Battleangel

Sixty years ago … the US started Project Paperclip.
While I do think it is somewhat petty blaming the scientists, it is also unacceptable obviously that a few nations (the US first and foremost) took part in this plundering for their own benefit and thus flaunted the rules they themselves claimed to uphold. It seems not much has happened in terms of morality since.

BBC - Project Paperclip: Dark side of the Moon - Sixty years ago the US hired Nazi scientists to lead pioneering projects, such as the race to conquer space. These men provided the US with cutting-edge technology which still leads the way today, but at a cost.

The range of Germany’s technical achievement astounded Allied scientific intelligence experts accompanying the invading forces in 1945.

Supersonic rockets, nerve gas, jet aircraft, guided missiles, stealth technology and hardened armour were just some of the groundbreaking technologies developed in Nazi laboratories, workshops and factories, even as Germany was losing the war.

Thus began Project Paperclip, the US operation which saw von Braun and more than 700 others spirited out of Germany from under the noses of the US’s allies. Its aim was simple: “To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union.”