Übergeek 바둑이: That the USA and Russians had a race to get hold of many Nazi boffins as possible is old news really... anyway here it is. Perhaps due to London being bombed by V1 and V2 rockets. Hitler was close to his perfect weapon, a stealthy jet bomber carrying nukes. No allied plane had a hope in hell of intercepting it, not even the German jets were any threat to them.

We had generations of cosmetic research.... and they wondered why animal free products took off like a house on fire.

Both sides knew that if people thought in numbers their lovely war would flop.. Communists became bad guys and so with Capitalists. So they had to have their toys to show how big they are. The Russians won on that with the Tsar bomb. 57 megatons... Is there any real difference after 1 megaton??

Then there are useful offshoots, GPS, Radar, Asdic, body armour, the jet, etc, etc..

This is the real world and as a race.. we ain't ready to drop using war.. but there comes a point you shouldn't cross in the production of making deadly toys. WWII was supposed to have been fought against mad science and mad men who were willing to pervert the human intellect.

As to why.. too greedy and too busy fighting for research money, and too scared I'd feel about certain consequences of rocking the boat.. especially in the McCarthy era.