Japan: We have medical knowledge from... experiments, and we'll forever be your economic bitch!
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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You might think that it's "experiments", but "medical knowledge" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence too, the US was predominantly interested in Japanese bioweapons research
Lemme guess, last word has been automatically censored ?
I’ll just test it by myself : removed
I’ll just test it by myself : removed
I need context, what is the word?
B itch. That’s it. Not the first time I’m seeing this word removed automatically. It’s the same on [email protected].
It's a filter on your instance (lemmy.ml)
Holy cow, thank you. Guess I’m out then !
Bitch test
Japan was America's removed lol this is cool
Promising a deal that includes citizenship, a house, a salary, and an administrative position to a Nazi scientist in exchange for their work and knowledge such that one's country can gain ground in a cold war is absolutely fine. It's absolutely totally fine.
Following through with the deal after getting the goods from the Nazi is not. Shoot the Nazi. You always shoot the Nazi.
Two war crimes dont make a right
I apologize if I'm misreading. Are you suggesting that it would be wrong to shoot a Nazi?
After promising safety in exchange for cooperation, and presumably without having convicted them of anything besides their former party affiliation?
Von Braun was not just guilty by association he utilised concentration camp slave labout
yeah Von Braun literally ran some of his rocket research out of a fucking death camp
A man whose allegiance is ruled by expedience?
Ah, now I will admit to there having been a potential nuance. I certainly would want a trial before an execution, for instance. But I also think it would be wrong to assume these scientists were completely morally innocent. Maybe I could be persuaded from my earlier opinion of "You always shoot a Nazi" but there needs to be something to show. A diary entry saying "I'm not sure about this Hitler fella." Something.
Either trial him OR make a deal. You cant make a deal and after getting what you want proceed to trial him.
What you're suggesting is stooping to the level of the nazi cruelty by a complete breach of agreement even after the other party has fulfilled their terms. Also what was that pathetic attempt at baiting the other guy by saying: "aRe yOu SuGgEsTiNg iT iS wRoNg tO sHoOt NaZiS?!!". Like that wasn't even the point of the other guy.
I think many of the scientists weren't Nazis, but rather forced to work for the Nazis, fearing for their and their family's lives. I could be wrong though, it has been a while since I've investigated that matter.
To be frank, it would be hard to siphon out truth from fiction at this point from personal accounts. That said, of course I distinguish between a forced Nazi accomplice and a sympathizer. I am not suggesting that they should be treated the same. I am suggesting that the U.S. was so zealous in its efforts to defeat the Russians that it wasn't making distinctions.
didn't Hitler get the idea of concentration camps from the US?
I think you are idolizing US in this a bit too much, they weren't exactly much better than the nazis.
I mean I know for sure Eugenics were a popular idea in the US during that time, PoC were treated terribly etc.
The second one makes for one less Nazi. Thus less warcrimes. Dont tell me theres some magical "cycle of hate" you're beholden to, just for putting down a child-killing government operative.
What do we do with the naturally born Nazis vs the Nazis that were forced to be Nazis.
I mean, if we're going to be serious, the USSR had its own version of Operation Paperclip. Operation Osoaviakhim
...
On arrival the 302 Germans were split into several groups. A large group of 99 specialists from the Zentralwerke was installed in Podlipki in the north east section of Moscow as part of Korolev's NII-88, 76 design engineers were transferred to Gorodomlya Island, and 23 specialists to Khimki as part of Glushko's OKB-456 for the development of rocket engines.
But once the Germans had been pumped for info, they fell by the wayside. The difference between Russians and Americans was that the Russians didn't put German scientists in administrative positions. They just squeezed them for their findings and retired them. The scientists didn't end up running the fucking departments.
This is not exactly correct. The Soviets did try to get German rocket scientists, but they didn’t get any valuable ones except for Helmut Grottrup. The rest already surrendered to the Americans in advance. The development of Soviet space/rocket program was not the same as the American’s.
However, German scientists (those who were not members of the Nazi Party or involved in the V-2 project) did helped significantly in the R-1 development, especially in gyroscopy which the Soviets lagged behind.
Also, the German scientists were treated very well by Stalin, and even as their program was being ended in Gorodomlya Island, they were given generous compensations for their relocation back to East Germany. However, the Soviet scientists (under the leadership Korolev) wanted to make their indigeous rockets (R-2) and so the German research team in the Gorodomlya Island was mostly restricted to theoretical development, with no means of experimentally testing their theoretical findings, so their G-1 rocket development remained stuck.
Eventually the Soviet scientists already learned how to do everything by themselves (by which point, the R-2 was already much superior to the original German V-2 rocket) and no longer needed the Germans, so their program ended.
Copied and pasted from a past comment of mine:
The entire V-2 team under von Braun from Peenemunde surrendered to the Americans on May 2, 1945 and brought with them more than 400 core scientific-technical employees, full documentation and reports and more than 100 intact copies of the A4/V-2 rockets ready to be shipped to the front, together with the combat launchers and the military personnel trained to operate the missiles.
The Peenemunde site was by then already deliberately destroyed to prevent anything useful from falling into the Soviet hands.
Operation “Ost” did happen, however, but the highest ranked German scientist they managed to recruit was Helmut Grottrup, who was von Braun’s deputy for missile radio-control and for electrical systems. He had claimed to be an anti-fascist, we may never know the truth, but he was indeed imprisoned by the Nazis for a time.
The vast majority of the German specialists who worked for the Soviets were not former associates of von Braun in Peenemunde, but were instead introduced to rocket technology when the Soviets established the Institutes RABE and Nordhausen in Germany after winning the war.
Werner von Braun later remarked:
“… the USSR nevertheless succeeded in acquiring the chief electronics specialist Helmut Gröttrup… But he was the only important catch from among the Peenemünde specialists.”
Other German scientists who worked for the Soviets such as Kurt Magnus and Hans Hoch (leading academics in gyroscopy) as well as Manfred von Ardenne (later awarded Hero of Socialist Labor) came from the academia and adjacent industries, and were not members of the Nazi Party.
They also managed to recruit workers and technicians who were POWs liberated from the Dora concentration camp (which supplied personnel for the notorious Mittelwerk factory, where von Braun had committed crimes against humanity including the torture, beatings and execution of the prison labor). Many of the POWs were involved in the sabotage of the A4 (V-2) rocket production at Mittelwerk, and resulting in substantial proportion of misfires and inaccurate flight trajectory when the Nazis used the rockets against England.
In other words, the Soviets had to reverse engineer pretty much everything from scratch (the R-1, which is the copy of A4/V-2), while the Americans got everything they needed. The Americans only fired the V-2 a few times, and then went on with their own “hybrid” designs such as the Navaho, Aerobee and Viking.
And in spite of all this, with such overwhelming advantage, the Americans still LOST the race against the USSR. The R-7 became the world’s first ICBM to be launched in 1957.
To put it in the terminology of you computer nerds, the Americans got the entire core dev team, with the complete source code and full documentations, and the whole tech support team, while the Soviets had to work with and piece together information from third party developers, and still raced ahead of the Americans.
In fairness, the Russians had one big advantage the Americans didn't..
Russian scientists.
But my point is more that they had no compunction over taking German scientists when presented with the opportunity.
Are Russian scientists extraordinary or something?
Demonstrably so, given the success of Russian industry.
They had a lot of excellent scientists.
Fun fact, the math behind radar stealth was developed by a Russian scientists and was ignored in URSS because it had a shit title. US delayed translating it because they didn't undersrand the title. After a few years somebody at lockeed marting found it and realized what it meant. I think F-117 was developed based on that.
At least von braun and his ilk contributed to science. The same cannot be said for the japanese war criminals behind unit 731, 1855 etc. they were let off scot free for the results of their fucking evil, psychopathic, sadistic GARBAGE “science”/“experimentation” 99% of which had no debatable value whatsoever.
And yet there are still plenty of people online who will defend Japan and say that the US shouldn't have ended the war as quickly as possible. Reading about what Unit 731 did makes the concentration camps seem humane in comparison, and I don't say that lightly. Even today, Japan refuses to acknowledge the crimes against humanity that their soldiers committed.
Japan refuses to acknowledge fucking anything. They call pearl harbor “the great accident/mistake” — they are taught that they HAD to attack the US because we were being hostile and cut off their access to oil, what they don’t teach is WHY we did that. Including all the atrocities they committed in their invasion of china and indonesia.
It’s incredibly frustrating how we’ve just allowed them to brush the whole war under the proverbial rug. Their nationalistic revisions to their text books paint them as victims when in reality they were fucking monsters.
Germany admits their wrongs and thoroughly educates every student about them, which is part of the reason why nobody resents or holds present-day germans accountable for the Nazi’s actions. Japan’s unwillingness to do the same is wrong.
Actually, none of the scientists were found guilty of a crime. (And several of them were investigated.)
You actually believe that? The people who claim that people like Werner von Braun didn't commit any crimes are the CIA and Braun himself. All of the records from Germany were destroyed. It's essentially just taking his word on it to believe he was only involved because "he had to be."
He was literally a member of the SS, the wing of the nazi government that was directly responsible for the Holocaust. He was photographed repeatedly with himmler himself, in uniform. He claimed that those were just ceremonial photos that he had to participate in the keep his career. He also claimed not to agree with the Nazis politically.
Why would you believe anything that a member of the SS said? Especially one as important to the Nazis as von Braun was.
Of fucking course he was never found guilty of any war crimes, the US was actively trying to recruit him. They didn't want to prosecute their newest asset, a man who directly led to the US becoming the globally dominant force it became during the space race. He was useful so the US government deliberately didn't investigate him seriously, took him at his word that he totally wasn't a real nazi, and then used him to invent more rockets for them.
But what are we going to do with all these pitchforks if we listen to reason?
Let's go to the old mill anyway, get some cider.
The soviets of course just took the research notes and therefore got rockets faster
This meme is not even true to be honest. The entire German V-2 team under von Braun surrendered to the Americans on May 2, 1945, with complete packages of intact V-2 rockets (ready for deployment), combat launchers and military personnel trained to operate all those equipments. The Americans literally got everything on a platter.
How does that fact make this meme false?
You can't explain starfield's narrative weakness without citing operation paperclip. Not correctly, anyway
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What war crimes would German military scientists have been executed for anyway? Out of all the Nazi's tried, only 11 were actually executed by the IMT, and thsse were the top, top brass of the party. The Mossad might have tracked down and killed a few more in the decades following, but that was way after the time that this meme references.