UNFOLDING OPERATION PAPERCLIP

On July 6th, 1945 the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a classified memorandum titled the “Exploitation of German Specialists in Science and Technology in the United States.” The Military Intelligence Division of the War Department, G-2, issued a memo out to eight agencies of the War Department that German specialists could be implemented within US intelligence to promote post-war military research.

Initially known as “Operation Overcast,” Operation Paperclip assembled more than 1,500 German and Austrian specialists to participate in a post-war intelligence program facilitated by the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This initiative, designed to drain the brain trust of Germany, was fueled by conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Although the USSR and the US were Allies, after WWII tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated to the Cold War. Why?

After World War Two, Soviets occupied eastern Europe including Poland, East Berlin, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, which all became satellite entities of the Soviet Union.

Operation Paperclip aerospace engineers at Fort Bliss, Texas

Although the Soviet Union joined the Allies during WWII, the USSR remained a concern to US intelligence and national security. As early as the 1920s, the Soviet Union established espionage programs within the United States. This was part of the Communist program, that was to convert the world masses to their ideology.

Did the USSR intimidate other nations? Did other world powers seek German intelligence for national defense?

In Gaia’s fourth episode of Deep Space “Dark Alliance,” researcher David Hatcher Childress explains that Great Britain could not have assimilated Nazi scientists into a permanent Space Program due to the fact that the Third Reich inflicted insurmountable devastation upon the UK, particularly London. The United States however, had enough distance between them and Germany to facilitate such a program. Therefore, it was imperative that the United States build military power that could match its closest threat and former ally.

It was not widely publicized that the UK first gleaned scientific information from the Nazi scientists the after Germany surrendered in May 1945.

When the British learned that the US was recruiting German scientists, they asked to use the specialists for their own rocket studies first. The US consented, and released German scientists, such as Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger, and Arthur Rudolph, into the British project known as “Operation Backfire.” The purpose of this operation was to conduct a series of V-2 tests on Germany’s north coast. Wernher Von Braun’s V-2 rocket was in fact one of the German weapons that demolished many parts of London. Aptly named, Operation Backfire thwarted American plans to intercept German individuals indefinitely and not all scientists were returned to aid the US.

Did the United States make other Faustian bargains?

Operation Paperclip was not the first time that the United States government sacrificed moral integrity in the name of scientific advancement. Following the Axis’ surrender, the US discovered Japanese war atrocities in Manchuria. In Unit 731 the Imperial Japanese Army conducted gruesome experiments including vivisections, forced biological and chemical procedures on the local Chinese population. When it came to prosecuting war crimes, the United States looked the other way and took this information for personal gain.

What was the greatest asset gained by the United States government?