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

Abstract

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.