Evidentia

My late father, Laurence Tombs, only spoke to me twice about his experience of London during the Second World War: some memories were fairly happy, whereas others were nightmarish. In hindsight, I can understand why.

On the fairly happy side, although a Canadian he worked as a civilian in 1943-1944 for the British Overseas Airways Corporation, based in London, since he had built up expertise on civil aviation in the years prior to the war. He mentioned to me that convoys of Sunderland flying boats had to be organized, to ferry both military and civil officials around Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. He provided the British government with expert knowledge of civilian airfields all over Nazi-occupied Europe. Millions of people were doing their part in the Allied war effort, and victory over tyranny was in sight. This was a happy memory for him.

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Lucienne Boyer’s Parlez-moi d’amour was one of my father’s favourite songs from those years. This version (from www.archive.org) was recorded in 1930 and is now in the public domain.

A Nazi V-1 buzz bomb

But there were also the nightmares of Nazi V-1 rocket and V-2 ballistic missile attacks on London, starting in mid-June 1944, one week after D-Day. He joined his BOAC colleagues and other Londoners as they fled to the Underground, to escape death and destruction. Once the attacks were over, they would come back up to the surface, to see office buildings, churches, homes and pubs in rubble, with bodies of dead civilians strewn here and there. Just to have survived was a blessing.

My father and other Londoners had to shelter in the Underground during rocket attacks

These rockets were built under the leadership of Werner von Braun, a rocket scientist and aeronautics engineer. Von Braun was a member of the Nazi party, a member of the dreaded SS who often wore the black uniform and death’s head insignia of the SS. Of course after the war he denied that he knew very much and stated that he had to follow orders and really had no choice. But the fact is that he was well aware that the rockets he designed and whose construction and launch he supervised were built using slave labour. It is alleged that he tortured at least one slave, likely a Jew, and witnessed the torture and hangings of other slaves. And these weapons of mass destruction deliberately targeted civilians – like my father, who was lucky enough to survive the attacks, but was in all likelihood somewhat traumatized by the experience.

Werner von Braun and his Nazi colleagues in 1941 – von Braun escaped justice and was richly rewarded by the US government after the war

A total of 9215 V-1 buzz bombs were fired at Britain, of which 2515 reached London, killing 6184 people there. As for the far more powerful V-2 missiles, 1402 of them were fired at Britain, killing 2752 civilians in London alone.

The US government was keenly interested in the V-2 ballistic missiles von Braun had designed

Of course everyone knows that Baron Werner von Braun surrendered to the Americans at the end of the war, and because of his expertise in rocketry and weapons of mass destruction – both of which were high priorities for the American government – he was promoted to director of the ballistic missile programme, played a leading role at NASA and ultimately was the key person responsible for putting a man on the moon, in 1969.

From the point of view of space rocketry, I have no doubt that Werner von Braun’s contribution was exceptional.

However, from the point of view of justice, consider his work for the Nazis on the V-1 and V-2 programmes; his membership in the Nazi Party and in the SS; his lead role in a programme of mass destruction using slave labour and deliberately targeting civilians who were actually allies of the United States; plus the ample rewards he received from the American government. All of which shows how bizarre it is when Washington claims to take the moral high ground in its denunciation of military dictatorships, crimes against humanity and human rights violations. Its own space and ballistic missile programmes were the brain child of a Nazi baron…

I have come to the conclusion that the values of human rights take a back seat when interests and realpolitik come into play.

Whether or not a man is convicted of crimes against humanity all depends on how useful he is to people in power. Considering the wartime experience of my father and millions of other people, I now understand why he was so dismayed by the fact that many crucial things had been left unfinished at the end of the war.

Von Braun designed and supervised the construction and launch of weapons of mass destruction that directly targeted civilians