Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, eighty one years ago today. On June twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, the US Secretary of State approved Werner
Speaker 1: von Brown and other German rocket scientists to enter the
Speaker 1: United States under a program called Operation paper Clip. This
Speaker 1: was a secret program to bring German scientists, engineers, and
Speaker 1: other specialists to the United States to live and work,
Speaker 1: including ones who had deep ties to the Nazi Party
Speaker 1: and war crimes. Our episode on Operation paper Clip came
Speaker 1: out on May twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, and it
Speaker 1: is Today's Saturday Classic Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2: Wilson and I'm Holly Friday.
Speaker 1: Today we are going to talk about Operation paper Clip,
Speaker 1: which is also known as Project paper Clip. And this
Speaker 1: was the US effort to bring German scientists to the
Speaker 1: United States after World War Two. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: the US was definitely not the only Allied nation doing this,
Speaker 1: as examples, the UK and France and the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: all had their own programs to try to exploit German
Speaker 1: scientific and engineering knowledge after the war, but in most
Speaker 1: cases those other programs involved specialists and researchers who were
Speaker 1: either working in occupied Germany or they were sent back
Speaker 1: to Germany after a few years of supervised work in
Speaker 1: another country. But for the United States program, a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who were part of it ultimately became
Speaker 1: permanent residents or citizens of the US, and this included
Speaker 1: people who were ardent Nazis or who had committed war crimes.
Speaker 1: A lot of the time, the rocket scientists are the
Speaker 1: ones who get the most just discussion around this program today,
Speaker 1: so people like Werner von Brown, who developed ballistic missiles
Speaker 1: for the US Army before joining the space program at NASA.
Speaker 1: But paper Clippers really came from a wide range of
Speaker 1: scientific and engineering specialties, including flight, medicine and chemical warfare
Speaker 1: and aeronautics. They worked in military and in civilian roles.
Speaker 1: It was like every layer of American industry and the
Speaker 1: military industrial complex. When I started on this episode, my
Speaker 1: intent was that today we were going to talk about
Speaker 1: the context for this program and its precursor, which was
Speaker 1: called Operation Overcast, and then the program itself and some
Speaker 1: of the most prominent and notorious people who were part
Speaker 1: of it. That turned out to be too much for
Speaker 1: one episode, which people listening to me list all those
Speaker 1: things off may not be that surprised by. So this
Speaker 1: episode is going to whack through the arc of this
Speaker 1: program's creation and its existence, and we'll have more about
Speaker 1: some of the specific scientists and engineers and other specialties
Speaker 1: in another episode sometime soon, possibly the next episode, but
Speaker 1: since it's not written yet, I don't want to promise anything.
Speaker 1: This is one of those things that became clear at
Speaker 1: like three o'clock yesterday afternoon that this could not all
Speaker 1: be one episode. So that means that while there will
Speaker 1: be some references to some Nazi atrocities during World War
Speaker 1: Two and the general era of the nineteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: there's there's not as much detail about the specifics in
Speaker 1: this particular episode. It is something that will be discussed
Speaker 1: more in a future episode about the researchers themselves.
Speaker 2: So to establish a bit of background on this subject.
Speaker 2: In June of nineteen forty two, Adolf Hitler issued the
Speaker 2: Decree of the Furor on the Reich Research Council. It read,
Speaker 2: in part quote, the necessity to expand all available forces
Speaker 2: to highest efficiency in the interest of the state requires
Speaker 2: not only in peacetime but also, and especially in wartime,
Speaker 2: the concentrated effort of scientific research and its channelization toward
Speaker 2: the goal to be aspired. It then went on to say,
Speaker 2: leading men of science above all are to make research
Speaker 2: fruitful for warfare by working together in their special fields.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty four he issued another decree, and this
Speaker 2: one called for the development of weapons and equipment that
Speaker 2: had quote revolutionary new characteristics. These would put Germany ahead
Speaker 2: of its enemies. Nazi propaganda framed these new weapons and
Speaker 2: equipment as Vunderwaffe or wonder weapons. Also in nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: Germany introduced the rocket power measureschment Emmy one sixty three,
Speaker 2: which was the world's first rocket powered fighter, the two
Speaker 2: sixty two, which was the world's first operational jet fighter,
Speaker 2: the V one flying bomb, which was the world's first
Speaker 2: cruise missile, and the V two rocket, which was the
Speaker 2: world's first ballistic missile. So a lot of wartime firsts there,
Speaker 2: and it has been widely repeated that if these technologies
Speaker 2: had been introduced just a few months earlier in the war,
Speaker 2: the access Powers might well have won, and there's some
Speaker 2: debate over whether that's really true, but Allied military officials
Speaker 2: definitely saw all of this and any other innovations that
Speaker 2: Germany might have had in the works is a huge threat.
Speaker 2: There were concerns that Germany's ultimate goal for the V
Speaker 2: two rocket was for it to carry a nuclear payload,
Speaker 2: and concerns that it was sharing its secrets and technologies
Speaker 2: with Japan. So the Allied powers made it a priority
Speaker 2: to try to capture as much German research and technology
Speaker 2: as possible, both to replicate it for themselves and to
Speaker 2: try to develop countermeasures. Especially after the D Day invasion
Speaker 2: started on June six, nineteen forty four, teams really searched
Speaker 2: for German research facilities and weapons factories. They copied blueprints
Speaker 2: and technical materials, They questioned scientists, and confiscated weapons and technology.
Speaker 2: This included disassembling and removing big pieces of equipment like
Speaker 2: V two rockets and wind tunnels and aircraft. This process
Speaker 2: really accelerated in the last months of the war. The
Speaker 2: UK and the US formed the Combined Intelligence Objective Subcommittee
Speaker 2: to coordinate a huge sweep for German military secrets and equipment.
Speaker 2: This really escalated after Hitler issued the Destructive Measures on
Speaker 2: Reich Territory Decree, also known as the Nero decree that
Speaker 2: happened on March nineteenth, nineteen forty five, and this decree
Speaker 2: called for the destruction of anything that could be used
Speaker 2: by enemies of Germany. British and American units became increasingly
Speaker 2: competitive as they tried to capture resources before Germany could
Speaker 2: destroy them and before Soviet forces who had similar objectives
Speaker 2: could move into an area. Yeah, in some cases it
Speaker 2: was literally an area that the Soviets were supposed to
Speaker 2: be occupying, but British or American forces or both together
Speaker 2: would be like, we got to get as much of
Speaker 2: this stuff ourselves as possible before they get here. As
Speaker 2: all of this.
Speaker 1: Was happening, military officials also started to shift their focus
Speaker 1: a little bit because no matter how many blueprints or
Speaker 1: technical manuals or formulas or actual pieces of technology they
Speaker 1: managed to secure, and no matter how many specialists they interviewed,
Speaker 1: that still wouldn't be the same as having ongoing access
Speaker 1: to the minds behind all of this stuff. So the
Speaker 1: Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee started developing lists of people to
Speaker 1: target and bring in for more long term work. Initially,
Speaker 1: there was a blacklist of targets of military value and
Speaker 1: a gray list of targets of quote vital post war interest,
Speaker 1: but those people were not of immediate military value. Often, though,
Speaker 1: these lists are kind of lumped together as just the Blacklist.
Speaker 1: One source for the names on these lists was a
Speaker 1: document prepared by senior Gestapo officer Werner Osenberg, who supervised
Speaker 1: the planning office of the Reich Research Council. He had
Speaker 1: compiled a list of about fifteen thousand names, part of
Speaker 1: which was discovered in an unflushed toilet in March of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. When Ousenberg himself was captured, he surrendered
Speaker 1: the entire list, along with documents that detailed the qualifications
Speaker 1: of the people on that list and other documents related
Speaker 1: to the German war effort. The US Army established the
Speaker 1: Field Information Agency Technical or FIAT to help it exploit
Speaker 1: German knowledge and resources, including finding and capturing people from
Speaker 1: this list, and the term exploit comes up over and
Speaker 1: over in descriptions of this whole phase of the projected
Speaker 1: Militaries and governments were increasingly interpreting all of this as
Speaker 1: a form of German reparations for the war, and German scientists, engineers, technicians,
Speaker 1: and researchers were all resources to exploit As part of
Speaker 1: those reparations.
Speaker 2: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force had established internment camps for
Speaker 2: scientists and engineers in Germany and in formerly German occupied territory.
Speaker 2: Some of these camps housed hundreds of people, and beyond
Speaker 2: interrogating them about their work and getting to interpret and
Speaker 2: explain technical documents, at first officials weren't quite sure what
Speaker 2: to do with them.
Speaker 1: Simply letting people go after they'd been interrogated wasn't really
Speaker 1: an option. The people who had developed the aircraft, bombs,
Speaker 1: and chemical and biological weapons for the Third Reich still
Speaker 1: presented a threat. And then, on top of that, the
Speaker 1: Potsdam Agreement, which was signed in August of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: called for the quote complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany
Speaker 1: and the elimination or control of all German industry that
Speaker 1: could be used for military production. And that meant that
Speaker 1: for a lot of these specialists, the industries that they
Speaker 1: had been working in, as well as other related industries
Speaker 1: where they might have been able to find jobs, those
Speaker 1: just would not exist anymore. So it wasn't like they
Speaker 1: could interrogate someone, release them, keep tabs on them. To
Speaker 1: make sure they were not doing anything dangerous while they
Speaker 1: went to some job they had gotten, because those industries
Speaker 1: they would have worked in no longer were to exist.
Speaker 2: Although the US and the UK were allies and the
Speaker 2: Combined Intelligence Subjective Subcommittee had been established as a joint
Speaker 2: effort between the two nations, over time they became increasingly competitive.
Speaker 2: For example, on April thirteenth, nineteen forty five, Colonel Donald L.
Speaker 2: Putt was led to the Herman Gerring Aeronautical Research Center
Speaker 2: at Vulcan Rode, which had been camouflaged under trees. This
Speaker 2: secret facility was in an area that was supposed to
Speaker 2: be under British control, so American forces worked as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible to secure as much as they could before
Speaker 2: the British arrived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this kind of stuff led to various toe stepping,
Speaker 1: basically from a military perspective, and then the United States
Speaker 1: having to work with Britain to say, okay, we took
Speaker 1: all these V two rockets that you were supposed to
Speaker 1: get access to, so we will work with you to
Speaker 1: figure out how they work and to launch some so
Speaker 1: you can see how they work. Some of this was
Speaker 1: specifically focused on trying to secure information and weapons that
Speaker 1: could be useful in the war in the Pacific, which
Speaker 1: was still ongoing. On April twenty second, nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: the US Army Air Forces Intelligence Service launched Operation Lusty,
Speaker 1: which stood for Luftwaffa Secret Technology and that was to
Speaker 1: secure technical and scientific intelligence that could be used in
Speaker 1: the war against Japan. The US started cost being German
Speaker 1: munitions that had been used against Britain during the Blitz.
Speaker 1: By the time Germany surrendered on May eighth of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, the US had captured most of Germany's most
Speaker 1: respected aircraft engineers. Two days later, Allied forces intercepted the
Speaker 1: German submarine U eight five eight, which surrendered in Delaware
Speaker 1: on May fourteenth. It was carrying civilian engineers to Japan,
Speaker 1: along with advanced weaponry and supplies, including an entire disassembled aircraft.
Speaker 1: Among its cargo were twelve hundred pounds of uranium oxide.
Speaker 1: This was most likely meant to be used for aircraft fuel,
Speaker 1: but it raised fears of the possibility of nuclear weapons development.
Speaker 1: So this made the ongoing exploitation of German researchers more urgent,
Speaker 1: and officials started to question whether some of this work
Speaker 1: might be done more effectively in the United States. Although
Speaker 1: it was generally agreed that exploiting German researchers in Germany
Speaker 1: was vital and was generally ethical, the idea of bringing
Speaker 1: people into the US was a lot more controversial. On
Speaker 1: May twenty eighth, Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to Admiral William D. Lahy which read, in
Speaker 1: part quote, I strongly favored doing everything possible to utilize
Speaker 1: fully in the prosecution of the war against Japan all
Speaker 1: information that can be obtained from Germany or any other source.
Speaker 1: These men are enemies, and it must be assumed they
Speaker 1: are capable of sabotaging our war effort. Bringing them to
Speaker 1: this country raises delicate questions, including the strong resentment of
Speaker 1: the American public, who might misunderstand the purpose of bringing
Speaker 1: them here and the treatment accorded them, But the idea
Speaker 1: of military necessity ultimately won out over these and other concerns.
Speaker 1: After this letter, the War Department General Staff held a
Speaker 1: meeting at the Pentagon to develop a plan to give
Speaker 1: some German researchers, specifically ones who were not Nazis or
Speaker 1: war criminals, temporary contracts to work in the United States
Speaker 1: under protective military custody.
Speaker 2: We'll talk more.
Speaker 1: About that after a sponsor break. The first project to
Speaker 1: bring German scientists to the US to work under a
Speaker 1: temporary contract was called Project Overcast, and it was launched
Speaker 1: on July twentieth, nineteen forty five. Under this program, German
Speaker 1: specialists and researchers would be brought to the US, where
Speaker 1: they would temporarily work under military supervision before eventually returning
Speaker 1: to Germany. Each person assigned a contract was supposed to
Speaker 1: undergo a background check to confirm that they were not
Speaker 1: an ardent Nazi. Like the word exploit, That phrase Nazi
Speaker 1: is a term that comes up a lot in documents
Speaker 1: about Operation Paperclip and its related programs. Officials recognized that
Speaker 1: under Adolph Hitler, Germany had been a single party dictatorship,
Speaker 1: and that at least some involvement with Nazism was essentially
Speaker 1: mandatory for non Jewish Germans. The researchers, who the US
Speaker 1: saw as the most skilled and important, were of course
Speaker 1: seen the same way by the Nazis, so in many
Speaker 1: cases they had been targeted for leadership roles and rewarded
Speaker 1: with honors and awards that were bestowed by the party.
Speaker 1: Some people who joined the party also did so out
Speaker 1: of a sense of self preservation or even opportunism. So
Speaker 1: with all this in mind, the general conclusion among American
Speaker 1: military authorities was that it was just not feasible to
Speaker 1: restrict anyone who had any connection at all to the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party. That would leave them with no researchers to exploit. Instead,
Speaker 1: the focus was on banning ardent Nazis, and ardent Nazis
Speaker 1: were described as people who had joined the Nazi Party
Speaker 1: before Hitler declared himself, Burier, people who were leaders in
Speaker 1: the party or in one of its affiliated organizations like
Speaker 1: the SS or the Essay, people who had been convicted
Speaker 1: in a post war de notification court, or people who
Speaker 1: had been accused or convicted of war crimes.
Speaker 2: This process involved interviews, examining people's records, and confirming that
Speaker 2: they were not on the Central Registry of War Criminals
Speaker 2: and Security Suspects that's also known as the crow Cast List.
Speaker 2: This list was described as quote an unwieldy monster archive.
Speaker 2: It was often vague, it was full of undocumented allegations.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of hearsay. But in terms of the
Speaker 2: people conducting these background checks. It became a useful checkof
Speaker 2: to say this person was not a suspected war criminal.
Speaker 1: This program, Operation Overcast, grew really quickly. It expanded to
Speaker 1: include a huge assortment of government and military programs and
Speaker 1: their associated acronyms. There were a lot of Every book
Speaker 1: that I read on this had just a of acronyms
Speaker 1: at the beginning and what they all did for The
Speaker 1: Joint Intelligence Objective Agency that has abbreviated JIOA and usually
Speaker 1: said JOA was created as part of the Joint Chiefs
Speaker 1: of Staff during this expansion, and this agency directed this
Speaker 1: whole operation and brought about sixteen hundred German and Austrian scientists, engineers,
Speaker 1: and researchers to the US between nineteen forty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. The Office of Strategic Services and the Joint
Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee were involved in this as well. Japan formally
Speaker 1: surrendered on September second, nineteen forty five, but even though
Speaker 1: that ended the war, the effort to bring German scientists
Speaker 1: to the US continued. By January of nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: one hundred sixty German specialists had been brought to the
Speaker 1: United States. One hundred and fifteen of them were rocket specialists,
Speaker 1: including Werner von Braun, and the program got bigger and
Speaker 1: broader from there. As relations between the US and the
Speaker 1: USSR devolved into the Cold War, the idea of keeping
Speaker 1: the other side from getting access to German researchers and
Speaker 1: technology became more and more important to both nations. The
Speaker 1: United States started to see an eventual armed conflict with
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union as inevitable advances in Soviet nuclear research
Speaker 1: led to fears that the Soviets had been getting aid
Speaker 1: from German scientists on this, although it later turned out
Speaker 1: that they were really getting stolen American nuclear secrets. On
Speaker 1: January third of nineteen forty six, the Mirk Report detailing
Speaker 1: biological warfare research in Japan became public, and that led
Speaker 1: for calls for more research into biological agents and their
Speaker 1: countermeasures in the United States, and that was yet another
Speaker 1: specialty of these German researchers. In March of nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: Project Overcast expanded. It shifted from a limited number of
Speaker 1: people with temporary contracts working under military supervision to between
Speaker 1: eight hundred and one thousand specialists who would be offered
Speaker 1: long term residency in the US and even citizenship. Since
Speaker 1: this was no longer intended as a temporary assignment, the
Speaker 1: researcher's families would be permitted to enter the US permanently
Speaker 1: as well. This was a whole process where Germany was
Speaker 1: being denocified, like people with Nazi ties were being pulled
Speaker 1: out of leadership positions in all of these different industries
Speaker 1: and all of these different contexts, some of the same
Speaker 1: people were being brought to the United States and offered
Speaker 1: US citizenship. So by this point, some of the scientists'
Speaker 1: families who were being housed at a camp in Germany
Speaker 1: had started calling that camp Camp Overcast, and that prompted
Speaker 1: this project's name change to Operation paper Clip or Project
Speaker 1: paper Clip, depending on the source that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: That name came from the paper clips that were used
Speaker 1: to discreetly flag the files of candidates whose backgrounds were
Speaker 1: potentially too damning for them to be allowed into the
Speaker 1: United States. In August, Secretary of State Dean Atchison sent
Speaker 1: a top secret memo to President Harry Truman requesting his
Speaker 1: approval of the interim exploitation of German and Austrian specialists
Speaker 1: under Project paper Clip. The document Truman approved included the
Speaker 1: text of State War Navy Coordinating Committee Document two five
Speaker 1: seven Slash twenty two, which outlined a revised version for
Speaker 1: the expanded paper clip program that had been launched in March.
Speaker 2: This read, in.
Speaker 1: Part quote, Persons proposed to be brought to the US
Speaker 1: here under shall be screened by the Commanding General us
Speaker 1: FET on the basis of available records. No person found
Speaker 1: by the Commanding General us FET to have been a
Speaker 1: member of the Nazi Party and more than a nominal
Speaker 1: participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism
Speaker 1: or militarism, shall be brought to the US here under. However,
Speaker 1: neither possidition or honors awarded a specialist under the Nazi
Speaker 1: regime solely on account of his scientific or technical ability,
Speaker 1: will in themselves be considered sufficient to disqualify a specialist
Speaker 1: for evacuation to the US here Under. Where there is
Speaker 1: doubt as to the qualification of a specialist under the
Speaker 1: preceding sentence, the Commanding General us FET may transport the
Speaker 1: specialist to the US, where further interrogation and screening shall
Speaker 1: be conducted immediately in order to determine such qualification.
Speaker 2: Before October of nineteen forty six. The State Department had
Speaker 2: been pre approving Project paper Clip candidates before they left Europe,
Speaker 2: but after that point the process shifted so that the
Speaker 2: Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner handled them. In the US.
Speaker 2: This dropped the State Department preclearance requirement, which was required
Speaker 2: by law in occupied Germany. The Office of Military Government
Speaker 2: US kept security dossiers on all of the candidates, but
Speaker 2: also withheld the most damaging information on many high profile candidates.
Speaker 2: Documents that were declassified in the nineteen seventies and afterward
Speaker 2: revealed that reports on individual candidates were revised to basically
Speaker 2: whitewash their backgrounds. Yes, some of these.
Speaker 1: Revisions were really dramatic. That sort of went from, you know,
Speaker 1: draft one, the first thing in somebody's file being like,
Speaker 1: this person is a dangerous Nazi, and then later on
Speaker 1: being like, ah, this person had no more than a
Speaker 1: nominal involvement in the Nazi Party. So even though this
Speaker 1: whole project had started with a lot of assurances that
Speaker 1: it absolutely would not involve ardent Nazis, in the end,
Speaker 1: paper Clippers included people who had worked directly with Adolf Hitler,
Speaker 1: Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Gering. Some had been officers in
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party or in the SS or the Essay.
Speaker 1: Some stood trial at Nuremberg or faced other war crimes trials.
Speaker 1: In some cases, people's backgrounds were so egregious that they
Speaker 1: were giving contracts to work for the US military, but
Speaker 1: they did that work while still living in Germany. But
Speaker 1: in other cases, people with pretty similar backgrounds still made
Speaker 1: their way to the US.
Speaker 2: Of course, this whole program was classified. But just as
Speaker 2: this shift was happening from temporary contracts to American citizenship,
Speaker 2: the American public was becoming more aware of what was
Speaker 2: going on. This started thanks to news reports that originated
Speaker 2: from Russian language newspapers being printed in Germany. Soon publications
Speaker 2: like The New York Times and Newsweek were reporting on
Speaker 2: German researchers, some of them Nazis, being brought to the
Speaker 2: US and offered citizenship.
Speaker 1: The War Department tried to respond to all this with
Speaker 1: its own favorable propaganda about the program. It's the whole
Speaker 1: idea of like, no, we're only bringing the good Germans here,
Speaker 1: like interviews with hand picked scientists who were doing relatively
Speaker 1: neutral and wholesome seeming work. Of course, course this all
Speaker 1: had to totally sidestep the fact that many paper clippers
Speaker 1: had been Nazis, and even if they had not been ardent,
Speaker 1: their work during the war had still contributed to, or
Speaker 1: at the absolute very least, been complicit in the German
Speaker 1: war effort. This work had been involved in the deaths
Speaker 1: of Allied personnel and the widespread atrocities of the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: There had been critics of this program within the government
Speaker 1: and the military from the beginning. For example, Samuel Klaus
Speaker 1: was an attorney with the State Department and had been
Speaker 1: chosen to represent the State Department with Joah. He had
Speaker 1: argued strongly against the program since he first became involved,
Speaker 1: pointing out that the United States was giving Nazis the
Speaker 1: chance for American citizenship while denying that chance to refugees
Speaker 1: and displaced persons who had been persecuted and harmed by
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. Thanks in part to Klaus's role, the
Speaker 1: relationship between the State Department and the military became incredibly
Speaker 1: adversarial during this program, and he wound up being targeted
Speaker 1: during the Red Scare. Yeah, he made a lot of
Speaker 1: incredibly strident criticisms of all of this. He was eventually
Speaker 1: moved off the project. Aside from his well argued criticisms
Speaker 1: of all of us, he apparently was also kind of
Speaker 1: a tricky person to work with and rubbed a lot
Speaker 1: of people the wrong way in this and many other contexts,
Speaker 1: so he seems like kind of a tangle. After these reports, though,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of vocal criticism of this program
Speaker 1: from the public as well. On December thirtieth, nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: the Council Against Intolerance in America sent a telegram to
Speaker 1: President Truman which read quote, as American citizens permit us
Speaker 1: to express our profound concern over reports that Nazi scientists
Speaker 1: have not only been brought to this country by the
Speaker 1: United States Army for research projects, but that their families
Speaker 1: are to follow them, and that they may be permitted
Speaker 1: to remain here permanently. We hold these individuals to be
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous carriers of racial and religious hatred. Their former
Speaker 1: eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises the issue
Speaker 1: of their fitness to become American citizens or hold key
Speaker 1: positions in American industrial, scientific, and educational institutions. If it
Speaker 1: is deemed imperative to utilize these individuals in this country,
Speaker 1: we earnestly petition you to make sure they will not
Speaker 1: be granted permanent residents or citizenship in the United States,
Speaker 1: with the opportunity which that would afford of inculcating these
Speaker 1: anti democratic doctrines which seek to undermine and destroy our
Speaker 1: national unity. That telegram was signed by about forty people,
Speaker 1: including Albert Einstein, A Philip Randolph, and Rabbi B. Benedict Glazier.
Speaker 1: Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein worked together to vocally oppose
Speaker 1: the program. Other organizations that spoke out against it included
Speaker 1: the NAACP, the Society for the Prevention of World War III,
Speaker 1: and the Federia Show of American Scientists, whose statement described
Speaker 1: the program as quote an affront to the people of
Speaker 1: all countries who so recently fought beside us, to the
Speaker 1: refugees whose lives were shattered by Nazism, to our unfortunate
Speaker 1: scientific colleagues of former occupied lands, and to all of
Speaker 1: those others who suffered under the yoke these men helped
Speaker 1: to forge. From there, Operation Paperclip continued to make some
Speaker 1: pretty astounding headlines that were honestly pretty embarrassing to the
Speaker 1: authorities who were behind it. We'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: these things more in this upcoming, not yet written episode
Speaker 1: of the show. On March ninth of nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: Drew Pearson wrote an article for The New York Times
Speaker 1: that alleged that Karl Krouch had been offered a Paperclip
Speaker 1: contract while incarcerated at Nuremberg, where he was awaiting a.
Speaker 2: Trial for war crimes.
Speaker 1: Crouch was ultimately convicted of enslavement and crimes against humanity.
Speaker 1: Project Paperclip wrapped up in September of nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: but German scientists were still brought into the US after
Speaker 1: that point. We're going to talk more about that after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. Project Paperclip, also known as Operation paper Clip,
Speaker 1: formally ran from March of nineteen forty six to September
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty seven, building on its precursor Operation Overcast,
Speaker 1: as we talked about earlier. But this same basic process
Speaker 1: continued under various different names and with various adjustments, for
Speaker 1: much longer.
Speaker 2: The recruitment of German.
Speaker 1: Scientists actually accelerated during the Berlin Blockade, which is when
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union blocked access to parts of Berlin in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight and nineteen forty nine. The idea was
Speaker 1: once again to keep the Soviets from getting access to
Speaker 1: more German knowledge and technology. With the CIA and JOA
Speaker 1: basically compete with each other in their efforts to find
Speaker 1: and recruit more German specialists. Things escalated once again during
Speaker 1: the Korean War under a project that was known alternately
Speaker 1: as Accelerated Paperclip and Projects sixty three. This program involved
Speaker 1: quote evacuating high profile scientists from Germany, and the focus
Speaker 1: shifted away from establishing that they were not Nazis to
Speaker 1: establishing that they were not communists. Recruits during this particular
Speaker 1: period included Walter Schreiber, who had been the surgeon General
Speaker 1: under the Third Reich, and he was hired to work
Speaker 1: at the US Air Force School of Aviation Medicine. His
Speaker 1: time in the US didn't last long, though, and it
Speaker 1: was part of more information about this program coming to
Speaker 1: public light. In nineteen fifty one, former war crimes investigator
Speaker 1: Leopold Alexander noticed a brief mention of his hiring in
Speaker 1: a medical journal. Alexander wrote to the Massachusetts Medical Society
Speaker 1: and to the Boston globed announcing this hiring. When the
Speaker 1: Globe ran its story, it included a statement from Schreiber,
Speaker 1: who said that he had been the victim of Russian disinformation.
Speaker 1: In the face of increasing and increasingly public outrage against
Speaker 1: Schreiber's work in the US, plans started to form to
Speaker 1: return him to Europe, but intelligence experts were concerned that
Speaker 1: he might be a security risk. He had previously been
Speaker 1: captured by Russia and had supposedly escaped, but a lot
Speaker 1: of this was mysterious, a little bit fishy, and there
Speaker 1: were concerns that he might very well start informing to
Speaker 1: the Russians. At the same time, American officials were concerned
Speaker 1: that he also presented a security risk if he remained
Speaker 1: in the United States, since he had extensive knowledge of
Speaker 1: all the other paper clippers who had been high ranking
Speaker 1: and ardent Nazis. Basically, they were afraid he would blow
Speaker 1: their cover. Eventually, the US paid for his passage to Argentina,
Speaker 1: where he had family and which had already become a
Speaker 1: home to a community of high profile notzs the officials.
Speaker 1: He was also given an undisclosed allowance. In the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: other Allied nations that had been working with German researchers
Speaker 1: within their own borders generally started returning those researchers to Germany,
Speaker 1: but in the US most were on the path to
Speaker 1: becoming citizens. In fact, ninety percent of the Germans who
Speaker 1: were brought to the US between nineteen forty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two ultimately became US citizens. And even though
Speaker 1: the details of the program were still classified, it had
Speaker 1: really become something of an open secret. I mean, the
Speaker 1: War Department had had this whole propaganda campaign about these
Speaker 1: being the good Germans. Only when the Soviet Union launched
Speaker 1: the satellite Sputnik in nineteen fifty seven, Bob Hope joked
Speaker 1: that it meant that quote.
Speaker 2: Their Germans were better than our Germans.
Speaker 1: Bob Hope is just one of the people that this
Speaker 1: quote has been attributed to. Sometimes, their German rock and
Speaker 1: scientists were better than our German ricace at scientists.
Speaker 2: People knew it was obvious. Yeah. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Colonel Henry Whalan became deputy director of JOAH, which
Speaker 2: was still overseeing this work. He was also spying for Russia,
Speaker 2: something that went undetected until nineteen sixty three, when the
Speaker 2: FBI investigated, it became clear that he had handed over
Speaker 2: or destroyed a lot of files related to Project paper Clip,
Speaker 2: so at least some of the details about all of
Speaker 2: this may never be known. Waylan pleaded guilty to charges
Speaker 2: of conspiring with Soviet agents, but the Justice Department dropped
Speaker 2: the charge of espionage.
Speaker 1: By the time Whalen's espionage was uncovered, JOAH had actually
Speaker 1: been disbanded. That happened in nineteen sixty two, and a
Speaker 1: few years after that people started calmbing through the details
Speaker 1: of what had happened during and after the war. The
Speaker 1: first book on Operation Paperclip to come out of this
Speaker 1: work was Clarence Lasbie's Project paper Clip German Scientists in
Speaker 1: the Cold War, which was published in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: At that point, though, most of the documents related to
Speaker 1: the program were still classified, and Lasbie's general conclusion was
Speaker 1: that authorities had screened everyone, but that a few ardent
Speaker 1: Nazis had unfortunately managed to evade detection. Criticism of the
Speaker 1: paper Clip program and its successors had been ongoing through
Speaker 1: all these years, but public interest reached another peak in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight after NBC aired a mini series on
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. In nineteen eighty, Eli Rosenbaum, who was a
Speaker 1: student at Harvard Law was browsing through a bookstore. He
Speaker 1: picked up both Dora, the Nazi concentration camp where modern
Speaker 1: space technology was born and thirty thousand Prisoners Died by
Speaker 1: Jean Michel, who was imprisoned at the camp, and the
Speaker 1: Rocket Team, which traced the history of the V two rocket,
Speaker 1: and in reading these books he connected the V two's
Speaker 1: development with the use of slave labor from the concentration camp.
Speaker 1: So when Rosenbaum finished his law degree, he got a
Speaker 1: job at the Department of Justice in the Office of
Speaker 1: Special Investigations. The OSI had been established in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals who were
Speaker 1: living in the US. Rosenbaum convinced the head of the
Speaker 1: OSI to open an investigation into paper Clipper Arthur Rudolph,
Speaker 1: who designed the Saturn five rocket and had been a
Speaker 1: big part of the V two development team.
Speaker 2: In addition to coordinating the use of enslaved labor at
Speaker 2: the German development facility known as Middelwerk, he had known
Speaker 2: about and been complicit in, or possibly been actively involved
Speaker 2: in atrocities that were committed there. He maintained that he
Speaker 2: was innocent of these accusations. Rather than stand trial, he
Speaker 2: renounced his US citizenship in nineteen eighty four and returned
Speaker 2: to Europe after thirty eight years in the US. After
Speaker 2: this happened, investigative journalists started trying to get more and
Speaker 2: more information about Operation paper Clip, including through the Freedom
Speaker 2: of Information Act, which had been signed into law in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. In nineteen eighty five, journalist Linda Hunt
Speaker 2: broke a story by publishing an article titled US cover
Speaker 2: Up of Nazi Scientists in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Speaker 2: This article, read in part quote formerly classified documents, revealed
Speaker 2: details of the US military's employment of alleged Nazi war
Speaker 2: criminals in highly sensitive defense projects. They show that government
Speaker 2: officials concealed information about many specialists in order to secure
Speaker 2: their legal US immigration status. The cover up seems to
Speaker 2: have stemmed from a belief that US national security would
Speaker 2: be best served by keeping these Nazi specialists away from
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union, but it was a direct contravention of
Speaker 2: the presidential directive which formally set up Project paper Clip.
Speaker 2: Hunt published a book based on this and other research
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one. Journalist Tom Bauer had done the
Speaker 2: same in nineteen eighty seven, both Hunt and Bauer framed
Speaker 2: Project paper Clip as a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, the US passed the Nazi War
Speaker 1: Crimes Disclosure Act, which mandated the declassification of roughly eight
Speaker 1: point five million pages of records related to all this.
Speaker 1: This mass declassification led to the publication of US Intelligence
Speaker 1: and the Nazis in two thousand and four. A key
Speaker 1: sentence from its introduction is quote, Granted, some intelligence activities
Speaker 1: involve a degree of secret and messiness which strained conventional
Speaker 1: moral standards, but there was no compelling reason to begin
Speaker 1: the post war era with the assistance of some of
Speaker 1: those associated with the worst crimes of the war. Between
Speaker 1: its establishment in nineteen seventy eight and its merge with
Speaker 1: the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: the Office of Special Investigations work led to at least
Speaker 1: one hundred Nazi war criminals being stripped of their US
Speaker 1: citizenship or moved from the United States. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, OSI legal historian Judith Fagan wrote a six
Speaker 1: hundred page report called Striving for Accountability in the Aftermath
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust, which detailed both the OSI's efforts to
Speaker 1: investigate Nazi war criminals and the US efforts to shelter them.
Speaker 1: After the Department of Justice released an incredibly heavily redacted
Speaker 1: version in response to a Freedom of Information Act request,
Speaker 1: former officials leaked the entire, unredacted thing to The New
Speaker 1: York Times. Yeah, I read an article that described this
Speaker 1: as an incredible cell phone because they had they had
Speaker 1: released something that was so incredibly redacted to the point
Speaker 1: of uselessness that other people were like, well, We're just
Speaker 1: going to leak the entire thing. In part because of
Speaker 1: all the information that has been declassified and released in
Speaker 1: the last few decades, there are various organizations and institutions
Speaker 1: that are really still wrestling with how to reconcile their
Speaker 1: own histories with paper clippers and their own connection to
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party and war crimes. We'll be talking about that,
Speaker 1: but since that will involve some of the discussion of
Speaker 1: more specific people who are part of the program in
Speaker 1: a future episode. It might be the next episode, but
Speaker 1: since I haven't written it yet, as I said at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, I don't quite want to
Speaker 1: promise anything. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to send us a note. Our email
Speaker 1: addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.