The US is all about realpolitik, and begins to make a lot more sense when you look at everything through a Kissinger-shaped lens (rest in piss, you evil bastard). We pretend to be ideological so our citizenry can feel good about ourselves, but the way the nation operates is purely pragmatic. Look no further than Israel-Palestine and how buddy-buddy we are with Saudi Arabia for modern examples. Even our support of Ukraine, while overlapping with an ethical imperative, is driven primarily by the interests of NATO and the relatively inexpensive degradation of Russia’s military and political standing we can participate in. We only give a shit about “human rights” when it benefits us.

Operation Paperclip was pragmatism. It creates a sense of cognitive dissonance when we try to hold in our minds that we brought Nazi scientists over and the idea that we’re “the good guys” and fought for “justice,” so our brains try to reduce that cognitive dissonance by saying those scientists weren’t behind any of the evils of the Nazis. They were, obviously. That didn’t matter to our government, but they kept the operation classified for a reason.

I think the US media has washed their image so clean with the WW2 movies that most people have no idea about stuff like the nazi rally happened in the US and the support for eugenics in the Us, and the concentration camps in the Us.

not to mention that one of the issues Nuremburg faced at the time was they couldn't go too heavy on the pro-Jewish side because your average man on the street was so antisemitic as a matter of course that if you looked too sympathetic towards the holocaust you'd lose popular support.

Paperclip can be rationalised as pragmatic, but bow about these guys?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_Gs-0dhOo
https://ebeggin.substack.com/p/ratlines-nato-and-the-fourth-reich https://www.businessinsider.com/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10?r=US&IR=T

Changed my view on history over the years.

And now the one that fought fascism is a fascist one.

Hmm.

How many were there before that?

Since the Nazis were fighting the Soviets in cold conditions, they did a lot of research on hypothermia. Their methodology involved putting Jews out in the cold and measuring how long it took for them to get hypothermia.

There was a lot of debate over whether the results of their research should be used or just be destroyed because using it might encourage future scientists to use immoral methods in their research. They ultimately decided to use that research.

But when they looked at the data, there was no real science happening. They were just freezing people to death out of cruelty with no benefit to science.

A lot of "Nazi science" is very overrated. Turns out cruel and hateful people don't make for good scientists. Science is done by people and people and if those people ignore morality, they become very warped. "Science at all costs, ignore morality" doesn't actually result in useful research. It may feel like ignoring ethics in favour of scientific progress is a strong pro-science stance, but it's just another fascist power fantasy.

Russia also employed a bunch of Nazi scientists for their own rocket program.

Memorable quote from The Right Stuff, a good movie about the Space Race: "Our Nazis are better than their Nazis."

I do not think german nazis were too motivated against africans, specially african-americans. They were ultra racist against Jewish and Slavic.

The American nazis were the ones obsessed with skin color against black people.

At least that's the impression I get when reading about those times.