Not sure why most commenters are shitting on you. It is an interesting possibility. The apple not falling far from the tree is an expression for a reason.
Yeah it’s almost kinda weird how defensive people are getting with this.
Because they’re making huge unfounded leaps of logic and then doing things like accusing people of defending Nazis for questioning the logic
I read almost every reply. The general tone of responses are “you can’t prove that so be quiet! Also I’m smarter than you”
That seems like a very uncharitable way to describe people pointing out that OP hasn’t actually presented any evidence and has seemingly misread their own source. I think there needs to be something stronger than “was a Russian emigrant who was unaccounted for after the Axis invaded his home” to call someone a member of the Nazi party
You left out the fact that the son has been actively implementing the Nazi agenda in the US. I think that makes it a bit more plausible.
I left it out because I don’t think that we should use the activities of someone’s child to accuse them of doing a separate wrong thing long before the the child was even born. Every single Nazi ever was the child of someone
Buddy, that is not how ideology works. If a guy is doing nazi things, speculating is fair game. If there are circumstantial things, we’ll talk about it.
Go write angry letters to the National Enquirer if you don’t like this stuff, internet commenters aren’t exactly the biggest fish to fry.
If a guy is doing nazi things
The entire problem here is that there is literally no evidence anywhere of the guy in question doing any Nazi things at all
I’m not saying people can’t speculate. I’m saying I think the conclusions they reached are wrong. That’s equally fine to do on the internet
Read through as well, it does seem like OP is wrong. Can’t assume all anti-Communists are Nazis, and the records that do exist don’t put him in suspicious places for the timeline. I can understand the desire to make connections to explain his son’s views, though.
There’s no need to prove that Spakovsky’s father was a Nazi to explain or hold Spakovsky accountable for his beliefs and actions. Any attempt to do so is a waste of time and a distraction. It also echoes the idea that children inherit the sins of their parents, which I believe is in line with authoritarian thought.
An interesting counter example:
Stephen Miller was born in California, is Jewish, specifically descended from Eastern Europeans who escaped pogroms, the grandchild of immigrants, and the child of democrats one of which was a social worker. Why is he acting so much like a fascist and a key member of an administration that apparently hates California, democracy, social programs, and is hell bent on starting its own anti-immigrant pogroms?
Judge a piece of shit for who they are, not because they come from a long line of pieces of shit.
I totally agree. Only mentioned the connection because that might be the motivation OP had to look into this or make this post.
Regarding Stephen Miller, though, or more broadly any child of people who undergo traumatic events, suffering often begets more suffering. That’s why we have so many quips like “hurt people hurt people”. It may be that his views are a rebellion against his family’s for one reason or another.
Also nothing changes that he’s a piece of shit, but y’know.
What’s funny about this is you’re going a long way to imply the father was a fascist/Nazi, when growing up in Alabama in the 50’s is all that’s needed to turn a child into a racist, fascist piece of shit.
Heritage foundation isn’t a Nazi respawn. It’s the American born and bred fascists who have been in America all along. Either way it doesn’t matter. They’re fascists through and through, no different to the nazi’s.
growing up in Alabama in the 50’s is all that’s needed to turn a child into a racist, fascist piece of shit
Alabama was the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights Movement, from Montgomery to Birmingham to Selma. A little unfair to assert it was a state that just makes people racist. The neo-confederates of the post-Depression Era had to work pretty hard to keep cramming Jim Crow down people’s throats decade after decade.
That said, Huntsville Alabama circa 1950 was most notable for Redstone Arsenal, home to the Marshall Space Flight Center. The center was founded through Operation Paperclip, a project to export German rocket scientists to the United States and pump them for their expertise in the field.
A guy with a Nazi mother and White-Russian father who emigrated to a city built around the famous rocketry lab was almost certainly influenced by the German brand of fascist ideology.
That said, the Germans got their strain of fascism from Fordist antisemitism pumped into the country after WW1. So if you’re going to pick a state to blame for The Heritage Foundation’s brand of white nationalist hate, you’d be better off pointing the finger at Michigan.
Alabama was the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights Movement, from Montgomery to Birmingham to Selma.
I mean, isn’t that because the core of the movement was persecuted black Southerners? Alabama having enough of thise guys to kickstart the movement feels like more of an indictment than praise.
It’s like saying the birthplace of antifascism was Fascist Germany or Italy… Like, yeah… It be like it do, because of how it did?
It’s like saying the birthplace of antifascism was Fascist Germany or Italy…
Post-WW1 Italy had one of the largest and most active Communist Parties in Europe. I don’t think it is reasonable to say “Italians are just fascist because of where they grew up” when you’ve got an enormous contrary datapoint. Neither is it reasonable to say Alabama produces racists ex nihilo. In the case of Redstone Arsenal, the federal government effective created a Fascist Reservation System and cultivated European extremist refugees like it was some kind of political petri dish.
I mean, isn’t that because the core of the movement was persecuted black Southerners?
You could find persecuted black workers from California to New York to Florida in 1963. Alabama wasn’t notable in that regard.
The movement that the nascent 50s civil rights movement tapped into in Alabama was a large socio-economic network of majority-minority townships, allied churches, and civic organizations that the white nationalist state was already struggling to control. Much like with Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the problem in Alabama was that too many black residents were doing too well.
The response to the 60s Civil Rights Movement along the Gulf Coast was to demolish a lot of that black wealth, export jobs overseas, and lynch a lot of those young black leaders.
Exactly my thought when I read that.
A guy with a Nazi mother and White-Russian father who emigrated to a city built around the famous rocketry lab was almost certainly influenced by the German brand of fascist ideology.
You linked a source saying his mother was German, not that she was a Nazi. His father also did not move straight to Huntsville in 1951 according to this post, he retired there over a decade later after having worked in
FloridaJacksonville (thanks to derfunkatron for the correction).You linked a source saying his mother was German, not that she was a Nazi.
I linked a source saying she was a German refugee from 1945 who emigrated to a township staffed full of Nazi emigres. Also, his father was White Russia - 100% a fascist.
They did not move straight to Huntsville.
It’s also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis. Was Alexander Kerensky a Nazi?
It’s also absolutely ridiculous to call all White emigres Nazis.
I see what you mean (though “explicitly” needs a citation) but not all so-called white emigres were members of the White Movement; “white emigre” is a misnomer. For example Trotsky could theoretically be called a white emigre, and less tenuously anyone fleeing the civil war would count.
To quote the wiki page you linked:
The White Armies comprised a number of different groups, who operated independently and did not share a single ideology or political goal.
Now read the rest.
Man, they still racist as fuck there.
Or the zionists
Ok… not sure why you’re trying to defend a neo Nazi or his old school Nazi dad, but sure.
I don’t think they were defending him; I think they were saying you don’t need German credentials to be a proper, full-blooded Nazi. Just being American is enough.
Uhm… ok just seems like it’s kind of deflecting from the point that this dude’s dad probably got off the hook for commiting crimes against humanity and was allowed to start over fresh without ever facing justice for the atrocities he directly committed.
I know as an American in many ways, I arguably hold some responsibility for benefiting from an unjust system. Still seems like a distraction in a post trying to call attention to the fact that a man literally trying to overthrow the American government was probably raised by a war criminal, and nobody has ever noticed this or brought it to the public’s attention.
So like the openly racist son of a Nazi war criminal who escaped justice is equivalent to any other American such as myself? Interesting, I would like to imagine I’m not quite as bad for being part of an exploited working class in an unjust system this guy is actively controlling, but I guess if you see it that way, not much I could say to change your mind.
You don’t have to be German to be a Nazi, there are American Nazis.
Are you calling me a Nazi?!?
Jesus you people…
What’s funny about this is you’re going a long way to imply the father was a fascist/Nazi, when growing up in Alabama in the 50’s is all that’s needed to turn a child into a racist, fascist piece of shit.
You don’t have to be German to be a Nazi, there are American Nazis. Just being American is enough
I’m trying to say this is dumb without just coming out and saying this is fucking dumb
You don’t have to be German to be a Nazi, there are American Nazis..Jesus you people…
Why bother with acknowledging reality when we can paraphrase and keep distracting from the original point by getting weirdly defensive bc somebody pointed out a fascist’s dad was also a literal WWII Nazi
Also, this is fucking dumb
Yes, this is dumb. I intentionally paraphrased the comments to be shorter and simpler, in the hope you will not misunderstand them. Let’s try and dumb this down even further: Nazism is neither an ethnic nor a heritable trait.
So like the openly racist son of a Nazi war criminal who escaped justice is equivalent to any other American such as myself? Interesting, I would like to imagine I’m not quite as bad for being part of an exploited working class in an unjust system this guy is actively controlling, but I guess if you see it that way, not much I could say to change your mind.
This guy’s racism was probably influenced by his father’s views, but ultimately separate from his father’s potential nazism. What his father did, said, and believed should have no bearing on an evaluation of his morals. He’s an adult now.
When I was in high school, I was a big fan of George W Bush, because my dad was. Fifteenish years later, my politics are vastly different from my father’s, and though there are overlaps (gay rights, legality of drugs, and privacy laws, mostly), it would be misleading for a someone to say that I inherited those from him.
It’s really hard to find somewhat accurate information on this guy. He seems to have been part of the White Army fighting the bolsheviks until the left for Yugoslavia. He taught there until 1941, when Germany invaded Yugoslavia. He stayed in the country until 1942 or 1945 (unclear), when he left for Bavaria. If the latter, it’s possible he tried to avoid Operation Keelhaul which would have seen him forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union.
After the war he was in an American-run camp for displaced German peoples, where he met Hans mother. They left for the US in 1950/1951 and settled in Huntsville. Since he was connected to the University of Alabama (and was a professor in sociology before the war), it seems likely that he was somewhat connected to Von Braun, who was also important in elevating the UoA.
Interestingly, it’s said that Von Braun and his fellow German scientists were more progressive than the Americans there. Von Braun was threatened by the KKK for a while because he hired black people.
But the timeline is shaky. Hans claims that his dad fought communists in Russia and Yugoslavia (specifically Tito’s), but it’s unclear when he did so. If he left for Germany in 1942 he couldn’t have fought Tito’s communists because he wasn’t around.
Presumably if he was around in this period, he likely due to his nobleman origin would have been part of the Chetniks, who had a complicated relationship with the Axis. Not quite Nazis, but plenty of war crimes to go around still.
But the most credible source I could find claims he left for Germany in 1942, seemingly making it impossible for him to have been part of the Chetniks. Which raises the question: who did he even fight, if anyone at all? He seems to have consistently moved towards areas where there was less or no fighting at the time (and that he could actually move to). It’s not impossible that he tried to avoid the wars once they reached his doorstep. He was also an anti-communist, which at least could explain the move to Yugoslavia and to Germany if it happened in 1945.
I’m not sure if based on these fragile timelines we can conclusively say or suggest he was part of the Nazis, Chetniks or any other group. The gap in his resume could well be explained by the fact that it’s an academic resume, likely leaving things off if they weren’t relevant to his academic career. Had he worked in a factory in that time for example, it probably wouldn’t have been listed either.
We do know that his son’s a fascist shitstain though. Whether he himself was a Nazi is highly unclear given the contradicting timelines and statements.
Von Braun and his fellow German scientists were more progressive than the Americans there.
Most of the Americans there would have been fascist shit stains. But let’s be very clear, there is no way in hell Von Braun deserves the title of more progressive than any other racist shit stain while hiding from justice after performing horrific Nazi experiments on human beings. A Nazi shit stain is a Nazi shit stain. It might not have been your intention, but it just really rubs me the wrong way to hear anybody try and paint this monster in any kind of positive light.
The reason he was hidden in Huntsville vs somewhere more progressive, is bc it was the middle of nowhere and the U.S. government wanted to keep him and the atomic technology he was helping to create, a secret. This is also why it would be a very strange coincidence for Von Spakovsky to end up in Huntsville of all places.
I don’t believe a word his son says about him, but I’d love to read any info you may have found in addition to his son’s rose colored memories.
I’m particularly interested in reading this report that is mentioned in a citation footnote from an article titled ‘What Did You Do during the War?’
Berezino district party committee report on the case of Ia. A. Shpakovskii, 24 May 1946
It might not have been your intention, but it just really rubs me the wrong way to hear anybody try and paint this monster in any kind of positive light.
Von Braun was a Nazi and likely committed war crimes, most likely the usage of forced labour. But ultimately he himself did not seem to hold the Nazi ideology that close to heart. He was especially alienated after his arrest by the Gestapo.
The man lacked principles, and seemed fine with using slave labour as long as he could play rocketman. A shitstain, sure. Nonetheless, he doesn’t appear to have held any (strong) racial prejudices, afaik not even antisemitism or something.
What I was pointing out is that the shitstains in Alabama were even more racist than the former Nazi immigrants were. So even if Hans turned out to be a racist shitstain, that might not necessarily be because his dad was; it might also be caused by the racists that were around during his upbringing.
I’m not sure what that citation you mentioned contains, but the context it’s used in makes it a little ambiguous:
Appealing to the authorities to reclaim property that people believed was unlawfully taken by local officials in the weeks right after the war was also dangerous. After all, investigations would ensue, which could backfire on those who had sought justice from the state. When F. Borisevich from Slutsk (eastern Belorussia) wrote a letter to Ponomarenko, complaining that NKVD officers had taken several of her possessions, among them money and clothes, the Slutsk authorities began to look into the issue. They found out that Borisevich’s husband had been arrested in 1937 and sentenced to forced labor. During the war, Borisevich had shared a house with two local policemen—one of them her grandson, who stole from “partisan and Jewish families.” Slutsk authorities concluded that she had acquired most of her possessions unlawfully during the war, and they decided to pass the case on to a higher court
So either dad did steal from partisans or Jews, or he was merely tried for doing so after seeking justice from authorities. The timeline is weird though, when would this case have taken place? In 1945 he had already left for Germany, so how was he tried by the Soviets? Or was he tried in his absence? Or is that citation referring to a different person?
Spakovsky ended up in Huntsville, likely to join the rest of the Germans who went there. He was a sociologist, not a rocket scientist, so maybe not a priority for operation Paperclip or something.
https://time.com/archive/6935350/the-rocket-mans-dark-side/
For reasons best known to von Braun, who held the rank of colonel in the dreaded Nazi SS, the prisoners were ordered to turn their backs whenever he came into view. Those caught stealing glances at him were hung. One survivor recalled that von Braun, after inspecting a rocket component, charged, “That is clear sabotage.” His unquestioned judgment resulted in eleven men being hanged on the spot. Says Gehrels, “von Braun was directly involved in hangings.”
It seems kinda difficult to easily buy the rosy narrative of von Braun, but also be so skeptical that something seems off about Spakovsky’s missing 9 years. The footnote cites his report as a similar case, not the case cited in the text. So does that make him similar to the accused woman? Possibly similar to the woman’s grandson who had been a collaborator and the reason she was accused? If Ia A Shpakovskii in the case is actually Anatolli Ignatevich Shpakovskii, it would be interesting to know what he was accused of.
Your citation there shows von Braun being a total shitstain, but not necessarily a racist shitstain. He lacked morals and principles, and used slave labour; but it doesn’t seem like he cared much about who the slaves were. So he doesn’t seem to have ended up having any qualms about hiring black people. I suppose it makes him slightly more progressive, but not necessarily any less of a bad person.
Regarding Shpakovskii, it’s unclear what he was accused or convicted of, and it’s unclear if whatever the allegations were were also true. But given the example provided, it seems the worst thing he could be getting accused of there is stealing from partisans/Jewish people, which is bad but not a war crime (assuming his case is indeed ‘similar’ to the example provided in that text).
I’m not sure we can figure out what this guy did exactly with just online sources, I can’t exactly find much more on the man. Given the evidence, he could in theory have been a Chetnik, which would fit his motivations and background. Being a full-blown Nazi seems less likely. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved in any war crimes, but there’s currently nothing that suggests that he was.
I really haven’t delved into this subject, but I have a theory
Maybe the kind of racism that SS Germans hold is different from the racism that is prevalent in the US.
The SS would view any non-Aryan, meaning most Americans, on the same level regardless of skin tone. Blacks from Missouri, Metis, Cajun, Mennonite would all be the same.
So the KKK would have their panties in a twist about the black Americans on staff, crying that Braun hired animals, while Braun would be confused because from his perspective, he only has animals to hire.
This could be a very funny key and Peele sketch, like a no true Scotsman but who’s more racist.
Again I haven’t looked into the Nazi perspective justifying their racism so I might be way off the mark.
At first I thought you were implying the dad was a part of Operation Paperclip. But that would require Nazis to have recruited an ethnic Slav for missile work.
Then I wonder if you’re implying dad might have been a Soviet spy targeting the stuff in Huntsville. And that seems more plausible. Under that scenario it is likely that significant parts or all of the refugee story are real, and that can be fashioned into decent cover.
And then it’s also plausible that there is no meaning, and a refugee settling in Huntsville is mere coincidence.
“Settled in Yugoslavia after WWI” means White Russian, so not really Soviet agent material.
There were plenty of reasons to flee Russia after WWI other than being a member of the White Movement. I mean you had civil war, famine, terror, more terror, etc. Plenty of reasons to fuck off and never look back.
Oh, yeah, Interwar Yugoslavia was full of Russians who weren’t necessarily politically slanted, but took one look at the mess and went “fuck that”. They’re commonly referred to as ‘whites’ because the ‘reds’ are presumed to have stayed in Russia.
I was more saying that jumping from “ethnic Russian” to “Soviet spy” is going the wrong direction. Presumably, someone pro-Soviet would go back when the revolution ended, whereas I can’t help but notice this dude stayed until '41, disappeared just about when the Nazis rolled in, and then reappeared just about when the Soviets were releasing Nazi POWs.
By the looks of the dates he left Yugoslavia when the Axis attacked, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do
Operation Paperclip
So the idea of apolitical nazi scientists just working on rockets is kinda not true when you look closer, but the real meat is Operation Bloodstone, where nazi officers were brought over snd given immunity to help run anticommunist programs.
I went to Paperclip because of the connection to Huntsville specifically with Redstone and NASA.
Oh, I didn’t know about the Huntsville connection.
An ethnic slav? He was born in Saint Petersburg…
And sure, it could just be a coincidental 9 year gap in his resume starting in 1941 and have nothing to do with him being a Nazi
Why would it be weird for an ethnic Slav to be born in the capital of the Russian empire? And are you suggesting he was a member of the Nazi party while he was teaching in Yugoslavia?
I’m suggesting he was a member of the Nazi party during the 9 years of his resume that are blank.
He was a teacher in Yugoslavia until 1941 and then I guess he took a nearly decade long sabbatical. Then suddenly he was in Germany . Then suddenly Huntsville.
His son wrote an essay after his mom died about how he wasn’t a Nazi, but his son is also a pathological liar who was responsible for preemptively stirring up an insurrection based on false claims he made about 2020 election security…
The country he was teaching in got invaded by the Axis in 1941. Of course he stopped teaching, the literal biggest war in all of history had come to his doorstep. It should not be that surprising for records to become patchy at that point
I agree that we shouldn’t bother with what his son says, that guy is not going to be a useful source here. It just seems like a huge leap to say “the fascists invaded his home and we don’t know what he did, therefore he must have joined them”. Surely if he was that much of a Nazi, he’d have gone to them instead of waiting until they came to him?
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/russia-hitler-white-russian-emigres-and-german-soviet-war
Defeated by the Red Army in the Russian Civil War of 1918–20, the Whites spent the next two decades in exile in Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, and beyond, yearning to liberate Russia from what they saw as the godless rule of Jews and Bolsheviks. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, many Russians sought to join his forces, blind to the fact that he aimed not to liberate Russia but to subjugate it. The Nazi regime, in turn, regarded these Russians with suspicion and enlisted only a fraction of them, mostly as interpreters and civil engineers. The Whites refused to see their homeland as anything but a victim of communism or to admit that Red Army soldiers were defending their country against Nazi aggression.
https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Roots-Nazism-Socialism-1917-1945/dp/0521070058 This book examines the overlooked topic of the influence of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Russian exiles on Nazism. White émigrés contributed politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically to National Socialism. This work refutes the notion that Nazism developed as a peculiarly German phenomenon: it arose primarily from the cooperation between völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. From 1920–1923, Adolf Hitler collaborated with a conspiratorial far right German-White émigré organization, Aufbau (Reconstruction). Aufbau allied with Nazis to overthrow the German government and Bolshevik rule through terrorism and military-paramilitary schemes. This organization’s warnings of the monstrous ‘Jewish Bolshevik’ peril helped to inspire Hitler to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union and to initiate the mass murder of European Jews. This book uses extensive archival materials from Germany and Russia, including recently declassified documents, and will prove invaluable reading for anyone interested in the international roots of National Socialism.
Unless this book talks about Shpakovsky specifically - and I assume you’d have mentioned it if it did - this is not proof of anything at all. You cannot take, “a lot of Russians joined up with the Nazis after the October Revolution,” to show that one specific guy was a Nazi; this is the ecological fallacy at best, even if we assume that most white emigres did that. Like, it would be absurd to call Alexander Kerensky a Nazi, and yet your logic here does exactly that.
Sure if you also ignore the fact we can’t seem to account for what he actually did during the war or following the war before he suddenly pops up in this middle of nowhere town where the U.S. happened to be hiding other Nazis.
I would be very curious to read this report though if you can find it for me: Berezino district party committee report on the case of Ia. A. Shpakovskii, 24 May 1946
Bc it does seem that he was at least accused of Nazi collaboration at some point.
He blanked for nine years then very briefly surfaced in Germany before somehow coincidentally ending up in the same middle of nowhere town in the U.S. where the U.S. government hid other Nazis to avoid trial in exchange for expertise they could offer that they didn’t want falling in the hands of the Soviet Union. Mainly to help further develop nuclear weapons and other atomic technology, but in general anything that they felt could give the U.S. and capitalism an advantage over the soviets and communism.
As I replied to you elsewhere, your own post does not say that he moved to Hunstville in 1951. Additonally, being a WWII refugee with useful skills is not an indicator of Naziism.
Well if you’re saying he was in paperclip, paperclip has been mostly declassified. You can look him up in the rolls here. Not a lot of Russian names on that list, but there might be a few.
Spakovsky or Shpakovskii isn’t in there, but I wouldn’t have expected a sociologist who had been out of work in his field for over a decade to be paper clipped.
He was born in Saint Petersburg…
Uh, yes, the capital of Russia? Your point?
No point, he was a white emigre born in Russia and an ethnic slav mystery solved. He was also a Nazi. He started teaching in Yugoslavia and then suddenly stopped in 1941. Then yada, yada, yada it was suddenly 1950 and he popped up in Germany and then Huntsville, Alabama.
Now his son is in the Heritage Foundation, he’s destroying everything, and he looks like he intentionally modeled himself off the nazi villain from Indiana jones
So Hans Anatol von Spakovsky was an immigrant anchor baby?
More of a paperclip baby
I don’t know if you can really call Huntsville a small town? It’s a city of almost a million people, including the suburbs around it.
In 1941?
Technically I don’t think he got to Huntsville until 1951, but yeah when he got there it was a town of less than 17k people and only 4 square miles.
In 1941 he was somewhere else… Doing something. Who knows what. We can’t say for sure what he was doing before he suddenly reappears in Germany in 1950 and then off to the city that never sleeps, Huntsville, Alabama, in 1951.
Your post doesn’t say he moved to Huntsville in 1951, it says he retired there over a decade later after teaching in the university in Jacksonville,
FloridaAlabama (thanks to derfunkatron for the correction)Jacksonville State University is in Jacksonville, Alabama, not Jacksonville, Florida.
You can also verify which Jacksonville this is supposed be because little Von Spakovsky was born in Huntsville in 1959.
Oh shit, thanks for the correction on that. I’ll edit the relevant comments
deleted by creator
Huh, if only there was some way to know how big Huntsville was in 1951
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Huntsville,_Alabama
It’s hilarious how many random points you have to swat down, like people are playing gotcha with every aspect of the post.
