Oh, Nazis

Last Updated on Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:16 Written by Brian! Thursday, 25 June 2009 02:16

oh-nazis

From the V-2 Rocket entry: “Over 3,000 V-2s were launched during World War II against Allied targets, resulting in the death of an estimated 7,250 military personnel and civilians. An estimated 20,000 inmates at Mittelbau-Dora died constructing V-2s, making the V-2 perhaps the only weapon system to have more deaths caused by its production than its deployment.”

Another way to look at it: the Nazis developed the equivalent of a gun that killed ten workers at the gun factory every time it was fired.

I really need to track down a good biography of Von Braun. There’s a horrible Faustian quality to his entire career. Dude just wanted to develop reliable space travel, but he had to pioneer what would become the most devastating weapons platform known to man to get there.

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oh-nazis
  • Ben M.
    First! (jk, I don't care)

    20k? Seriously? Wow, can you say "fired?". Wikipdedia has a nice big article on him.


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

    Hope that helps.
  • Brand
    Well, we dropped the A bomb from planes. And isn't the firebombing of Tokyo still #1 for civilian casualties ever?

    Missiles will probably never kill as many people as bullets or bombs. They're just too expensive. Nukes aside, if it ever comes to that.
  • I thought Dresden killed more? I could be wrong.

    The Nazi 'worker relations' weren't ever what you would call... good.
  • Missiles will probably never kill as many people as bullets or bombs. They’re just too expensive. Nukes aside

    Well, yes, that's my point. Ol' Wernher's tech is what lead to the ICBM which is explicitly for nuclear weapons. We don't need to actually deploy nukes to know that they'd be orders of magnitude more devastating than conventional missiles.
  • Ben M.
    Sorry for going a little off-topic here, but I have a question that either Scott or Brian could answer about the availability of issue 3.3 (the newest one). I checked my comic store (jetpack) and they didn't have it, so I check ebay, they didn't have it, I just checked heavy ink, and they don't even have it. Whats going on?
  • The second issue of the third series is the most recent. The third issue will be available somewhere in July.

    The third issue should have been out by now according to the original dates we solicited for the series, but then our printer and Diamond screwed us huge and delayed the release of the first issue by three weeks, so that pushed back the rest of the issues.
  • I saw this (http://tinyurl.com/kkxsgz) in our campus bookstore (run by B&N) and thought of you!
  • That looks pretty cool. Thanks for the link.
  • Ben M.
    Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I thought I might have stumbled into the twilight zone for a second there.
  • R.Wolff
    I immediately wondered if that book was by Paul Roland as in: the musician Paul Roland, but I wouldn't have honestly expected it to be so. Truly, something new every day.
  • And yet here we are. How unusual!
  • Scott!
    I don't pay attention to the blog for a week and this is what you get up to? Sheesh.
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