Re:100th anniversary of Konrad Zuse: creator of the first pr...
by ErrantX on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @03:51PM
(#1452951)
No, I would not have worked for the Nazi government, thank you very much. Hundreds of high-caliber scientists and engineers chose to avoid working for the Nazis or the Fascists and fled elsewhere.
But the point is you can't for certain say that (statistically you probably would have ended up doing it, or be dead, one of the two). Who knows if we'd have seen it coming in time, or been privileged enough to get out, or not made a decision to stay and try to protect your people, etc. Hundreds of thousands did work and fight beneath the Nazi government (some by choice, some by default). At what point do you stop being a victim and it turns into making a morally wrong choice?
EDIT: it's worth pointing out that we can assume any rational man with a knowledge of history would choose to run for it. But that's cheating :)
It's hard to make an outright judgement on this guy. I agree he made a very wrong choice to stick with the Nazi's - but we do not know how he viewed things, what he saw etc. Partly because we were not there (generally, at the time) and partly because he doesn't seem to have told anyone his decisions/feelings (that I can find).
And this is my gripe; discussing the fact he made a choice (that we consider poor) to work for the Nazi government is one thing. But the insinuation was much wider than that; and that is very wrong :) The implication is that he was on-board with the sick things that they did; and that is disingenuous (my gf just pointed out that a modern equivalent could be saying a Mr Joe Bloggs, by working in a US science lab, is in support of the Guantanamo Bay detentions).
One of my German friends made a very important point to me once. Which is basically that it is easy to forget that the Nazi's were an elected government prior to the war - and that they were viewed quite positively for a short while. The descent into war was swift (as these things go) and pretty brutal. It's easy to sit here and make claims about what we would have done, or judge those working for the government but really it's bunk to do so. He also points out that there was a distinct difference between the Nazi government and the Nazi party - the problem was they shared the same crazed leadership.
But the point is you can't for certain say that (statistically you probably would have ended up doing it, or be dead, one of the two). Who knows if we'd have seen it coming in time, or been privileged enough to get out, or not made a decision to stay and try to protect your people, etc. Hundreds of thousands did work and fight beneath the Nazi government (some by choice, some by default). At what point do you stop being a victim and it turns into making a morally wrong choice?
EDIT: it's worth pointing out that we can assume any rational man with a knowledge of history would choose to run for it. But that's cheating :)
It's hard to make an outright judgement on this guy. I agree he made a very wrong choice to stick with the Nazi's - but we do not know how he viewed things, what he saw etc. Partly because we were not there (generally, at the time) and partly because he doesn't seem to have told anyone his decisions/feelings (that I can find).
And this is my gripe; discussing the fact he made a choice (that we consider poor) to work for the Nazi government is one thing. But the insinuation was much wider than that; and that is very wrong :) The implication is that he was on-board with the sick things that they did; and that is disingenuous (my gf just pointed out that a modern equivalent could be saying a Mr Joe Bloggs, by working in a US science lab, is in support of the Guantanamo Bay detentions).
One of my German friends made a very important point to me once. Which is basically that it is easy to forget that the Nazi's were an elected government prior to the war - and that they were viewed quite positively for a short while. The descent into war was swift (as these things go) and pretty brutal. It's easy to sit here and make claims about what we would have done, or judge those working for the government but really it's bunk to do so. He also points out that there was a distinct difference between the Nazi government and the Nazi party - the problem was they shared the same crazed leadership.
(interesting discussion btw)