There are probably a lot of Russians who fled to Germany after WWII only to end up in Huntsville, Al with a 9 year gap in their resume starting in 1941..., right?
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Idk that's why I would like to read the report. Maybe it was another Soviet Nazi with the same initials and last name.
Also, 1941-1950 is not the middle of WWII. Wtf was he doing between the time the war ended and the time he came to Florida (which is actually another location Von Braun was shuffled) and then Alabama? We have nothing except the word of his son, which has proven to be very unreliable testimony for most things, even while under oath.
But if you want to defend this random guy, who raised quite the piece of shit, be my guest. Not really my problem.
It's not even the same initials, though‽ You haven't read the report, you don't know that it's even about the guy in question, and yet you're still leaning on it to say "it does seem that he was at least accused of Nazi collaboration at some point."
1941 is absolutely the middle of WWII and that's when he goes missing.
We have nothing except the word of his son, which has proven to be very unreliable testimony for most things, even while under oath.
We have nothing saying he's a Nazi in the first place!
I do not care about defending this guy. I know nothing about him, I haven't read his work. I care about opposing the flinging around of unjustified accusations of Naziism; that shit is serious and should be treated seriously. Insisting that someone was an actual member of the Nazi party on the "evidence" you have provided is playing directly into the hands of the fascists that whine that people on the left call everyone Nazis these days. You actually are doing that.
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You linked a source saying his mother was German, not that she was a Nazi.
I linked a source saying she was a German refugee from 1945 who emigrated to a township staffed full of Nazi emigres. Also, his father was White Russia - 100% a fascist.
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It's like saying the birthplace of antifascism was Fascist Germany or Italy... Like, yeah... It be like it do, because of how it did?
wrote last edited by [email protected]It’s like saying the birthplace of antifascism was Fascist Germany or Italy…
Post-WW1 Italy had one of the largest and most active Communist Parties in Europe. I don't think it is reasonable to say "Italians are just fascist because of where they grew up" when you've got an enormous contrary datapoint. Neither is it reasonable to say Alabama produces racists ex nihilo. In the case of Redstone Arsenal, the federal government effective created a Fascist Reservation System and cultivated European extremist refugees like it was some kind of political petri dish.
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You linked a source saying his mother was German, not that she was a Nazi.
I linked a source saying she was a German refugee from 1945 who emigrated to a township staffed full of Nazi emigres. Also, his father was White Russia - 100% a fascist.
They did not move straight to Huntsville.
It's also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis. Was Alexander Kerensky a Nazi?
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God this is fucking exhausting. Good thing this guy's not on trial and this is an Internet forum.
Sure thing chief. You're right it's ridiculous to think a criminal who completely changed the spelling of his birth name, might begin using his middle name as his first while escaping justice. It's ridiculous to think there's anything strange about this guy or his son. He's completely innocent. He was a great man and will forever be remembered as a totally normal guy that nobody should look into any further. He was so innocent of any wrong doings that I find it weird anyone would even suggest or think there's anything weird to even look into. Case closed. Congrassions.
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I mean, isn’t that because the core of the movement was persecuted black Southerners?
You could find persecuted black workers from California to New York to Florida in 1963. Alabama wasn't notable in that regard.
The movement that the nascent 50s civil rights movement tapped into in Alabama was a large socio-economic network of majority-minority townships, allied churches, and civic organizations that the white nationalist state was already struggling to control. Much like with Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the problem in Alabama was that too many black residents were doing too well.
The response to the 60s Civil Rights Movement along the Gulf Coast was to demolish a lot of that black wealth, export jobs overseas, and lynch a lot of those young black leaders.
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It’s also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis.
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It’s also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis.
To quote the wiki page you linked:
The White Armies comprised a number of different groups, who operated independently and did not share a single ideology or political goal.
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You left out the fact that the son has been actively implementing the Nazi agenda in the US. I think that makes it a bit more plausible.
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You left out the fact that the son has been actively implementing the Nazi agenda in the US. I think that makes it a bit more plausible.
I left it out because I don't think that we should use the activities of someone's child to accuse them of doing a separate wrong thing long before the the child was even born. Every single Nazi ever was the child of someone
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Now read the rest.
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Now read the rest.
I know what the White movement is. Their only unifying factor was opposition to the Reds. If you want to claim that it was "openly and explicitly fascist", quote the bit you want. The wiki article does not actually use the word "fascist" at all, so I assume that when you say "explicitly" you either do not actually mean "explicitly" or you are referring to something other than what you linked
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I know what the White movement is.
You clearly don't.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
Jacksonville State University is in Jacksonville, Alabama, not Jacksonville, Florida.
You can also verify which Jacksonville this is supposed be because little Von Spakovsky was born in Huntsville in 1959.
Granted, this thread is full of wild speculation, but the Jacksonville/Huntsville thing is factual.
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I know what the White movement is.
You clearly don't.
Stop dancing around the issue and quote what you are referring to.
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Well if you're saying he was in paperclip, paperclip has been mostly declassified. You can look him up in the rolls here. Not a lot of Russian names on that list, but there might be a few.
Spakovsky or Shpakovskii isn’t in there, but I wouldn’t have expected a sociologist who had been out of work in his field for over a decade to be paper clipped.
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It might not have been your intention, but it just really rubs me the wrong way to hear anybody try and paint this monster in any kind of positive light.
Von Braun was a Nazi and likely committed war crimes, most likely the usage of forced labour. But ultimately he himself did not seem to hold the Nazi ideology that close to heart. He was especially alienated after his arrest by the Gestapo.
The man lacked principles, and seemed fine with using slave labour as long as he could play rocketman. A shitstain, sure. Nonetheless, he doesn't appear to have held any (strong) racial prejudices, afaik not even antisemitism or something.
What I was pointing out is that the shitstains in Alabama were even more racist than the former Nazi immigrants were. So even if Hans turned out to be a racist shitstain, that might not necessarily be because his dad was; it might also be caused by the racists that were around during his upbringing.
I'm not sure what that citation you mentioned contains, but the context it's used in makes it a little ambiguous:
Appealing to the authorities to reclaim property that people believed was unlawfully taken by local officials in the weeks right after the war was also dangerous. After all, investigations would ensue, which could backfire on those who had sought justice from the state. When F. Borisevich from Slutsk (eastern Belorussia) wrote a letter to Ponomarenko, complaining that NKVD officers had taken several of her possessions, among them money and clothes, the Slutsk authorities began to look into the issue. They found out that Borisevich’s husband had been arrested in 1937 and sentenced to forced labor. During the war, Borisevich had shared a house with two local policemen—one of them her grandson, who stole from “partisan and Jewish families.” Slutsk authorities concluded that she had acquired most of her possessions unlawfully during the war, and they decided to pass the case on to a higher court
So either dad did steal from partisans or Jews, or he was merely tried for doing so after seeking justice from authorities. The timeline is weird though, when would this case have taken place? In 1945 he had already left for Germany, so how was he tried by the Soviets? Or was he tried in his absence? Or is that citation referring to a different person?
Spakovsky ended up in Huntsville, likely to join the rest of the Germans who went there. He was a sociologist, not a rocket scientist, so maybe not a priority for operation Paperclip or something.
https://time.com/archive/6935350/the-rocket-mans-dark-side/
For reasons best known to von Braun, who held the rank of colonel in the dreaded Nazi SS, the prisoners were ordered to turn their backs whenever he came into view. Those caught stealing glances at him were hung. One survivor recalled that von Braun, after inspecting a rocket component, charged, “That is clear sabotage.” His unquestioned judgment resulted in eleven men being hanged on the spot. Says Gehrels, “von Braun was directly involved in hangings.”
It seems kinda difficult to easily buy the rosy narrative of von Braun, but also be so skeptical that something seems off about Spakovsky's missing 9 years. The footnote cites his report as a similar case, not the case cited in the text. So does that make him similar to the accused woman? Possibly similar to the woman's grandson who had been a collaborator and the reason she was accused? If Ia A Shpakovskii in the case is actually Anatolli Ignatevich Shpakovskii, it would be interesting to know what he was accused of.
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It’s also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I see what you mean (though "explicitly" needs a citation) but not all so-called white emigres were members of the White Movement; "white emigre" is a misnomer. For example Trotsky could theoretically be called a white emigre, and less tenuously anyone fleeing the civil war would count.
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Read through as well, it does seem like OP is wrong. Can't assume all anti-Communists are Nazis, and the records that do exist don't put him in suspicious places for the timeline. I can understand the desire to make connections to explain his son's views, though.
wrote last edited by [email protected]There’s no need to prove that Spakovsky’s father was a Nazi to explain or hold Spakovsky accountable for his beliefs and actions. Any attempt to do so is a waste of time and a distraction. It also echoes the idea that children inherit the sins of their parents, which I believe is in line with authoritarian thought.
An interesting counter example:
Stephen Miller was born in California, is Jewish, specifically descended from Eastern Europeans who escaped pogroms, the grandchild of immigrants, and the child of democrats one of which was a social worker. Why is he acting so much like a fascist and a key member of an administration that apparently hates California, democracy, social programs, and is hell bent on starting its own anti-immigrant pogroms?
Judge a piece of shit for who they are, not because they come from a long line of pieces of shit.
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Jacksonville State University is in Jacksonville, Alabama, not Jacksonville, Florida.
You can also verify which Jacksonville this is supposed be because little Von Spakovsky was born in Huntsville in 1959.
Granted, this thread is full of wild speculation, but the Jacksonville/Huntsville thing is factual.
Oh shit, thanks for the correction on that. I'll edit the relevant comments
