It might be interesting to consider the physics world at about 1935, and then again at 1945.

I heard one narrative put it in such a way, that these discoveries of galaxies and lots of them far away had quite a bit of interest, until everyone's focus became war machines and nuclear bombs. When they returned to cosmology after the war, it was as they "said, where were we, space was expanding? ok" and then proceeded to work from there. An oversimplification I'm sure.