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A good historical nugget is that the Americans got a huge leg up in the space race by importing the Germans who worked on the V-2 program. Germans killed Sovie

A good historical nugget is that the Americans got a huge leg up in the space race by importing the Germans who worked on the V-2 program. Germans killed Soviets by the millions. If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could get their hands on you. If you were the Americans, you distrusted the Soviets already, so it was a win-win. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

jgtrosh 29d ago
This went both ways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim
- godwinson__4-8 29d ago
  Yes a good thing to point out, however the American initiative was more successful, was it not? Largely because raw numbers aside, most of the top talent wanted to avoid the Soviets and thus the US was the only logical option. That is, part of what made the American job on this easier is top German talent anticipated some "Operation Osoaviakhim" (or worse) scenario and thus sought out the US as the only way to get out ahead of it. von Braun made major contributions to NASA. My understanding is relatively speaking, the Soviets got the scraps. Not that it made no impact, but just to say the impact of the Germans on the American space program should not be understated, and I don't think it would be accurate to assess the fruits of these two competing operations as equivalent. von Braun and others had a major hand in the Saturn V. Who did the Soviets manage to seize of equal caliber? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
  - lkey 29d ago
    [flagged]
  - generuso 29d ago
    USA got the cream of the crop of the managers of the German missile program, while the USSR got the workers, who actually did the work with their hands and built the parts for the rockets. (One exception was Helmut Gröttrup, the head of the V-2’s guidance and telemetry systems.) In fact, after the war the USSR has briefly reconstituted the manufacturing of V-2 in Germany, employing thousands of people, before transplanting this entire industry to the USSR. This dramatically lifted the level of Soviet manufacturing and relevant metallurgy. von Braun's dissertation was on engine design and testing. But when he built the Redstone missile in the USA, he ordered the engine from a US company -- the engine which was already a generation ahead, compared to the imported German engines which the US engineers studied after the war. Meanwhile, the Soviets have developed even better engines, completely on their own, though with the important parts built using the materials and the equipment brought from Germany. So it is debatable whether having the German higher-ups and having a greater continuity with German design philosophy was a good thing or a liability. It is less well known, but France have also imported a significant number of ex-Peenemunde engineers for their program. And their engines developed in a way different from both the American ones and the Soviet ones -- which definitively shows that although internalizing the German know-how was the starting point for everyone, it did not define the path of subsequent development. Of course, the engines were not the whole story. The Germans took to the USA the advanced prototypes of the inertial guidance systems which were developed for the missiles that were supposed to come after the V-2. And the Soviets got Helmut Gröttrup. This did have its effects in both cases.
    - blini-kot 29d ago
      great comment, just wanted to add a little: all three countries were pioneering rocketry in the 20-30s, more or less in equal measure. I don't know why this WW2 rocket discussion happened to begin with, but people here don't seem to understand that there is no magical inherent technical skill which is unique and irreplaceable. Experience helps to speed things up, sure, but it can be acquired by any program given time and resources, with no talent blockers.
    - flohofwoe 29d ago
      > USA got the cream of the crop of the managers of the German missile program, while the USSR got the workers That's a bit oversimplified. The Russians got quite a few important scientists and engineers in other areas (aircraft design, nuclear physics, electronics, radar, optics), they just didn't make as good use of them as the US (e.g. the 'American Germans' essentially won the space race for the US).
talon8635 29d ago
For any unfamiliar with the history, Russia was a mass murdering machine in this era, vaporizing tens of millions of people, including Russians, in very short spans of time without even a second thought. We all know Germans was. And some people would fling fecal allegations that “so was the US!”. No. German and Russian actions were categorically different than wartime casualties (even brutal, possibly criminal, wartime casualties like fire bombing heavily civilian enemy areas like Dresden)
- deleted 29d ago
  [deleted]
- lkey 29d ago
  You're right, America didn't intentionally engineer the death of millions until after the war, when it became the undisputed global superpower. ...If you choose to intentionally ignore slavery in the American South, Convict Leasing, and Jim Crow. see also what the CIA got up to in Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... And in your living memory: Vietnam, Korea, the vile shit we did to Haiti and Chile, the 'Banana Republics', Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, unconditionally supporting Israel and the Gulf States various war crimes and genocides, etc... And of course, most recently, the sudden and complete excision of life-saving aid to children in Africa, leaving the world's most vulnerable to starve. And also the total embargo on Cuba, to ensure starvation, with the intention of conquest, resource extraction, and collective punishment. but God forbid someone on a message board tarnish the US's sterling reputation (relative to some of history's worst) during WWII.
  - NetMageSCW 28d ago
    How many poor people are you responsible for dying because you aren’t giving enough to support them? Cutting off aid is terrible, but you don’t get to blame the US for their dying - without blaming the rest of the world as well. That isn’t a US issue.
- blini-kot 29d ago
  For anyone actually unfamiliar with history, this is a gross exaggregation made with a sole purpose of equalizing nazi crimes with what happened in the soviet union. History does not work this way, in the early modernity masses were cohesive and industrialized, and so were the crimes and atrocities. Every developed country got to it, but what makes nazis different is that the regime was built with the sole purpose of commiting atrocities, hence the outstanding scale and character of the matter.
Danox 29d ago
They got a leg up and still the Russians with Sputnik got into space first, on top of splitting Korea and winning in Vietnam and having the nuclear bomb fall into their lap and to top it off they appear to have the Manchurian candidate in the White House.
- deleted 29d ago
  [deleted]
- erkt 29d ago
  Take a deep breath.
  - iJohnDoe 29d ago
    If you can't see those points, you need to take several deep breaths.
  - xyzsparetimexyz 29d ago
    [flagged]
    - celsoazevedo 29d ago
      That's just what the countries that defeated Germany did. The Americans had Paperclip, the soviets had Operation Osoaviakhim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim Not to mention the initial dash to get to technology and scientists before the others.
- bigyabai 29d ago
  With fairness to the Soviets, the USSR's reputation for rocket artillery was nearly as impressive as Germany's in WWII. The Allies had less experience scaling and deploying the technology, so they had more to gain by taking in the Peenemünde researchers.
- bpodgursky 29d ago
  The Russians conscripted more German rocket scientists than the Americans got through Operation Paperclip, both programs were bootstrapped with German expertise. Americans got ~1,600, Russians more like 6,000.
bell-cot 29d ago
> If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could... Misleading. Pretty much all Germans were eager to surrender to the Western Allies - US/UK/France. That became the German government's official top priority in the closing days of the war, and Eisenhower threatened to seal the Western Front (to German soldiers and civilians fleeing the Soviets) when the Germans dragged their heels on his terms of surrender. A relatively brief treatment can be found here - https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/catalog/7-9.pdf https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/cat...
- godwinson__4-8 29d ago
  True, I just meant that if you had something of value (like rocket expertise) you would be more likely to get favorable terms. And you knew the Soviets would be extra interested in you. Thus the added "eagerness". But yes the point is on the whole, Germans did not want to surrender to the Soviets. Germans didn't kill millions of American civilians. They didn't level American cities. So, it was perfectly logical as Germany collapsed for any German to fear the retribution of the Soviet armed forces, who they had every reason to see as filled with a rage and a sense of purpose no American would have been able to contemplate.
lkey 29d ago
[flagged]
- godwinson__4-8 29d ago
  It seems you are misreading my comment and the cold realism in which it is articulated (and which the relevant historical actors in this moment operated under) as some sort of endorsement of the act or an ignorance of the accompanying atrocities. Rest assured I only sought to comment in that manner because I find generally on a forum such as this, leading with a sense of outrage (regardless of how justified) is typically unhelpful. I share your sentiments, though I sort of take it as a given on this forum that these aspects of WWII are known. I would guess far less people know about Operation Paperclip, thus the "nugget". If upon learning about this someone needs me to connect the dots to your sentiments, well frankly I would suggest such a person is likely beyond my reach given the nature of the venue we find ourselves in (pseudonymous forum). I would encourage you to not so readily cast aspersions upon your fellow interlocutors here based on turn of phrase alone. Have a nice day.
  - cindyllm 29d ago
    [dead]
JewsKilledChr 29d ago
[flagged]

jgtrosh 29d ago

This went both ways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

godwinson__4-8 29d ago
Yes a good thing to point out, however the American initiative was more successful, was it not? Largely because raw numbers aside, most of the top talent wanted to avoid the Soviets and thus the US was the only logical option. That is, part of what made the American job on this easier is top German talent anticipated some "Operation Osoaviakhim" (or worse) scenario and thus sought out the US as the only way to get out ahead of it. von Braun made major contributions to NASA. My understanding is relatively speaking, the Soviets got the scraps. Not that it made no impact, but just to say the impact of the Germans on the American space program should not be understated, and I don't think it would be accurate to assess the fruits of these two competing operations as equivalent. von Braun and others had a major hand in the Saturn V. Who did the Soviets manage to seize of equal caliber? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
- lkey 29d ago
  [flagged]
- generuso 29d ago
  USA got the cream of the crop of the managers of the German missile program, while the USSR got the workers, who actually did the work with their hands and built the parts for the rockets. (One exception was Helmut Gröttrup, the head of the V-2’s guidance and telemetry systems.) In fact, after the war the USSR has briefly reconstituted the manufacturing of V-2 in Germany, employing thousands of people, before transplanting this entire industry to the USSR. This dramatically lifted the level of Soviet manufacturing and relevant metallurgy. von Braun's dissertation was on engine design and testing. But when he built the Redstone missile in the USA, he ordered the engine from a US company -- the engine which was already a generation ahead, compared to the imported German engines which the US engineers studied after the war. Meanwhile, the Soviets have developed even better engines, completely on their own, though with the important parts built using the materials and the equipment brought from Germany. So it is debatable whether having the German higher-ups and having a greater continuity with German design philosophy was a good thing or a liability. It is less well known, but France have also imported a significant number of ex-Peenemunde engineers for their program. And their engines developed in a way different from both the American ones and the Soviet ones -- which definitively shows that although internalizing the German know-how was the starting point for everyone, it did not define the path of subsequent development. Of course, the engines were not the whole story. The Germans took to the USA the advanced prototypes of the inertial guidance systems which were developed for the missiles that were supposed to come after the V-2. And the Soviets got Helmut Gröttrup. This did have its effects in both cases.
  - blini-kot 29d ago
    great comment, just wanted to add a little: all three countries were pioneering rocketry in the 20-30s, more or less in equal measure. I don't know why this WW2 rocket discussion happened to begin with, but people here don't seem to understand that there is no magical inherent technical skill which is unique and irreplaceable. Experience helps to speed things up, sure, but it can be acquired by any program given time and resources, with no talent blockers.
  - flohofwoe 29d ago
    > USA got the cream of the crop of the managers of the German missile program, while the USSR got the workers That's a bit oversimplified. The Russians got quite a few important scientists and engineers in other areas (aircraft design, nuclear physics, electronics, radar, optics), they just didn't make as good use of them as the US (e.g. the 'American Germans' essentially won the space race for the US).

talon8635 29d ago

For any unfamiliar with the history, Russia was a mass murdering machine in this era, vaporizing tens of millions of people, including Russians, in very short spans of time without even a second thought. We all know Germans was. And some people would fling fecal allegations that “so was the US!”. No. German and Russian actions were categorically different than wartime casualties (even brutal, possibly criminal, wartime casualties like fire bombing heavily civilian enemy areas like Dresden)

deleted 29d ago
[deleted]
lkey 29d ago
You're right, America didn't intentionally engineer the death of millions until after the war, when it became the undisputed global superpower. ...If you choose to intentionally ignore slavery in the American South, Convict Leasing, and Jim Crow. see also what the CIA got up to in Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... And in your living memory: Vietnam, Korea, the vile shit we did to Haiti and Chile, the 'Banana Republics', Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, unconditionally supporting Israel and the Gulf States various war crimes and genocides, etc... And of course, most recently, the sudden and complete excision of life-saving aid to children in Africa, leaving the world's most vulnerable to starve. And also the total embargo on Cuba, to ensure starvation, with the intention of conquest, resource extraction, and collective punishment. but God forbid someone on a message board tarnish the US's sterling reputation (relative to some of history's worst) during WWII.
- NetMageSCW 28d ago
  How many poor people are you responsible for dying because you aren’t giving enough to support them? Cutting off aid is terrible, but you don’t get to blame the US for their dying - without blaming the rest of the world as well. That isn’t a US issue.
blini-kot 29d ago
For anyone actually unfamiliar with history, this is a gross exaggregation made with a sole purpose of equalizing nazi crimes with what happened in the soviet union. History does not work this way, in the early modernity masses were cohesive and industrialized, and so were the crimes and atrocities. Every developed country got to it, but what makes nazis different is that the regime was built with the sole purpose of commiting atrocities, hence the outstanding scale and character of the matter.

Danox 29d ago

They got a leg up and still the Russians with Sputnik got into space first, on top of splitting Korea and winning in Vietnam and having the nuclear bomb fall into their lap and to top it off they appear to have the Manchurian candidate in the White House.

deleted 29d ago
[deleted]
erkt 29d ago
Take a deep breath.
- iJohnDoe 29d ago
  If you can't see those points, you need to take several deep breaths.
- xyzsparetimexyz 29d ago
  [flagged]
  - celsoazevedo 29d ago
    That's just what the countries that defeated Germany did. The Americans had Paperclip, the soviets had Operation Osoaviakhim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim Not to mention the initial dash to get to technology and scientists before the others.
bigyabai 29d ago
With fairness to the Soviets, the USSR's reputation for rocket artillery was nearly as impressive as Germany's in WWII. The Allies had less experience scaling and deploying the technology, so they had more to gain by taking in the Peenemünde researchers.
bpodgursky 29d ago
The Russians conscripted more German rocket scientists than the Americans got through Operation Paperclip, both programs were bootstrapped with German expertise. Americans got ~1,600, Russians more like 6,000.

bell-cot 29d ago

> If you were a German of value (like a rocket scientist) you were eager to surrender to the Americans before the Soviets could... Misleading. Pretty much all Germans were eager to surrender to the Western Allies - US/UK/France. That became the German government's official top priority in the closing days of the war, and Eisenhower threatened to seal the Western Front (to German soldiers and civilians fleeing the Soviets) when the Germans dragged their heels on his terms of surrender. A relatively brief treatment can be found here - https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/catalog/7-9.pdf https://history.army.mil/portals/143/Images/Publications/cat...

godwinson__4-8 29d ago
True, I just meant that if you had something of value (like rocket expertise) you would be more likely to get favorable terms. And you knew the Soviets would be extra interested in you. Thus the added "eagerness". But yes the point is on the whole, Germans did not want to surrender to the Soviets. Germans didn't kill millions of American civilians. They didn't level American cities. So, it was perfectly logical as Germany collapsed for any German to fear the retribution of the Soviet armed forces, who they had every reason to see as filled with a rage and a sense of purpose no American would have been able to contemplate.

lkey 29d ago

[flagged]

godwinson__4-8 29d ago
It seems you are misreading my comment and the cold realism in which it is articulated (and which the relevant historical actors in this moment operated under) as some sort of endorsement of the act or an ignorance of the accompanying atrocities. Rest assured I only sought to comment in that manner because I find generally on a forum such as this, leading with a sense of outrage (regardless of how justified) is typically unhelpful. I share your sentiments, though I sort of take it as a given on this forum that these aspects of WWII are known. I would guess far less people know about Operation Paperclip, thus the "nugget". If upon learning about this someone needs me to connect the dots to your sentiments, well frankly I would suggest such a person is likely beyond my reach given the nature of the venue we find ourselves in (pseudonymous forum). I would encourage you to not so readily cast aspersions upon your fellow interlocutors here based on turn of phrase alone. Have a nice day.
- cindyllm 29d ago
  [dead]

JewsKilledChr 29d ago

[flagged]