>I thought America in general and California specifically had the world's best engineers.
Where on earth did you get that idea? Japan and Germany have long been known to have the world's best engineers. The only engineering that Americans have really proven themselves to be the best in the world at is software. There were times in the distant past when they were best in the world at other things, but those times are gone. There might be an exception for military technology though; no one builds aircraft carriers like the USA still.
Remember the Apollo rocket program? How did America do that? They brought in a bunch of Nazi engineers, remember?
As for when America stopped doing "hard" things, I think it was somewhere in the 80s or 90s maybe, though from what I can tell, the really big turning point in this country was 2001, but things were falling apart before that too.
No, they lost because, even with better engineering (at least for the Germans), they couldn't match America's industrial production capability. American tanks (esp. the Sherman) were total crap compared to German tanks, but they could pump them out at many times the volume the Germans could. Quantity over quality.
In addition, America was protected by two large oceans, so its industrial production capabilities were never affected by the enemy. Germany's factories were constantly being bombed.
And finally, on top of all that, America entered the war late, and by that time Germany was already softened a lot from fighting with France, Britain, Russia, etc. If they hadn't been stupid enough to invade Russia, we might not be having this exchange.
The US has by far the best engineers in the world. It also has the best scientists by a wide margin. Its top 50 universities embarrass the rest of the world in research output, save for a few foreign universities. The US tech industry, biotech, pharma, farming, aerospace and manufacturing segments are either the best in the world or among the best. The US also still has by far the leading semi conductor industry, you can't do anything in that segment without utilizing US companies.
Intel, nVidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple, Micron, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Applied Materials, LAM Research, Analog Devices - the US has the best hardware and semi engineers of any nation. What do Germany and Japan have that competes that small list?
There is no other country that could enable SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin, et al. to exist.
There's a reason why it was Tesla of California that pushed the auto industry forward, not Germany or Japan.
Nearly every piece of modern technology that you use today was invented by US engineers. There are few exceptions. From the lithium battery, to modern solar cells, to the smartphone or cellphone, to the microprocessor, to the LED & LCD, to the router, computer networks, and everything inbetween. The modern laser, fiber optics, PDAs, spreadsheets, the relational database, a dozen major programming languages, ethernet, ram/dram, the personal computer, streaming media, DPS, the cable modem, the hard drive, SSD, the GUI, the mouse, email, 3D graphics, the digital camera, the optical disc, and dozens of other critical elements the modern world has relied upon.
The modern world hardly exists save for what US engineers invented.
Most of the tech related to the satellite industry - including GPS - was invented by US engineers, by a fat margin. There's a reason it's SpaceX that is going to lead in global Internet access via satellite, not a company from Russia, China, Germany or Japan. The US has by far the best satellite tech and engineers.
The entire AI industry has been trailblazed by US engineers.
The US is so far ahead on autonomous driving tech that every foreign auto company has had to set up shop in Silicon Valley, because none of them can compete. That includes China, Japan and Germany. Auto Germany's biggest fear is being turned into a cheap box commodity, while Silicon Valley takes over the industry via software - their fear is valid, that's exactly what is going to happen.
Europe is so far behind in biotech, they constantly have to buy US companies to try to keep up. All of their best biotech products and companies have been acquired from the US. Asia isn't remotely competitive in pharma or biotech, they're 20 years behind on most things. Japan has one or two relevant companies there, China is only just now starting to make a dent.
The US has been far ahead on genomics tech for decades. It's US companies like Illumina that lead the way, not hardware from Japan. How about robotic surgery? That has been dominated by another US company for two decades, Intuitive Surgical.
It was the US - Broad and Berkeley in particular - that was responsible for about 3/4 of all progress on CRISPR, which China has aggressively copied from. Once again, elite US engineers and scientists blazing the way.
> Remember the Apollo rocket program? How did America do that? They brought in a bunch of Nazi engineers, remember?
That's dramatically false. Slander in fact. Apollo involved thousands of engineers. It was not largely made up of Nazi engineers.
And Japan? The country that hasn't done anything of consequence in 25 years in engineering or technology. Not only did they entirely lose their hardware industry to South Korea, Taiwan and China, but they can't do software at all. There's a reason their economy hasn't expanded since the early 1990s.
Germany, the country that can't do software, can barely do hardware, can't do mobile, has mediocre military tech, rarely invents anything of consequence, and whose last great remaining industry - the auto business - is about to implode. Yeah sure. Germany certainly used to have vaunted engineers, decades ago. There's nothing special about a BMW or Volkswagen today, and it shows in their stagnation. The future of the auto industry is cheap boxes from China and American software.
Accordingly, von Braun became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel Americans to the Moon. At Marshall, the group continued work on the Redstone-Mercury, the rocket that sent the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. Shortly after Shepard’s successful flight, President John F. Kennedy challenged America to send a man to the Moon by the end of the decade. With the July 20, 1969 moon landing, the Apollo 11 mission fulfilled both Kennedy’s mission and Dr. Von Braun’s lifelong dream.
Where on earth did you get that idea? Japan and Germany have long been known to have the world's best engineers. The only engineering that Americans have really proven themselves to be the best in the world at is software. There were times in the distant past when they were best in the world at other things, but those times are gone. There might be an exception for military technology though; no one builds aircraft carriers like the USA still.
Remember the Apollo rocket program? How did America do that? They brought in a bunch of Nazi engineers, remember?
As for when America stopped doing "hard" things, I think it was somewhere in the 80s or 90s maybe, though from what I can tell, the really big turning point in this country was 2001, but things were falling apart before that too.