How scientists of the Third Reich worked for the benefit of US industry

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

75 years ago, US intelligence services began Operation Overcast, later renamed Operation Paperclip. It involved the recruitment and use of Nazi scientists in the interests of the United States, including those suspected of involvement in crimes against humanity.

Many of them, thanks to the edits made by the special services in their files, were able to obtain US citizenship and later worked at the enterprises of the American military-industrial complex, avoiding responsibility for their actions during the Second World War. Experts call Operation Paperclip an immoral project and a mind hunt. According to historians, the United States used war criminals to create more advanced means of destruction against yesterday's allies.

In July 1945, US intelligence agencies launched Operation Overcast, which was later named Paperclip. Within its framework, the United States recruited scientists from Nazi Germany for work, including those involved in crimes against humanity.

Make money in disaster

Washington thought about using the scientific developments of the Third Reich long before the end of World War II. In November 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States created the Committee for Industrial and Technical Intelligence, which was tasked with finding technologies in Germany that could potentially be useful to the American economy. And the special intelligence department of the Air Force for the collection and analysis of aviation technical information compiled a list of German aircraft that were supposed to be captured by the American security forces. The equipment, its drawings, archives and aviation personnel were searched for by special mobile groups.

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According to the military historian Yuri Knutov, the Americans, from the moment they entered the war, were guided by very pragmatic considerations, trying to "make money on a world catastrophe."

The expert said that at the beginning of 1945, one of the internal documents of the German Association for Defense Research, containing the names of German scientists who were involved in scientific work for defense purposes, fell into the hands of the special services of the Western Allies. This list was later used by the American special services to compile a list of researchers of interest to the United States.

In the summer of 1945, American intelligence decided to streamline its work on finding and using carriers of important scientific and technical information in the interests of the United States. On July 19 (some sources cite the date July 6), Operation Overcast began. It was developed by the US Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the CIA) and approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The export of German specialists to the United States was handled by the Joint Intelligence Agency.

• "V-2" on the Meilerwagen transport and installation trailer
• © Wikimedia Commons / Imperial War Museum

Initially, the activities within the framework of the operation concerned 350 German scientists, but soon intelligence began to insist on expanding the scale of activity.

“According to the data available in open sources, the operation covered a total of at least 1,800 scientific specialists and 3,700 members of their families,” said Yuri Knutov.

According to him, the most interesting shots were taken to the United States, while the rest were resettled to Western Europe and there were thoroughly interrogated.

"Clean" dossiers

“Around the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946, Operation Veil was renamed Operation Paperclip for reasons of secrecy. There is a version that this name is an ironic allusion to the very paper clips with which photographs of Nazi criminals were attached to the "clean" dossiers invented by American intelligence, "said Yuri Knutov.

According to Dmitry Surzhik, senior researcher at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the most important "acquisition" of the Americans during this operation was the research team of the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun.

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“Wernher von Braun is the scientist who, in fact, created the Americans their rocket program. He oversaw the development of all major US space rockets up to Saturn 5, which took the Apollo 11 crew to the moon. In fact, thanks to him, the Americans managed to land a man on the moon,”the expert emphasized.

As Yuri Knutov recalled, von Braun served as deputy director of NASA and a number of other high government positions in the US aerospace sector, becoming a very influential and well-to-do person. In 1955, he was officially granted United States citizenship.

“At the same time, the Americans completely closed their eyes to what von Braun did during the war. He was an SS officer, and tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners were involved in his work in Germany, many of whom died. Von Braun himself later made excuses that, they say, he knew nothing about torture and executions, but he was clearly cheating. There is evidence of concentration camp prisoners, members of the Resistance that von Braun personally gave instructions to torture them, Knutov said.

• Wernher von Braun with the military of the Third Reich
• © Wikimedia Commons / Bundesarchiv

Arthur Rudolph was another prominent Nazi rocket engineer working for NASA and the US military, according to the historian. During the war years, he actively exploited concentration camp prisoners, and then “forged the defense might” of Washington. When in the 1980s there was talk of his involvement in war crimes, he left America and settled in the Federal Republic of Germany.

As Knutov noted, people who worked for the Nazi regime subsequently received awards from the Pentagon and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, their names were noted in the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Hitler's military doctor Hubertus Struggold was called the father of American space medicine. A special prize and a military medical library bore his name. He passed special checks by the US authorities three times. But only after his death began to surface data on the participation of Struggold in Nazi experiments on living people, including children suffering from epilepsy.

Former subordinates of Hitler also helped the Americans to develop military missiles, aviation equipment, and new types of fuel.

• Wernher von Braun in the USA
• © Wikimedia Commons / NASA

In addition, in addition to the Germans, according to Yuri Knutov, the Americans also collaborated with former members of Japanese special forces, who experimented with people in the development of bacteriological weapons.

“How morality is combined with the recruitment of war criminals is a difficult question. Especially considering that, for example, thousands of civilians were killed by V-2 missiles in the allied United States, Great Britain,”noted Dmitry Surzhik.

According to Yuri Knutov, Operation Paperclip was "an immoral and inhuman project."

“It was a mind hunt. The United States used war criminals to create more sophisticated means of destruction directed against yesterday's allies, Knutov summed up.