Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Friday. Today we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about Operation paper Clip, which is
Speaker 1: also known as Project paper Clip, and this was the
Speaker 1: US effort to bring German scientists to the United States
Speaker 1: after World War Two. And to be clear, the US
Speaker 1: was definitely not the only Allied nation doing this, as examples,
Speaker 1: the UK and France and the Soviet Union all had
Speaker 1: their own programs to try to exploit German scientific and
Speaker 1: engineering knowledge after the war. But in most cases those
Speaker 1: other programs involved specialists and researchers who were either working
Speaker 1: in occupied Germany or they were sent back to Germany
Speaker 1: after a few years of provised work in another country.
Speaker 1: But for the United States program, a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who were part of it ultimately became permanent residents
Speaker 1: or citizens of the US, and this included people who
Speaker 1: were ardent Nazis or who had committed war crimes. A
Speaker 1: lot of the time. The rockets scientists are the ones
Speaker 1: who get the most discussion around this program today. So
Speaker 1: people like Verner von Brown, who developed ballistic missiles for
Speaker 1: the U. S. 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 thees and forties. There's
Speaker 1: just that there's not as much detail about the specifics
Speaker 1: in this particular episode. It is something that will be
Speaker 1: discussed more in a future episode about the researchers themselves,
Speaker 1: so to establish a bit of background on this subject.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen forty two, Adolf Hitler issued the
Speaker 1: Decree of the Feur on the Reich Research Council. It read,
Speaker 1: in part, quote, the necessity to expand all available forces
Speaker 1: to highest efficiency in the interest of the state requires
Speaker 1: not only in peace time, but also, and especially in wartime,
Speaker 1: the concentrated effort of scientific research and its channelization toward
Speaker 1: the goal to be aspired. It then went on to say,
Speaker 1: leading men of science above all are to make research
Speaker 1: fruitful for warfare by working together in their special fields.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four he issued another decree, and this
Speaker 1: one called for the development of weapons and equipment that
Speaker 1: had quote revolutionary new characteristics. These would put Germany ahead
Speaker 1: of its enemies. Nazi propaganda framed these new weapons and
Speaker 1: equipment as Vunderwaffe or wonder weapons. Also in nineteen four,
Speaker 1: Germany introduced the rocket power measer Schmidt Emmy one sixty three,
Speaker 1: which was the world's first rocket powered fighter, the Messer
Speaker 1: Schmidt Emmy two sixty two, which was the world's first
Speaker 1: operational jet fighter, the V one flying Bomb, which was
Speaker 1: the world's first cruise missile, and the V two rocket,
Speaker 1: which was the world's first ballistic missile. So a lot
Speaker 1: of wartime first there, and it has been widely repeated
Speaker 1: that if these technologies had been introduced just a few
Speaker 1: months earlier in the war, the Access Powers might well
Speaker 1: have won, and there's some debate over whether that's really true,
Speaker 1: but Allied military officials definitely saw all of this and
Speaker 1: any other innovations that Germany might have had in the
Speaker 1: works as a huge threat. There were concerned earned that
Speaker 1: Germany's ultimate goal for the V two rocket was for
Speaker 1: it to carry a nuclear payload, and concerns that it
Speaker 1: was sharing its secrets and technologies with Japan, So the
Speaker 1: Allied Powers made it a priority to try to capture
Speaker 1: as much German research and technology as possible, both to
Speaker 1: replicate it for themselves and to try to develop countermeasures,
Speaker 1: especially after the D Day invasions started on June, teams
Speaker 1: really searched for German research facilities and weapons factories that
Speaker 1: copied blueprints and technical materials. They questioned scientists and confiscated
Speaker 1: weapons and technology. This included disassembling and removing big pieces
Speaker 1: of equipment like V two rockets and wind tunnels and aircraft.
Speaker 1: This process really accelerated in the last months of the war.
Speaker 1: The UK and the US formed the Combined Intelligence Objective
Speaker 1: Subcommittee to coordinate a huge sweep for German military secrets
Speaker 1: and equipment. This really s scalated after Hitler issued the
Speaker 1: Destructive Measures on Rke Territory Decree also known as the
Speaker 1: Nero Decree, that happened on March nineteenth nine, and this
Speaker 1: decree called for the destruction of anything that could be
Speaker 1: used by enemies of Germany. British and American units became
Speaker 1: increasingly competitive as they tried to capture resources before Germany
Speaker 1: could destroy them and before Soviet forces who had similar
Speaker 1: objectives could move into an area. In some cases it
Speaker 1: was literally an area that the Soviets were supposed to
Speaker 1: be occupying, but British or American forces are both together
Speaker 1: would be like, we we're got to get as much
Speaker 1: of the stuff ourselves as possible before they get here.
Speaker 1: As all of this was happening, military officials also started
Speaker 1: to shift their focus a little bit, because no matter
Speaker 1: how many blueprints or technical manuals or formulas or actual
Speaker 1: pieces of technology they managed to secure, and no matter
Speaker 1: how many specialists they interviewed, that still wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: same of having ongoing access to the minds behind all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. So the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee started
Speaker 1: developing lists of people to target and bring in for
Speaker 1: more long term work. Initially, there was a blacklist of
Speaker 1: targets of military value and a gray list of targets
Speaker 1: of quote vital postwar interest, but those people were not
Speaker 1: of immediate military value. Often, though, these lists are kind
Speaker 1: of lumped together as just the black list. One source
Speaker 1: for the names on these lists was a document prepared
Speaker 1: by senior Gestapo officer of Werner Ozenberg, who supervised the
Speaker 1: planning office of the Reich Research Council. He had compiled
Speaker 1: a list of about fifteen thousand names, part of which
Speaker 1: was discovered in an unflushed toilet in March of nine.
Speaker 1: When Osenburg himself was captured, he surrendered the entire list
Speaker 1: along with documents that detailed the qualifications of the people
Speaker 1: on that list and other documents related to the German
Speaker 1: war or effort. The U. S. Army established the Field
Speaker 1: Information Agency Technical or FIAT to help it exploit German
Speaker 1: knowledge and resources, including finding and capturing people from this list,
Speaker 1: and the term exploit comes up over and over in
Speaker 1: descriptions of this whole phase of the project. Allied militaries
Speaker 1: and governments were increasingly interpreting all of this as a
Speaker 1: 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. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force had established internment
Speaker 1: camps for scientists and engineers in Germany and informally German
Speaker 1: occupied territory. Some of these camps housed hundreds of people,
Speaker 1: and beyond interrogating them about their work and getting to
Speaker 1: interpret and explain technical documents, at first, officials weren't quite
Speaker 1: sure what to do with them. Simply letting people go
Speaker 1: after they'd been interrogated wasn't really an option. The people
Speaker 1: who had developed the aircraft, bombs, and chemical and biological
Speaker 1: weapons for the Third Reich still presented a threat. And
Speaker 1: then on top of that, the Potsdam Agreement, which was
Speaker 1: signed in August of n called for the quote complete
Speaker 1: disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the elimination or control
Speaker 1: of all German industry that could be used for military production.
Speaker 1: And that meant that for a lot of these specialists,
Speaker 1: the industries that they had been working in, as well
Speaker 1: as other related industries where they might have been able
Speaker 1: to find jobs, those just would not exist anymore. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they could interrogate someone, release them, keep
Speaker 1: tabs on them to make sure they were, you know,
Speaker 1: not doing anything dangerous while they went to some job
Speaker 1: they had gotten because those industries they would have worked
Speaker 1: in no longer were to exist. Although the US and
Speaker 1: the UK were at eyes and the Combined Intelligence Subjective
Speaker 1: Subcommittee had been established as a joint effort between the
Speaker 1: two nations, over time they became increasingly competitive. For example,
Speaker 1: on April, Colonel Donald L. Putt was led to the
Speaker 1: Herman Geering Aeronautical Research Center at Vulcan Road, which had
Speaker 1: been camouflaged under trees. This secret facility was in an
Speaker 1: area that was supposed to be under British control, so
Speaker 1: American forces worked as quickly as possible to secure as
Speaker 1: much as they could before the British arrived. This kind
Speaker 1: of stuff led to various toe stepping, basically from a
Speaker 1: military perspective, and then the United States having to like
Speaker 1: work with Britains to say, Okay, we took all these
Speaker 1: V two rockets that you were supposed to get access to,
Speaker 1: so we will work with you to figure out how
Speaker 1: they work and to launch sums you can see how
Speaker 1: they work. Some of this was specifically focused on trying
Speaker 1: to secure information and weapons that could be used full
Speaker 1: in the War in the Pacific, which was still ongoing.
Speaker 1: On April twenty second, nineteen forty five, the US Army
Speaker 1: Air Forces Intelligence Service launched Operation Lusty, which stood for
Speaker 1: Luftwaffa's Secret Technology, and that was to secure technical and
Speaker 1: scientific intelligence that could be used in the war against Japan.
Speaker 1: The US started copying German munitions that had been used
Speaker 1: against Britain during the Blitz. By the time Germany surrendered
Speaker 1: on May eighth of nineteen forty five, the US had
Speaker 1: captured most of Germany's most respected aircraft engineers. Two days later,
Speaker 1: Allied forces intercepted the German submarine U eight five eight,
Speaker 1: which surrendered in Delaware on May fourteenth. It was carrying
Speaker 1: civilian engineers to Japan, along with advanced weaponry and supplies,
Speaker 1: including an entire disassembled aircraft. Among its cargo were twelve
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of uranium ox side. This was most likely
Speaker 1: meant to be used for aircraft fuel, but it raised
Speaker 1: fears of the possibility of nuclear weapons development. So this
Speaker 1: made the ongoing exploitation of German researchers more urgent. An
Speaker 1: officials started to question whether some of this work might
Speaker 1: be done more effectively in the United States. Although it
Speaker 1: was generally agreed that exploiting German researchers in Germany was
Speaker 1: vital and was generally ethical, the idea of bringing people
Speaker 1: into the US was a lot more controversial. On Under
Speaker 1: Secretary of War Robert Patterson wrote a letter to Admiral
Speaker 1: William D. Lahy which read, in part quote, I strongly
Speaker 1: favored doing everything possible to utilize fully in the prosecution
Speaker 1: of the war against Japan all information that can be
Speaker 1: obtained from Germany or any other source. These men are enemies,
Speaker 1: and it must be assumed they are capable of sabotaging
Speaker 1: our war effort. Bringing them to this country raises delicate questions,
Speaker 1: including the strong resentment of the American public, who might
Speaker 1: misunderstand the purpose of bringing them here and the treatment
Speaker 1: accorded them, But the idea of military necessity ultimately went
Speaker 1: out over these and other concerns. After this letter, the
Speaker 1: War Department General Staff held a meeting at the Pentagon
Speaker 1: to develop a plan to give some German researchers, specifically
Speaker 1: ones who were not Nazis or war criminals, temporary contracts
Speaker 1: to work in the United States under protective military custody.
Speaker 1: We will talk more about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The first project to bring German scientists to the US
Speaker 1: to work under a temporary contract was called Project Overcast,
Speaker 1: and it was launched on July. Under this program, Germans
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 ardent
Speaker 1: Nazi is a term that comes up a lot in
Speaker 1: documents about Operation paper Clip and its related programs. Officials
Speaker 1: recognized that under Adolf Hitler, Germany had been a single
Speaker 1: party dictatorship, and that at least some involvement with Nazism
Speaker 1: was essentially mandatory for non Jewish Germans. The researchers, who
Speaker 1: the U saw is the most skilled and important, were
Speaker 1: of course seen the same way by the Nazis, so
Speaker 1: in many cases they had been targeted for leadership roles
Speaker 1: and rewarded with honors and awards that were bestowed by
Speaker 1: the party. Some people who joined the party also did
Speaker 1: so out of a sense of self preservation or even opportunism.
Speaker 1: So with all this in mind, the general conclusion among
Speaker 1: American military authorities was that it was just not feasible
Speaker 1: to restrict anyone who had any connection at all to
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party. That would leave them with no researchers
Speaker 1: to exploit. Instead, the focus was on banning ardent Nazis,
Speaker 1: and ardent Nazis were described as people who had joined
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party before Hitler declared himself, bureer people who
Speaker 1: were leaders in the party or in one of its
Speaker 1: affiliated organizations like the s S or the essay people
Speaker 1: who had been convicted in a post war denazification court,
Speaker 1: or people who had been accused or convicted of war crimes.
Speaker 1: This process involved interviews, examining people's records, and confirming that
Speaker 1: they were not on the Central Registry of War Criminals
Speaker 1: and Security Suspects that's also known as the crow Cast List.
Speaker 1: This list was described as quote an unwieldy monster archive.
Speaker 1: It was often vague, it was full of undocumented allegations.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of hearsay, But in terms of the
Speaker 1: people conducting these background checks, it became a useful check
Speaker 1: off 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 list of
Speaker 1: acronyms at the beginning and what they all stood for.
Speaker 1: The Joint Intelligence Objective Agency that is abbreviated j I
Speaker 1: o A and usually said JOAH was created as part
Speaker 1: of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during this expansion, and
Speaker 1: this agency directed this whole operation and brought about sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred German and Austrian scientists, engineers, and researchers to the
Speaker 1: US between nine and nineteen seventy. The Office of Strategic
Speaker 1: Services and the Joint Intelligence Committee were involved in this
Speaker 1: as well. Japan formally surrendered on September two, but even
Speaker 1: though that ended the war, the effort to bring German
Speaker 1: scientists 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 fifteen of them were rocket specialists,
Speaker 1: including Werner von Braun, and the program got bigger and
Speaker 1: broader from their As a relations between the US and
Speaker 1: the USSR devolved into the Cold War, the idea of
Speaker 1: keeping the other side from getting access to German researchers
Speaker 1: and technology became more and more important to both nations.
Speaker 1: The United States started to see an eventual armed conflict
Speaker 1: with the Soviet Union as inevitable advances in Soviet nuclear
Speaker 1: research led to fears that the Soviets had been getting
Speaker 1: aid from German scientists on this, although it later turned
Speaker 1: out that they were really getting stolen American nuclear secrets.
Speaker 1: On January third of nineteen forty six, the merc report
Speaker 1: detailing biological warfare research in Japan became public and that
Speaker 1: led for calls for more research into biological agents and
Speaker 1: their countermeasures in the United States, and that was yet
Speaker 1: another specialty of these German researchers. In March of ninety 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 a 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: researchers families would be permitted to enter the US permanently
Speaker 1: as well. This was the whole process where Germany was
Speaker 1: being denocified, like people with Nazi ties were being pulled
Speaker 1: out of leadership positions, and 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 chained 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 to 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 1: This read, in part quote, persons proposed to be brought
Speaker 1: to the US here under shall be screened by the
Speaker 1: Commanding General U. S. F Et on the basis of
Speaker 1: available rec kords. No person found by the Commanding General U. S.
Speaker 1: F Et to have been a member of the Nazi
Speaker 1: Party and more than a nominal participant in its activities,
Speaker 1: or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism, shall be
Speaker 1: brought to the US here under. However, neither position nor
Speaker 1: honors awarded a specialist under the Nazi regime solely on
Speaker 1: account of his scientific or technical ability, will in themselves
Speaker 1: be considered sufficient to disqualify a specialist for evacuation to
Speaker 1: the US. Here under where there is doubt as to
Speaker 1: the qualification of a specialist under the preceding sentence, the
Speaker 1: Commanding General U s F E. T. 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. Before
Speaker 1: October of nineteen, the State Department had been pre approving
Speaker 1: Project paper Clip candidates before they left Europe, but after
Speaker 1: that point the process shift did so that the Immigration
Speaker 1: and Naturalization Service Commissioner handled them in the US. This
Speaker 1: dropped the State Department preclearance requirement, which was required by
Speaker 1: law in occupied Germany. The Office of Military Government US
Speaker 1: kept security dossier's on all of the candidates, but also
Speaker 1: withheld the most damaging information on many high profile candidates.
Speaker 1: Documents that were declassified in the nineteen seventies and afterward
Speaker 1: revealed that reports on individual candidates were revised to basically
Speaker 1: whitewash their backgrounds. Yes, some of these revisions were really
Speaker 1: dramatic that sort of went from, you know, draft one,
Speaker 1: the first thing in somebody's fil being like, this person
Speaker 1: is a dangerous Nazi, and then later on being like,
Speaker 1: as this person had no more than a nominal involvement
Speaker 1: in the Nazi Party. So even though this whole project
Speaker 1: had started with a lot of assurances that it absolutely
Speaker 1: would not involve ardent Nazis, in the end, Paper Clippers
Speaker 1: included people who had worked directly without off Hitler, Heinrich
Speaker 1: Himler and Herman Gurring. Some had been officers in the
Speaker 1: Nazi Party or in the s S 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 U. S Military,
Speaker 1: but they did that work while still living in Germany.
Speaker 1: But in other cases, people with pretty similar backgrounds still
Speaker 1: made their way to the US. Of course, this whole
Speaker 1: program was classified, but just as this shift was happening
Speaker 1: from temporary contracts to American citizenship, the American public was
Speaker 1: becoming more aware of what was going on. This started
Speaker 1: thanks to news reports that originated from Russian language newspapers
Speaker 1: being printed in Germany. Soon publications like The New York
Speaker 1: Times and Newsweek were reporting on German researchers, some of
Speaker 1: them Nazis, being brought to the 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 nowhere, only bringing the good Germans here,
Speaker 1: like interviews with handpicked scientists who were doing relatively neutral
Speaker 1: and wholesome seeming work. Of course, this all had to
Speaker 1: totally sidestep the fact that many paper clippers had been Nazis,
Speaker 1: and even if they had not been ardent, their work
Speaker 1: during the war had still contributed to, or at the
Speaker 1: absolute very least, been complicit in the German war effort.
Speaker 1: This work had been involved in the deaths of Allied
Speaker 1: personnel and the widespread atrocities of the Holocaust. There had
Speaker 1: been critics of this program within the government in the
Speaker 1: military from the beginning. For example, Samuel Klaus was an
Speaker 1: attorney with the State Department and had been chosen to
Speaker 1: represent the State Department with Joah. He had argued strongly
Speaker 1: against the program since he first became involved, pointing out
Speaker 1: out that the United States was giving Nazis the chance
Speaker 1: for American citizenship while denying that chance to refugees and
Speaker 1: displaced persons who had been persecuted and harmed by the
Speaker 1: Nazi regime. Thanks in part to Claus's role, the relationship
Speaker 1: between the State Department and the military became incredibly adversarial
Speaker 1: during this program, and he wound up being targeted during
Speaker 1: the Red Scare. Yeah. He uh. He made a lot
Speaker 1: of incredibly strident criticisms of all of this. He was
Speaker 1: eventually moved off the project. Aside from his well argued
Speaker 1: criticisms of all of this, he apparently was also kind
Speaker 1: of a tricky person to work with and rubbed a
Speaker 1: lot of people the wrong way in this and many
Speaker 1: other contexts, So he seems like kind of a tangle um.
Speaker 1: After these reports, though, there was a lot of vocal
Speaker 1: criticism of this program from the public as well. On
Speaker 1: December six, the Counsel Against Intolerance in America sent a
Speaker 1: telegram to President Truman which read quote as Americans citizen
Speaker 1: permit us to express our profound concern over reports that
Speaker 1: Nazi scientists have not only been brought to this country
Speaker 1: by the United States Army for research projects, but that
Speaker 1: their families are to follow them, and that they may
Speaker 1: be permitted to remain here permanently. We hold these individuals
Speaker 1: to be potentially dangerous carriers of racial and religious hatred.
Speaker 1: Their former eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises
Speaker 1: the issue of their fitness to become American citizens or
Speaker 1: hold key positions in American industrial, scientific, and educational institutions.
Speaker 1: If it is deemed imperative to utilize these individuals in
Speaker 1: this country, we earnestly petition you to make sure they
Speaker 1: will not be granted permanent residents or citizenship, and the
Speaker 1: United States with the opportunity which that would afford of
Speaker 1: inculcating these anti democratic doctrines which seek to undermine and
Speaker 1: destroy our national unity. That telegram was signed by about
Speaker 1: forty people, including Albert Einstein, A Philip Randolph, and Rabbi B.
Speaker 1: Benedict Glazer. Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein worked together to
Speaker 1: vocally opposed the program. Other organizations that spoke out against
Speaker 1: it included the n double a c P, The Society
Speaker 1: for the Prevention of World War Three, and the Federation
Speaker 1: of American Scientists, whose statement described the program as quote
Speaker 1: an affront to the people of all countries who so
Speaker 1: recently fought beside us, to the refugees whose lives were
Speaker 1: shattered by Nazism, to our unfortunate scientific colleagues of former
Speaker 1: occupied lands, and to all of those others who suffered
Speaker 1: under the yoke these men helped to forge from their
Speaker 1: Operation paper Clip continued to make some pretty astounding headlines
Speaker 1: that were honestly pretty embarrassing to the authorities who were
Speaker 1: behind it. We'll talk about some of these things more
Speaker 1: in this upcoming, not yet written episode of the show.
Speaker 1: On March nine seven, Drew Pearson wrote an article for
Speaker 1: The New York Times that alleged that Carl Crouch had
Speaker 1: been offered a paper Clip contract while incarcerated at Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: where he was awaiting a trial for war crimes. Crouch
Speaker 1: was ultimately convicted of enslavement and crimes against humanity. Project
Speaker 1: paper Clip wrapped up in September of ninety but German
Speaker 1: scientists were still brought into the US after that point.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk more about that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Project paper Clip, also known as Operation paper Clip, formally
Speaker 1: ran from March of ninety six to September of ninety,
Speaker 1: building on its precursor, Operation Overcast, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: but the same basic process continued under various different names
Speaker 1: and with various adjustments for much longer. The recruitment of
Speaker 1: German scientists actually accelerated during the Berlin Blockade, which is
Speaker 1: when the Soviet Union blocked access to parts of Berlin
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight and nineteen forty nine. The idea
Speaker 1: was once again to keep the Soviets from getting access
Speaker 1: to more German knowledge and technology, with the CIA and
Speaker 1: JOAH basically competing with each other in their efforts to
Speaker 1: find and recruit more German specialists. Things escalated once again
Speaker 1: during the Korean War under a project that was known
Speaker 1: alternately as Accelerated paper Clip and Project sixty three. This
Speaker 1: program involved quote evacuating high profile scientists from Germany, and
Speaker 1: the focus shifted away from establishing that they were not
Speaker 1: Nazis to establishing that they were not communists. Recruits during
Speaker 1: this particular period included Walter Schreiber, who had been the
Speaker 1: surgeon General under the Third Reich, and he was hired
Speaker 1: to work at the U. S. Air Force School of
Speaker 1: Aviation Medicine. His time in the US didn't last long, though,
Speaker 1: and it was of more information about this program coming
Speaker 1: to public light. In nineteen fifty one, former war crimes
Speaker 1: investigator Leopold Alexander noticed a brief mention of his hiring
Speaker 1: in a medical journal. Alexander wrote to the Massachusetts Medical
Speaker 1: Society and to the Boston Globe denouncing this hiring. When
Speaker 1: the Globe brand 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 home
Speaker 1: to a community of high profile Nazi officials. He was
Speaker 1: also given an undisclosed allowance. In the nineteen fifties, other
Speaker 1: Allied nations that had been working with German researchers within
Speaker 1: 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, nine of the Germans who were
Speaker 1: brought to the US between nineteen forty five and nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty two ultimately became US citizens. And even though the
Speaker 1: details of the program were still classified, it had really
Speaker 1: become something of an open secret. I mean, the 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 satellites spt NICK in nineteen fifty seven, Bob Hope
Speaker 1: joked that it meant that quote their Germans were better
Speaker 1: than our Germans. Bob Hope is just one of the
Speaker 1: people that this quote has been attributed to. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: their German rocket scientists were better than our German rocket scientists.
Speaker 1: People knew it was obvious. In nineteen fifty nine, Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Colonel Henry Whalen became deputy director of JOAH, which was
Speaker 1: still overseeing this work. He was also spying for Russia,
Speaker 1: something that went undetected until nineteen sixty three, when the
Speaker 1: FBI investigated. It became clear that he had handed over
Speaker 1: or destroyed a lot of files related to Project paper Clip,
Speaker 1: so at least some of the details about all of
Speaker 1: this may never be known. Whalen pleaded guilty to charges
Speaker 1: of conspiring with Soviet agents, but the Justice Department dropped
Speaker 1: the charge of espionage. By the time Whalen's espionage was uncovered,
Speaker 1: JOAH had actually been disbanded. That happened in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and a few years after that people started combing through
Speaker 1: the details of what had happened during and after the war.
Speaker 1: The first book on Operation paper Clip to come out
Speaker 1: of this work was Clarence Lasbie's Project paper Clip German
Speaker 1: Scientists in the Cold War, which was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. At that point, though most of the documents
Speaker 1: related to the program were still classified, and Lasbie's general
Speaker 1: conclusion was that authorities had screened everyone, but that a
Speaker 1: few ardent Nazis had unfortunately managed to evade detection. Criticism
Speaker 1: of the paper clip program and its successors had been
Speaker 1: ongoing through all these years, but public interest reached another
Speaker 1: peak in nineteen seventy eight after NBC aired a mini
Speaker 1: series on the Holocaust. In night, Eli Rosenbaum, who was
Speaker 1: a student at Harvard Law, was browsing through a bookstore.
Speaker 1: He picked up both Dora, the Nazi concentration camp where
Speaker 1: modern space technology was born in and 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 twos
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 o s I had been established in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals
Speaker 1: who were living in the US. Rosenbaum convinced the head
Speaker 1: of the o s I to open an investigation into
Speaker 1: paper clipper, Arthur Rudolph, who designed the Saturn five rocket
Speaker 1: and had been a big part of the V two
Speaker 1: development team. In addition to coordinating the use of enslaved
Speaker 1: labor at the German development facility known as Middle Work,
Speaker 1: he had known about and been complicit in, or possibly
Speaker 1: been actively involved in atrocities that were committed there. He
Speaker 1: maintained that he was innocent of these accusations. Rather the
Speaker 1: stand trial, he renounced his US citizenship in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four and returned to Europe after thirty eight years in
Speaker 1: the US. After this happened, investigative journalists started trying to
Speaker 1: get more and more information about Operation paper Clip, including
Speaker 1: through the Freedom of Information Act, which had been signed
Speaker 1: into law in nineteen sixty seven. In nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: journalists Linda Hunt broke a story by publishing an article
Speaker 1: titled US cover Up of Nazi Scientists in the Bulletin
Speaker 1: of the Atomic Scientists. This article read in part quote,
Speaker 1: formerly classified documents revealed detales of the U. S military's
Speaker 1: employment of alleged Nazi war criminals in highly sensitive defense projects.
Speaker 1: They show that government officials concealed information about many specialists
Speaker 1: in order to secure their legal U S immigration status.
Speaker 1: The cover up seems to have stemmed from a belief
Speaker 1: that US national security would be best served by keeping
Speaker 1: these Nazi special lists away from the Soviet Union, but
Speaker 1: it was a direct contravention of the presidential directive which
Speaker 1: formally set up Project paper Clip. Hunt published a book
Speaker 1: based on this and other research in Journalist Tom Bauer
Speaker 1: had done the same in seven. Both Hunt and Bauer
Speaker 1: framed Project paper Clip as a conspiracy. In the US
Speaker 1: passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which mandated the
Speaker 1: declassification of roughly eight point five million pages of records
Speaker 1: related to all this. This mass declassification led to the
Speaker 1: publication of U S Intelligence and the Nazis in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. A key sentence from its introduction is
Speaker 1: quote Granted, some intelligence activities involve a degree of secret
Speaker 1: and messiness which strained conventional moral standards, but there was
Speaker 1: no compelling reasons to begin the post war era with
Speaker 1: the assistance of some of those associated with the worst
Speaker 1: crimes of the war. Between its establishment in and its
Speaker 1: merge with the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section in
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 removed from the United States. In two thousand six,
Speaker 1: O s I 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 O. S i
Speaker 1: s efforts to investigate Nazi war criminals and the U
Speaker 1: S efforts to shelter them. After the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: released an incredibly heavily redacted version in response to a
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act request, former officials leaked the entire,
Speaker 1: unredacted thing to The New York Times. Yeah. I read
Speaker 1: an article that described this as an incredible cell phone
Speaker 1: because they had they had released something that was so
Speaker 1: incredibly redacted to the point of uselessness that that other
Speaker 1: people were like, well, We're just going to leak the
Speaker 1: entire thing. In part because of all the information that
Speaker 1: has been declassified and released in the last few decades,
Speaker 1: there are various organizations and institutions that are really still
Speaker 1: wrestling with how to reconcile their own histories with paper
Speaker 1: clippers and their own connection to the Nazi Party and
Speaker 1: war crimes. We'll be talking about that, Uh, but since
Speaker 1: that will involve some of the discussion of more specific
Speaker 1: people who were part of the program in a future episode.
Speaker 1: It might be the next episode, but since I haven't
Speaker 1: written it yet, as I said at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, I don't quite want to promise anything. Do
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of listener mail? I do
Speaker 1: have listener mail. This is actually a listener Facebook comment,
Speaker 1: which I don't think we read a lot of, and
Speaker 1: listener to mail because they tend to be a little
Speaker 1: trickier for us to keep up with than the email
Speaker 1: which is just there in the inbox. UM. And this
Speaker 1: is from Anne, who was commenting on the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes where Uh, Holly and I had been talking about
Speaker 1: the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. UM. And I talked about how
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I would go on road
Speaker 1: trips with my mom to western North Carolina. UM, and
Speaker 1: when we got to the Lynn Cove Dot, we would
Speaker 1: just turn around before we got to the Lynn Cove
Speaker 1: Viaduct because we were both scared of heights and my
Speaker 1: mom didn't want to drive on it and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to ride on it. Uh. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I assume it's still there. So Anne has left a
Speaker 1: comment to say, just listen, Tracy. The Lynn Cove Viaduct
Speaker 1: is indeed still there on the Blue Ridge Parkway. When
Speaker 1: we used to live in Atlanta, we would drive that
Speaker 1: section of the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to
Speaker 1: family get togethers in Blowing Rock. As a passenger, it
Speaker 1: never really bothered me, but I've never driven it. The
Speaker 1: way it is set up against the side of the mountain,
Speaker 1: it feels like more of the same curvy mountain roads
Speaker 1: and less like being on a bridge to me. And
Speaker 1: I've definitely been on way scarier curvy mountain roads than
Speaker 1: the Blue Ridge Parkway Rocky Mountain National Park anyone. Anyway,
Speaker 1: thanks ladies for the great podcast. As always, I've listened
Speaker 1: since the short episode Day is not from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: but I found it early enough that listening from the
Speaker 1: beginning wasn't nearly the shore it would be now stuff
Speaker 1: you miss and History Class remains and one of my
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts of all the ones that listened to, and
Speaker 1: I have learned so much about so many things over
Speaker 1: the years, So thank you Anne for this comment. It's
Speaker 1: been so long since I've been able to go to
Speaker 1: western North Carolina that I was like I assume that
Speaker 1: registered there. I did, uh. So I went to college
Speaker 1: in Asheville, North Carolina. I grew up outside of Winston Salem,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. And when I got to the point that
Speaker 1: I was going to be able to take a car
Speaker 1: with me to college, I was like, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to get over this fear of heights, because I cannot
Speaker 1: drive myself up the mountain if I don't. So I
Speaker 1: did eventually drive on the Lynco Viaduct myself without my
Speaker 1: mom um, and I have, you know, driven on things
Speaker 1: that are definitely much scary er than that. Weirdly, one
Speaker 1: of them was UM going to a thing that used
Speaker 1: to happen once a year called max fun Con, which
Speaker 1: was held in Lake Arrowhead, California, which involved driving out
Speaker 1: a road that felt like a lot like driving up
Speaker 1: the mountain on I forty to go to Asheville from
Speaker 1: from points east of there, except it would go on
Speaker 1: a lot longer um. And so the first time that
Speaker 1: I was going to go there, I had kind of
Speaker 1: asked people like, how how scary is this drive, and
Speaker 1: They're like, Oh, it's not that bad. And as I
Speaker 1: was driving up there, I was like, Oh, this just
Speaker 1: feels just like driving on I forty. But it just
Speaker 1: kept going. Um, and there was one of those low
Speaker 1: lying cloud days and at some point I got above
Speaker 1: the cloud and was able to see down it. And
Speaker 1: that's when I was like, oh, this is a little
Speaker 1: higher than I might like to be right now. I
Speaker 1: can't understand that. So anyway, thank you Anne for this comment. Um,
Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcasts were History Podcast at i heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. We're all over social media A miss
Speaker 1: in History? Uh, That's where you'll find our Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and Pinterest and Instagram. Even though we don't read
Speaker 1: Facebook comments on the show very often, we do see
Speaker 1: them when people leave them. We don't really see the
Speaker 1: ones that people really leave on our website though. The
Speaker 1: thing we don't have the power to turn off with
Speaker 1: folks leave comments there. Um. You can subscribe to our
Speaker 1: show on the I heart Radio app and anywhere else
Speaker 1: do you get podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
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