Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War (review)
rounding the engineer's responsibility for the murderous use of concentration camp labor in the V 2 production program is selective. He quotes at length two French survivor testimonials that are dubious as evidence (both may be cases of mistaken identity, confusing Wernher with his younger brother Magnus, Jr. and consigns to a passing mention in a footnote the one prisoner testimonial favorable to von Braun. He lists my own detailed article on these questions in the bibliography but fails to argue with my positions in the text or the endnotes, depriving readers of a complete and fair discussion of the book's central question: von Braun's guilt. Biddle waits until the epilogue to discuss the rocket engineer's ten day imprisonment by the Gestapo in 1944, rather than treating it in context. This arrest has always been inconvenient to hardcore von Braun critics, just as his Nazi record has been inconvenient to his heroworshippers. Biddle's book is smoothly written for the wider public for whom it is primarily intended. Scholars may and Dark Side of the Moon a stimulating alternative view of von Braun's relationship with Nazism. But Biddle's research reoects little originality; almost everything in this book has already appeared elsewhere. And for readers of this journal, it is noteworthy that the Cold War American half of von Braun's life is scarcely treated at all.