Read Online Dreams of Earth and Sky by Freeman Dyson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Freeman Dyson
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innocent civilians were burned to death. If we had lost the war, those responsible might have been condemned as war criminals, and I might have been found guilty of collaborating with them.
After this declaration of personal involvement, let me state my conclusion. In my opinion, the moral imperative at the end of every war is reconciliation. Without reconciliation there can be no real peace. Reconciliation means amnesty. It is allowable to execute the worst war criminals, with or without a legal trial, provided that this is done quickly, while the passions of war are still raging. After the executions are done, there should be no more hunting for criminals and collaborators. In order to make a lasting peace, we must learn to live with our enemies and forgive their crimes. Amnesty means that we are all equal before the law. Amnesty is not easy and not fair, but it is a moral necessity, because the alternative is an unending cycle of hatred and revenge. South Africa has set us a good example, showing how it can be done.
In the end, I admire von Braun for using his God-given talents to achieve his visions, even when this required him to make a pact with the devil. He bent Hitler and Himmler to his purposes more than they bent him to theirs. And I admire the United States Army for giving him a second chance to pursue his dreams. In the end, the amnesty given to him by the United States did far more than a strict accounting of his misdeeds could have done to redeem his soul and to fulfill his destiny.
Note added in 2014: This review provoked a record number of eloquent and moving responses from people outraged by my friendly portrayal of von Braun. Here is an extract from one of them:
I was a medical student at the London Hospital, in 1944, when an early V-2 landed one afternoon in Petticoat Lane, a crowded and popular people’s market in London’s East End. There were hundreds of killed and injured and over two hundred were admitted to the hospital, where the severely injured were promptly triaged to the operating rooms but many lay for hours in the corridors and basement to receive treatment, mostly for nasty lacerations from flying glass. It was a scene I have never forgotten.
Professor Dyson’s role in the planning of the RAF raid on Dresden, admittedly a horrific incident, seems paltry compared to the calculated killing and brutal exploitation of the inmates of the forced labor camp where the V-2 was conceived and manufactured. Von Braun never publicly renounced his role in the Nazi regime, of whose sadism and brutality he seems to have been fully aware.
Surely confession and penitence must precede reconciliation? Amnesty yes, reconciliation maybe, but forgiveness no. Neither did we need to reward such a man with a presidential medal for his acts of redemption for unforgivable sins.
Bernard Lytton
Donald Guthrie Professor Emeritus of Surgery/Urology
Yale University School of Medicine
Director, Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
In response to a letter from Leo Blitz in Berkeley, whose mother survived the concentration camp at Stutthof, I wrote:
I once visited the camp at Stutthof when I was in Poland. I am not saying that von Braun or anyone else was innocent. But I think you miss the main point. Amnesty is not for the innocent. Amnesty is for the guilty. We need amnesty at the end of a war because a large number of people on both sides are guilty. War is like that. Modern war is a brutal business, and when I was working for Bomber Command I was in the same business as von Braun. After that, we all needed an amnesty, with a few exceptions such as your mother.
* Knopf/Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007.
† The original version of the 1950 memoir was unpublished, and is now in the von Braun papers at Huntsville. A revised version was published with the title “Reminiscences of German Rocketry” in
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
, Vol. 15
After this declaration of personal involvement, let me state my conclusion. In my opinion, the moral imperative at the end of every war is reconciliation. Without reconciliation there can be no real peace. Reconciliation means amnesty. It is allowable to execute the worst war criminals, with or without a legal trial, provided that this is done quickly, while the passions of war are still raging. After the executions are done, there should be no more hunting for criminals and collaborators. In order to make a lasting peace, we must learn to live with our enemies and forgive their crimes. Amnesty means that we are all equal before the law. Amnesty is not easy and not fair, but it is a moral necessity, because the alternative is an unending cycle of hatred and revenge. South Africa has set us a good example, showing how it can be done.
In the end, I admire von Braun for using his God-given talents to achieve his visions, even when this required him to make a pact with the devil. He bent Hitler and Himmler to his purposes more than they bent him to theirs. And I admire the United States Army for giving him a second chance to pursue his dreams. In the end, the amnesty given to him by the United States did far more than a strict accounting of his misdeeds could have done to redeem his soul and to fulfill his destiny.
Note added in 2014: This review provoked a record number of eloquent and moving responses from people outraged by my friendly portrayal of von Braun. Here is an extract from one of them:
I was a medical student at the London Hospital, in 1944, when an early V-2 landed one afternoon in Petticoat Lane, a crowded and popular people’s market in London’s East End. There were hundreds of killed and injured and over two hundred were admitted to the hospital, where the severely injured were promptly triaged to the operating rooms but many lay for hours in the corridors and basement to receive treatment, mostly for nasty lacerations from flying glass. It was a scene I have never forgotten.
Professor Dyson’s role in the planning of the RAF raid on Dresden, admittedly a horrific incident, seems paltry compared to the calculated killing and brutal exploitation of the inmates of the forced labor camp where the V-2 was conceived and manufactured. Von Braun never publicly renounced his role in the Nazi regime, of whose sadism and brutality he seems to have been fully aware.
Surely confession and penitence must precede reconciliation? Amnesty yes, reconciliation maybe, but forgiveness no. Neither did we need to reward such a man with a presidential medal for his acts of redemption for unforgivable sins.
Bernard Lytton
Donald Guthrie Professor Emeritus of Surgery/Urology
Yale University School of Medicine
Director, Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
In response to a letter from Leo Blitz in Berkeley, whose mother survived the concentration camp at Stutthof, I wrote:
I once visited the camp at Stutthof when I was in Poland. I am not saying that von Braun or anyone else was innocent. But I think you miss the main point. Amnesty is not for the innocent. Amnesty is for the guilty. We need amnesty at the end of a war because a large number of people on both sides are guilty. War is like that. Modern war is a brutal business, and when I was working for Bomber Command I was in the same business as von Braun. After that, we all needed an amnesty, with a few exceptions such as your mother.
* Knopf/Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 2007.
† The original version of the 1950 memoir was unpublished, and is now in the von Braun papers at Huntsville. A revised version was published with the title “Reminiscences of German Rocketry” in
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
, Vol. 15
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