Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "" video.

  1. Well done. But as far as Von Braun denying his Nazi ties, he could have signed a thousand documents and that wouldn't have changed the fact that at least 20,000 slave laborers died building his rockets for his Fuhrer. Paperclip was an ethically repugnant program but in the world of the way things are the United States knew the Soviets would snatch up any German scientists they couldn't get to first and Soviet rockets replacing German rockets as a threat to national security was something the Allies were going to do everything in their power to prevent. As far Sputnik is concerned, from what I have read Khrushchev wasn't all that keen on the idea. He got talked into it after being convinced it wouldn't have a negative effect on long-range rocket development which he knew he had to have because bombers cost too much. After he saw the overreaction freak out by the American public, spurred on by one Lyndon Baines Johnson, he got fully on board with the space race. Ike wasn't worried because he knew the Sputnik gap like the later missile gap was a bunch of BS but he did a piss-poor job of communicating that to his fellow citizens who saw death from above. Korolev was a sharp cookie and when he died the program met the same fate as every other Soviet program after the pioneer died or was pushed out, a lesser functionary took over and the race was over. As a child of Apollo I owed a debt to men like Korolev and Von Braun who allowed me and billions of other people to witness our first step on another planetary body, but a lot of people died in the effort, some voluntarily, some at the end of a gun. Those were exciting times though. We don't dream big dreams anymore, and when civilizations stop dreaming big dreams, they start to decline. That has been true throughout the ages, and we will not be the exception. But that little plaque on the Moon will be there long after are kicked off this rock. That's kinda cool. I wonder if another civilization who dreamed bigger dreams will find it and wonder what the hell happened to the race that planted it? Ce La Vie.
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  2. We would have lost thousands of men and the Soviets would have ended up with it anyway because it was in the zone they had been granted at Yalta. Eisenhower made the right decision. Churchill had 19th Century notions of capturing capitals and Montgomery wanted the glory of capturing one for him. Even after he was president Ike didn't like the fact America had to defend Berlin. For him it was symbolism and Eisenhower was a practical, not a symbolic man.
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