Operation Paperclip

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Paperclip scientists pose together.
Operation Paperclip scientists pose together.

Operation Paperclip was the code name under which the U.S. intelligence and military services extricated Nazi scientists from Germany, during and after the final stages of World War II. The project was originally called Operation Overcast, and is sometimes also known as Project Paperclip. [1]

Contents

When the Allies entered Germany in 1945 their scientific intelligence experts were astounded by the sheer scope of the German technical and scientific accomplishments. The original unnamed plan to only interview scientists changed after Major Robert Staver, staff officer of the Ordnance Corps Rocket Branch, sent a cable (signed by Colonel Joel Holmes)[1] to the Pentagon on May 22 1945 of the urgency to evacuate the German technicians and their families as "important for Pacific war."[2]

Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years the U.S. pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents in Germany. John Gimbel comes to the conclusion, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion.[3][4][5]

The program of acquiring German scientists and technicians for the U.S. was not only founded in profit interests, however; an equally strong motivator was the desire to deny the expertise of German scientists to the Soviet Union.[6] The case for finding and holding Nobel laurate Werner Heisenberg was summed up thus "…he was worth more to us than ten divisions of Germans. Heisenberg was in charge of the German secret atomic bomb program code-named "Virus House". Had he fallen into Russian hands, he would have proven invaluable to them."[7]

Of particular interest to the U.S. were scientists specialising in aerodynamics and rocketry (such as those involved in the V-1 and V-2 projects), chemical weapons, chemical reaction technology and medicine. These scientists and their families were secretly brought to the United States, without State Department review and approval; their service for Hitler's Third Reich, NSDAP and SS memberships as well as the classification of many as war criminals or security threats would have disqualified them from officially obtaining visas.

An effort that predated Overcast was the US Navy's acquisition in May 1945 of Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, who was initially employed at a Long Island NY mansion[8] and then at Naval Air Station Point Mugu in 1947.

The majority of the scientists, numbering almost 500, were deployed at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico; Fort Bliss, Texas; and Huntsville, Alabama to work on guided missile and ballistic missile technology. In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists arrived from Germany at Fort Strong in the US: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schultze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky.[9].

The United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.[2] In 1959, 94 individuals were brought to the US under Paperclip, including Friedwardt Winterberg, Hans Dolezalek, and Friedrich Wigand.[10]

Paperclip acquired a total of 1600 personnel.[11]

  • ECLIPSE - unimplimented 1944 plan for post-war operations in Europe[13] that would destroy V-1 and V-2 missiles found by the Air Disarmament Wing.[14]
    • Safehaven - a US project under ECLIPSE to prevent German researchers from escaping to other countries (e.g., Latin America).[15]
  • JCS Directive 1067/14 - modified U.S. occupation directive stating that German scientist should be detained as needed for intelligence purposes, except for war-criminals.[16]
  • Field Information Agency; Technical (FIAT) - US Army agency in the search for information to use against WWII Japan.[17] The project greatly benefited U.S. commercial interests.[18] FIAT was dissolved in 1947 when operation PAPERCLIP began large scale operations.
  • DUSTBIN (counterpart of ASHCAN) - US Army detention center established first in Paris and later in Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt.[19]
  • Project 63 - "Project to help former Nazis obtain jobs with Lockheed, Martin Marietta, North American Aviation or other defense contractors during a time when many American engineers in the aircraft industry were being laid off."[20] (see also National Interest)
  • Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM) - US project to gather German experts in cryptography.

  • In the film Ice Station Zebra, a character describes the tactical situation: "The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists."
  • The novel Space has a segment with a fictionalized account of Operation Paperclip.
  • In the comic book Astro City, the title city was engineered by a Nazi Scientist.
  • In the movie The Good German, an American journalist discovers some aspects of Operation Overcast.

  1. ^ McGovern, J. "Crossbow and Overcast". W. Morrow: New York, 1964. (pg 242)
  2. ^ McGovern. (pg 173)
  3. ^ Norman M. Naimark The Russians in Germany pg. 206. (Naimark refers to Gimbels book)
  4. ^ The $10 billion compares to the U.S. annual GDP of $258 billion in 1948.
  5. ^ The $10 billion compares to the total Marshall plan expenditure (1948-1952) of $13 billion, of which Germany received $1,4 billion (partly as loans).
  6. ^ Norman M. Naimark The Russians in Germany pg. 206
  7. ^ Norman M. Naimark The Russians in Germany pg. 207
  8. ^ Hunt, Linda (1991). Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990. New York: St.Martin's Press, p6,21,31. ISBN 0312055102. 
  9. ^ McGovern, J (1964). Crossbow and Overcast. New York: W. Morrow, p207. 
  10. ^ Hunt. 204
  11. ^ Hunt. 259
  12. ^ Ordway, Frederick I., III; Sharpe, Mitchell R (1979). The Rocket Team, Apogee Books Space Series 36, p316,319. 
  13. ^ Ziemke, Earl F (1990). The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946. Washington DC: US Army, p163. 
  14. ^ Cooksley, Peter G (1979). Flying Bomb. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p 44. 
  15. ^ Ordway. 313
  16. ^ Beyerchen, Alan "German Scientists and Research Institutions in Allied Occupation Policy" History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3, Special Issue: Educational Policy and Reform in Modern Germany. (Autumn, 1982), pp. 289-299.
  17. ^ for "securing of 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."Ziemke. (pg 316)
  18. ^ Beyerchen. 289-299: So much of the FIAT information was used for commercial purposes that the office of the Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas let it be known that they wanted the future peace treaty with Germany be phrased so that U.S. industry that made use of the information would be protected from lawsuits.
  19. ^ Ziemke pg 314
  20. ^ Hunt. 176
  21. ^ "UK 'fears' over German scientists" BBC NewsUK 31 March 2006
  • Joint Intelligence Objectives

Agency (1947). Objective List of German and Austrian Scientists (Microsoft Word). 

  • Norman M. Naimark The Russians in Germany; A History of the Soviet Zone of occupation, 1945-1949 Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-78406-5
  • Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)

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