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Notes -
The USSR caught up so fast because of their absurdly-good spy network. The reason the USSR's spy efforts were so good was that the Western intelligentsia leaned heavily socialist in the same way they lean SJ now; back in the 40s said intelligentsia had not learned of/processed the fact that the USSR under Stalin was a terrible place. This meant basically all security against the USSR was compromised from the get-go in exactly the same way any attempt to do anti-SJ things these days is compromised from the get-go. You had absurd things like the UK chief of anti-Soviet counterintelligence being a spy for the Soviets.
The Nazis did not have that advantage. When the Brits went through Nazi intelligence records after the war they discovered that literally every single Nazi spy in the UK had been caught and either imprisoned or turned into a double-agent. Independent invention takes longer than stealing tech, so I don't think it's plausible that they'd have been as close on Western heels as the Soviets were.
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Oh yes, certainly there were a ton of things where Germany was ahead (including missiles, as you note). But it was behind in this particular thing and "steal" is a very fast way of removing tech leads.
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