The US literally beat the Nazis to developing fission technology, i.e. nukes (admittedly with a very international research community). It’s quite clear just from that, that the US had plenty of strong scientists before they brought in Nazis/Nazi collaborators from overseas.
As a complete side note: I believe it’s been speculated (by people who know much more about this than me) that Nazi research on nukes, among other things, was hampered by researchers like Heisenberg deliberately dragging their feet because they were forced to work on the projects but didn’t believe in the cause. I’m not meaning to clear the name of any Nazi collaborators, but pointing out that not all scientists working under the Nazi regime were necessarily nazis.
Nuke and atomic technology was one thing … and the Americans basically had that in their pocket regardless if they had Nazi scientists or not
The big leap that the Americans made with Nazi scientists was to pair atomic technology with ballistic missile technology.
When you just have a bomb and you need a big slow moving aircraft to deliver the bomb, then it is almost useless as there are plenty of ways to take down a jet in mid flight before it even reaches a target.
The unholy match that humanity came up with was to pair nuclear weapons with missile technology … which created a weapon that is nearly unstoppable and completely dangerous for all of humanity.
The US literally beat the Nazis to developing fission technology, i.e. nukes (admittedly with a very international research community). It’s quite clear just from that, that the US had plenty of strong scientists before they brought in Nazis/Nazi collaborators from overseas.
As a complete side note: I believe it’s been speculated (by people who know much more about this than me) that Nazi research on nukes, among other things, was hampered by researchers like Heisenberg deliberately dragging their feet because they were forced to work on the projects but didn’t believe in the cause. I’m not meaning to clear the name of any Nazi collaborators, but pointing out that not all scientists working under the Nazi regime were necessarily nazis.
Nuke and atomic technology was one thing … and the Americans basically had that in their pocket regardless if they had Nazi scientists or not
The big leap that the Americans made with Nazi scientists was to pair atomic technology with ballistic missile technology.
When you just have a bomb and you need a big slow moving aircraft to deliver the bomb, then it is almost useless as there are plenty of ways to take down a jet in mid flight before it even reaches a target.
The unholy match that humanity came up with was to pair nuclear weapons with missile technology … which created a weapon that is nearly unstoppable and completely dangerous for all of humanity.