Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program in which over 1,500 German
scientists, technicians, and engineers from Nazi Germany and other foreign countries were
brought to the United States for employment in the aftermath of World War II. It was conducted
by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, and in the context of the burgeoning Cold
War. One purpose of Operation Paperclip was to deny German scientific expertise and knowledge
to the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, as well as inhibiting post-war Germany from
redeveloping its military research capabilities. Although the JIOA's recruitment of German
scientists began after the Allied victory in Europe on May 8, 1945, U.S. 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,
Kurt H. Debus 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 scientists were granted
security clearances by the U.S. government 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.
Osenberg List Having failed to conquer the USSR with Operation
Barbarossa, the Siege of Leningrad, Operation Nordlicht, and the Battle of Stalingrad, 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 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 northeast 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.
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,
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 U.S. Intelligence. Then U.S. 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
In 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
U.S. 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 U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff 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 United States 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
Early on, the United States created the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee. This
provided the information on targets for the T-Forces that went in and targeted scientific,
military and industrial installations 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 United States 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 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, 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 United States, and the "possible violation by the
US 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", 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 United States
put some of Germany's best minds on ice for three years, therefore depriving the German
recovery of their expertise. The scientists
In May 1945, the U.S. Navy "received in custody" Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, the inventor of the
Hs 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 U.S. 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, located
on Long Island in Boston harbor: 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 United States 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 fuel scientists at a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana,
Missouri. In early 1950, legal U.S. residency for some
of the Project Paperclip specialists was effected through the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez,
Chihuahua, Mexico; thus, Nazi scientists legally entered the United States from Latin America.
Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field, where the United States had
Luftwaffe aircraft and equipment captured under Operation Lusty.
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 Helmut Weickmann; the
optician Gerhard Schwesinger; and the engineers Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther, and Hans
Ziegler. In 1959, 94 Operation Paperclip men went to
the United States, 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 United States 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. Key figures
Rocketry Rudi Beichel, Magnus von Braun, Wernher von
Braun, Werner Dahm, Konrad Dannenberg, Kurt H. Debus, Walter Dornberger, Ernst R. G. Eckert,
Krafft Arnold Ehricke, Otto Hirschler, Hermann H. Kurzweg, Fritz Mueller, Eberhard Rees,
Gerhard Reisig, Georg Rickhey, Werner Rosinski, Ludwig Roth, Arthur Rudolph, Ernst Steinhoff,
Ernst Stuhlinger, Bernhard Tessmann, and Georg von Tiesenhausen.
Aeronautics Sighard F. Hoerner, Siegfried Knemeyer, Alexander
Martin Lippisch, Hans Multhopp, Hans von Ohain, and Kurt Tank
Medicine - biological weapons, chemical weapons, human experimentation, human factors in space
medicine Hans Antmann, Kurt Blome, Erich Traub, Walter
Schreiber, and Hubertus Strughold Electronics
Hans Hollmann, Kurt Lehovec, Johannes Plendl, Heinz Schlicke and Hans K. Ziegler
Intelligence Otto von Bolschwing and Reinhard Gehlen
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: An Anglo-American military intelligence
operation established first in Paris, then in Kransberg Castle, at Frankfurt.
ECLIPSE: 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: 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, American and British 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, a Soviet counterpart
of Operation Paperclip, involving German technicians, managers, skilled workers and their respective
families who were relocated to the USSR in October 1946.
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. Target Intelligence Committee: US project
to exploit German cryptographers. See also
List of former Nazi Party members Carmel Offie
Fort Bliss Gernot Zippe
Klaus Barbie Operation Bloodstone
Operation Lusty — targeting advanced aircraft of the defeated Luftwaffe
Ratlines Unit 731 — Japanese human experimenters
recruited for their biological weapons technology. Upper Atmosphere Research Panel
Notes
References
Further reading Jacobsen, Annie. Operation Paperclip: The
Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. New York: Little, Brown
and Company. ISBN 9780316221047. OCLC 827257574. Retrieved 17 February 2014.