Anti-Semitism

Via

The US and Nazi Germany

The growing German economy in the thirties had been good to some of America's largest companies, especially the automakers. Ford had established its second largest plant outside of North American in Cologne. General Motors' wholly owned subsidiary, Opel AG, happened to be the largest automaker in Germany. Combined the US automakers constituted the majority of German automotive car production. This was especially critical as German automakers Daimler-Benz and Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had shifted from passenger car production to the service of rearming Germany. - Bhu Srinivasan Americana

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Operation Paperclip

Recently read Annie Jacobsen's book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America. It was a well written book about a difficult subject but a subject that needed telling.

Besides the obvious of Werner von Braun and the German rocket scientists that were integral to the US's space program and landing a man on the moon, the German scientists also contributed to the creation of Agent Orange in Vietnam and the creation of VX gas which was thankfully never used (except as a plot device to the 1996 movie The Rock). The Nazi scientists also laid the foundations for DARPA - so should they be given credit for all the benefits that stemmed from that program?

Central question of the book to me was what is worse - the Nazi's saying they were "only following orders?" Or the Americans looking past what a man had actually done because of what their science could do? I understand it was a different time and the threat from the Soviets was very real. Very real. So I'm biased about our actions because I have the luxury of not having to live through those threats of when nuclear war with the USSR was a real fear.

One "what if" from the book that really troubled me. Germany had huge stockpiles of Sarin gas but never used it (they invented Sarin gas!). They invented this chemical super-weapon but never used it. Why? They were willing to kill millions of Jews and others - why wasn't Hitler willing to use Sarin on the Eastern Front? How different would world history be if they did?