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“Project Paperclip” redirects here. For the Holocaust project, see Paper Clips Project. For other uses, see Paper clip (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Operation Paper, a 1951–52 CIA operation.
Kurt H. Debus, a former V-2 rocket scientist who became a NASA director, sitting between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1962 at a briefing at Blockhouse 34, Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959; several were former members of the Nazi Party.
The effort began in earnest in 1945, as the Allies advanced into Germany and discovered a wealth of scientific talent and advanced research that had contributed to Germany’s wartime technological advancements. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff officially established Operation Overcast (operations “Overcast” and “Paperclip” were related, and the terms are often used interchangeably) on July 20, 1945, with the dual aims of leveraging German expertise for the ongoing war effort against Japan and to bolster U.S. postwar military research. The operation, conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), was largely actioned by special agents of the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many selected scientists were involved in the Nazi rocket program, aviation, or chemical/biological warfare. The Soviet Union conducted a similar program, called Operation Osoaviakhim, that emphasized many of the same fields of research.
The operation, characterized by the recruitment of German specialists and their families, relocated more than 6000 experts to the US. It has been valued at US$10 billion in patents and industrial processes. Recruits included such notable figures as Wernher von Braun, a leading rocket-technology scientist. Those recruited were instrumental in the development of the U.S. space program and military technology during the Cold War. Despite its contributions to American scientific advances, Operation Paperclip has been controversial because of the Nazi affiliations of many recruits, and the ethics of assimilating individuals associated with war crimes into American society.
The operation was not solely focused on rocketry; efforts were directed toward synthetic fuels, medicine, and other fields of research. Notable advances in aeronautics fostered rocket and space-flight technologies pivotal in the Space Race. The operation played a crucial role in the establishment of NASA and the success of the Apollo missions to the Moon.
Operation Paperclip was part of a broader strategy by the US to harness German scientific talent in the face of emerging Cold War tensions, and ensuring this expertise did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union or other nations. The operation’s legacy has remained controversial in subsequent decades.
Background and Operation Overcast
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In February 1945, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) set up T-Force, or Special Sections Subdivision, which grew to over 2,000 personnel by June. T-Force examined 5,000 German targets, seeking expertise in synthetic rubber and oil catalysts, new designs in armored equipment, V-2 (rocket) weapons, jet and rocket propelled aircraft, naval equipment, field radios, secret writing chemicals, aero medicine research, gliders, and “scientific and industrial personalities”.[1]
When large numbers of German scientists began to be discovered by the advancing Allied forces in late April 1945, the Special Sections Subdivision set up the Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section to manage and interrogate them. The Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section established a detention center, Camp Dustbin, first near Paris and later in Kransberg Castle outside Frankfurt. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the first secret recruitment program, called Operation Overcast, on July 20, 1945, initially “to assist in shortening the Japanese war and to aid our postwar military research”.[2] The term “Overcast” was the name first given by the German scientists’ family members for the housing camp where they were held in Bavaria.[3] In late summer 1945, the JCS established the JIOA, a subcommittee of the Joint Intelligence Community, to directly oversee Operation Overcast and later Operation Paperclip.[4] The JIOA representatives included the army’s director of intelligence, the chief of naval intelligence, the assistant chief of Air Staff-2 (air force intelligence), and a representative from the State Department.[5] In November 1945, Operation Overcast was renamed Operation Paperclip by Ordnance Corps officers, who would attach a paperclip to the folders of those rocket experts whom they wished to employ in the United States.[3]
The project was not initially targeted against the Soviet Union; rather the concern was that German scientists might emigrate and continue their research in countries that remained neutral during the war.[6] Much U.S. effort was focused on Saxony and Thuringia, which on July 1, 1945, became part of the Soviet occupation zone. Many German research facilities and personnel had been evacuated to these states before the end of the war, particularly from the Berlin area. The USSR then relocated more than 2,200 Nazi specialists and their families—more than 6,000 people—with Operation Osoaviakhim during one night on October 22, 1946.[7]
In a secret directive circulated on September 3, 1946, President Truman officially approved Operation Paperclip and expanded it to include 1,000 German scientists under “temporary, limited military custody”.[8][9][10] News media revealed the program as early as December 1946.[11]
On April 26, 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued directive JCS 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”;[12]: 185 and that, excepting war-criminals, German scientists be detained for intelligence purposes as required.[13]
Osenberg List
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In the later part of World War II, Germany was at a logistical disadvantage, having failed to conquer the USSR with Operation Barbarossa (June–December 1941), and its drive for the Caucasus (June 1942 – February 1943). The failed conquest had depleted German resources, and its military–industrial complex was unprepared to defend the Greater Germanic 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 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.[14][15]
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.
— Dieter K. Huzel, Peenemünde to Canaveral
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 [de], the engineer-scientist heading the Wehrforschungsgemeinschaft (Defense Research Association), recorded the names of the politically cleared men to the Osenberg List, thus reinstating them to scientific work.[16]
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.[17][12] Then U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the United States Army Ordnance Corps, used the Osenberg List to compile his list of German scientists to be captured and interrogated; Wernher von Braun, Germany’s best rocket scientist, headed Major Staver’s list.[18]