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Operation Paperclip
'''Operation ''Paperclip'' (also Project Paperclip''') was the code name for the O.S.S.–U.S. Military evacuation of scientists from Nazi Germany, during the terminus and aftermath of World War II. In 1945, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established with direct responsibility for effecting Operation Paperclip.
Many specifics of Operation Paperclip remain highly classified.
Osenberg List
Following the failure of the German invasion of the Soviet Union (codenamed Operation ''Barbarossa''), the strategic position of Germany was at a disadvantage since German military industries were unprepared for a long war. As a result, Germany began efforts in early 1943 to recall scientists and technical personnel from combat units for use in research and development:
The recalling first required identifying the men, then tracking them and ascertaining their political correctness and reliability, before being recorded to the Osenberg List, by Werner Osenberg, a University of Hannover engineer-scientist, head of the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Eng: Military Research Association).
[ Major Robert B. Staver, U.S.A., Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance, London, used the Osenberg List to compile his Black List of scientists to be interrogated, headed by rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. ]
Operation ''Overcast''
The original, unnamed plan to only interview the rocket scientists changed after Major Staver sent Col. Joel Holmes's cable to the Pentagon, on 22 May 1945, about the urgency of evacuating the German technicians and their families as “important for [the] Pacific war”.
On 19 July 1945, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff designated the handling of the Nazi scientists and their families as '''Operation ''Overcast''''', [ but when their housing's nickname, “Camp Overcast”, became common, conversational usage, ''Operation Overcast'' was renamed ''Operation Paperclip''][ in March 1946.]
NOTE: Despite an initial effort for secrecy, the rocket scientists were interviewed by the newsmedia in 1946.
An equally strong reason for these scientific rescues was denying German expertise to the Soviets. For example, in Operation Alsos, nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg — principal scientist in the German nuclear energy project — was appreciated by Allied intelligence as: " . . . he was worth more to us than ten divisions of Germans".
Groups of scientists
In May 1945, the U.S. Navy acquired Dr. Herbert A. Wagner, who worked at Naval Air Station Point Mugu in 1947.
In early August 1945, Colonel Holger Toftoy, chief of the Rocket Branch in the Research and Development Division of Army Ordnance, offered initial one-year contracts to the rocket scientists. After Toftoy agreed to take care of their families, 127 scientists accepted the offer. 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 Schulze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky.[ In November, December, and February, three subsequent groups of rocket scientists arrived in the US for duty at Fort Bliss and White Sands Proving Grounds as "War Department Special Employees."][ ]
In early 1950, U.S. legal residence for some "''Paperclip'' Specialists" was effected [ through the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juárez; from which the scientists legally entered the U.S. ][ In later decades, the wartime activities of some scientists were investigated — Arthur Rudolph was exiled in 1984]
Eighty-six aeronautical engineers were transferred to Wright Field, which had acquired Nazi aircraft and equipment under Operation ''Lusty''.
The United States Army Signal Corps employed 24 specialists — including physicists Drs. Georg Goubau, Gunter Guttwein, Georg Hass, Horst Kedesdy, and Kurt Levovec; physical chemists Professor Rudolf Brill and Drs. Ernst Baars and Eberhard Both; geophysicist Dr. Helmut Weickmann; technical optician Dr. Gerhard Schwesinger; and electronics engineers Drs. Eduard Gerber, Richard Guenther and Hans Ziegler.[http://www.infoage.org/paperclip.html]
The United States Bureau of Mines employed seven German synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer-Tropsch chemical plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.[http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/presentations/ft_ww2/ft_ww2_slide33.htm]
In 1959, ninety-four Operation Paperclip men went to the U.S., including Friedwardt Winterberg, Hans Dolezalek, and Friedrich Wigand. [ Through 1990, the operation immigrated 1,600 personnel,][ with the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the U.K. (patents and industrial processes) valued at some $10 billion dollars.]
Related operations
*Special Mission V-2 - US operation commanded by Major William Bromley to recover V-2 rocket parts and equipment. Major James P. Hamill, with the aid of the 144th Motor Vehicle Assembly Company, coordinated the shipment of the first trainload of V-2 equipment from Nordhausen to Erfurt.[ (see also Operation Blossom, Broomstick Scientists, Hermes project, Operations Sandy and Pushover)]
*Operation ''Backfire'' - Rocket experiments in the area of Cuxhaven
*''ECLIPSE'' - unimplemented 1944 plan for post-war operations in Europe
**''Safehaven'' - US project under ''ECLIPSE'' to prevent German researchers from escaping to other countries (e.g., Latin America).
*JCS Directive 1067/14 - On April 26, 1946, Joint Chiefs of Staff Order 1067 had been issued to General Eisenhower to "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."[ The U.S. occupation directive stated that German scientists should be detained as needed for intelligence purposes, except for war-criminals.]
NOTE: 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.
*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 was dissolved in 1947 when operation ''PAPERCLIP'' began large scale operations.]
*''DUSTBIN'' (counterpart of ''ASHCAN'') - British-American operation established first in Paris and later in Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt.
*National Interest/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."
*Operation ''Alsos'', Operation ''Big'' - US efforts to capture German nuclear secrets, equipment and personnel
*Operation ''Lusty'' - US efforts to capture German aeronautical secrets, equipment and personnel
*Target Intelligence Committee (TICOM) - US project to gather German experts in cryptography.
*Operation ''Surgeon'' - UK operation to deny German aeronautical expertise to the USSR and instead exploit the scientists in order to further British research.
*''APPLEPIE'' - Project to locate and interrogate key German personnel of RSHA AMT VI and members of the German Army Staff who were knowledgeable about Soviet industrial and economic matters.
Cultural references
*The title character in the film ''Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'' is an expatriate Nazi ("one of our Germans") working for the U.S.
*''The X-Files'' episode "Paper Clip" has several fictional former Nazi scientists.
*''The Good Shepherd'' is a 2006 film focusing on Operation: Paperclip depicting the competition between the USA and the Soviet Union for German scientists.
*The novel ''Space'' contains a fictionalized account of Operation ''Paperclip''.
*In the comic book Astro City, the title city was engineered by a former Nazi scientist.
*In the film ''The Good German'', an American war correspondent discovers aspects of Operation ''Overcast''.
*The comic book "Ministry of Space" depicts an alternate history in which the British extracted various Nazi rocket scientists before the Americans and used them to create a powerful British space program.
*Detroit techno music producer Carl Craig released an album under the alias "Paperclip People" in 1996. The album was titled ''The Secret Tapes Of Doctor Eich''.
*Operation Paperclip is mentioned by the character Neddy Nelson in Chuck Palahniuk's novel ''Rant''
* In the second series of ''Twin Peaks'' it is reveal that the character Major Briggs, Bobby Briggs father, worked on Operation Paperclip in relation to UFOs.
* The Area 51 novels feature two characters who are former Nazi scientists recruited by the U.S. for secret research on UFOs.
Key figures
* Rocketry: (see also List of German rocket scientists in the US): [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/beichel.htm Rudi Beichel], Magnus von Braun, Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger, Werner Dahm, Konrad Dannenberg, Kurt H. Debus, Ernst R. G. Eckert, Krafft Arnold Ehricke, [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/hirchler.htm Otto Hirschler], [http://history.nasa.gov/biosk-n.html Hermann H. Kurzweg], Fritz Mueller, [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/reisig.htm Gerhard Reisig], Georg Rickhey, Arthur Rudolph, Ernst Stuhlinger, [http://www.astronautix.com/astros/rosinski.htm Werner Rosinski], Eberhard Rees, Bernhard Tessmann
* Aeronautics: Alexander Martin Lippisch, Hans von Ohain, Hans Multhopp, Kurt Tank, Willy Messerschmitt
* Medicine: Walter Schreiber, Kurt Blome, Hubertus Strughold, Hans Antmann (Human factors)
* Electronics: Hans Ziegler, Kurt Lehovec, Hans Hollmann, Johannes Plendl
* Intelligence: Reinhard Gehlen
Operation_Paperclip
Source: Wikipedia