The list of their achievements is very impressive. We are still using most of the their ballistic technology almost 60 years later. Without creating tedious lists there is also:
Did they get a bad press because they lost the war? If you remove the attempted genocide of the Jews, then they really were an incredibly inventive lot
Well, I’d dispute that. The German economy may have been wrecked by World War 1 and postwar inflation, but it was still one of the more advanced industrial economies in the world before the Nazis arrived: similar to France and Britain, which also suffered in WW1.
Beyond genocide of the Jewish people, there was also agressive invasion of Poland, France, Russia, etc. Quite a bit to “overlook”.
But yes, the technical innovation coming out of Germany at that time was astonishing. Don’t forget the ME jets either.
The U.S. crushes them, destroys them, and spits them out when it comes to inventions even before WWII. It is like comparing a Pee Wee team to the World Series Champions. The U.S. also did not engage in genocide. The Germans were, and still are, good at certain types of engineering but they also go go a little nutty and try and take over the world from time to time and many people don’t find that clever or endearing.
You mean like in hand-to-hand combat, or for their gourmet cooking?
I would say AJP taylor is a well respected historian no? He maintained that the Nazi experiment had economic benefits.
I think it’s widely aknowledged that the Nazis would have had 100 times the technological advancements if they hadn’t sent all the Jewish scientists and engineers fleeing for the US, the UK and the USSR.
A hundred times? How many Jewish scientists and engineers did they have?
I would love to see this wide acknowledgement, perhaps a link of some sort? If it is so wide I’m sure it will be somewhere on the web.
The U.S. did commit genocide against some Native American tribes.
It’s not the Nazis – it’s the Germans. They have an impressive track record in the sciences and engineering, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century. Look at all the pharmaceutrical work, organic chemistry (especially coal-tar derivatives), basic physics, etc.
Just so you won’t feel bad, Goddard’s work preceded Oberth’s and the VfR in rockets, although the Germans stepped up production and development much more during WWII than the US did. The US also had jet planes in research before WWII, I understand, but the Germans actually built and flew some near the end of the war.
I suppose so but that was a little earlier. We learned our valuable lesson that genocide just isn’t nice and moved on.
Germany lead the world in science and scholarship in general from about the mid-nineteenth century to the 1930’s. The modern university was more or less invented in Germany in the nineteenth century. People from other countries (including the U.S.) went there for graduate study, while Germans didn’t have to go elsewhere to study anything. The Nazis actually messed up the universities in Germany because so many academics decided in the 1930’s to move elsewhere, not just Jews (and they were a large part of German academia) but also other people who saw World War II coming. The Nazis were getting by on what was left of the German scientific establishment.
I think being clever is as much a matter of avoiding pitfalls as making impressive technological advances. While one can make an argument for the latter, the former was not their strong point.
Shagnasty writes:
> The U.S. crushes them, destroys them, and spits them out when it comes to
> inventions even before WWII.
This is exaggerated.
Argent Towers writes:
> I think it’s widely aknowledged that the Nazis would have had 100 times the
> technological advancements if they hadn’t sent all the Jewish scientists and
> engineers fleeing for the US, the UK and the USSR.
So is this.
The myth of german technical superiority came about because of two things;
-the germans re-armed BEFORE everybody elese 9ecept the Italians). The meant that in 1939, Germany had the most modern tanks, most modern fighters, submarines, AA guns, etc. However, by 1943, the germans were using a LOT of essentiually obsolete weapons.
-the Germans had some very good generals, who (correctly) pointed out the importance of armored warefare. They designed their tanks to be fast and mobile (unlike the French, who saw tanks as infantry support)
Also, the German Army was very well organized and trained-and they ALWAYS kept a reserve force. As i say, by the end of the war, the germans were behind in all ares of weapons, with the possible exception of jet fighters 9and they could not build enough of them).
The OP’s list, silly as it is, is destroyed with the first point.
Heavy water was exactly the wrong technology to use for atomic development. The U.S. was smart enough not to go down that dead end.
As for the rest, well, remember that Germany before the Nazis was one of the great nations of the world. Only Britain and possibly the U.S. rivaled it. In fact, one of the reasons that the world didn’t act against the Nazis earlier is that Germany was known as one of the great cultures in world history and people continued to carry that image of the nation well through the war and indeed for some time after until the truth emerged.
All one can say about the Nazis is that they despoiled one of the great heritages of mankind, not that created any legacy for themselves.
William L. Shirer claims that the economic hardships from the Treaty of Versailles were not worse than those Prussia imposed on France after the war of 1870. As has been said, many eminent scientists at the time were German. Not all Germans were Nazis. The Nazis deserve “credit” for furthering propaganda techniques that have since been used to deprive millions of freedom, funding and furthering war technology, and using cruel and unethical medical experiments on war prisoners.
The Nazis do not come close to matching the Ancient Greeks or Romans for inventiveness. If you define clever as below, you’d probably want to use a different word.
Clever \Clev"er, a. [Origin uncertain. Cf. OE. cliver eager, AS. clyfer (in comp.) cloven; or clifer a claw, perh. connected with E. cleave to divide, split, the meaning of E. clever perh. coming from the idea of grasping, seizing (with the mind).]
Possessing quickness of intellect, skill, dexterity, talent, or adroitness; expert.
Showing skill or adroitness in the doer or former; as, a clever speech; a clever trick. --Byron.
Having fitness, propriety, or suitableness.
Well-shaped; handsome. ``The girl was a tight, clever wench as any was.’’ --Arbuthnot.
Good-natured; obliging. [U. S.]
Well, Andy Eldritch in his Nazi-goth phase and other have pointed out that the Nazi’s did have the best uniforms…
The Nazi party ruled a nation that has a history of achievement in the arts and sciences. None of the things you listed are Nazi achievements.
The wonder isn’t that Germany did so well, it’s that such an enlightened people fell in with the Nazi schemes so readily.
I think it is a cautionary tale for us as to what can happen when the political leadership capitalizes on a dramatic event to spread unreasoning fear in a nation.