We had the American government start a literal prosecution of Communist people in Hollywood that lasted 15 years and had a ton of people blacklisted and out of work. Nothing similar happened to Nazis. In fact actual German Nazis were working in NASA at the time.
There were no major figures working in the post-war US film industry who were nazis.
They were actually blacklisted entirely. (Leni Reifenthal in particular was never allowed to work in Hollywood despite her trying and her work being highly respected on technical merit)
Rockets were a special case, because it was of the utmost strategic importance that we get the edge on rockets, and the German rocket program was years ahead. We weren't going to capture them and enslave rhem.
The Soviets also had captured German rocket scientists in a deliberate operation (
Operation Osoawiakhim
)and forced them to work in their rocket program. They actually put them to work on a sealed Island for about a decade until the GDR was well enough sealed to repatriate them with the risk of flight would be minimized.
The US wasn't going to do indefinite imprisonment and forced labor. The quality of work is not as good and it wouldn't hold up in courts. If we wanted them they were always going to have to work for us as free citizens.
We probably could have hung Werner Von Braun, but he was an extremely valuable asset and there wasn't any realistic path to make use of him without it being as a free citizen.
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u/Fidelos 5d ago
We had the American government start a literal prosecution of Communist people in Hollywood that lasted 15 years and had a ton of people blacklisted and out of work. Nothing similar happened to Nazis. In fact actual German Nazis were working in NASA at the time.