I constantly see references as to how USA and the USSR were in a race near the end of the European part of the war in order to grab as many scientists as they could. Why was it that the Germans were always on top of the world in terms of technology before its divide? Even during WW1, German scientists kicked the rest of the world's ass with their mustard and chlorine gas, but how was it that they were able to beat everyone else to create the first manufactured WMD?
I’m sorry you were downvoted for what seems to me a perfectly legitimate question.
By the early twentieth century, German scientists were the most prestigious in the world. To understand why, you need to look back at the previous hundred years. In the wake of Napoleon’s invasion of the German lands (Germany was not yet a unified country), reformers in Prussia and elsewhere founded new university and remodeled old ones. Germany already had a lot of universities precisely because it wasn’t unified – there were a lot of cities and principalities with their own institutions.
By the mid-19th century, these reformed German universities became hotbeds for the training of research scientists and the discovery of scientific ideas. German professors kept cabinets of research equipment which they used to teach their students, giving the first generations of professionally trained German chemists hands-on experience with labwork before they even graduated. Compared to traditional university education in Britain and France, which was founded on texts and theory, that was a considerable advantage. Germany soon became a leader in chemistry and experimental physics. By the 1870s, other countries began reforming their own universities along german lines. In the USA, Johns Hopkins was the first to train its science graduate students with intense lab-based work.
Germany also organized its science very well. Especially after unification in 1870, it was not uncommon for a student to attend university in one or several cities, earn a PhD at another, work in the lab at a third, and then take a professorial position at a fourth. This circulated ideas, expertise, and practices around the empire and made science stronger everywhere. Add to this the fact that German industry led much of the ‘second industrial revolution,’ and formed a symbiotic relationship with the universities and the state. German expertise in chemical and electrical technology fueled a strong academy, and vice versa. This also meant that scientific expertise could become technical expertise as large firms hired scientists. Implicit in your question is the idea that military technology is an index for measuring scientific success. That’s not always a perfect correlation; but, because of the way German science and industry were structured, science could serve the state in that way. Take for example Fritz Haber, probably most famous as the father of chemical warfare, but who earned a Nobel prize for synthetic ammonia, which was useful for fertilizer (and, truth be told, ammunition). He studied at several universities, worked in business, and held academic positions.