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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

IIRC west germany did end up welcoming some nazis back into government positions so from their standpoint it probably seemed fairly reasonable. There were still Nazis everywhere in postwar berlin.

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They did. Same with the US inviting Third Reich scientists. Or BND, CIA, MI5 and others inviting HVA (Stasi foreign spy agency) people into their ranks.

What, except maybe that states are immoral and opportunistic, does these things tell us?

I am not sure. Maybe I am missing net positive things as outcomes from these behaviors. But to me neither example is good.

Using those scientists to made the bomb to end the war was one positive outcome.

The Operation Paperclip scientists helped build rockets for the post-war era. Not bombs.

The German / Austrian / Hungarian scientists that worked on the bomb came to the US years before the Manhattan project started.

The idea that the bombs on Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki shortened the war in a significant way is in historic sciences at least contested.

I remember my professor at University arguing against the fact that this idea was presented as proven fact, when there were many question in the scientific community.

Not sure how maybe newer evidence might have changed it. I would need to dive into the actual scientific literature to update my knowledge of the topic.

East Germany did that too in the early years for building up their "inofficial army" (called "Kasernierte Volkspolizei") before the "official" NVA (National People's Army) was founded in 1956. After that they mostly got rid of old Nazis in the army though, at least the high-ranking ones. In general, the more specialist and "valuable" an old Nazi was, the more it was likely that his history was quickly forgotten, also in the East.

Exactly. Both sides did this as it’s hard to defeat a country then build it back up when you exclude everyone who who was in the old govt (many who joined the Nazi party for non-ideological reasons).

If you dig into the history it’s pretty interesting. The USSR and France I believe were adamant about de-Nazification, but petered out quickly when they realized it was holding up rebuilding the country. The US and UK weren’t too worried about lower level Nazi’s once the leaders and major war criminals were handled.

In that were the real concern, the DDR would have restricted travel from the West to the East by residents of the West, but not travel by its own residents to the West and return journeys—yet it prohibited the latter.

Moreover the DDR cannot seriously have had such concerns, since it too e.g. employed former Nazi officers in its army.

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