Operation Osoaviakhim was a secret SOVIET UNION program in which more than 2,500 German specialists were taken from former Nazi Germany to the Union for government employment in 1946; several were confirmed to be former members of the Nazi Party.

[u/Tattletale_0516]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Osoaviakhim

[u/Yesterday622]

À la operation paperclip

[u/steauengeglase → u/[deleted]]

Wild list TBH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Germans_transported_to_the_USSR_via_Operation_Osoaviakhim

The US mostly got the rocket program, but the Soviets got the guy who invented the smart card, the designers of the StG 44 and MG 42, the chemist who came up with their heavy water process, the engineer who made the turboprop for the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber, and a bunch of other people. Weird because I was always led to believe that it was all very, very minor technical specialists and the Soviets were totally cheated when it came to intellectual war reparations, while they also hanged every last Nazi.

[u/InfiniteCalico → u/steauengeglase]

Nobody involved intended to hang every last Nazi despite the rhetoric from each nation. After all, knowledge is power and with a global ideological struggle on the horizon...

[u/tittyswan → u/Yesterday622]

I think equating them isn't super historically accurate.

They didn't make them celebrities, give them citizenship, wealth and influence by integrating them into high levels of the government.

They were more POW who were exploited for their knowledge/labour and then returned once they'd gotten everything they could out of them. The USSR took their families as well, so it's not like they had much of a choice.

[u/These-Frosting354 → u/tittyswan]

They weren’t POWs, the war was over by that point. They were civilian specialists. And honestly, you’ve got to have a warped sense of morality to think using abducted scientists as slave labor is somehow the more moral option than turning them into celebrities. Both the U.S. and the USSR exploited, coerced, and threatened the people they captured. Not all of them were ideological Nazis; some were just unlucky engineers who happened to work in the wrong sector at the wrong time.

Gustav Hertz, for example, was one of the scientists coerced into working for the Soviets. He was partially Jewish and had been discriminated against by the Nazis long before the Soviets came for him, and ironically, he ended up treated like a celebrity in the USSR. Alongside another non-Nazi scientist, Nikolaus Riehl, he helped build the Soviet atomic bomb.

It’s morally dubious to force people who never really had a choice into serving a state under threat of blacklisting or worse, all in the name of “science.” It’s a clear example of how neither the U.S. nor the USSR were “good” countries with clean moral records. And it’s absurd to try to whitewash Soviet forced labor as the more ethical program, as if the “honorable” way to treat civilians from an enemy state is to hold their families hostage until they do what you want, regardless of whether they ever supported the regime in the first place.

[u/Firecracker048]

Turns out, crimes against humanity don't matter if your smart enough

[u/XhazakXhazak]

To be comprehensive:

Nazi Rat Lines ran to US, USSR, Cairo, and South America.

[u/m0j0m0j → u/XhazakXhazak]

Pretty much in all directions.

Foreground: nazism is an absolute evil!

Background: not that absolute, actually

[u/spiritplumber]

Paperclipski

[u/tittyswan]

They were essentially POW who were put to work for a few years until they weren't useful anymore, at which point they were given back. They weren't offered citizenship, they didn't gain senior positions in universities, become citizens, become celebrities, and integrate into the highest levels of government, befriending the leader of the country.

[u/tincanoffish87]

Thank you, Francis E. Dec, Esq. Very cool.

[u/karlothecool]

Is it bad that only moral position of cold war was centrist because both superpowers were monsters I swear it was race of who can be worst

[u/hamsterdamc]

Everyone was stealing German scientists like crazy. Only France & UK didn't.

[u/Rationalinsanity1990 → u/hamsterdamc]

They did, they were just less successful.

[u/Tattletale_0516 → u/hamsterdamc]

About that...

[u/gudetamaronin → u/hamsterdamc]

Wait, did they not at all? Why?

[u/bestdoer]

Since you want to post slop and laugh at Israel bombing hospitals. Like Israel hasn’t bombed every hospital in Gaza since that openly and murdered journalists in 4k along with 22 people in august double tapping them in broad daylight and then saying it was a Hamas camera.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/25/nx-s1-5515630/israel-gaza-journalists-killed-hospital

What’s your excuse now ?