If they didn’t go to the moon, then why didn’t the Russians them?
Both countries faced the difficulty of traversing the van Allen Radiation Belt. The Russians (sans a home-grown Hollywood talent hotbed) presumably dealt with the problem while bathed in reality.
Given that the Americans--seeking merely the optics of a cold war advantage (with that Hollywood piece in place)--had less of a "requirement" to face reality, they faked it till they could make it.
One wonders with such an achievement "six times in the bag" without a major failure why the Americans haven't been back for a manned moon flight, or any other manned destination, be it a celestial body, or even merely traversing beyond the van Allen Belt (~1000 to ~2600 miles) in the meantime. Forty years on, couldn't a lot of money been made flying rich people to the moon and back with such a well-proven vehicle by now?
..And Stolar... invocations of God, Nazi-isms, or next of kin do not an argument make. History has shown that hundreds of thousands if not millions of people can be simultaneously deluded by propaganda.