ABSTRACT
The United States would not displace Germany as the world’s technological leader until after World War II. In the first half of the century, those who wanted a leading-edge scientific education went to Germany. During World War II, Germany was the only adversary to deploy ballistic missile technologies; it had prototype jet engines; and much of the urgency behind America’s Manhattan Project was the fear that Germany would be the first to invent atomic weapons. In the end it was not the physical destruction of losing a war but its racial policies [our emphasis] that cost Germany its scientific and engineering leadership. The physical damage could be repaired. The human damage could not. America had gained the Einsteins, the Fermis, and their intellectual descendents. It seized global scientific and technological leadership.
