The even wilder thing is that the CIA actively hired former Nazis (and relocated them and their families) in Operation Paperclip after the war to aid in Cold War operations...
The Soviets and British did the same thing, IIRC.
The lesson is simple: if you're going to lose a war, lose a war as a guy who is good at something, because the new management will be a lot less likely to hold crimes against humanity against you.
Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown,
"Ha, Nazi, Schmazi, " says Wernher von Braun.
http://www.protestsonglyrics.net/Humorous_Songs/Wernher-Von-...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9735018/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publications/la-famine-...
To believe that anti-Soviet sentiment was "derangement" is extremely delusional.
A significant amount of Soviet military “research” was done in the West.
Others were hired for their expertise as spies, secret police and worse:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-age...
"Some spies for the United States had worked at the highest levels for the Nazis.
One SS officer, Otto von Bolschwing, was a mentor and top aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the “Final Solution,” and wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews."
If that slip is the reason for the downvotes, fine. Otherwise, blame the NYT.
An example of loyalty tests in current US politics did come to my mind, but it wasn't that one.
Notably, nobody in this entire comment section has been able to articulate how the space race has improved humanity more than equivalent efforts that focus on human quality of life, like implementing a public healthcare system. Whitey On The Moon rings just as true now as it did 60 years ago. Political posturing that happened to spawn technological development is a poor excuse for lack of coherent values. The fact that we achieved something that is truly admirable does not excuse for the general lack of giving-a-shit-about-humans that surrounds national politics. You know what else would be admirable? Taking care of our neighbors even if they don't contribute to the GDP.
Essentially, the US seems to have a habit of being "forced" to ally with undesirable elements after some lapse in geopolitical awareness or effort leads to hostilities (sound familiar?).
Surely you cannot believe that?
I'm not saying that the US and Soviets ever would have been strict allies like we became with Japan, but a calmer entry to the post-war period might have cooled nerves and prevented the worst excesses of the Cold War. Do they seek the bomb? Do they ruin Afghanistan? Do we have flashpoints in Korea, Vietnam, South America? Are we still dealing with the negative ramifications of these events, decades on? And, in this hypothetical alternate history, did we have to employ and grant amnesty to literal Nazis to counter Soviets threatened by the Truman Doctrine? We can't know, but surely it's believable. Unless you think that mid-century communists were evil and irrational (and I suppose that you could (not me)).
Only if you ignore communist antagonism in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Up to and including their own allies when they gave their citizens a little too much freedom. I have several books in Czech on my shelf with a copyright date of 1968, a year in which far more books were published than years prior, I wonder why they share that year?
1) The Soviet blockade of West Berlin. The Soviets did this in response to the horrifically aggressive acts of the US, Britain, and France to... manage their occupation zones in Germany differently than the Soviets wanted them to, and economic and currency reform in West Germany.
2) The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. As far as I can tell, western involvement in Dubcek's reforms and the Prague Spring were about as non-existent as possible. This didn't stop the Soviets and other Warsaw Pact nations invading their own ally, and in explicit violation of the Warsaw Pact itself.
3) The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam. The west's bizarre support of the Khmer Rouge after the successful Vietnamese invasion notwithstanding (for complex geopolitical reasons), prior to the invasion it treated both Cambodia and Vietnam as enemies and the war between the two nations was do to their own politics, not any US influence.
And there are plenty more. And I'm sure there are instances you can bring up where the combloc countries were reacting to clear aggression by the west, but here's the thing: I'm not claiming that such aggression never happened. Meanwhile you seem to be arguing that the combloc countries would have been perfectly peaceful if they didn't need to react to aggressions by those damn western capitalists.
Wait, why would the Soviet Union see a pledge to protect nations from authoritarian threats as aggression?
Later developments would also prove the doctrine's stated intentions to be a farce, as much of its execution involved toppling democracies in favor of US-backed autocrats.
Yes.
>and that made it justified
I didn't say that. Their reaction may not have been justified, but it, or some like reaction, was understandable, even predictable - and, most importantly, a reaction. Speaking from the perspective of the West, who could not control the USSR's behavior, but who could measure its own actions against what would provoke or placate them: did we do everything we could to avoid the Cold War? Did we AVOID doing anything that might have pushed both states towards it? Clearly not.
So, circling back: when we talk about the US spiriting Nazis away to America, setting them up with a happy American life, justified by the necessity of staying ahead of the Soviets in a military and technological arms race... Where does that necessity come from? Something unavoidable, or not? That's my only point here. It's wild that America created conditions where we felt the need to harbor mass murderers and/or their enablers, when we needn't have had to. I don't know why that idea makes you so angry.
Or even to the Soviets' stated rationale for taking action -- the introduction of the Deutsche Mark in West Berlin?
I'd really like to see your careful, considered response to this question.
Seems you can't bring yourself to simply say, "it was antagonistic" for some reason.
"Is the sky blue?" - "Well, it isn't non-blue ..."
Which was?
No need for fancy optic effects here - just say what you mean.
>Maybe I do, maybe I don't.
>But this we do know: per previous replies, if we can't agree on appropriate language to discuss the color of the sky on a given day -- that is, if I can't get a straight answer from you in response to an extremely straightforward question about a single event in 1948 -- then we're not going to be able to communicate with each other in regard to the bigger-picture stuff.
>Which was?
>No need for fancy optic effects here - just say what you mean.
I see that you're angry that I did not take the bait of trying to contradict your premise. Sorry; much as you may hate it, we agree that the siege was antagonistic. My straight answer, I'll repeat: antagonism in response to previous antagonism is, at the very least, understandable. In this case, "Who started it?" is significant.
I'm trying to falsify my own stance by finding an instance where the USSR did something aggressive and uncalled for that wasn't a response to Western rhetoric or behavior. One might say the various invasions in the run-up to WWII, but those come after Truman's famous, "Let 'em kill each other," line; Western enmity was preexisting, at that point. And I reject the notion that it comes down to their human rights record, considering our own (even at that time). It seems to come down to a bitterness over the West's inability to turn its totalitarian machine towards at least the facade of our desires and ends (a la China for much of the 90s and 2000s). It's just one of many examples where the West has interpreted a failure to kowtow to our ambitions as an existential threat. This is the dumbshit recklessness that I'm referring to when I say that we started the Cold War.
Also, this is the last time I'm assuming good faith on your part. I would say, "Don't fuck it up," but part of me thinks that you'll take that as a challenge.
Antagonism in response to previous antagonism is, at the very least, understandable.
Next question then: was the response ... proportionate? You know, blockading a a whole city, so that nothing can get in, not even diapers or baby food? That's like, an act of war, right? In response to -- currency reform?
More specifically: would you say the Soviet response to that situation was -- "understandable"? Would you now?
Or was it more like -- dumbshit recklessness?
This is an extremely myopic point of view, and ignores a whole host of major events in Europe and Asia in the key years 1946-1950. I don't have time to lay them out for you, but if the topic is of interest to you, then you're welcome to do your own research.
Maybe I do, maybe I don't.
But this we do know: per previous replies, if we can't agree on appropriate language to discuss the color of the sky on a given day -- that is, if I can't get a straight answer from you in response to an extremely straightforward question about a single event in 1948 -- then we're not going to be able to communicate with each other in regard to the bigger-picture stuff.
But not just because of their 'impressive achievements' during their time as Nazi scientists, part of why they were hired was because the US was afraid to lose them to the Soviet Union based purely on _potential achievements_. Some scientists even played this as a card to get hired by the US.
Otto Skorzeny allegedly worked for the Mossad after working with Nasser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Skorzeny#Alleged_recruitm...
And perhaps on larger scale in terms of raw headcount. But significantly, there were apparently no "rock stars" like Gehlen, von Braun, Skorzeny or Barbie in their pack. Nor did any of these characters end up (like the first two) leading mission-critical organizations/programs up until the 1960s.
I think it's a decent book. If you end up reading / liking this book, I'd also recommend her book "Nuclear War: A Scenario" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182733784-nuclear-war. Both are well researched, the second one (Nuclear War) was a more entertaining read, in a morbid kind of way.
Before someone thinks I'm a nazi apologist, I want to clarify this is about making a point of the world being extremely grey, even in areas where you perceive the good guys to operate.
The BRD was like that famous Fawlty Towers sketch. "Don't mention the war!".
Just to be curious, what did you write about Israel and Germany?
Portions of the city that were razed weren't rebuilt until into the Nineties (the 1990s).
But somehow, a mythology clings on that the Union were the problem, not the people carrying the torches.
Unfortunately, a campaign of terrorism that culminated in the crooked compromise of 1877 brought an end to that.
> Green Cross was founded in 1950 as Japan's first commercial blood bank and became a diversified international pharmaceutical company producing ethical drugs for delivery or administration by doctors and healthcare workers. Its founders included war criminals such as Masaji Kitano who performed torture and experiments on humans in the Japanese military's notorious Unit 731 during World War II. Also serving as a consultant for the company was Murray Sanders, the American officer and physician who had petitioned for Kitano's acquittal after the war.
> In the late 1980s, Green Cross and Takeshi Abe were at the center of a scandal in which up to 3,000 Japanese people contracted HIV through the distribution and use of blood products which were known to be unsafe.