I’ve always been a bit puzzled at that one, given that the protagonist spends most of the storyline designing and building warplanes. He’s apparently motivated purely by the love of flight, but consequences are never directly addressed, except for maybe at the end when he comments on how they all got destroyed. Is he wilfully oblivious? Is he on board with Japanese aggression? Is this a comment on the “just doing my job” people involved in any war effort?
I’ve always viewed it as somewhere between “willfully oblivious”, “on board with the war”, and “his love of flight”.
Warner Von Braun built the V2 (among others) rocket for the Nazis, but he always claimed it was because of his love of space flight. And being German he was utilizing the resources he had available to him. Now, that was also while he was being shielded from the majority of questions by the US government so who knows what the real truth was. IMO I believe that he was driven by his desire to see space travel, and the rest of the “bad parts” (slave labour and building terror weapons for the Nazis) could be explained with just good ol fashion racism that was en vouge in the 30s-70s.
How does The Wind Rises fit into this?
Plot spoilers
I’ve always been a bit puzzled at that one, given that the protagonist spends most of the storyline designing and building warplanes. He’s apparently motivated purely by the love of flight, but consequences are never directly addressed, except for maybe at the end when he comments on how they all got destroyed. Is he wilfully oblivious? Is he on board with Japanese aggression? Is this a comment on the “just doing my job” people involved in any war effort?
I’ve always viewed it as somewhere between “willfully oblivious”, “on board with the war”, and “his love of flight”.
Warner Von Braun built the V2 (among others) rocket for the Nazis, but he always claimed it was because of his love of space flight. And being German he was utilizing the resources he had available to him. Now, that was also while he was being shielded from the majority of questions by the US government so who knows what the real truth was. IMO I believe that he was driven by his desire to see space travel, and the rest of the “bad parts” (slave labour and building terror weapons for the Nazis) could be explained with just good ol fashion racism that was en vouge in the 30s-70s.