Walt Disney Treasures - Tomorrowland what was Walt Thinking!

[Phil Moors]

I recently purchased this limited edition tin for my newly acquired region free dvd played. Walt Disney produced a handful of Disneyland episodes on space travel. As I began watching Man on the Moon from 1955 I suddenly became aware that I was being lectured by ex Nazi scientists, Werner Von Braun etc. How could the USA have swept their pasts under the carpet in persuit of the space race and further how could Walt Disney, who produced countless war propaganda films for the USA have employed them?

My stock in Walt Disney has always been sky high, but I never new about this and am appalled by the fact that a man with high family values could work with them.

I shall be getting rid of this tin. I could never watch this now.

[Mike Newell]

Don’t think you can blame Walt. Werner and others were appointed to NASA purely for their knowledge of building rockets V1 and V2 etc. They quietly forgot about the thousands of slave labour they murdered or starved to death in their factories

Lots of people profited from WW2. The Swiss, big industrial companies like Ford GM and Volkswagen. The 1st two sued and got compensation from the Allies for damage caused to their German factories by US and RAF bombings.

The chemical companies who made cyanide were successful restructured with the exact same management.

Finally Hugo Boss as Russell Brand stated made “those lovely black uniforms” . There are were loads of others.

[Steve Klare]

Werner von Braun had something to offer and cut himself a deal. The United States recognized that in the post WW2 era the strategic high-ground was going to be nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, so they accepted.

It was always about ICBMs: the space race was a side-effect and very likely without the desire for ICBMs, Sputnik, Soyuz, Mercury and Apollo might never have reached their launch pads.

There's a scene in "The Right Stuff" where President Eisenhower wants an explanation why the USSR kept beating NASA into space. In the end he says "So their Germans are better than our Germans?" So it was a game that everybody who could play was playing. In the mindset of the era, the failure to play and play well was risking annihilation.

So, yes, for the American government to put up a herd of Nazi tech supporters in suburban comfort was morally lax (-at least), but it's what later came to be called "Realpolitik" and one of the nice things people who don't have these responsibilities have going for us is we get to keep our hands clean of choices like this.

One of the things I was happy about as I got older was I was getting too old to be drafted. I would have hated the idea of pointing a rifle at another human being and seeing him fall after I squeezed off a round, or dropping a bomb on a city and watching the impact.

I still recognize the need for there to be people willing and capable to do these things and I respect them for the personal sacrifices they often make.

[Mike Newell]

Werner also had the good sense to depart in 1977 before anyone got round to asking awkward questions. Why does Dr Strangelove come into my head?

[Steve Klare]

My read of Dr. von Braun is he was both apolitical and more than a little amoral too. He wanted to build rockets and didn't hash out the nasty details he left to whichever politicians he was working for. Had his overtures to the US come back with orders to surrender for arrest, maybe he would have turned to the Soviets instead. (Maybe the Americans figured this out, too...)

-a Dacha in suburban Moscow for the summer, a nice place on the Black Sea for the winter, and generous facilities in Novosibirsk.

Maybe Neil Armstrong would have gone to a Dude Ranch instead of the Moon in 1969.

[Ed Gordon]

Phil's dilemma with Von Braun is the same problem we all face when a public figure we admire (be it artist, scientist, et al) is accused of, or proven to have committed a moral breach. Pick a name, the list is long.

[Steve Klare]

Bill Cosby basically tops my list.

Walt Disney was no giant of virtue either. There is no question he was a giant in the animation industry and he's delighted a couple of generations, but he certainly had a nasty side to him. As a collaborator he was petty and jealous, doubly so as the Boss, and as a former employer he could be downright vindictive. He also had a pretty complete collection of ethnic hatreds (-including all the classics).

What may be most surprising about Walt Disney is what a poor father he was. He was so wrapped up in his projects that he could be pretty disengaged as a father. (You'd hope a Dad that owned Disneyland would be championship level!)