Edit: And perhaps I'm misconstruing your statement, which seems to have more to do with the decline in German culture after the purges rather than what led to the purges.
Quite a few people argued since then that the rise of fascism was surprising because of the intellectual environment, but that it was a actually a pre-requisite for it to happen that way. If that is accurate or not, is a different matter but one could make a point that the "German question" combined with the propensity for total, systemic philosophical systems in German culture contributed to the uniqueness of what happened during 1933-45.
That's not true. Hitler didn't liquidate the intelligentsia. The first programmable computer ( by konrad zuse ) was created during that time. The first rockets were developed during that time. Hitler didn't wipe out all the nobel prize winners in germany.
Germany was still a major intellectual center before, during and AFTER ww2.
Germany is still the 3rd largest producer of nobel prize winners with 106.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...
Germany didn't go anywhere. Hitler isn't germany. Hitler is just a blip in german history.
The reason Germany, England, and France (Spain didn't catch up because they had no reason to as a negative consequence of their enormous wealth at the time) excelled to such extent that this particular period appears like a very special and wonderful intellectual age, is that the rest of the world was for the most part severely under-developed. Germany didn't become less "wise".
Today the contrast is much smaller, but Germany continues to be a scientific powerhouse even if it isn't as evident.
Edit:// just realized you were going by numbers and not by capita
It appears to me that the "greatness" of these men is an unquestionable truth in our society, while scientists of the same era with more evident influence go largely unnoticed.
Edit: typo.