How about winning the two world wars and taking all the scientist worth their name out of Germany?
Umm, most scientists "worth their name" either fled, or opposed, or were killed (or like Hilbert, forced into silence) by the NS regime. Other than von Braun and Heisenberg, there just weren't that many titanic figures with influential positions, and who were genuinely (or even tacitly) pro-Nazi after 1940 or so (I'm not sure there were any, in fact).
Of course there were still university professors, and all those technicians working for von Braun's program, and so on -- but the point is that they weren't people of great influence in the international community.
So it is most likely the defection of top minds like Bohr and Einstein that led to Germany's continuing loss of dominance after WW II, rather than the number of lesser scientists who stayed behind to work on actual weapons projects.
Umm, most scientists "worth their name" either fled, or opposed, or were killed (or like Hilbert, forced into silence) by the NS regime. Other than von Braun and Heisenberg, there just weren't that many titanic figures with influential positions, and who were genuinely (or even tacitly) pro-Nazi after 1940 or so (I'm not sure there were any, in fact).
Of course there were still university professors, and all those technicians working for von Braun's program, and so on -- but the point is that they weren't people of great influence in the international community.
So it is most likely the defection of top minds like Bohr and Einstein that led to Germany's continuing loss of dominance after WW II, rather than the number of lesser scientists who stayed behind to work on actual weapons projects.