Leni Redux

The Maximum Leader asks:

“Should Werner Von Braun not have been honored for his contributions to the American Space program? (For the Ballistic Missile program?)”

Werner Von Braun?
I think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and orphans
Of old London town,
Who owe their fine pensions
To Werner Von Braun.

Should we have used the Rocket Nazi to bolster our arms race with the Soviets during the Cold War? Hell, yes. Should we praise him and honor him? Hell, no.

(Though I am willing to praise and honor individuals whose grandfathers worked with Von Braun)

The Foreign Minister tells me Leni became a humanitarian after the war. The Maximum Leader minimizes the leadership role that Leni played in the Third Reich. And he quite correctly hit me for a factual misstep I made when I called her an important player in the rise of the Reich.

But we have an important question here – should we as society forgive past errors and allow people the grace to become better members of society?

Werner Von Braun certainly was useful. Would I honor him? No. He may have been narrowly focused on the technical aspects of rocket flight (“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down – that’s not my department says Werner Von Braun”). But he did so with the knowledge that his technical innovations would be used for terrorist attacks that had no military value. Smallholder does not object to the targeting of civilians if such targeting shortens a war (military value), saves more lives than is lost, and is technologically unavoidable. For example, I would protest vociferously if we started indiscriminately carpet-bombing Tehran. We don’t need to do that to defeat the mullahs. In 1945, I’m waving my hat at the departing Superfortresses and taking grim satisfaction at the firebombing of Tokyo.

Certainly one has to believe in the possibility of redemption. Are there activities that are so heinous that redemption is impossible?

Imagine Joseph Mengele escaping to Africa and running vaccination clinics. Would they lives he saved, no matter how many, excuse his hideous atrocities?

Leni is a harder case. She didn’t actually shoot anybody. But she evidently used concentration camp inmates to make “Tiefland.” Half of her cast was executed after the completion of the movie. While she didn’t pull the trigger or order the deaths, she can hardly claim that she didn’t know what was going on (German denials of knowledge are kind of like French avowals of membership in La Resistance – everyone makes them, but the facts contradict their claims). Is her enthusiastic support for Hitler enough to disqualify her from future praise?

This seems to be a gray area. We have all done things of which we are not proud. I would hope that all of my life’s work is not remembered with the caveat “Yeah, but he insensitively dumped two girls in high school.” I hope we won’t remember Mike’s life with the caveat that “Yeah, but he led the Foreign Minister down the path to alcohol abuse.”

I’m not sure where to make the call. But if I were a member of the Academy, honoring the auteur of “Triumph of the Will” would be troublesome.

SUBNOTE:
I wrote an essay a while ago about how I tend to be attracted to people who know their Python. I have found that a person’s knowledge of and enjoyment of Lehrer’s music is also a reliable gauge of how much I will enjoy that person’s company. I have very fond memories of drunkenly performing lascivious Lehrer songs with my high-school co-pilot, to the great delight of out adoring female fans. Okay, fan singular. Whatever.