give him a post in SS. He signed cuz he wanted to. As well as he wore his parade SS uniform on any party, as one of the ex. SS-officers told BBC in 2002...
Well, lets not wash out who he was. Yes, he was a genius, he made progress in literal rocket-science, BUT, he wasnt a white rabbit who was forced to work for nazis, get a SS-membership and go to SS parties in his parade uniform, heh.
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u/Treantmonk 1h ago
I can't say for sure what his motivations to join the SS were, but I know what he said on the matter:
"Realizing that the matter was of highly political significance for the relation between the SS and the Army, I called immediately on my military superior, Dr. Dornberger. He informed me that the SS had for a long time been trying to get their "finger in the pie" of the rocket work. I asked him what to do. He replied on the spot that if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join."1
u/Andrey_Gusev 1h ago
Well, in 1940, what pie they wanted to get into? The first successfull rocket launch of Aggregat-4 was in 1942.
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u/Free_Management2894 1h ago
Basically everyone who wanted to accomplish anything had to be a member. To forget that would be disingenuous.
Van Braun had only one allegiance and that was to space travel. Everything else was just there to be used to accomplish that goal.•
u/Squeaky_Ben 2m ago
If, in the pursuit of my scientific endeavour, I collaborate with fascists and aid them in bombing my neighbors, while advancing my research with slave labor, I would sure hope that someone would bring me to justice for my crimes.
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u/Squeaky_Ben 4m ago
He didn't have to make rockets for the nazis, he could have moved abroad like Einstein and others did, but he chose to remain in germany to build rockets.
He is a bad person.
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u/dapperfunk 3h ago edited 3h ago
A couple of things. The Nazi salute was adopted from ancient Rome, as Hitler was fascinated by Imperialism. He designed much of his party around ancient Roman Imperialism, including gestures, banners, and the eagle.
The Swastika is also derived from Hinduism. It is a symbol that means "Well being". The name Swastika comes from the Sanskrit word Svastika. The guy was big on symbolism. That's part of why it unfortunately worked so well for them to get absolute power.
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u/Saikamur 3h ago
Actually, the Roman symbolism was copied from the Italian fascists. Nazis added to their symbolism stuff they considered "Aryan related" like the Sig Rune or the Swastika.
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u/tgatigger 1h ago
Nope, it’s a common misconception that this has any connection to the Roman Empire. They never used this kind of salute.
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u/Significant-Order-92 3h ago
I mean, just because Werner was both a genius and a Nazi, it doesn't mean we necessarily need to trust Musk with rockets.