Another home grown program with a low Nazi coefficient was the kiwi nuclear thermal rocket. Instead of cool exploding atomic bomb propulsion, this was Heinlein-style atomic jets — a nuclear pile superheated hydrogen fuel for propulsion. They actually built a test rocket and fired it, but never built a flying version. That program was cancelled in the late sixties IIRC.

Elon Musk seems to have achieved near-Nazi levels of chemical rocket efficiency with no obvious Nazis. Though one wonders…

More seriously, I remember reading that review and agreeing with you that it was a different time:

An interesting (if rather breathless) 1957 TIME cover story about Schriever refers to the general and his crew as “tomorrow’s men.” In retrospect, this was true only if one defined “tomorrow” as the interval between the appearance of the article and, say, July 1969. Actually it could be argued that Schriever was a man of the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the era of the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building. In our current era, the execution of such projects has become difficult almost to the point of impossibility. Schreiver faced down General LeMay and Secretary Talbott..would a modern-day Schriever be able to prevail against the lilliputian army of lawyers, “community activists,” and “public interest” nonprofits who obstruct every single project of any size? Further thoughts on this at my post like swimming in glue, but I’m afraid that the answer is “no,” and will continue to be “no” absent some major changes in our society.

The book, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War, is available cheap, via third-party sellers, on Amazon, for those whose bookcases aren’t already groaning under unsafe loads.

There’s an interesting biography of General Schriever and his era; my review is here.