I have occasionally discussed what I call the Germanophile technology cult here. That is my term for the pop-culture trope that credits any and all innovations, especially in aviation and space, to the World War II era Germans. I believe in credit where it’s due but this kind of attribution goes far beyond anything that could be justified by facts and, worse, it is a staple among pop-culture consumers who otherwise know nothing about the subject.
I think it has now reached the ultimate: Yesterday I met a guy who thought rocket pioneer Robert Goddard was a German. I said, no, Goddard was an American. Now, one really disturbing characteristic of Germanophiles is the weasely desperation with which they cling to their position. He responded, “Uh, sure, he was naturalized, like von Braun, but he was a German scientist who was brought here to work for us after World War II.” I said, no, he was born in Worcester Massachusetts, his family came here from England in the 17th century, and he actually died before the end of World War II. Forced to accept that Goddard was in fact an American, he shifted ground and tried to denigrate Goddard’s achievements, an approach I also see from the authors of Goddard’s Wikipedia bio.
If they know little about Goddard and other American and British inventors, the Kultists know nothing of Sergei Korolev, just assuming that all Russian rocketry was a case of their German scientists vs. our German scientists. In fact, the Soviets got largely the second team from the roundup of German rocketeers, headed by one Helmut Gröttrup, who later did great things in data processing.
Gröttrup was nothing if not bold. After the war, he was trapped in the Soviet occupation zone and decided to go to work for the new masters. First though, he brazenly demanded 1500 American dollars a month (a fortune at the time), a new Cadillac car, and a luxury apartment in East Berlin for his services. He could have been shot out of hand, but he gambled that the Russians were desperate enough to accept. He was right and they did.
He and his group of about 170 other Germans returned to Germany in 1953, 4 years before Sputnik.