[defrost]

As the poser of the obviously rhetorical question in question ...

for many speakers of English as a first language seeped in the conventions of English conversation, storytelling, and literature it was a clear juxtaposition intended to single out the ridiculous proposition that technology advances during wartime are somehow tied to WWII alone.

Have a look at the original sentence again, it's absolutely a clunker, very probably the product of a clanker (or of an ESL human).