Operation Paperclip

Germany’s use of its V-1 jet-powered flying bombs and V-2 rockets during the latter stages of World War II ushered in the era of guided missiles. After the war, as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union increased, both countries sought to develop their own arsenal of guided missiles. In the ensuing arms race, both moved to first exploit and then improve upon Germany’s advanced rocket technology. Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Turner, first Commander of White Sands Proving Ground, plainly stated the rationale behind this effort. “We must support and actively engage in a program of research and development that will provide us with weapons of greater power and greater range than any other nation can produce, and maintain for years to come a superiority in this field which is unquestionable and which is known to our potential enemies.” In the years right after World War II, the U.S. Army capitalized on the German progress to research and develop their own series of rockets and long-range missiles. The U.S. Army post of Fort Bliss, Texas had an important role in this exciting early American rocketry period.

We are led to believe that at the end of the Second World War in 1945, all of the Nazis were either killed in battle or captured by the heroic Allies.

We are led to believe that in the years following the war, the surviving Nazis were all tried for their crimes during the war against mankind.

We are led to believe that, aside from a few that found safe refuge in far corners of the globe, in places such as Bolivia, Argentina, New Zealand and some less-habitable locations, justice for all Nazis was swift and served as the great equaliser. 

What we are not told as part of this narrative is where a group of over 1,500 Nazis disappeared to at the end of the Second World War.

More than 1,500 German scientists, engineers and technicians (many of whom were formerly registered members of the Nazi Party, some were party leaders) were recruited and brought to the United States. After World War II they were hired under Operation Paperclip by the U.S. government to gain scientific and military advantage during the Cold War and, later, Space Race. (Paperclips were attached to the scientists’ new work as U.S. Government Scientists, thus the name.)

Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II.

On the morning of July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 left Earth’s atmosphere on their way to the moon.

The day was tense. The moon landing was (and remains) possibly the greatest feat of engineering in human history, but success was by no means a guarantee. In the Command Room at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA’s best and brightest were a ball of nerves, mainlining coffee and chewing their fingernails.

All except for Wernher von Braun.

In 1945 during the cold war and the space race with Russia, the United States conducted Operation Paperclip. Over 1600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from Germany to work for the U.S. government. Operation Paperclip’s purpose was to aid and advance the U.S. military during the cold war. This isn’t a video about the scientists and engineers, but about the 108 families stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Thank you for watching From the Space Vault!

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.

The new Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, shares much in common with the first movie in the series — Raiders of the Lost Ark. Among the common features is that the villain in the new movie, as in Raiders, is a German Nazi.

Image © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd.

“ROCKET SCIENTIST” – A central element to the Space Camp history pedagogy is the distinction between a “Missile” and a “Rocket”. Beyond the technical difference in payload—a missile carries munitions, a rocket carries a capsule—the students are encouraged to think about the difference in purpose: a missile explodes, whereas a rocket explores. Setting aside the assumption that exploration and destruction are so easily bifurcated (and we are talking to nine-year olds; a lot of assumptions will be ignored), note how even this seemingly simple characterization of von Braun as a “Rocket Scientist” is an apology. Not only does this, given the Space Camp’s definition of a rocket, deftly dismiss his role in the military, more generally it points our attention to his genius (which is undeniable) rather than the ethics of what that intellect was put to.

Operation Paperclip (formerly known as Operation Overcast) was initiated in 1945 by the newly established Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) of the United States. As tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States over global domination grew, the Truman administration envisioned Germany’s scientific and technological advances during World War II as a valuable potential asset, particularly for military and rocketry development.