brilliant programme Danf - thanks for that!
what is not mentioned in the programme, and is perhaps the most impressive factor, is just how little 'stuff' was left by the Murkins and us for the Ruskies to get their hands on.
the Russians did NOT get any rocket blueprints, like those liberated by the Murkins, nor did they get their hands on any of the designers or experts like Von Braun. instead, they gathered as much hardware as they could and reverse-engineered it - all under the control of Sergey Korolyov, Russia's best rocket scientist. Korolyov had spent the past few years in a gulag, due to Stalin's purges, and was not a well man.
despite the massive head start that the US had, Korolyov and his team worked tirelessly with the scrappy amounts of German technology, and in only a handful of years had overtaken Murka in the space race! until the Apollo missions, the Russians were streets ahead, and it took HUGE Murkin investment to play catch up
Sergey Korolyov's identity was a state secret up until his premature death in 1966, but his legacy still lives on in the shape of the Russian Soyuz rocket - basically the exact same design of Korolyov's original R7 which launched Sputnik, and is still in use today!
sm