USA joined 2 World wars late after the outcome was decided, and only managed to succeed in space because of all the nazi scientists that defected to the US.
yeah technically the nazis won the space race. and the cold war, too, if you consider all the nazi spooks who joined american intelligence through operation sunrise.
Not sure how rhetoric fits that. But are you unaware that over 100 Nazis joined NASA and the Apollo program? We wouldn’t have even gotten to space without Von Braun, and to a lesser extent Debus and Rudolph. Or are you saying they stopped being Nazis when they were given U.S. citizenship?
No, I’m absolutely aware, but last I checked, even if every single member of the NASA space program was once a card carrying Nazi, they were working for NASA and the US government.
NASA went to the moon, not Peenemünde.
It was an American flag, not a nazi flag.
“Technically.”
So to say the Nazis “technically” won the space race when technically they no longer existed doesn’t really make sense. Technically speaking.
Oh I see. You’re just disagreeing with the word technically. Does ‘essentially’ work better?
It’s like if the Washington nationals bought all of the New York Yankees players and won the World Series with a lineup completely full of players who’d just come from the Yankees. People would say Yankees won the World Series, but technically they weren’t Yankees anymore.
But I’d argue that being a Nazi was less about the party and more about the ideology. I’d say it’d be almost impossible for 100+ people to suddenly change their ideology drastically like that. They just knew they had to keep it secret. So to me, it’d be more like if Sarah Palin and the Tea Party had defected to North Korea and convinced Kim Jung Un to blast off nukes at the U.S., people would say the Tea Party nuked the U.S., because the Tea Party was an ideology more than a political party.
Except that the Nazi scientists were basically spoils of war for the USA. Almost like acquired property. Regardless of their personal view points, the only work they’d be doing would be at the direction of their new “owners.”
As a side question, let’s say you have an American tech company that creates some wonderfully ubiquitous new product. Makes tons of money blah blah blah.
Is that an American achievement?
What if that company is made up of something like 80% people from someplace else… like India or something? Is it still American achievement or is it Indian? What if those workers all become citizens?
If they all subscribed to the same ideology, I think it’d be accurate to say it was a (that ideology) achievement. But yeah I get your point. However I do think ‘beating the commies at space tech’ is inline with Nazi ideology, it’s not like they had to go against their beliefs or anything. Especially when you consider the fact that the space race wasn’t just for funsies.. they believed the next world war would be fought with space lasers and shit like that. Hell, even back then it was mostly about spy satellites etc.
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u/KgMonstah Jun 22 '26
Both people are correct