operation paperclip essay

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What Was Operation Paperclip?

By: Laura Schumm

Updated: March 4, 2020 | Original: June 2, 2014

As World War II was entering its final stages, American and British organizations teamed up to scour occupied Germany for as much military, scientific and technological development research as they could uncover. 

Trailing behind Allied combat troops, groups such as the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) began confiscating war-related documents and materials and interrogating scientists as German research facilities were seized by Allied forces. One enlightening discovery—recovered from a toilet at Bonn University—was the Osenberg List: a catalogue of scientists and engineers that had been put to work for the Third Reich .

In a covert affair originally dubbed Operation Overcast but later renamed Operation Paperclip, roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War . The program was run by the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), whose goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop America’s arsenal of rockets and other biological and chemical weapons, and to ensure such coveted information did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union . 

Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA—bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country’s postwar efforts.

One of the most well-known recruits was Wernher von Braun, the technical director at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Germany who was instrumental in developing the lethal V-2 rocket that devastated England during the war. Von Braun and other rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees” to assist the U.S. Army with rocket experimentation. Von Braun later became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which eventually propelled two dozen American astronauts to the Moon .

Although defenders of the clandestine operation argue that the balance of power could have easily shifted to the Soviet Union during the Cold War if these Nazi scientists were not brought to the United States, opponents point to the ethical cost of ignoring their abhorrent war crimes without punishment or accountability.

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By Wendy Lower

• Feb. 28, 2014

Among the trophies of the Second World War captured by Allied intelligence agents were Nazi scientists and their research on biological and chemical weapons. In a classified memorandum titled “Exploitation of German Scientists in Science and Technology in the United States,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff described these men as “chosen, rare minds whose continuing intellectual productivity we wish to use.” Such intellectual spoils were not to fall into Soviet hands. In 1945, Operation Overcast (renamed Operation Paperclip for the paper clips attached to the dossiers of the most “troublesome cases”) began. More than 1,600 Germans were secretly recruited to develop armaments “at a feverish and paranoid pace that came to define the Cold War.”

Although some of these men had been Nazi Party members, SS officers and war criminals, they were valued as vital to American national security. Thus it was O.K., American government officials reasoned, to ignore these scientists’ roles in developing biological and chemical weapons, in designing the V-2 rockets that shattered London and Antwerp and in the countless deaths of concentration camp inmates who fell victim to medical experiments at Dachau and Ravensbrück.

The journalist Annie Jacobsen’s “Operation Paperclip” is not the first unveiling of the program. The New York Times, Newsweek and other media outlets exposed Paperclip as early as December 1946. Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rabbi Steven Wise publicly opposed the program, and according to a Gallup poll, most Americans at the time considered it a “bad” idea. But Jacobsen’s book is the first on the topic to appear since President Clinton signed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 1998, which pushed through the declassification of American intelligence records, including the F.B.I., Army intelligence and C.I.A. files of German agents, scientists and war criminals. Jacobsen’s access to these documents, along with her research in various special collections and her interviews with former intelligence personnel and relatives of the scientists, make her study the most in-depth account yet of the lives of Paperclip recruits and their American counterparts.

Jacobsen tracks 21 of these Nazi scientists and technicians. Eight of her subjects had worked directly with Hitler, Himmler or Göring; 15 were active Nazi Party members; 10 served in paramilitary squads like the SA and SS; and six were tried at Nuremberg. A few familiar figures pop up, including several pioneers in space exploration — Wernher von Braun, Hubertus Strughold, Walter Dornberger and Arthur Rudolph.

The “classified body of secrets and lies” behind Operation Paperclip is complex and crowded, and in some places the narrative becomes muddled, as infamous Nazis and American intelligence operatives appear alongside present-day historians and archivists who are unnecessarily cited to provide basic facts. To her credit, Jacobsen deftly untangles the myriad American and German government agencies and personnel involved, though not without repetitious reminders of who is who.

More gripping and skillfully rendered are the stories of American and British officials who scoured defeated Germany for Nazi scientists and their research. One well-known find was the Osenberg list of thousands of German scientists and facilities, which was retrieved from a toilet at Bonn University. Another was a huge cache of tabun (a sarin-like chemical). While searching the I. G. Farben laboratories on the German-Polish border, British soldiers uncovered 175 forested bunkers storing aerial bombs with a powerful organophosphorus nerve agent. They called in American Army chemists, who tested the chemical and found that just a drop on the skin would kill a rabbit in minutes. In 1945, 530 tons of tabun were shipped to various locations in the United States including Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.

There, Jacobsen writes, American soldiers became unknowing guinea pigs for Dr. L. Wilson Greene, an American. In a gassing chamber, soldiers were exposed to low levels of tabun. Greene was pleased with the effects: Though the soldiers were “partially disabled” for one to three weeks, they eventually recovered. Thus nerve agents and hallucinogenic drugs could serve as more “gentle” weapons, immobilizing the enemy but, Greene hoped, avoiding the “wholesale killing of people or the mass destruction of property.” Greene assigned his colleague, the German chemist Fritz Hoffmann, to research other toxic agents for military use. Hoffmann (who died in 1967) studied everything from street drugs to Mongolian hallucinogenic mushrooms, and may have contributed his research to the development of Agent Orange. Hoffmann’s daughter remembered that her father was interested in producing a substance that could defoliate trees in Vietnam “so you could see the enemies.” In an interview with Jacobsen, she remarked: “Agent Orange turned out not only to defoliate trees but to cause great harm in children. Dad was dead by then, and I remember thinking, Thank God. It would have killed him to learn that. He was a gentle man. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

American intelligence agents, Jacobsen argues, were blinded by brinkmanship. Some became consumed by the search for weapons and were double-crossed by German scientists. One such man was Gen. Charles E. Loucks, chief of intelligence for chemical warfare stationed in Heidelberg. So dedicated was Loucks that he found the task of securing the German arsenal of chemical weapons for his country to be “more interesting than going down to Paris on weekends.” He became charmed by the notorious SS Brig. Gen. Walter Schieber, who eventually worked as a chemist for the American Army’s Chemical Corps and then for the C.I.A. Schieber turned out to have been a Soviet mole and international weapons dealer, as Jacobsen discovered in the declassified files.

There are few satisfying explanations in Jacobsen’s account of this “tawdry group of amoral war opportunists, many of whom were linked to war crimes.” In the end, it is not clear who was exploiting whom — the Nazi scientists or their American recruiters. What is clear is that contemporary public opinion had it right: Operation Paperclip was a bad idea. By shining light on the human, ethical and monetary costs of the program, Jacobsen’s book reveals just how bad. Nazi scientists were generously remunerated for developing biological and chemical weapons whose cleanup and disposal took decades and cost approximately $30 billion. American experimentation on humans continued during the Cold War in violation of the Nuremberg Code. A lethal chemical might have been developed for warfare, with terrible consequences.

Jacobsen ends her study by asking Gerhard Maschkowski, a Jewish survivor of the I. G. Farben camp at Auschwitz, “What matters, what lasts?” In response, Maschkowski reveals his blue-ink tattoo. Yet certain truths are obscured in Jacobsen’s disturbing account. She writes that the Germans didn’t use any chemical or biological weapons in World War II. Although they may not have deployed such weapons on the battlefield, the Germans did use carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B, a pesticide) in mobile gas vans and gas chambers. In 1942-43, the Allies threatened retaliation if the Germans used chemical weapons. Apparently this warning applied only to Allied soldiers in combat and civilians in Allied cities, not to the Jews, Soviet P.O.W.s and others who were murdered in Auschwitz, Birkenau and other Nazi extermination sites.

OPERATION PAPERCLIP

The secret intelligence program that brought nazi scientists to america.

By Annie Jacobsen

Illustrated. 575 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $30.

Wendy Lower is the author of “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,” a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award.

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

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Operation Paperclip. The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America

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• OPERATION PAPERCLIP

Apple Books

Barnes & Noble

The explosive story of America’s secret post-WWI science programs, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51.

In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich’s scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis’ once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler’s scientists and their families to the United States.

Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?

Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich’s ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.

In this definitive, controversial look at one of America’s most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.

Praise for OPERATION PAPERCLIP

“this book is a remarkable achievement of investigative reporting and historical writing, but it is a moral force as well as a literary tour de force. it reminds us, unforgettably, about the wages of war — and the price of victory.”.

— The Boston Globe

“As comprehensive as it is critical, this latest expose from Jacobsen is perhaps her most important work to date…Jacobsen persuasively shows that it in fact happened and aptly frames the dilemma…Rife with hypocrisy, lies, and deceit, Jacobsen’s story explores a conveniently overlooked bit of history.”

“this is an engrossing and deeply disturbing expose that poses ultimate questions of means versus ends.”, “throughout, the author delivers harrowing passages of immorality, duplicity and deception, as well as some decency and lots of high drama. how dr. strangelove came to america and thrived, told in graphic detail.”, “annie jacobsen’s operation paperclip is a superb investigation, showing how the u.s. government recruited the nazis’ best scientists to work for uncle sam on a stunning scale. sobering and brilliantly researched.”.

— Alex Kershaw, author of The Liberator

The Ethical Questions in the Hidden History of Operation Paperclip

As the war wound down, a group of politicians, industrialists, and scientists, designated as the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) met to define the targets in a wide variety of fields. As discussed extensively in Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip 1 , one of CIOS’ first conclusions was that receiving pictures and copies of paperwork was insufficient. They needed to talk extensively to the people who had generated the work and bring them to the U.S. to work with our scientists and advance our knowledge.

Nazi Scientists in America

At first, U.S. officials promised none of the Germans would be known or alleged war criminals, going so far as to suggest none had been Nazis. This, of course, was impossible, as a German scientist could not obtain a job without party membership. Not all officials agreed with the idea. The Departments of State, Justice, Labor and Commerce all objected to skipping such legal requirements as visa clearances, but their staff were eventually persuaded by the promises that the scientists would stay only temporarily. That is, they’d be here under military guard until we’d learned from them all we needed.

President Truman initially agreed to the idea and about 150 scientists came. But in the winter of 1945-46, the expanded version of CIOS became seriously concerned that Russia was ahead of us in weapons development and that a Cold War was in the offing. We needed all the German scientists we could muster to prevent advanced Nazi technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union. The number of German scientists brought to the U.S. expanded to 1,500 (or possibly more; records are hard to find and verify). To signal that no visa check was to be completed, the requesting staff attached a paperclip to each scientist’s folder. Thus the name of the operation. None of these scientists’ folders was subjected to the scrutiny required of other potential immigrants.

Immigration Policy and Development

On the one hand, these scientists gave a terrific jump start to our defenses. Think about the work of Wernher von Braun and his staff’s contribution to the space race. These men eventually became U.S. citizens; von Braun led NASA. But times changed, and in 1979, the Department of Justice established an Office of Special Investigations to find and deport Nazi war criminals—and, in time, anyone who contributed to genocide and had omitted those actions on their visa applications. Our political system had shifted. One might say the criterion of morality superseded political expediency.

So, do you agree that it was right to engage fully in Operation Paperclip in the late 1940’s? To what degree should we allow the times to define our immigration policy? Should our government be required to make public such decisions about exceptions to agreed-upon policies? In February 2021, we deported a Nazi war criminal in his 90’s. Should we continue to do so?

Good historical novels often chew on such large questions. And I hope you enjoy the attention Operation Paperclip has in my novel, Chasing the American Dream ! Do let me know your reactions.

And, please, do rate the novel and, if you can, post a review on Amazon and Goodreads !

_____________________________________________________________________________

1 Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. Little, Brown and Company, 2014

Whatever Happened To The Scientists Of Operation Paperclip?

On the surface, the story of the end of World War II seems pretty straightforward. You know, the invasion of Normandy and D-Day, the Allied forces beating back the Axis powers, the end of the Holocaust and the eventual surrender of Nazi Germany — all of that. It's a rather well-known story, one that seems like your old-fashioned narrative of good triumphing over evil.

But when you look at the wider historical context, things get a little more confusing and considerably less clear on the moral front. After all, the Cold War was looming on the horizon, and for Western powers, the Soviet Union was already a threat to be monitored and a very active factor in grand designs for the coming world order. When you also take into consideration news of Nazi Germany's technological and scientific advancements during the war, well, you end up with Operation Paperclip.

In short, Operation Paperclip was the post-World War II program to poach Nazi scientists and relocate them to the United States, often by any means necessary. If you think that sounds sketchy, you'd be right. The whole thing was thoroughly covered up, and the eventual paths those scientists' lives took were both surprising and entirely unsurprising at the same time. Here's what happened to the scientists of Operation Paperclip.

The Osenberg List

While the journeys of these Nazi scientists entered strange territory after the end of World War II, their path toward Operation Paperclip really got started right in the middle of the war. More specifically, that start came with a man named Werner Osenberg.

According to Annie Jacobsen's "Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America," Osenberg was a devout member of the Nazi Party — an SS member, at that — when he was tasked in 1943 to put together an exhaustive list of the best scientific minds Germany had to offer. These individuals were to be recalled from the front lines and instead employed by the Nazi Party more directly, granting them research and testing facilities so they could improve and develop weapons. Osenberg did quite the thorough job, identifying thousands of scientists for this purpose.

But once the Allies began to invade Germany, that thoroughness backfired spectacularly. While investigating at Bonn University, soldiers noticed professors attempting to destroy a bunch of documents. After they were tipped off by a Polish lab technician, Allied forces found documents that had been partially flushed down a toilet. Not only did those records contain the names of scientists on the Osenberg List, but they also led soldiers to Osenberg's office, where they found a treasure trove of information on exactly who these scientists were and what projects they were working on. It was clear enough just how valuable that information could be.

Scientists were relocated to keep them away from the Soviets

It's pretty hard to ignore the fact that the Cold War came right on the heels of World War II, and Eastern and Western nations were already sizing each other up by the mid-1940s. As it turns out, Operation Paperclip is emblematic of those exact international tensions. Per "Operation Paperclip," a lot of the hesitation to recruit Nazi scientists evaporated in the minds of American officials once the Soviet Union became more of an active threat. Despite any initial doubts, it suddenly seemed a whole lot more important to make sure those scientists weren't left out in the open for the Soviets to snatch up themselves.

As explained by History Collection , those scientists and their families were moved around quite a bit at the end of the war. Many were held in a city called Landshut, though certain high-priority individuals were officially taken into custody — unofficially, it was so they could get to work more quickly and be incapable of emigrating to, say, Soviet Russia.

After the war ended, there were more relocations. With the Americans and Soviets slicing up Germany into respective areas they could influence, nearly 2,000 people were ordered to pack up their things immediately and head for the train station, where they could be resettled into newly appointed American zones. There, the scientists were kept effectively under house arrest, regularly checking in with military police so that their locations were known at all times.

Fighting the Soviets wasn't the initial idea

Given the context of World War II and the Cold War, it makes sense that the reason behind Operation Paperclip would've been the threat posed by the Soviet Union. But in actuality, the goals and intentions behind this secret program evolved over the course of a few years. Starting with the discovery of the Osenberg List, it's true that American forces were looking for information on Nazi science, but that was the extent of it (via History Collection ). They were looking for notes and research when they scoured Bonn University — not the scientists themselves. The discovery of the Osenberg List was really something of a happy accident for the Americans.

Even then, the Soviets weren't the first thought on the minds of U.S. officials. Rather, that first concern was the Pacific. By the time of the discovery of the Osenberg List, the Pacific front was still active, and recruiting Nazi scientists sure seemed like a good way to buff up any potential technological advantage. In fact, the war in the Pacific was the reason behind initial recruitment being as quick as it was.

And there was one other part of this, too: Keep your enemies close. These were Nazi scientists; no one could trust them, which was exactly the reason they should be recruited. Bringing those scientists to the U.S. gave American officials the perfect way to keep an eye on them, rather than allowing them to roam and potentially sow further chaos (via "Operation Paperclip" ).

Nazi ties were covered up

If you've been thinking that this entire thing sounds morally and legally questionable, you would be correct. When this whole idea was first conceived, President Harry Truman had exactly the hesitations that you'd hope for regarding allowing Nazis into the U.S. Despite allowing the operation to exist, Truman did so with a specific caveat; according to History , he explicitly said that no active members of the Nazi Party were to be recruited.

That caused some problems for the powers behind Operation Paperclip. A good few of the scientists were SS members or had received awards from the Nazi Party (via "Operation Paperclip" ); their active participation was hard to debate. So rather than tell the truth and potentially lose the valuable knowledge these scientists could bring to the U.S., they just lied. They erased participation in the Nazi Party (and war crimes) from the records of the scientists, thus allowing them entry to the U.S.

Things didn't stop there. When a particular scientist seemed to present a more difficult case, a paperclip was attached to their records — a secret signal that those files wouldn't be shown yet to the higher-ups. (It was also the inspiration for the name "Operation Paperclip," as it had been called "Operation Overcast" up to that point.) And what's more? They changed the wording of Truman's caveat. It wasn't "active Nazis" who weren't allowed, but rather those who would "plan for the resurgence of German military potential." You can probably see just what the workaround there was.

The scientists got away scot-free

Given the place that World War II and the Holocaust occupies in the general understanding of history, you'd think that, even with all the shady actions taken by the U.S. government, these Nazi scientists would've seen some sort of consequence for their actions, right? It only seems fair to think that the world wasn't keen on just letting the Nazis go and live happy lives.

But that's basically what happened with the scientists of Operation Paperclip, generally speaking, both in the eyes of the public and the government. In fact, most of the time, these scientists had to face little to no punishment for their actions. On the contrary, many were treated favorably. In her book "Operation Paperclip," Annie Jacobsen makes mention of Nazi doctor Theodor Benzinger and his rather glowing obituary in  The New York Times . The article mentions the fact that he did wartime research, but neglects to say just which side that research benefitted. Instead, it shines a spotlight on his advances in the chemical and medical fields.

Then there are cases like Arthur L. Rudolph (pictured above), a Nazi who ran a munitions factory during the war and was brought over to the U.S. in 1945. According to The Telegraph , the Justice Department bent over backwards in 1949 to ensure there would be no problems with Rudolph gaining re-entry after visiting Mexico, claiming that doing so was in the national interest.

Many were employed at NASA

While there were well over 1,000 scientists who were tapped by Operation Paperclip, there are some pretty clear trends. One of those trends? NASA .

As summarized by History Collection , many Nazi engineers had been of interest to the Third Reich due to their knowledge of rockets. But after the war, what more natural use for rockets was there than space travel? Engineers such as Bernhard Tessmann and Kurt Debus worked on the V-2 rocket program back in Germany, with Debus being an especially staunch supporter of the Nazi regime. Nonetheless, Tessmann came to work at the Marshall Space Flight Center to research thrust control (and later created a music scholarship at the University of Alabama). Debus, meanwhile, was a central figure in the early space program at Cape Canaveral and went on to become the first director of the Kennedy Space Center, per NASA .

But not all of the scientists who worked at NASA were known for rockets. Hubertus Strughold was said to be implicated in human experimentation at Dachau, but nonetheless, he was brought over to the U.S. in 1947, per an article in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine . From there, he was known for pioneering space medicine, essentially the study of what the conditions of space would do to the human body from both a biological and a psychological standpoint. That research led to the development of equipment such as early space suits worn by American astronauts, as well as understanding the effects of weightlessness on those astronauts.

Wernher Von Braun

Regarded by History Collection as the "Father of American Rocketry," Wernher von Braun might be the best example of just how few consequences these Nazi scientists had to endure after taking part in Operation Paperclip. After all, Braun had been a high-ranking member of the SS and reportedly played a large role in the creation of harsh and cruel conditions for workers who were enslaved and forced to build German V-2 rockets.

But even sources like Britannica give little voice to his actual participation in the Nazi Party, summarizing his claims that he only did it to further his research and serve his country. Instead, his push for space exploration is highlighted, as is his major role in the development and success of the American space program. Not only was he part of the team to launch the first U.S. satellite, but he was later appointed the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, where he headed up the development of rockets for the famous Saturn space program. He remained in positions of leadership for years and even received numerous awards from the U.S. government for his work.

Oh, and even wilder? According to "Operation Paperclip," Braun was even contacted by Walt Disney Studios in the mid-1950s and invited to appear on one of their TV broadcasts. More than 40 million people watched that particular program, ranking it among the most highly rated shows at the time. He basically became something of a celebrity.

The Thalidomide Scandal

If you haven't heard of the Thalidomide Scandal , here's the rundown. Per Newsweek , throughout the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of babies were born with various birth defects — shortened or missing limbs, blindness, deafness, deformed spines, and damaged internal organs. Ultimately, the common factor was a chemical then hailed as a miracle drug: thalidomide. It was sold as a way to treat morning sickness, but when the promises of safety proved to be lies, the company responsible, Chemie Grünenthal, came under fire.

Now, where does this tie into Nazi scientists? It's deeply connected, in fact. Many of the scientists and chemists employed at Chemie Grünenthal were wanted Nazis and known war criminals. And as for where Operation Paperclip plays into this? That would be a specific man: Otto Ambros.

Ambros was a brilliant and charismatic chemist, even favored by Adolf Hitler himself. During World War II, he was responsible for the development of dangerous nerve gasses and was reported to have tested those gasses on personnel at none other than the Auschwitz death camp (via "Operation Paperclip" ). Ambros was also linked to reports of mass murder and enslavement. He was found guilty during the Nuremberg Trials and sentenced to eight years in prison, but he was tapped for Operation Paperclip in late 1951 and shortly released. He would work at both Dow Chemical and even the U.S. Army Chemical Corps during the Cold War and served on the advisory committee of Chemie Grünenthal at the time of the Thalidomide Scandal.

[Featured image by Stephencdickson via Wikimedia Commons | cropped and scaled |  CC BY-SA 4.0 ]

The Dachau Trials and deportation

When it comes to war crimes committed by Nazis, you may be familiar with the Nuremberg Trials, but they weren't the only case of Nazis being brought to justice. Per the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , from June 1945 to December 1947, the U.S. Army held its own set of trials, known as the Dachau Trials. Generally speaking, these trials existed to deal with lesser war crimes, such as cases involving lower-level guards and police members who had committed crimes against Allied soldiers. But they also dealt with bigger cases where large groups of people were harmed or killed; those cases did sometimes involve higher-level officials and SS members who were working at concentration camps such as Dachau.

According to History Collection , those trials targeted one of the scientists of Operation Paperclip: Georg Rickhey. During the war, Rickhey had been in charge of large-scale projects and production lines, many of which were built inside underground bunkers (via "Operation Paperclip" ). It was said he'd even been the mind behind Adolf Hitler's personal fortified bunker , and the U.S. brought him stateside for that expertise. But when testimony at the Dachau Trials revealed he'd made use of slave labor and promoted horrendous working conditions, he was arrested, returned to Germany, and tried. Despite being acquitted in late 1947, he remained in Germany, never returning to the U.S.

The Office of Special Investigations

As disheartening as it is to learn about the lies and deceptions used to help grant American citizenship to literal Nazis. fear not — the charade didn't last forever. As documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (or the OSI, for short) was formed in 1979 with the explicit purpose of investigating cases regarding Nazis and their war crimes. They were looking for those who were not only involved in persecution, but also naturalization fraud — in other words, the sort of methods used by Operation Paperclip. According to a 2008 report , only one Operation Paperclip scientist, Arthur Rudolph, was prosecuted by the OSI, but the group still made an impact. All told, they deported and denaturalized more than 100 such war criminals and stopped a few hundred more from gaining entry to the U.S. In 2010, they merged with another group but still pursued the same goals they started with: shedding light on crimes that might have been forgotten by the public.

And speaking of the public? While Operation Paperclip was conducted under the radar, it couldn't stay that way. According to The Telegraph , in 2006, the OSI specifically looked into cases of the U.S. government helping war criminals gain American citizenship. They wrote up a 600-page report on what they found, but the Justice Department tried to hide it, claiming that none of the findings should be considered official and that many were, instead, faulty. Nonetheless, by 2010, that report leaked to the public, who were finally able to see the true scope of Operation Paperclip.

Harry Truman Approves Operation “Paperclip”

On 3 September 1946, US President Harry S. Truman approved operation “Paperclip” to attract German scientists to the USA and prevent them from moving to the USSR. However, the recruitment and transfer of scientists from Germany to the United States had begun much earlier, and Truman’s order specifically clarified that those who had been “an actual member of the Nazi Party and was more than a formal participant of its activities or actively supported Nazi militarism” be excluded from recruitment.

According to the said restrictions, most scientists were to be considered unfit. Rocket builders Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolf, and physicist Hubertus Strughold were among them, each of them was previously recognised as “a threat to the security of the allied forces”.

In order to circumvent President Truman’s orders, as well as the Potsdam and Yalta agreements, the United States intelligence agencies had to falsify the biographies of numerous German scientists and specialists who had been taken to America, remove all information about their membership in the NSDAP, and about their activities from their personal files. Many of the scientists conducted experiments with radiation, oxygen starvation, and other inhumane things on prisoners of concentration camps. Kurt Blome, for example, tested anti-plague vaccines on prisoners and Walther Schreiber tested bacterial weapons. Within the framework of operation “Paperclip” 1,800 specialists and 3,700 members of their families were transported to the USA.

Christopher Simpson. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)

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Operation Paperclip

[Declassified Documents on Operation Paperclip Follow This Brief Introduction]

At the twilight of World War II, as the embers of battle subsided and the world began to reimagine its new geopolitical landscape, the United States launched an audacious covert operation. Termed “Operation Paperclip,” this classified mission sought to capitalize on the scientific prowess of Nazi Germany, aiming to bolster American defense, research, and space exploration capabilities for the decades to come.

Background and Objectives

When the dust of World War II settled, the global powers, especially the U.S. and the Soviet Union, were already eyeing the spoils of war. Both nations understood the scientific and military advantage the German technological innovations presented. Operation Paperclip, initiated in 1945, was the U.S.’s answer to this strategic opportunity.

Its primary objective was to recruit and relocate top German scientists, engineers, and technicians to the United States. In doing so, America hoped to prevent their expertise from benefiting the Soviet Union, or from contributing to any resurgence of power in post-war Germany.

Key Figures and Accomplishments

The breadth of talent acquired through Operation Paperclip was vast, but among the recruits, certain names stood out:

• Dr. Wernher von Braun : Arguably the most renowned figure of the operation, von Braun was instrumental in the development of the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany. Once in the U.S., he became a linchpin in the development of the American space program, playing a pivotal role in the Apollo moon landings.

Through the acquired German expertise, the U.S. made significant leaps in:

• Aerospace Technologies : These experts were foundational in shaping what would become NASA and propelling the U.S. to its eventual moon landing.
• Missile and Defense Systems : Beyond space exploration, the German scientists were pivotal in advancing U.S. missile technology, which would prove crucial during the Cold War era.

Ethical Concerns and Controversies

The benefits of Operation Paperclip to the U.S. are undeniable. However, the program’s legacy is not without its shadows. Many of the scientists recruited had affiliations with the Nazi Party, and some were even implicated in war crimes, including conducting heinous experiments in concentration camps.

The U.S. government, in its quest for technological superiority, often chose to overlook these dark histories. These ethical oversights have, over the years, become a significant point of contention and debate.

Operation Paperclip underscores the intricate dance of science, ethics, and geopolitics. It is a chapter in history that presents a mix of admiration for scientific advancements and introspection on the moral lines crossed in the process.

As you delve into the declassified documents archived below, the magnitude and nuances of Operation Paperclip will unfurl, offering a more profound understanding of this pivotal moment in history.

[Below: Declassified Documents on Operation Paperclip]

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The horrible secrets of operation paperclip: an interview with annie jacobsen about her stunning account.

Annie Jacobsen is a journalist and the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51. A graduate of Princeton University, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

Launch of a V2 in Peenemünde; photo taken four seconds after taking off from test stand, Summer 1943

The journalist Annie Jacobsen recently published Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Little Brown, 2014). Scouring the archives and unearthing previously undisclosed records as well as drawing on earlier work, Jacobsen recounts in chilling detail a very peculiar effort on the part of the U.S. military to utlize the very scientists who had been essential to Hitler’s war effort. 

As I read your book I started thinking about the various Nazi genre films such as; The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File, and Marathon Man — they all hold to a similar premise, key Nazi’s escape Germany after the war and plot in various ways to do bad things. Apparently truth is stranger than fiction. What was Operation Paperclip?

Operation Paperclip was a classified program to bring Nazi scientists to America right after World War II. It had, however, a benign public face. The war department had issued a press release saying that good German scientists would be coming to America to help out in our scientific endeavors.

But it was not benign at all, as seen in the character of Otto Ambros, a man, as you explain, was keen on helping U.S. soldiers in matters of hygiene by offering them soap, this soon after they had conquered Germany. Who was Ambros?

Otto Ambros I must say was one of the most dark-hearted characters that I wrote about in this book. He was Hitler’s favorite chemist, and I don’t say that lightly. I found a document in the National Archives, I don’t believe it had ever been revealed before, that showed that during the war Hitler gave Ambros a one million Reichsmark bonus for his scientific acumen. The reason was two-fold. Ambros worked on the Reich’s secret nerve agent program, but he also invented synthetic rubber, that was called buna. The reason rubber was so important — if you think about the Reich’s war-machine and how tanks need treads, aircraft need wheels — the Reich needed rubber. By inventing synthetic rubber, Ambros became Hitler’s favorite chemist.

Not only that when the Reich decided to develop a factory at Auschwitz, — the death camp had a third territory, there was Auschwitz, there was Birkenau — they did it in a third territory called Auschwitz III also known as Monowitvz-Buna. This was where synthetic rubber was going to be manufactured using prisoners who would be spared the gas chamber as they were put to work, and most often worked to death by the Reich war machine. The person, the general manager there at Auschwitz III, was Otto Ambros. Ambros was one of the last individuals to leave Auschwitz, this is in the last days of January 1945 as the Russians are about to liberate the death camp. Ambros is there according to these documents I have located in Germany, destroying evidence right up until the very end.

After the war, Ambros was sought by the Allies and later found, interrogated and put on trial at Nuremberg, where he was convicted of mass-murder and slavery. He was sentenced to prison, but in the early 1950s as the Cold War became elevated he was given clemency by the U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy and released from prison. When he was sentenced, the Nuremberg judges took away all his finances, including that one million Reichsmark bonus from Hitler. When McCloy gave him clemency he also restored Otto Ambros’ finances, so he got back what was left of that money. He was then given a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.

He actually came to work in the United States?

Otto Ambros remains one of the most difficult cases to crack in terms of Paperclip. While I was able to unearth some new and horrifying information about his postwar life, most of it remains, “lost or missing,” which I take to mean classified. We do know for a fact that Ambros came to the United States two, possibly three times. As a convicted war criminal traveling to the United States he would have needed special papers from the U.S. State Department. The State Department, however, informed me through the Freedom of Information Act that those documents are lost or missing.

You describe quite well the pushing and pulling on how this program came about — and the compulsion to accelerate things once the Cold War hit full steam. The rationale being if the U.S. didn’t employ these men — and they were all men — then the Soviets would have. How do you see that type of argument having these characters so vividly in front of you?

It was really one of the most traumatic elements of researching and going through the documents, seeing how there were different factions in the Pentagon — because the program was run out of the Pentagon by Joint Chiefs of Staff. They created a specific unit called the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), which was in charge of Paperclip. In these documents you can see the tug-of-war between generals who were absolutely opposed to the idea of bringing anyone who participated in the Reich’s rise to power, they were loathe to bring these scientists here, they did not want to. I quote transcripts where certain generals saying exactly that. On the other hand, there were other individuals, generals and colonels, who were gun-ho about the prospect about making America’s arsenal, the aggregate of our military strength, the strongest in the world, and certainly stronger than the Soviets. To that end they did not see any problem in bringing these scientists to the U.S. and were seemingly willing to not only overlook the past of these Nazi scientists, but to white wash them.

The former Nazi Surgeon General, Walter Scheiber, had an advocate in the U.S in the person of Colonel Charles Loucks. You describe a photo taken of Loucks in Japan where he is standing by an “enormous pile of dead bodies” that in turn lay “next to a stack of incendiary bombs,” with a look of detachment.” This reminded me of the famous quote by U.S. General Curtis LeMay: 

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.”

LeMay and Louck’s justifications do not sound much different than the Nazi rationale of, “I was only following orders.” How do you see this and has your thinking changed in the course of writing this?

Certainly with some of the individuals involved a kind of necessary detachment in their perception of what they needed to do to serve their country. Mindful of the fact that I was not there during the Cold War and looking at history, one must take into account how high the stakes were — thermo nuclear war. Some of the individuals involved in Paperclip, i.e. the American officials, as a journalist I was able to consider that and see the paradox and conflict and empathize with having to make those very tough decisions.

General Loucks, however, stuck out as an exception to me because he didn’t only see work with Hitler’s closest confidants as a matter of national security for the United States moving forward, he grew to actually respect and appreciate the Nazi scientists. I found these quotes from him in his diaries, which he left posthumously to the Military History Institute in Pennsylvania. You see him discussing his fondness for example, a former Brigadier Fuhrer, Walter Schrieber, who was on Himmler’s personal staff and was so close to Hitler he was given a gold Party badge, which meant he was in favor by the Fuhrer. Sheiber was involved in concentration camp experiments, he was the liaison between Otto Ambros and Reich’s chemical committee, he had direct knowledge of the most horrific elements of the concentration camp, including genocide. Here he was being invited into the home of General Louck. At one point in the diary, I learned, he would even spend the night at the General’s home as a houseguest.

Now you point out an interesting passage in the book that I think gives a little perspective on General Loucks and made me wonder about how much the war had possibly transformed him? He was in charge overseeing the chemical weapons intelligence in Japan after the war. As I describe in the book going out into the Japanese countryside and taking a look at these incendiary bombs that he was in charge of manufacturing for the Americans during the war. He talks with this peculiar detachment about coming across a pile of what was left of these incendiary bombs and a pile of dead bodies, Japanese civilians who had been killed. He talks about them with such a strange perspective where he is only interested in seeing if his incendiary bombs had worked that it... gave me pause.

Former Vice President Henry Wallace, under Franklin Roosevelt, is perhaps best known for running for President, and refusing to renounce the support of U.S. Communists. What did he have to do with Operation Paperclip?

That’s such an interesting detail for you to pick up on and it was such an interesting element to write about. Although he had been Vice President and Truman later became Roosevelt’s Vice President, then of course fate and circumstance elevates Truman to the President. Henry Wallace is then Secretary of Commerce. What was interesting is that the Secretary of Commerce had a place on the JIOA, and was privy to some, but not all of the information regarding Operation Paperclip that was being run by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wallace as Secretary of Commerce was incredibly gung-ho about getting Americans back to work. He had this book called, Sixty Million Jobs, and he intended to help America reach that milestone, the post-war prosperity that everyone in the nation was hoping for. Wallace saw science as a means to do that. Without knowledge of who these Nazi scientists were and what their pasts were Wallace endorsed this program, to such a degree that he wrote a letter to President Truman himself, saying you need to get on board with this program. That had a huge impact on Operation Paperclip which at that very moment in time, this is just a few months after the end of the war, the Joint Chiefs were struggling with the idea of Paperclip because the perception was that it was a deal with the devil. When Wallace stepped in, and said this is brilliant for commerce, it was exactly what the Joint Chiefs had been looking for.

How did you happen on this topic? How hard was it research and writing this?

I came across Operation Paperclip when I was writing Area 51, which involved the two Nazi aircraft designers who were brothers, Walter and Reimar Horten. The Horten brothers did not come to America as part of Paperclip, but their boss certainly did. His name was Siegfried Knemeyer, he was Herman Goering’s most important scientists for the Luftwaffe. Gorring liked him so much that he referred to him as ‘my boy‘ and made him chief of all technical engineering. When I learned that shortly after the war Knemeyer came to the United states with his seven children and his wife, had a long and prosperous career with the U.S. Air force, and that when he retired in the mid 1970s the Defense Department awarded him with the Distinguished Civilian Service Award — the highest award a scientist can get from the Pentagon — I thought to myself, how does that happen? How do you go from having Herman Goring as your boss then to having the U.S. Defense Department as your boss, and to be so important to both? That is where I became instantly curious about Operation Paperclip.

I was able to track down Knemeyer’s grandson who lives in the United States. He is about my age and is a very courageous fellow who believes in transparency. He agreed to let me interview him. There began a dialog between Dirk Knemeyer and myself about what this really meant. In those interviews I realized there was a way into Operation Paperclip in a manner that had not been reported before. Of course I was writing my book on the shoulders of so many amazing journalists; including Clarence Lasby, Linda Hunt and Tom Bower — people who have written about Paperclip before, but with limited access — we all sort of go along, and build on things as more informationgets revealed. I believe, though, that what gave me a lot of insight into the characters in Operation Paperclip was access to their family members.

As for the second part of your question, the subject matter is so complex, certainly when you are reading about the war, it is dark and evil. Then when you read about what happened after the war it is complicated and thought provoking. For a journalist that is challenging territory. I’m someone who always welcomes the challenge because I don’t believe stories are black and white. And I don’t believe stories are one-sided, or easily made simple. I believe this is a subject matter that deserves serious consideration and I also think there is so much more to be revealed. I hope my book inspires journalist sin the coming decade to look at this more. Because I absolutely know that there is so much out here that is still classified.