posted 01-31-2008 12:54 PM               

Scheufelen was born on 30 October 1913 and worked at Peenemünde since 1942. Being in charge of the guided anti-aircraft "Waterfall" (Wasserfall) at the start, he switched to the unguided "Taifun" anti-aircraft missile shortly before the end of the war.

Joining Wernher von Braun at Fort Bliss in January 1946, Scheufelen returned to Germany in 1950 to work in the family's paper mill. After the Apollo 1 accident, his papermill at Lenningen received a call for the production of inflammable paper that was used in US spacecraft since Apollo 13.

Scheufelen wrote a book about his experiences at Peenemünde and beyond:
"Mythos Raketen. Chancen für den Frieden. Erinnerungen“ von Dr.-Ing. Klaus H. Scheufelen, ISBN 3-7628-0573-3, Bechtle Verlag, München/Esslingen

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Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany

posted 02-02-2008 07:56 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted:
Klaus Scheufelen was a very nice guy.

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Of course, the document could be incorrect.

I too have personal correspondence with Scheufelen from the mid-1990s regarding his work on space projects in the US, and he was indeed a helpful responder. I would respectfully suggest however that he forever forfeited his right to be called a "nice guy" over sixty years ago.

I respect the wish of others here to mark a moment of silence at the passing of a fellow human being. But felt the need to comment on "nice guy."

posted 02-03-2008 07:00 AM               

As I understand the document you provided, German air force first Lieutenant Scheufelen was transport commander of Taifun-Express evacuating "everything necessary for the serial production of the Taifun, an unguided surface-to-air missile" from Mittelwerk in March 1945. I did not find any hint, that he ever broke international law or treated prisoners other than human beings should be treated.

posted 02-03-2008 08:45 AM               

Having said that, it is still important to differenciate the degree of personal responsibility amongst those guys. There were guys who were leaders, who decided on the use of forced labor, there were guys that were early members of the Nazi party, there were guys who became members of the SS and walked around in SS uniforms. And there people who were personnally involved in beating prisoners.

Joachim Neander’s study that Francis cites unfortunately helps little in establishing the individual responsability of Scheufelen in this context. It merely mentions that Scheufelen was in charge of the “Taifun” evacuation train that coincicentally waited in a train station when the transport of concentration camp inmates came aloung. Neander certainly does not say that Scheufelen was a “transport commander for prisoners”. He very probably wasn’t. The transports of camp prisoners happened under SS command. From what I read in the text, the “Taifun” train was requisitioned by the SS for this role. Neander does not even establish any responsability about who instructed locating the prisoners behind the engine where they were likely subjects to Allied attacks. Calling him a “transport commander for prisoners” and basing this on Neander’s text is stretching the evidence a little.

Also, Neander’s statement that Scheufelen had become one of “America’s space heroes” is more than a tad too bold to be true. Scheufelen returned to native Germany in 1950. That was long before anything meaningful in the “space race” had happened. No Redstone rocket, no transfer to Huntsville, and certainly not the slightest development towards a Saturn rocket. That all happened later. When Wernher von Braun and his team became heroes in the mid-Sixties, Scheufelen had left the team for a decade and a half. His role in supplying paper for the space program after Apollo 13 is marginal, and with Apollo 13 the space race had been won already. In other words: his role in the Moon programme is a footnote to a footnote.

The Peenemündians were anything but heroes, and blind admiration is certainly not the approach to follow. Would I see the Peenemündians as role models for my children? Thanks, but not thanks. But in discussing their wrongs, it certainly helps to pay close attention to detail. Even in a murky context like the Nazi regimes, there were Nazi leaders, Nazi helpers, and opportunists. In other words: shades of black, or rather in this case, brown.

posted 02-03-2008 11:40 AM            

Thank you for your very considered replies. Jürgen, having known you since 1987 and discussed this general issue with you before, I know you to be a very wise and level-headed person on this issue, able to see many aspects of the debate that has swirled around these men for decades, and will doubtless continue to do so. So I appreciate your thoughts here.

Here is one of the relevant parts of Joachim Neander's piece (Neander, as I understand it, is a respected Polish historian who has done some very good work in the general field of the Holocaust)

"In addition, about a dozen boxcars and carriages were occupied by the personnel of the future plant, among them 350 to 400 prisoners, mostly German nationals. The transport commander was Luftwaffe first Lieutenant Dr. Klaus Scheufelen, who would later become one of America's “Space Heroes.”

Although Jürgen raises some interesting possibilities about who may or may not have initiated events and orders, much of which may be correct, I'm not sure how else to interpret the above other than to mean that Scheufelen was transport commander for both the parts and the personnel (including prisoners) sent to work on them. Cosmos-Walter seems to understand it the same way. Jürgen, perhaps you thought I was referring to the concentration camp prisoners who were later attached to the same train, many of whom were later shot by the SS when they were trying to escape. I wasn't, and don't know of any evidence Scheufelen was involved in that aspect of the train journey (although he was in a command position).

The prisoners I am referencing were on the same train and being sent to work on his own engineering project.

Nevertheless, Jürgen makes several excellent points. There were some very different levels of personal responsibility amongst the Peenemünde team. This is certainly the case. And, who knows, perhaps Scheufelen somehow wandered through the war without any notion of the events going on around him, including the events that take place on the very train he was involved in arrangements for (of which this is one document of one small incident in an entire war).

It all disgresses from the original reason I posted. Which is:

• The Peenemünde team were indeed involved in some pioneering space work, which should be recognized, and their individual passings are notable.
  
• For such passings to be marked with a respectful moment of silence is, in my opinion, inappropriate considering the murky past that every single one of them was, to differing extents, involved in.
  
• Nevertheless, I held my opinion here for a few days. But when one of these people is called "a very nice guy," I did feel, for the sake of historical accuracy, something needed to be said. As Jürgen so eloquently states:

  "The Peenemündians were anything but heroes, and blind admiration is certainly not the approach to follow. Would I see the Peenemündians as role models for my children? Thanks, but no thanks."

posted 02-03-2008 06:50 PM               

"1943-45 on development of anti-aircraft rockets" and "1946-50 on development of anti-aircraft rocket LOKI"

posted 02-03-2008 11:28 PM               

Likewise, while I do believe the discussions held here do have a place on CS, I just don't think they are appropriate in this thread at this time.

posted 02-04-2008 12:17 AM            

If this thread was begun (as I believe it was) as an obituary, not a eulogy, it is certainly valid to discuss the totality of a person's life. Often an obituary is the place where a person's life achievements, good and bad, are summarized.

If this thread is supposed to be a memorial, a eulogy - then I seriously question the taste of memorializing and eulogizing any of the Peenemünde team when they pass away, considering their collective role in World War Two. If anything, their passing is a time to reflect on their worth as a person, and the moral (or otherwise) choices they made, or chose not to make.

posted 02-04-2008 09:51 AM               

Maybe this should be adopted as the general rule for notifications of deaths in order to avoid unseemly speculation and on-list disgreement?

posted 02-04-2008 09:59 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by FFrench:
If anything, their passing is a time to reflect on their worth as a person, and the moral (or otherwise) choices they made, or chose not to make.

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The problem I see is that I doubt any of us here are truly qualified to assess the "worth" of a person that we hardly knew. Sure, it's possible to develop a personal opinion based on reading an account of something they were involved with 60 years ago. But I think in order to truly assess the worth of a man, one needs to look at the sum of his entire life...and have adequate knowledge of the man's character in order to do so.

posted 02-04-2008 03:25 PM               

Also, papers are full of obits, discussions and controversies about the legacy of the deceased, especially prominent ones.

Now the meal we will have to miss, but talk about the lifetime achievements of a passed invididual are certainly a part of life, in my humble opinion.

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Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany

International Director (Europe), Space Unit
Vice President, Weltraum Philatelie e. V.

posted 02-04-2008 03:28 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
...especially decisions we made when we were young, impressionable, and caught up in causes that we later regret.

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Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany

International Director (Europe), Space Unit
Vice President, Weltraum Philatelie e. V.

posted 02-04-2008 04:02 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by eurospace:
To those inexperienced with the passing of people: it is quite usual to share recollections, good or bad, about the deceased, after the official ceremony is over and people sit together over a meal.

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posted 02-04-2008 07:03 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark:
The problem I see is that I doubt any of us here are truly qualified to assess the "worth" of a person that we hardly knew.

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However, if space historians cannot comment, in a space forum, about a person connected to the space program, then I don't know who and when anyone can.

quote:

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Originally posted by Paul:
...in order to avoid unseemly speculation

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However, I must honestly ask you, what is the more unseemly?

• That obituaries of members of the Peenemünde group, who in varying degrees (some very minor, some major) were all involved in creating Nazi war weaponry generally designed to kill large numbers of civilians, and frequently employed slave laborers to do so, are receiving respectful eulogies and moments of silence on this website?

• Or that this subject is brought up when one of them dies?

I know that some high schoolers and other young people read postings on this website. What kind of education would it be for them, that the space community uncritically eulogizes such people, who were all, whether in very small or much larger ways, connected to some of modern history's largest atrocities?

posted 02-04-2008 11:22 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by FFrench:
However, if space historians cannot comment, in a space forum, about a person connected to the space program, then I don't know who and when anyone can.

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Space historians can rightly comment on an individual's contributions to the space program. But unless that space historian has specific evidence that directly ties an individual to the wartime atrocities in question, then I feel it's better to leave that connection go unspoken instead of running the risk of wrongly soiling the name of good man.

It would be easy if we could paint every German at Peenemünde as evil. But war is never that simple. I have to believe that some of the Germans at Peenemünde were basically good people, just as some of the American bomber crews over Dresden and Tokyo were basically good people, or just like some of the Japanese pilots over Pearl Harbor were good people. Sometimes good people are made to do things they would otherwise never do.

When I was reading Flyboys by James Bradley, I was shocked to read of the treatment of some of the prisoners by the Japanese. The events that occurred at Chichi-Jima went beyond my worst imagination and some of the Japanese soldiers were so brutal and inhumane that it defied comprehension. Yet among all of that were some Japanese soldiers who had sympathy for their prisoners and, in the end, demonstrated that good people can sometimes exist within the machinery of evil.

posted 02-04-2008 11:46 PM            

I doubt I can be swayed from the opinion that no member of the Peenemünde team deserves an automatically respectful eulogy on their death, considering their collective role in the deaths of so many innocent people who are far more deserving of a moment of respectful silence.

Nevertheless, I can't help but be moved by the fact that you are looking and hoping for the good in people, whatever horrors they may have participated in.

To overlook and ignore the darker moments of history (as this thread was doing, I felt) is wrong, as it makes it more likely that they will be repeated. Yet to hope that, somewhere in the middle of such horrors, there were some good people, is the kind of sentiment that allowed people to live through such dark moments.

It's the kind of emotion, in fact, that makes us better than those who perpetrated the bad deeds of history. And I have to admire that.

If both of these viewpoints are understood and appreciated, in balance, then this will have been a very worthwhile discussion.

posted 02-06-2008 05:32 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by mjanovec:
Generally those people participating in the recollections are people who knew the deceased very well...or at least had their own personal experiences with the deceased from which to draw their opinions.

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And collectSPACE is of course not a cemetery, but a message board ....

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Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany

International Director (Europe), Space Unit
Vice President, Weltraum Philatelie e. V.