Wasn't Von Braun a Nazi?

I don't believe he was ever a member of the Nazi party but he did do rocket and missile research for the Germans during WWII. He "defected" to the US under mysterious circumstances at the close of the war.
The movie is based on a true story.

1) Well, yeah, he was, but being a member of the Nazi Party and/or serving in the military (includng SS) was not exactly a voluntary activity in Germany in the late 1930s/early 1940s. Von Braun's military positions, from the best reading I have been able to make, were largely "ceremonial" so he would have security clearance to work on dangerous weapons systems.

2) The Nazi regime operated for the most part on a "need-to-know" basis, especially when it came to horrible stuff like genocide, crimes against humanity, etc etc. Von Braun was probably never in a situation where he really needed to know any of that stuff so it's very unlikely he was allowed to know much about it. The use of slave labor in the V-2 factories he probably knew about, but that didn't start until mid-to-late 1944 by which time the war was basically going down the chutes for the Germans and they needed all the manpower they could get to build the V-2. Von Braun probably knew the V-2 factory workers were not all there voluntarily but for him to object to it would have meant quick execution.

At several points in 1944, WVB sent memos up the chain of command complaining of shoddy workmanship by the slave laborers on the V-2 production line. Some of the V-2 slave workers were picked out of (mostly Jewish) prisoners with engineering or manufacturing backgrounds because Von Braun and other members of the V-2 team felt the work was too complicated for average lesser-educated prisoners and WVB felt (probably correctly) the "shoddy workmanship" was really more like passive-aggressive sabotage.

Some of the Nazi military brass (possibly up to Hitler) felt Von Braun was a pampered academic golden boy and they got tired of hearing his complaints about sloppy work by the prisoners -- especially since he had been the one who had demanded "more qualified" slaves in the first place, who may have been more willing and able to screw up the finished V-2 product with "minor errors."

Von Braun was, of course, arrested by the SS at one point on suspicion of subversive activities and kept under arrest for several weeks, so it certainly cannot be said he was always an enthusiastic participant in the Nazis' plans.

3) Of course anybody living in Nazi Germany under the rule of Hitler would have heard all sorts of anti-semitic, racist, etc etc rhetoric over the course of many years, but that was not really unusual in Europe in the early 20th century so most people would have thought nothing much of it. It would be very comparable to living in the southern US in the late 19th/early 20th century, in regards to your attiudes toward blacks.

4) Von Braun certainly knew the V-2 was going to be used to kill people in the war. In that respect he is no different from Allied scientists who worked on the B-17, the B-29, the Manhattan Project, etc etc.

5) To sum it up: WVB was certainly a member of the Nazi Party; it would have been highly surprising if he had not. In my opinion his participation was mainly because he wanted government support for his projects, and once his skills were known, the military wanted his services whether he was willing or not.

While WVB does bear some responsibility for supporting the Nazi regime, it wasn't like he was personally shoving Jews into the ovens. My assumption is like most Germans he didn't know that much of the Nazi atrocities and also probably didn't want to know.

He worked to support the Nazi regime because the alternative was the firing squad. When the war was ending he surrendered to the Americans because he figured he would be executed by the Soviets.

FWIW, I suspect pretty much all the German rocket specialists, even after they had been in the US for decades in the 60s and 70s and were prominent members of NASA, were probably kept a very close (but discreet) eye on by the CIA and FBI.

Yeah, but not the "Ve haff vays of makink you tahk..." kind with the monocle and scar...

"The single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom."

He was also a scientist.

"Operation Paperclip" - U.S. government gave safe heaven to Nazi scientists in return for their "research" knowledge from human experimentation, among other things.

Spread the truth with knowledge.

Yes, and the Soviets (Russians) who suffered second worst in WW2 (Chinese people suffered the worst- those that claim WW2 was all about THEIR suffering don't even rank in the top three) wanted to try and execute all the key Nazi scientists for war-crimes.

However, the British and Americans offered complete immunity to ANY Nazi war-criminal who had scientific skills (including Josef Mengele), so the Soviets were forced to do the same to ensure the US war machine post-WW2 would not be in a position to inflict worse atrocities against the Soviet Union than the Nazis had during WW2.

The USA created the Cold War, and the arms race that led to the USSR becoming the dominant nuclear weapons owner on the planet (a situation that continues to the current day). Had the USA agreed to try Nazi scientists for war-crimes, as Stalin demanded, America would have taken the lead in space technology from the very beginning, although it would have taken America a little longer to put the first satellite into space. In other words, America would have been first, BUT Man's presence in space would have taken longer without the expertise of the Nazis.

In fact America's terrible mistake FORCED the Russians to create excellent relationships with the Germans in East Germany from the very beginning, whereas if America had not been so moronic, the Russians would have continued to treat the Germans terribly for decades as a response to German atrocities in Russia.

The Soviet Union was literally made vastly stronger and more powerful by America's evil desire to work with the most wicked Humans from Japan's and Germany's mass murdering wartime science departments, rather than see these monsters punished for their crimes.

It is even sicker when you consider that America PARDONED all those Japanese scientists who had experimented on living captured US servicemen, if those scientists agreed to turn over their research to the US, and continue the same line of work for the US military.

The entire American space program, as well as advancements in just about every field - pretty much entirely due to German/Nazi engineering.

Von Braun and his team will always be controversial.

He was working on the rocket program long before the war. The Germans were inspired by Robert Goddard's pioneering. When the Nazi's took the Germany over to get funding you had to be part of the party. Slave labor was used to build the V-2s.

At the end of the war his team made the conscious decision decision the US would apply the peace time applications he intended before the war. This is why they surrendered to the Allies. There is no way he was naive to think no matter what side they surrendered it wouldn't be continued to be used for the military.