Steve, Werner von Braun was considered by many to be a war criminal, and it was only his knowledge that kept him out of the dock.
Von Braun was responsible for production at the Dora-Mittelwerk facility in the Harz Mountains near Nordhausen. Concentration camp laborers here were forced to assemble V-2 ballistic missiles under deplorable conditions that resulted in large numbers of deaths. Perhaps as many as 20,000 workers died in V-2 production. Von Braun later acknowledged that he selected workers for Mittelwerk from camp inmates at Buchenwald. He also acknowledged that by 1944 he was aware that many of the slave laborers at Mittelwerk had been executed, that many others had succumbed to malnourishment and dysentery, and that the environment at Mittelwerk was “repulsive.”
