IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB000952254

Germans in Russia: Cold War, Technology Transfer, and National Identity (2009)

Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 24
Pages: 120--143

Publication Date: 2009
Edition Details: Volume title: “Science and National Identity: The Role of Science and Technology”
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Cold War National identity National histories Technology transfer Missiles 20th century, late Soviet Union Germany

In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet government captured and put to work thousands of German scientists and engineers in support of domestic military projects. Many were assigned to aid in the development of ballistic missiles but were repatriated back to the German Democratic Republic in the early 1950s. This much-invoked but poorly understood chapter in the history of Soviet science brought into relief a larger set of issues on the constitutive role of science and technology in the articulation of a Soviet national identity during the early cold war. These factors, which included a resurgence of postwar nationalism and the culture of extreme secrecy, forced an unlikely outcome to the question of how best to make use of German expertise: reframe the Germans as less useful and send them home. Here, the intersection of cold war imperatives, technology transfer, and national identity produced a condition in which the Germans' ultimate fate had less to do with their expertise (which was quite impressive) than the perception of their expertise. The latter was easier to manipulate and eventually overshadowed the former.

...More

Included in

Article Harrison, Carol E.; Johnson, Ann (2009) Introduction: Science and National Identity. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (p. 1). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000952254/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Zhang, Baichun; Zhang, Jiuchun; Yao, Fang; (2005)
Technology Transfer from the Soviet Union to the People's Republic of China, 1949--1966 (/isis/citation/CBB001021301/)

Article Germuska, Pál; (2009)
Conflicts of Eastern and Western Technology Transfer: Licenses, Espionage, and R&D in the Hungarian Defense Industry during the 1970s and 1980s (/isis/citation/CBB001032368/)

Article Yanqiong, Liu; Jifeng, Liu; (2009)
Analysis of Soviet Technology Transfer in the Development of China's Nuclear Weapons (/isis/citation/CBB001032369/)

Article Bergien, Rüdiger; (2019)
Programmieren mit dem Klassenfeind: Die Stasi, Siemens und der Transfer von EDV-Wissen im Kalten Krieg. (Programming with the class enemy: The Stasi, Siemens and the transfer of computer knowledge in the Cold War.) (/isis/citation/CBB885999329/)

Chapter Neufeld, Michael J.; (2004)
Overcast, paperclip, osoaviakhim: Looting and the transfer of German military technology (/isis/citation/CBB001180296/)

Article Antony Adler; (2020)
Deep Horizons: Canada's Underwater Habitat Program and Vertical Dimensions of Marine Sovereignty (/isis/citation/CBB981240817/)

Article Alvandi, Roham; (2014)
The Shah's Détente with Khrushchev: Iran's 1962 Missile Base Pledge to the Soviet Union (/isis/citation/CBB001421831/)

Article James Mills; (2020)
The transfer and exploitation of German air-to-air rocket and guided missile technology by the Western Allies after World War II (/isis/citation/CBB962341267/)

Book Peter Svik; (2020)
Civil aviation and the globalization of the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB434541611/)

Article Heefner, Gretchen; (2007)
Missiles and Memory: Dismantling South Dakota's Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001030814/)

Book Siegfried S. Hecker; (2016)
Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers (/isis/citation/CBB152427066/)

Article Paju, Petri; Durnová, Helena; (2009)
Computing Close to the Iron Curtain: Inter/national Computing Practices in Czechoslovakia and Finland, 1945-1970 (/isis/citation/CBB002489161/)

Article Parr, Helen; (2013)
The British Decision to Upgrade Polaris, 1970--4 (/isis/citation/CBB001201572/)

Article Spinardi, Graham; (2010)
The Rise and Fall of Safeguard: Anti-ballistic Missile Technology and the Nixon Administration (/isis/citation/CBB001033658/)

Article Doel, Ronald E.; Friedman, Robert Marc; Lajus, Julia; Sörline, Sverker; Wråkberg, Urban; (2014)
Strategic Arctic Science: National Interests in Building Natural Knowledge---Interwar Era through the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001450344/)

Book Stern, Sheldon M.; (2012)
The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality (/isis/citation/CBB001212706/)

Chapter Knolle, Johannes; Joas, Christian; (2014)
The Physics of Cold in the Cold War: “On-Line Computing” between the ICBM Program and Superconductivity (/isis/citation/CBB001500409/)

Book Christoph Becker-Schaum; Philipp Gassert; Martin Klimke; Wilfried Mausbach; (2016)
The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s (/isis/citation/CBB550341529/)

Book Sheehan, Neil; (2009)
A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (/isis/citation/CBB001032645/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}