Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

98 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
and that’s essentially what the community dealt with, was
the white power structure at NaSa. 24
the Germans’ commonality with other white citizens of the area expressed
itself in other ways as well. Just like most white Southerners of huntsville, the
newly arrived Germans did not appear to be openly opposed to the system
of racial segregation. the fact that they had been members of the privileged
majority in Nazi Germany in a system that segregated and persecuted Jews and
other minorities made their silence towards the Jim Crow system appear to
be a continuation of the same tragic callousness towards those constructed as
racially or otherwise inferior. 25 the commonality based on beliefs in being of
the same race seemed tightly linked to common experiences and histories of
racial privilege. 26
Smith points towards this important relationship and connects the use
of slave labor for the production of the V-2 rockets during World War II with
the slave labor system of the United States in the seemingly not so distant past,
ofering one explanation for why the German rocket engineers’ past seems to
be overlooked by many in huntsville:
and, so these people love von Braun and will not hear about
the Mittelwerks . . . (in) huntsville . . . I don’t hear any
24. ray interview, July 17, 2007.
25. Germans who were adults during the Nazi period in Germany may not have all known to
what extent the persecution of Jews was being carried out, but there is no doubt they saw
and would have often been part of the treatment of Jews and other minorities as second class
citizens or worse. Very few tried to intervene. robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and
Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford and New York: Oxford University press, 2001).
26. the term “race” is a highly contested and socially constructed term. Which race a person is
associated with or applies to himself or herself depends on factors such as location and historical
context. as in many other countries, racism and racialization have a long standing history in the
United States and in Germany. For the relationship of racism and racialization between europe
and the United States, see, for example, David theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the
Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, Ma, Oxford, UK: Blackwell publishers Inc., 1993) and Stefan
Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York,
NY: Oxford University press, 1994). For the United States specifcally, see: Michael Omi and
howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States (London: routledge, 1994); edward W.
Said, Orientalism (London:penguin, 1978); Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary peller,
Kendall thomas (eds.), Critical Race Theory (New York, NY: the New press, 1995); Lipsitz,
The Possessive Investment In Whiteness, (philadelphia, pa: temple University press, 1998). For
Germany specifcally, see: tina Campt, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race,
Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich (ann arbor, MI: University of Michigan press, 2004);
heide Fehrenbach, Race After Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America
(princeton, NJ: princeton University press, 2005); Friedrichsmeyer, Sarah, Lennox, Sara,
Zantop, Susanne, The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (ann arbor,
MI: University of Michigan press, 1998); Uli Linke, German Bodies: Race and Representation
after Hitler (New York, NY: routledge, 1999).