28. Operation Paperclip:
Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of
Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency recruitment of German
scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after VE Day.
President Truman authorized Operation Paperclip in
August 1945; however he expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a
member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities,
or an active supporter of Nazi militarism” would be excluded.
These included Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and
Hubertus Strughold, who were all officially on record as Nazis and
listed as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces.” All were cleared to
work in the U.S. after having their backgrounds “bleached” by the military;
false employment histories were provided, and their previous Nazi affiliations
were expunged from the record. The paperclips that secured newly-minted
background details to their personnel files gave the operation its name.
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Operation Paperclip
was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program
used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the
United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45). It was
conducted by theJoint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), and in the
context of the burgeoning Soviet–American Cold War (1945–91). One
purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific knowledge and
expertise to theUSSR, the UK, and (divided) Germany itself.
Although the JIOA's recruitment of German scientists began
after the European Allied victory (8 May 1945), US
President Harry Truman did not formally order the execution of
Operation Paperclip until August 1945. Truman's order expressly excluded anyone
found "to have been a member of the Nazi Party, and more than a
nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi
militarism". However, those restrictions would have rendered ineligible
most of the leading scientists the JIOA had identified for recruitment, among
them rocket scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur
Rudolph, and the physician Hubertus Strughold, each earlier classified as
a "menace to the security of the Allied Forces".
To circumvent President Truman's anti-Nazi order and the
Allied Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the JIOA worked
independently to create false employment and political biographies for the
scientists. The JIOA also expunged from the public record the scientists' Nazi
Party memberships and régime affiliations. Once "bleached" of their
Nazism, the US government granted the scientists security clearance to
work in the United States. Paperclip, the project's operational name,
derived from the paperclips used to attach the scientists' new political
personae to their "US Government Scientist" JIOA personnel files.
The Osenberg List
Having failed to conquer the USSR with Operation
Barbarossa (June–December 1941), the Siege of
Leningrad (September 1941–January 1944), Operation
Nordlicht ("Northern Light", August–October 1942), and
the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942–February 1943),Nazi
Germany found itself at a logistical disadvantage. The failed
conquest had depleted German resources and its military-industrial complex was
unprepared to defend the Großdeutsches Reich (Greater German Reich)
against the Red Army's westward counterattack. By early 1943, the German
government began recalling from combat a number
of scientists, engineers, and technicians; they returned to work in
research and development to bolster German defense for a protracted war with
the USSR. The recall from frontline combat included 4,000 rocketeers returned
to Peenemünde, in north-east coastal Germany.
Overnight, Ph.D.s were liberated from KP duty, masters
of science were recalled from orderly service, mathematicians were hauled out
of bakeries, and precision mechanics ceased to be truck drivers.
—Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral
The Nazi government's recall of their
now-useful intellectuals for scientific work first required
identifying and locating the scientists, engineers, and technicians, then
ascertaining their political and ideological reliability.
Werner Osenberg, the engineer-scientist heading the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft
(Military Research Association), recorded the names of the politically-cleared
men to the Osenberg List, thus reinstating them to scientific work.
In March 1945, at Bonn University, a Polish laboratory
technician found pieces of the Osenberg List stuffed in a toilet; the list
subsequently reached MI6, who transmitted it to US Intelligence. Then US
Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the
Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, used the
Osenberg List to compile his list of German scientists to be captured and
interrogated; Wernher von Braun, Nazi Germany's premier rocket scientist,
headed Major Staver's list.
Identification
V-2 rocket launching, Peenemünde, on the
north-east Baltic German coast. (1943)
Operation Overcast — Major Staver's original intent was
only to interview the scientists, but what he learned changed the operation's
purpose. On 22 May 1945, he transmitted to US Pentagon headquarters Colonel
Joel Holmes's telegram urging the evacuation of German scientists, and their
families, as most "important for [the] Pacific war" effort. Most
of the Osenberg List engineers worked at the Baltic coast German Army
Research Center Peenemünde, developing the V-2 rocket; after capturing
them, the Allies initially housed them and their families in Landshut, Bavaria,
in southern Germany.
Beginning on 19 July 1945, the US Joint Chiefs of
Staff (JCS) managed the captured ARC rocketeers under a program called
Operation Overcast. However, when the "Camp Overcast" name of the
scientists' quarters became locally-known, the program was renamed Operation
Paperclip in March 1946. Despite these attempts at secrecy, later that year the
press interviewed several of the scientists.
Regarding Operation Alsos, Allied Intelligence
described nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg, the German
nuclear energy project principal, as " . . . worth more to us than
ten divisions of Germans." In addition to rocketeers and nuclear
physicists, the Allies also sought chemists, physicians, and naval weaponeers.
Meanwhile, the Technical Director of the German Army Rocket
Center, Wernher von Braun, was jailed at P.O. Box 1142, a secret
military-intelligence prison in Fort Hunt, Virginia in the United
States. Since the prison was unknown to the international community, its
operation by the US was in violation of the Geneva Convention of
1929, which the U.S. had ratified. Although Von Braun's interrogators pressured
him, he was not tortured; however in 1944 another PoW, U-boat
Captain Werner Henke was shot and killed while climbing the fence at
Fort Hunt.
Capture and detention
The Allied zones of occupation in post-war Germany,
highlighting the Soviet zone (red), the inner German border (heavy black line)
and the zone from which British and American troops withdrew in July 1945
(purple). The provincial boundaries are those of pre-Nazi Weimar Germany,
before the present Länder (federal states) were established.
Early on the U.S. created the Combined Intelligence
Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS). This provided the information on targets for
the T-Forces that went in and targeted scientific, military and
industrial installations (and their employees) for their know-how. Initial
priorities were advanced technology, such as infrared, that could be used
in the war against Japan; finding out what technology had been passed on to Japan;
and finally to halt the research. A project to halt the research was codenamed
"Project Safehaven", and it was not initially targeted against the
Soviet Union; rather the concern was that German scientists might emigrate and
continue their research in countries such as Spain, Argentina or Egypt, all of
which had sympathized with Nazi Germany.
Much U.S. effort was focused
on Saxony and Thuringia, which by 1 July 1945 would become part
of the Soviet Occupation zone. Many German research facilities and personnel
had been evacuated to these states, particularly from the Berlin area. Fearing
that the Soviet takeover would limit U.S. ability to exploit German scientific
and technical expertise, and not wanting the Soviet Union to benefit from said
expertise, the U.S. instigated an "evacuation operation" of
scientific personnel from Saxony and Thuringia, issuing orders such as:
On orders of Military Government you are to report with your
family and baggage as much as you can carry tomorrow noon at 1300 hours (Friday,
22 June 1945) at the town square in Bitterfeld. There is no need to bring
winter clothing. Easily carried possessions, such as family documents, jewelry,
and the like should be taken along. You will be transported by motor vehicle to
the nearest railway station. From there you will travel on to the West. Please
tell the bearer of this letter how large your family is.
By 1947 this evacuation operation had netted an estimated
1,800 technicians and scientists, along with 3,700 family-members. Those with
special skills or knowledge were taken to detention and interrogation centers,
such as one code-named DUSTBIN, to be held and interrogated, in some cases for
months.
A few of the scientists were gathered up in Operation
Overcast, but most were transported to villages in the countryside where there
were neither research facilities nor work; they were provided stipends and
forced to report twice weekly to police headquarters to prevent them from
leaving. The Joint Chiefs of Staff directive on research and teaching stated
that technicians and scientists should be released "only after all
interested agencies were satisfied that all desired intelligence information
had been obtained from them".
On 5 November 1947, the Office of Military Government of the
United States (OMGUS), which had jurisdiction over the western part of occupied
Germany, held a conference to consider the status of the evacuees, the monetary
claims that the evacuees had filed against the U.S., and the "possible
violation by the U.S. of laws of war or Rules of Land Warfare". The OMGUS
director of Intelligence R. L. Walsh initiated a program to resettle the
evacuees in the Third world, which the Germans referred to as General
Walsh's "Urwald-Programm" (jungle program), however this program never
matured. In 1948, the evacuees received settlements of 69.5 million Reichsmarks
from the U.S., a settlement that soon became severely devalued during the
currency reform that introduced the Deutsche Mark as the official
currency of western Germany.
John Gimbel concludes that the U.S. put some of Germany's
best minds on ice for three years, therefore depriving the German recovery of
their expertise.
The scientists
German scientists repatriated from Sukhumi in February
1958. (see Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union)
In May 1945, the US Navy "received in
custody" Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, the inventor of theHs
293 missile; for two years, he first worked at the Special Devices Center,
at Castle Gould and at Hempstead House, Long Island, New York; in 1947, he
moved to the Naval Air Station Point Mugu.
In August 1945, Colonel Holger Toftoy, head of the
Rocket Branch of the Research and Development Division of the US
Army's Ordnance Corps, offered initial one-year contracts to
the rocket scientists; 127 of them accepted. In September 1945, the first
group of seven rocket scientists arrived at Fort Strong,
Massachusetts: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel,
August Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert, and Walter Schwidetzky.
Beginning in late 1945, three rocket-scientist groups
arrived in the US for duty at Fort Bliss, Texas, and at White Sands
Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as "War Department Special
Employees".
In 1946, the United States Bureau of
Mines employed seven German synthetic fuelscientists at
a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri.
In early 1950, legal US residency for some of the Project
Paperclip specialists was effected through the US consulate in Ciudad
Juárez,Chihuahua, Mexico; thus, Nazi scientists legally entered the US from
Latin America.
Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred
to Wright Field, where the US had Luftwaffe aircraft and equipment
captured underOperation Lusty (Luftwaffe Secret Technology).
The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists
— including the physicists Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass,
Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Lehovec; the physical chemists Rudolf Brill, Ernst
Baars, and Eberhard Both; the geophysicist Dr. Helmut Weickmann; the optician
Gerhard Schwesinger; and the engineers Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther,
and Hans Ziegler.
In 1959, ninety-four Operation Paperclip men went to the US,
including Friedwardt Winterberg and Friedrich Wigand. Throughout its
operations to 1990, Operation Paperclip imported 1,600 men, as part of
the intellectual reparations owed to the US and the UK, some $10
billion in patents and industrial processes.
During the decades after they were included in Operation
Paperclip, some scientists were investigated because of their activities during
World War II. Arthur Rudolph was deported in 1984, but not
prosecuted, and West Germany granted him citizenship. Similarly,Georg Rickhey,
who came to the United States under Operation Paperclip in 1946, was returned
to Germany to stand trial at the Dora Trial in 1947; he was
acquitted, and returned to the United States in 1948, eventually becoming a
U.S. citizen.
The aeromedical library at Brooks Air Force Base in San
Antonio, Texas had been named after Hubertus Strughold in 1977.
However, it was later renamed because documents from the Nuremberg War Crimes
Tribunal linked Strughold to medical experiments in which inmates from
Dachau were tortured and killed.[23]
Key figures
Rocketry
Rudi Beichel, Magnus von Braun, Wernher von
Braun, Walter Dornberger, Werner Dahm, Konrad
Dannenberg, Kurt H. Debus,Ernst R. G. Eckert, Krafft Arnold
Ehricke, Otto Hirschler, Hermann H. Kurzweg, Fritz
Mueller, Gerhard Reisig, Georg Rickhey, Arthur
Rudolph, Ernst Stuhlinger, Werner Rosinski, Eberhard
Rees, Ludwig Roth, Georg von Tiesenhausen, andBernhard
Tessmann (see List of German rocket scientists in the US).
Aeronautics: Siegfried Knemeyer, Alexander Martin
Lippisch, Hans von Ohain, Hans Multhopp, Kurt Tank
Medicine
Walter Schreiber, Kurt Blome, Hubertus
Strughold, Hans Antmann (Human factors)[18]
Electronics
Hans K. Ziegler, Kurt Lehovec, Hans
Hollmann, Johannes Plendl, Heinz Schlicke
Intelligence
Reinhard Gehlen, Otto von Bolschwing
Similar operations
APPLEPIE: Project to capture and interrogate key
Wehrmacht, RSHA AMT VI, and General Staff officers knowledgeable of
the industry and economy of the USSR.
DUSTBIN (counterpart of ASHCAN): An Anglo–American
military intelligence operation established first in Paris, then
in Kransberg Castle, at Frankfurt.
ECLIPSE (1944): An unimplemented Air Disarmament Wing
plan for post-war operations in Europe for destroying V-1 and V-2
missiles.
Safehaven: US project within ECLIPSE meant to
prevent the escape of Nazi scientists from Allied-occupied Germany.
Field Information Agency; Technical (FIAT): US Army agency
for securing the "major, and perhaps only, material reward of victory,
namely, the advancement of science and the improvement of production and
standards of living in the United Nations, by proper exploitation of German
methods in these fields"; FIAT ended in 1947, when Operation
Paperclip began functioning.
On 26 April 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued JCS
Directive 1067/14 to General Eisenhower instructing that he "preserve
from destruction and take under your control records, plans, books,
documents, papers, files and scientific, industrial and other information and
data belonging to . . . German organizations engaged in military
research";and that, excepting war-criminals, German scientists be
detained for intelligence purposes as required.
National Interest/Project 63: Job placement assistance for
Nazi engineers at Lockheed, Martin Marietta, North American Aviation, and other
aeroplane companies, whilst American aerospace engineers were being laid off
work.
Operation Alsos, Operation Big, Operation
Epsilon, Russian Alsos: Soviet and American efforts to capture
German nuclear secrets, equipment, and personnel.
Operation Backfire: A British effort at capturing rocket and
aerospace technology from Cuxhaven.
Operation Lusty: US efforts to capture German aeronautical
equipment, technology, and personnel.
Operation Osoaviakhim (sometimes transliterated as
"Operation Ossavakim"), a Soviet counterpart of Operation Paperclip,
involving German technicians, managers, skilled workers and their respective
families.
Operation Surgeon: British operation for denying German
aeronautical expertise from the USSR, and for exploiting German scientists in
furthering British research.
Special Mission V-2: April–May 1945 US operation, by Maj.
William Bromley, that recovered parts and equipment for 100 V-2 missiles from a
Mittelwerk underground factory in Kohnstein within the Soviet zone.
Maj. James P. Hamill co-ordinated the transport of the equipment on 341
railroad cars with the 144th Motor Vehicle Assembly Company,
from Nordhausen to Erfurt, just before the Soviets arrived. (see
also Operation Blossom, Broomstick Scientists, Hermes project,
Operations Sandy and Pushover)
Target Intelligence Committee: US project to exploit
German cryptographers.
See also
Spaceflight portal
Carmel Offie
Fort Bliss
Gernot Zippe
List of former Nazi Party members
Unit 731 - Japanese human experimenters recruited for
their biological weapons technology.
Upper Atmosphere Research Panel
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