Arthur Rudolph: The fallen hero of the moon landing
This account discusses Arthur Rudolph's contributions to the U.S. space program and the moral controversies of his Nazi past. Brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip, he developed the Saturn V rocket but was later expelled due to war crimes involving forced labor at Mittelbau-Dora. His legacy remains contentious due to these ethical issues.
Project Paperclip Arthur Rudolph moon landing
A secret United States program after World War II in which over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the U.S. for government employment. These individuals were primarily experts in rocket technology, aerodynamics, and chemical weapons, many of whom had been involved with the Nazi regime and its war efforts. The goal was to leverage their expertise for U.S. technological advancement during the Cold War, particularly in the arms race against the Soviet Union.
From a moral viewpoint, Project Paperclip raises several significant ethical issues:
1. Collaboration with Former Nazis
– Many of the scientists brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip were former members of the Nazi Party or had been complicit in the regime’s war crimes and atrocities, including the use of slave labor and human experimentation. Employing these individuals without holding them accountable for their past actions poses serious moral concerns about justice and accountability.
2. Complicity in Past Atrocities
– By providing amnesty and lucrative positions to individuals involved in the Nazi war machine, the U.S. effectively overlooked their contributions to crimes against humanity. This can be seen as a tacit approval or at least a minimization of their heinous actions during the war, which can be morally troubling for victims and their descendants.
3. Moral Compromise for Strategic Gain Arthur Rudolph moon landing
– The decision to prioritize strategic and technological advantage over ethical considerations is a classic moral dilemma. On one hand, the U.S. aimed to gain an upper hand in the Cold War, which was seen as essential for national security. On the other hand, this pragmatic approach compromised moral integrity by valuing scientific expertise over justice and human rights.
4. Historical Revisionism and Secrecy
– The secretive nature of Project Paperclip, including efforts to obscure the backgrounds of these scientists, contributes to a form of historical revisionism. It can distort public understanding of the events and individuals involved in World War II, undermining efforts to fully reckon with the past.
5. Impact on Victims and Survivors
– For Holocaust survivors and other victims of Nazi atrocities, seeing former perpetrators rewarded and integrated into U.S. society without facing consequences for their actions can be deeply distressing. It raises questions about the moral responsibility of governments to uphold justice and honor the memory of victims.
In summary, from a moral standpoint, Project Paperclip is contentious because it involves a significant trade-off between ethical principles and perceived national security interests. The program’s implementation reflects a prioritization of scientific and strategic gains over accountability and justice, leading to a complex legacy that continues to prompt ethical reflection and debate.
One of the fathers of the moon landing
German-born Arthur Rudolph, a prominent rocket engineer and one of the fathers of the moon landing, relocates from the USA to Hamburg when his Nazi past catches up with him. In Hamburg, the public prosecutor’s office initiates an investigation against him.
May 25, 1984 Arthur Rudolph moon landing
An elderly gentleman enters the US Consulate General on the banks of the Alster in Hamburg. Hardly anyone walking by would have noticed the man with thinning hair. He is a hero in the USA, but nobody knows him here in Germany. Arthur Rudolph is a rocket engineer, one of the best in the world. He developed the Saturn V launch vehicle for the moon landing in the summer of 1969. Born in Germany, he was richly decorated in the United States for his achievements, including by NASA.
But in March 1984, he had to leave the USA because his Nazi past had caught up with him. The USA accuses him of having been involved in the harassment and persecution of forced laborers during the Third Reich. On this day in May 1984, the 77-year-old renounced his US citizenship at the US Consulate General. This was stipulated in an agreement with the US Department of Justice. Rudolph would never be allowed to enter the USA again. In return, the Americans would continue to pay him his pension.
And so Arthur Rudolph now lives with his wife Martha in an apartment building in the Wellingsbüttel district of Hamburg. In a quiet street. They rent an apartment on the first floor with a terrace at the back and a view of the countryside. There is a simple reason why the Rudolphs moved to Hamburg of all places: Martha Rudolph’s sister lives there. Their only daughter remains in the USA.
The public prosecutors are becoming more attentive
Arthur Rudolph is now a stateless person. He had renounced his German citizenship when he was naturalized in the USA in November 1954. So on 1 July 1984, he applies for his naturalization in Hamburg. But things did not go as the retiree had imagined. In mid-October 1984, the Foreign Office in Bonn was informed by the US ambassador that they had expatriated an ex-Nazi. Shortly afterward, the Hamburg authorities were also called in: Did they know where a certain Arthur Rudolph was staying in the city? The police quickly find out his home address. The Hamburg public prosecutor’s office becomes suspicious: why did Rudolph have to leave the USA? What accusations does the US Department of Justice have against him?
“Smear campaign by the press”
The press also got wind of the story. “My family and I are being ruthlessly harassed by the press, radio and television,” complains Rudolph. “Completely unfounded accusations” were made against him, claiming that he had never committed any crimes. In fact, there was no incriminating material against Arthur Rudolph, not even at the Central Office for the Prosecution of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg.
Is Rudolph responsible for the killings? Arthur Rudolph moon landing
Considering the allegations in the USA, however, the Hamburg senior public prosecutor Harald Duhn initiated so-called preliminary investigation proceedings on October 30, 1984: “to clarify whether Arthur Rudolph is responsible for acts of murder in connection with his former activities and whether there is concrete evidence of involvement in Nazi crimes of violence.” Duhn noted on December 18, 1984: “Mr. Rudolph is interested in public rehabilitation. I have therefore promised him that I will inform him of the outcome of the case in any case.” The Hamburg investigators inquired in the USA. What statements did Rudolph make during the interrogations in the USA?
“Hunting yesterday’s heroes” in the USA
The change of attitude in the USA towards the German rocket engineers began in the early 1980s. In 1979, the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was founded in the Department of Justice to track down Nazi war criminals in the country: The investigators also scrutinize the past of scientists from Germany. The news magazine “Stern” speaks of a “hunt for yesterday’s heroes”. The “Washington Post” writes that the investigations are overdue: “Among the stupid and disgraceful decisions sometimes made by the United States, few are more offensive than the recruitment of Nazi rocket engineers.” And one of these rocket engineers with a Nazi past is Arthur Rudolph.
Rudolph’s career begins in Peenemünde
He laid the foundations for his career in northern Germany. In Peenemünde on the island of Usedom, he began working alongside the legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun in 1937 on the construction of rockets for the National Socialists. Von Braun was responsible for development, Rudolph for serial production. “Arthur Rudolph was a vital and central figure for the National Socialists’ rocket production, even in Peenemünde,” So, Philipp Aumann, curator of the Peenemünde Historical and Technical Museum. “He also actively approached the SS in Peenemünde to use concentration camp prisoners for rocket production.”
When the British severely damaged the facilities in Peenemünde with air raids during “Operation Hydra” in August 1943, the National Socialists relocated rocket production to underground tunnels in the Harz Mountains near Nordhausen in Thuringia. For Rudolph, this was the beginning of the time that would later turn out to be his undoing.
Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp
After his time in Peenemünde, Arthur Rudolph moved to the Harz Mountains. From September 1943 to April 1945, he was technical operations director of the state-owned company Mittelwerk. His task has not changed: He is to manufacture Hitler’s “weapon of retaliation” – the V2 long-range rocket – in as large a quantity as possible. Only the location is different: production takes place in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. The working and living conditions there were so cruel that even Albert Speer, who had organized the system of forced laborers, described them as “barbaric” in his memoirs. Around 20,000 people lost their lives.
“Around one in ten concentration camp prisoners there was employed in weapons production,” says historian Aumann. “The prisoners in rocket production were clearly better off than those who had to dig the tunnels, for example. Rudolph also repeatedly talked his way out of this.” Arthur Rudolph moon landing
In fact, Rudolph was often heard to say after 1945: He had done everything in his power at the time to alleviate the conditions for the forced laborers. “Rudolph belonged to the so-called functional elite in the Third Reich. If he later distanced himself from the atrocities, this is not credible,” explains expert Aumann.
Welcomed with open arms
A few weeks before the end of the war, the National Socialists gave up the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and Rudolph fled to Bavaria on April 8, 1945. From May to July 1945, he was housed in a US Army camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. As a rocket scientist, he was highly sought after by the Allies. From July to October 1945, he worked for the British Operation “Backfire”, during which rocket launches were also carried out near Cuxhaven. Afterward, the British certified the German: “There is no doubt that Rudolph is a rocket engineer of the highest caliber.” But shortly afterward, the Americans secured his services.
On 22 November 1945, Rudolph signed an employment contract with the US Army “as a member of the Dr. von Braun Group”. On December 6, 1945, he enters the USA. His wife and daughter join him in 1947.
Rudolph’s naturalization in the national interest
Rudolph’s Nazi past was not a problem at the time. He had already been a member of the NSDAP since 1931, two years before the “seizure of power”: “Fearing that the communists would come to power, I joined the NSDAP in order, as I believed, to preserve Western culture,” Rudolph recalls in retrospect. Shortly after the end of the war, he was classified in a US document as a “one hundred percent Nazi, dangerous type, security risk”. Arthur Rudolph moon landing
But the US government deliberately ignored the warning at the beginning of the Cold War. In September 1948, a Secret Service report stated that Rudolph was “not an ardent Nazi and would probably have been classified as a follower if he had been denazified”. And the Ministry of Justice stated that failure to naturalize Rudolph would be “detrimental to national interests”. His knowledge is too valuable for the US military. NASA later benefited from his expertise until Rudolph voluntarily retired on January 31, 1969.
Investigations in the USA
13 years later, investigators from the US Department of Justice took an interest in the Nazi past of the celebrated rocket engineer. In the fall of 1982, Rudolph was questioned for hours for the first time, followed by a second interrogation in February 1983. Initially, Rudolph was not told what crimes he was accused of. He was in poor health, having only recently survived a heart attack. He does not feel up to a possible trial. “It would drag on for years and exceed all my financial resources,” Rudolph later remarks. In addition, it was impossible to produce any witnesses to exonerate him: “The work colleagues I still knew had died,” Rudolph sobered up. And so, in March 1984, he and his wife boarded a plane to Germany – bound for Hamburg.
Duhn initiates investigations in Hamburg
In the Hanseatic city, Chief Public Prosecutor Duhn decides on June 27, 1985, to initiate preliminary proceedings against Arthur Rudolph – for aiding and abetting murder. Rudolph’s statements, which he had made in 1947 “as a witness in an American military court case and also as a victim of the expatriation proceedings against him, gave rise to the initial suspicion of crimes that could still be prosecuted”. The basis for this decision is the mail from Washington that arrived in Hamburg shortly beforehand. It contains the interrogation transcripts with Rudolph’s statements about his Nazi past.
In a letter to the German authorities, the US Department of Justice explained Rudolph’s expatriation as follows: “The evidence we gathered during the investigation of the Rudolph case was more than sufficient to prove aiding and abetting in the persecution of forced laborers. Whether it is sufficient as evidence of murder under your law is, of course, for you to decide.”
“I think they were Russians”
What happened from September 1943 to April 1945 in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, where forced laborers were forced to manufacture rockets under the technical direction of Arthur Rudolph? More than 40 years later, Hamburg’s chief public prosecutor Duhn is only interested in one question: what role did Rudolph play in the hanging of forced laborers? The SS killed them in a particularly brutal manner for alleged sabotage: As a deterrent, the other forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners had to watch the executions.
The Hamburg investigators know: Rudolph admitted during interrogations in the USA to having been present at least during one hanging of forced laborers. Six to twelve men were executed. “I think they were Russians,” said Rudolph. He was not present at the execution the whole time.
200 prisoners under his control Arthur Rudolph moon landing
According to the Hamburg investigation files, Rudolph told the US investigators that he had been under great pressure during rocket production: “There was always a deadline, always the desire for more prisoners.” When asked how many prisoners were under his control, Rudolph replied: up to 200 prisoners a day. He had never seen a prisoner die of hunger. “I did not see them being punished, beaten or shot,” Rudolph stated on the record in the USA. He refused to testify to the Hamburg investigators.
100 witnesses questioned around the world
The Hamburg public prosecutors are therefore dependent on witness statements. “Attempts are being made to identify witnesses who observed Rudolph and can say what part he played in the persecution of so-called saboteurs,” notes the senior public prosecutor. Around 100 witnesses are being questioned in the course of the investigation, including in the USA, Australia and Israel. However, the results are meager. In November 1985, the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office came to the sobering conclusion: “The investigations to date have revealed that the accused was hardly known by name to the concentration camp inmates. No incriminating statements have been obtained from the circles of former employees, be they other engineers or office assistants. On the contrary, there is a clear impression of a certain solidarity with the accused.”
Rudolph continues to maintain his innocence. He called witnesses to exonerate him, but in the opinion of the public prosecutor’s office, they “did not provide anything concrete to exonerate him”. However, the suspicion is so low that there is no longer any need for exoneration, Duhn notes in the files.
Request for assistance to the USSR
In January 1986, the senior public prosecutor assumes that he will soon close the case against Rudolph. But the Hamburg Senator for Justice Eva Leithäuser got in his way: she wanted to ask the Soviet Consulate General for help with the investigation. Duhn speaks out against it: It was “extremely unlikely that Soviet prisoners knew Rudolph personally and could associate specific memories relevant to the crime with the name.” In addition, speed is of the essence because “the decision on Rudolph’s citizenship depends on the proceedings”.
But the senator was not deterred and wrote to the consul general in Hamburg at the end of January 1986 asking whether the Soviet authorities had any information about the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp “which could be useful for the difficult investigative work of the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office”. This step delayed the conclusion of the proceedings by a whole year, without the Soviets being able to contribute anything tangible.
Lacking evidence
And so, on February 17, 1987, the senior public prosecutor dropped the investigation against Arthur Rudolph lacking evidence. No charges were brought. Duhn told the press: “Our investigations have indicated that Rudolph knew that the prisoners in the Mittelwerk were being wronged.” He had been involved in the selection of prisoners suspected of sabotage who were killed. “However, the accusations were too general and could not be proven in detail; they were not sufficient for an accusation of murder,” the senior public prosecutor concluded. As a result, Arthur Rudolph was naturalized on 17 March 1987. After almost 33 years, he is once again a German citizen.
“No moral judgments whatsoever” Arthur Rudolph moon landing
At a personal meeting, however, Duhn made it clear to the former rocket engineer that the termination of the proceedings “did not mean a whitewash and that there was no moral judgment whatsoever”.
“Fierce attacks from the USA” Arthur Rudolph moon landing
In the USA, the Hamburg investigators’ decision to discontinue the proceedings against Rudolph is met with incomprehension. Attorney General Duhn is facing “fierce attacks” from the special division OSI in the US Department of Justice, which was itself investigating Rudolph in the expatriation proceedings. “It is very disappointing that the German authorities decided against criminal prosecution,” said Eli Rosenbaum, who later became OSI Director.
Concretely provable guilt
Duhn justifies himself by pointing out the fundamental differences between expatriation proceedings and criminal proceedings: “German criminal law requires concretely provable personal guilt for charges to be brought, which was lacking in this case.” The investigation should also have been limited to participation in the murder of prisoners because the prosecution of other charges such as deprivation of liberty, assault and coercion is time-barred.
USA refuses Rudolph entry
Rudolph still dwells on his successful time in the USA. When the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the moon landing were due in 1989, the pensioner wanted to travel to the USA. But the US government refused him a visa. He also failed in his attempt to regain US citizenship. The Americans also took away the medal awarded to him by NASA in 1987 for his services to the moon landing. The former rocket engineer has finally lost his hero status in the USA, even if many former companions continue to stand by him.
Canada trip also flops Arthur Rudolph moon landing
To see their daughter again, who still lives in the USA, Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph fly to Canada in July 1990. A family reunion was planned there. But as Arthur Rudolph was still on a US wanted list, he was detained by the Canadian authorities on arrival at Toronto airport – and eventually deported. Watch the CBC video.
Death on New Year’s Day Arthur Rudolph moon landing
Arthur Rudolph spent the last two years of his life in an old people’s home. On the night of January 1, 1996, he dies at the age of 89 after another heart attack.
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