559

submitted 1 day ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

70 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 21 points 1 day ago

The US is all about realpolitik

Not to excuse the US's history of foreign diplomacy, but I think it would be naive to believe that there exists any major power who doesn't treat geopolitics with the same level of pragmatism.

The Soviets hated the Nazi even more than the US did and yet they still had their own version of paperclip. Operation Osoaviakhim brought almost double the number of Nazi scientists into the Soviet Union.

[-] azi@mander.xyz 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Osoviakhim was somewhat more ideologically consistent than Paperclip. The scientists weren't invited to the USSR with promises of cushy jobs and immunity from prosecution: they were forced from their homes, loaded onto freight trains, and made to work. It was part of the wider program of the Allies using the forced labour of ethnic Germans as a means of war reparations.

[-] Bloomcole@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago

Unlike the Soviets the US/UK did everything to keep nazis in power and save them.

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 4 points 19 hours ago

I mean, the Soviets didn't offer them any guarantees. But I think that's more of a byproduct of how they held leverage over the specialist, and more of a difference in how the two cultures choose to motivate employees.

Despite this, the affected specialists and their families were doing well compared to citizens of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Zone, apart from the suffering of deportation and isolation. The specialists earned more than their Soviet counterparts. The scientists, technicians and skilled workers were assigned to individual projects and working groups, primarily in the areas of Aeronautics and rocket technology, nuclear research, Chemistry and Optics. The stay was given for about five years.