I can't teach this history often and fast enough:

Goddard flew the first liquid-fueled rocket in 1926 and held the patents on gyroscopic guidance, turbopumps, and gimbal steering.

The V2 design was simply German agents and embassy channels pulling his patent filings through the 1930s.

In March 1945 Goddard personally examined a captured V-2 and concluded it was built on his work. Of course inferior, because Nazis. The gyroscope in particular, so badly made.

By 1960 the US government paid Goddard's estate and the Guggenheim Foundation $1 million, the largest government patent settlement ever.

Not only did V-2-derived designs infringe his patents, the entire Paperclip project was a sham and a setback for America. Von Braun himself spent the postwar years crediting Goddard as ahead of everyone.

The Soviets were ahead of America in the early Space Race years ///because/// they fired all the captured Nazi scientists as too stupid to be useful.