project paperclip

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What Was Operation Paperclip?

By: Laura Schumm

Updated: March 4, 2020 | Original: June 2, 2014

As World War II was entering its final stages, American and British organizations teamed up to scour occupied Germany for as much military, scientific and technological development research as they could uncover. 

Trailing behind Allied combat troops, groups such as the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) began confiscating war-related documents and materials and interrogating scientists as German research facilities were seized by Allied forces. One enlightening discovery—recovered from a toilet at Bonn University—was the Osenberg List: a catalogue of scientists and engineers that had been put to work for the Third Reich .

In a covert affair originally dubbed Operation Overcast but later renamed Operation Paperclip, roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War . The program was run by the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), whose goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop America’s arsenal of rockets and other biological and chemical weapons, and to ensure such coveted information did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union . 

Although he officially sanctioned the operation, President Harry Truman forbade the agency from recruiting any Nazi members or active Nazi supporters. Nevertheless, officials within the JIOA and Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the forerunner to the CIA—bypassed this directive by eliminating or whitewashing incriminating evidence of possible war crimes from the scientists’ records, believing their intelligence to be crucial to the country’s postwar efforts.

One of the most well-known recruits was Wernher von Braun, the technical director at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Germany who was instrumental in developing the lethal V-2 rocket that devastated England during the war. Von Braun and other rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees” to assist the U.S. Army with rocket experimentation. Von Braun later became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which eventually propelled two dozen American astronauts to the Moon .

Although defenders of the clandestine operation argue that the balance of power could have easily shifted to the Soviet Union during the Cold War if these Nazi scientists were not brought to the United States, opponents point to the ethical cost of ignoring their abhorrent war crimes without punishment or accountability.

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Project Paperclip was the second name for a program to bring German and Austrian engineers, scientists, and technicians to the United States after the end of World War II in Europe. Known by many today as “Operation Paperclip,” which is actually a misnomer, it was originally called Project Overcast. Its official objective was to bring these experts to the United States for six months to a year to help America in the war against Japan. But that war suddenly ended in August 1945 and the program continued anyway. In fact, the U.S. armed forces and civilian agencies sought long-term advantages for the United States through the seizure of Third Reich technologies that they saw as superior to, or competitive with, Allied ones—notably aircraft, rockets, and missiles. The people who had invented or designed these weapons were needed to help transfer the technology. So what began as a short-term advisory project quickly evolved into a program of permanent immigration. 

Many of Project Paperclip's scientists and engineers had Nazi records, which were seen as an inconvenient problem by the project's administrators. Roughly half of the early Paperclip specialists had been members of the Nazi Party, many opportunistically. A minority were true believers who had significant party records or had joined the SS  (Schutzstaffel) , or SA (Sturmabteilung)   also known as Brownshirts for their brown uniform. The rapid deterioration of relations with the Communist-run Soviet Union, which by 1948 led to a Cold War that threatened to turn hot, made the immigration of ex-Nazis more palatable to the American government and public. It became easier to sweep their past under the rug. The argument was that we needed them for our weapons programs or, at the very least, we needed to deny their knowledge and talents to the Soviets.  

A case in point was the V-2 ballistic missile group led by Dr. Wernher von Braun. He had been a party member and SS officer and was at least tangentially involved in the murderous exploitation of concentration-camp prisoners in missile production, as were several associates. The U.S. Army kept that information classified and brought von Braun and about 125 colleagues to Fort Bliss, outside El Paso, Texas. The Germans helped Americans launch V-2s and were tasked with developing an experimental cruise missile. In 1950, von Braun’s group was moved to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, and became the heart of the Army’s nuclear-armed ballistic missile development. In his spare time, von Braun made himself world-famous by advocating spaceflight in magazines and on TV. Soon after the Soviets launched Sputnik in October 1957, he and his German-led group, now numbering in the thousands (almost all native-born Americans), helped launch the first United States satellite, Explorer I. In 1960, von Braun’s division of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency was transferred to a new civilian space agency, NASA. The Huntsville Germans, most naturalized in 1954-1955, went on to lead the development of the Saturn rockets that put Americans on the Moon in 1969.

That spectacular Cold War story has long overshadowed the project to the point that, even today, members of the general public and the media often equate the von Braun group with Paperclip. In fact, the Huntsville Germans, numbering closer to 200 by the mid-fifties thanks to later arrivals, were never more than 15 to 20 percent of Paperclip’s intake. The U.S Air Force, not the Army, brought over the most experts, and other specialists went to Navy facilities or those of the Commerce Department and private companies. It was part of a broad program to exploit German science and technology, one that paralleled projects in the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and several smaller countries. Most Paperclip specialists were dispersed as individuals or small groups to military laboratories, universities, and private companies, with the result that they did not have the public profile of the Huntsville Germans.  

Another common fallacy is that von Braun’s group, and by extension, all the Paperclip arrivals, came to help the United States space program. But before the Eisenhower Administration started the Vanguard satellite project in 1955, there was no space program . The aerospace specialists, who constituted most of the Paperclip program, were here to help the United States in the rapidly developing arms race with the Soviet Union. Notable areas of focus were guided missiles, supersonic aerodynamics, guidance and control, rocket and jet engines, and aerospace medicine. In missile development, von Braun’s group accelerated the integration of German liquid-propellant rocket technology. But American rocket groups and companies had already formed in World War II—notably Reaction Motors in New Jersey and Aerojet and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California—which meant that the Germans were only one part of a complex story of technological change and adaptation. The driving force in rocket development after World War II, and especially after 1950, was the nuclear arms race. Until Vanguard and Sputnik, space exploration was only a side effect and an afterthought. V-2s and new United States sounding rockets reached into the extreme upper atmosphere and near-space to understand the environment that missiles would travel through. 

In sum, Project Paperclip made a significant contribution to American technology, rocket development, military preparedness and, eventually, spaceflight. But there was a moral cost to the program: the coverup of the Nazi records of many of the specialists. In a small number of cases, the United States hosted and integrated people who should have faced war crimes trials. These facts often lead to black-and-white judgments: either the Paperclip scientists and engineers were all Nazi criminals or all technological geniuses. In my assessment, the project and related efforts to seize German knowledge did greatly benefit American science, technology, and national security in the Cold War, but we needed a better filter to screen out some of the worst offenders. In the late forties and early fifties era of anti-Communist anxiety especially, it was all too easy to obscure and excuse their Nazi past. The facts came out only in the 1980s, when their files were declassified. Only then was it possible to make a balanced judgment about Project Paperclip.  

Michael J. Neufeld is a Senior Curator in the Space History Department and the author of The Rocket and the Reich and Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War.   

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Why the U.S. Government Brought Nazi Scientists to America After World War II

As the war came to a close, the U.S. government was itching to get ahold of the German wartime technology

Danny Lewis

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have put an end to World War II, but they weren’t the only destructive weaponry developed during the war. From nerve and disease agents to the feared and coveted V-1 and V-2 rockets, Nazi scientists worked on an impressive arsenal. As the war came to a close in 1945, both American and Russian officials began scheming to get that technology for themselves. So it came to pass that 71 years ago today, 88 Nazi scientists arrived in the United States and were promptly put to work for Uncle Sam.

In the days and weeks after Germany’s surrender, American troops combed the European countryside in search of hidden caches of weaponry to collect. They came across facets of the Nazi war machine that the top brass were shocked to see, writer  Annie Jacobsen told NPR’s All Things Considered in 2014. Jacobson wrote about both the mission and the scientists in her book,  Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America .

“One example was they had no idea that Hitler had created this whole arsenal of nerve agents,” Jacobsen says. “They had no idea that Hitler was working on a bubonic plague weapon. That is really where Paperclip began, which was suddenly the Pentagon realizing, ‘Wait a minute, we need these weapons for ourselves.’"

But just studying the weapons wasn't enough, and the U.S. military wasn’t the only country eyeing Nazi scientists—their one-time allies in the Soviet Union were doing the same thing. If the Soviets were going to press their former enemies into service, American military officials didn't want to be left behind.   So the U.S. government hatched a plan to bring 88 Nazi scientists captured during the fall of the Nazi Germany back to America and get them back on the job. Only this time, according to  History.com , they were working for the U.S. under a project known as “Operation Paperclip.”

While the military did what they could to whitewash the pasts of their “prisoners of peace,” as some of the scientists called themselves, many had serious skeletons in their closets. For example, Wernher von Braun was not just one of the brains behind the V-2 rocket program, but had intimate knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps. Von Braun himself hand-picked people from horrific places, including  Buchenwald concentration camp , to work to the bone building his rockets, Jacobsen tells NPR.

Operation Paperclip was top secret at the time. After all, the devices these men helped design killed many people throughout Europe, not to mention the deaths their government was responsible for on the battlefield and in the concentration camps. Even agents with the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which the U.S. government tasked with hunting down top Nazi officers who went on the lam after the war, were unaware for decades of the extent to which government officials were collaborating with their quarry,  Toby Harnden reported for  The Telegraph  in 2010.

While many of the men who were brought to the U.S. under the program were undoubtedly instrumental in scientific advancements like the Apollo program, they were also supportive and responsible for some of the horrors experienced by victims of the Holocaust. Operation Paperclip has certainly left a questionable legacy. 

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Danny Lewis | | READ MORE

Danny Lewis is a multimedia journalist working in print, radio, and illustration. He focuses on stories with a health/science bent and has reported some of his favorite pieces from the prow of a canoe. Danny is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Fact check: Nazi scientists were brought to work for U.S. through Operation Paperclip

The claim: After World War II, Nazi scientists joined NASA through Operation Paperclip 

There have been many events , both big and small, that have shaped U.S. history. Among them, a Facebook post claims, is a secret U.S. program that recruited Nazis.

A modified version of the  popular meme of Homer Simpson vanishing into a hedge depicts Simpson bearing a swastika on one shoulder and an arm extended in a Nazi salute. "World War II: ends," reads the text above, which goes on to suggest former "Nazi scientists" subsequently shifted over to NASA, as illustrated by Simpson reemerging in a T-shirt emblazoned with the agency's distinctive logo and a red baseball cap with the America flag.

The sentiment within the comments seemed largely accepting of the claim.

"What was the alternative for them?" asked one. "Since herr fuhrer (sic) liked to shoot people..."   

"Art imitates life," wrote another sharing a GIF featuring images from the Marvel movie franchise of an evil Nazi scientist character and a newspaper clipping with the headline "Germany scientists recruited by U.S.".   

USA TODAY awaits comment from the Facebook user who posted the meme in the public group Official Flat Earth & Glove Discussion. 

Operation Paperclip

In 1945, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, a subcommittee established by the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was tasked with retrieving German scientists, doctors and engineers who were identified as intellectually vital to the Third Reich. 

Journalist Annie Jacobsen states in a 2014 interview that this was prompted by the Allies' concerns over Hitler's potential weapons arsenal. 

"Fall of 1944, right after the Normandy landings, scattered among the Allies' troops are these little units of scientific intelligence officers and they're working to find out Hitler's biological weapons, his chemical weapons and his atomic weapons," said Jacobsen, author of "Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America." 

These intelligence officers eventually discovered while the atomic weapons program was not as advanced as initially feared, Hitler's biochemical weapons were. The hunt "for this scientific treasure and ultimately for the scientists themselves" thus ignited Operation Overcast, renamed Paperclip for the paperclips attached to the files of the most "troublesome cases," Jacobsen writes in her book. 

The U.S. was not alone in this endeavor. Britain, France and especially the Soviet Union sought to enlist these German scientific experts, as well. A U.S.-Soviet technological rivalry marked by the Space Race and Cold War would also serve as a motivation, and justification, for Operation Paperclip's existence.  

The Nazis and their contributions

By the fall of 1945, German scientists starting arriving on U.S. soil. Not all the men recruited were Nazis or SS officers but the most prominent and valued among them were, having worked either directly with Hitler or leading members of the Nazi Party, such as Heinrich Himmler and Herman Göring. 

Wernher von Braun, a rocket engineer, was instrumental in developing the first U.S. ballistic missile, the Redstone, and later the Saturn V rocket while serving as director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. As a Nazi ideologue and member of the SS, he traveled to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he "handpicked slaves to work for him as laborers," said Jacobsen in a 2014  interview with NPR. 

Hubertus Strughold, a physiologist and medical researcher, headed the German Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine, known for its torturous medical experiments on inmates from the Dachau concentration camp. Strughold claimed ignorance of any such activity until after the war, yet he appeared among a list of 95 doctors at an October 1942 conference discussing their findings. In the U.S., he was chief scientist of the aerospace medical division at Brooks Air Force and has since been credited as the father of space medicine. 

Walter Schreiber, a former Nazi general, also oversaw inhumane medical experiments involving bioweapons that resulted in countless of deaths. Following the war, he was captured by the Soviets but defected to the U.S. He worked for various government entities before finally settling in Texas at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine, Jacobsen writes. 

While Schreiber would later serve as a witness during the Nuremberg trials, he, von Braun, Strughold and the rest of their fellow Nazis brought to the U.S. would never be held accountable for their own atrocities. Operation Paperclip remained secret throughout much of the Cold War.   

Our rating: True

We rate this claim TRUE because it is supported by our research. Operation Paperclip was a secret initiative launched by the U.S. government to recruit German engineers, doctors, physicists, chemists and other scientific experts for U.S. technological advancement, especially in anticipation of the Cold War. Many recruited German scientists did work for NASA and various other government entities. They were not held responsible for their war crimes. 

Our fact-check sources:

• Business Insider, May 7, 2018, " The most impactful event in every state that shaped US history " 
• Vulture, June 24, 2019, " The Full-Circle Journey of ‘Homer Simpson Backs Into the Bushes’ "
• PBS NewsHour on YouTube, March 31, 2014, " When the U.S. recruited Nazis for 'Operation Paperclip' "
• The Mimi Geerges Show on YouTube, March 19, 2014, " Bringing Nazi Scientists to America - Annie Jacobsen "
• Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 16, 2016, " Why the U.S. Government Brought Nazi Scientists to America After World War II ."
• NPR, Feb. 15, 2014, " The Secret Operation To Bring Nazi Scientists To America ." 
• Central Intelligence Agency Library, Oct. 6, 2014, " Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America "
• National Archives, Oct. 11, 2016, " Records of the Secretary of Defense (RG 330) "
• Esquire, Feb. 23, " Hunters' Nazi NASA Scientists Are Based on the True Story of Operation Paperclip "
• Time, July 18, 2019, " How Historians Are Reckoning With the Former Nazi Who Launched America's Space Program " 
• The Associated Press, Oct. 26, 1993, " Portrait of Nazi Prompts Protest " 
• The Virginian-Pilot, Jul. 20, 2014, " How the U.S. secretly scooped Hitler's top scientists " 

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