The whole story is fascinating, if more than a little fucked up.
He and his engineering team decided to seek out US troops to surrender to because he didn’t want the Soviets getting their hands on his rocket tech. The US government got him out of the country, forged documents to get him into the US legally, granted him immunity and shielded him from being prosecuted for war crimes and atrocities he was involved in.
He was sitting poolside at a resort when an US agent came up to him and said essentially “we found you, we also know where your family is. You can come with us and we’ll get you and your family out, or, you can wait for the Russians to find you, which won’t be long, and you can see what they do with you. The choice is yours, but make it right now.”
So he went to the US because he felt his fate was better there. And he wasn’t just a scientist who was being used by the Nazis, he was a hardened nazi. He ran factories with slave labor that had executed corpses hanging from the ceiling. The workers had to go down a hallway to check into work where the bodies of sabotauers were on display and they had to punch them on their way onto the floor. He wasn’t just complicit in that and how things were run, those were his decisions. (I did a humongous project on the V-2 rocket when I was younger. Would have won the national competition in DC if I would have just answered one question the judges were essentially begging me to answer)
The whole story is fascinating, if more than a little fucked up.
He and his engineering team decided to seek out US troops to surrender to because he didn’t want the Soviets getting their hands on his rocket tech. The US government got him out of the country, forged documents to get him into the US legally, granted him immunity and shielded him from being prosecuted for war crimes and atrocities he was involved in.
I think it was more him not wanting to be caught by the Russians because it would be a lot more uncomfortable.
Probably both
He was sitting poolside at a resort when an US agent came up to him and said essentially “we found you, we also know where your family is. You can come with us and we’ll get you and your family out, or, you can wait for the Russians to find you, which won’t be long, and you can see what they do with you. The choice is yours, but make it right now.” So he went to the US because he felt his fate was better there. And he wasn’t just a scientist who was being used by the Nazis, he was a hardened nazi. He ran factories with slave labor that had executed corpses hanging from the ceiling. The workers had to go down a hallway to check into work where the bodies of sabotauers were on display and they had to punch them on their way onto the floor. He wasn’t just complicit in that and how things were run, those were his decisions. (I did a humongous project on the V-2 rocket when I was younger. Would have won the national competition in DC if I would have just answered one question the judges were essentially begging me to answer)
What was the question?
They wanted me to show that I understood that this was the beginning of space travel.
And that kids, is why you should study engineering in college.
So you can be scooped up after the war.