also there were cases in science where a great discovery was made in some field but only later literature was found predating the official publication about the same topic by years. atomic bomb was similar, the americans compared how far germany was in their research & found that both nations had basically an identical approach to the research. there are of cousre outliers & geniouses but in general things develop evenly one step at a time. the sequence of steps to achieve an end is often just the most logical streightforward way to do things, thus those similarities in nature also.
Germany