this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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i had someone here on lemmy try to say the scientists recruited to the US via operation paperclip weren't involved in crimes against humanity. a lot of people have missed in the shuffle of the past 80 years exactly what happened during the holocaust.
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.
Not to excuse the US's history of foreign diplomacy, but I think it would be naive to believe that there exists any major power who doesn't treat geopolitics with the same level of pragmatism.
The Soviets hated the Nazi even more than the US did and yet they still had their own version of paperclip. Operation Osoaviakhim brought almost double the number of Nazi scientists into the Soviet Union.
Osoviakhim was somewhat more ideologically consistent than Paperclip. The scientists weren't invited to the USSR with promises of cushy jobs and immunity from prosecution: they were forced from their homes, loaded onto freight trains, and made to work. It was part of the wider program of the Allies using the forced labour of ethnic Germans as a means of war reparations.
Unlike the Soviets the US/UK did everything to keep nazis in power and save them.
I mean, the Soviets didn't offer them any guarantees. But I think that's more of a byproduct of how they held leverage over the specialist, and more of a difference in how the two cultures choose to motivate employees.
Please do explain the 'useful' pragmatic excuse for these monsters:
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
Nazis are useful anticommunists
The US does not currently support Ukraine or NATO, and is allied with Russia.
And when it comes to Nazi rocket scientists falling into the hands of post-WW2 America, or the USSR, I'm quite glad it was the former.
I wouldn't say we're allied with Russia lmfao, that's liberal bullshit, Trump is only looking after himself and whoever gives him the most in return. Very transactional, which means we are essentially allies with whoever gives us (him) the best offer. Whether that be literal gifts or things for his "legacy".
is this the Trump supporter "liberal bullshit" or the Marxist "liberal bullshit"?
Why did Trump tariff every country on earth except Russia?
Marxist lol
We already do zero trade with Russia right? (I haven't checked but we sanctioned the shit out of them right lmao)
You ever wonder why Marxists sound so much like Trump supporters these days?
In what way are we allies with Russia in your eyes?
If we were, the Ukraine / Russia war would be over already with heavy losses on the Ukraine side, instead we literally just gave them even more ammunition.
Again, it's a transactional relationship for Trump, which I'm not saying is good at all, but it is the case, and to claim we're allied with Russia is just factual incorrect.
I was actually going to commend you for not just assuming I was a trump supporter but.... Rip
Trump is allied with Putin. It's just going to take a while for him to convert the rest of the country.
It's more like a close friendship for him.
Trump and Putin will act in concert if their goals align so they can both personally benefit. They're both egotistical monsters though who are entirely about themselves and their legacy first and foremost. You're absolutely reaching by saying they're close friends or allies, the proof is in the pudding, Trump could have completely pulled out of Ukraine but he hasn't yet. Why do you think that is?
He has a history of stuffing his cabinet with them too:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868/
I already said, it would piss off the rest of his administration. He has to change them slowly. Take over DC so that if the anti-Russia components revolt, it won't matter, for example. Arm DC soldiers. You see where this is going.
Bro he filled his second admin with sycophants, literally just raided Flynn with the FBI lmfao. Sorry you're incorrect and making this both too simple and too complex lmao.
What does any of that have to do with Russia?
You're a BlueAnon conspiracy nut, you think everything is to do with Russia
Wow, compelling argument. You can tell "tankie" is a meaningful term because being from the wrong Lemmy instance can make you one
You ever wonder why ukraine supporters sound so much like nazis these days?
Please hurry, the Ostfront is calling, have another try
because Russia is already sanctioned to the ground, you must be living under a rock lmao.
I suppose with regard to Ukraine I should have said “our support was.”
LOL
Did they stop supplying weapons, intelligence,etc..?
Did secret agent Orange unilaterally break all the missile treaties, pit sanctions on Russia and expand NATO troops around their border just to fool us?
You think the USA is morally superior to the former USSR?
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.
lord… i live near two of the american concentration camps called out by name in the planning docs for auschwitz…
Where did you learn about this?
Or the Japanese concentration camps. USA bigot since day one. USA more like a white supremacists wet dream.
i mean Hitler was literally inspired by the US.
Every day thousands upon thousands of people were being killed. Why? Because they were wearing the uniform of an enemy country. Killing people for wearing the wrong clothes (or maybe just standing too close to someone wearing the wrong clothes) is what a war is.
It strikes me as odd to be super upset over internment when more Japanese people were killed when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked. Internment was obviously bad, but compared to other shit happening at the time? I guess the people killed in the war couldn't tell their story afterwards, so we don't care about that? Or maybe it's because we've been indoctrinated to believe that killing someone for wearing the wrong clothes is good and honourable?
There was a Japanese insurgency in Hawaii, so some of the people held in internment camps were actually insurgents. Obviously most of them weren't. But what's the difference between that scenario and hitting a military target and a lot of civilians getting killed because they happened to live a little too close to a military target? Because that kind of shit was happening all the time in WWII.
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.
They were effective anti-communists. Same reason after the War the US cuddled up with the essentially fascist regimes of Salazar and Franco.
Greece also was fascist.
All of them got a place in NATO, like many nazis.
They were anti-communist bcs that is the main characteristic of fascists.
And the US has zero problem with that, on the contrary.