A few excerpts of the book Project Paperclip by Clarence G. Lasby
A few excerpts of the book Project Paperclip by Clarence G. Lasby A few excerpts of the book Project Paperclip by Clarence G. Lasby Atheneum, 1971 - hard cover [sourced] Cover (photo) from pages 32 - 35 By far the most important group of displaced persons were the V-2 experts from Peenem¸nde. In 1932 a young artillery captain, Walter Dornberger, had recruited an even younger scientist, Dr. Wernher von Braun, to experiment on military rockets for the German Army. During the 1930's the two directed an expanding team of scientists in the development of a series of rockets, beginning with the A-1, a short projectile weighing 330 pounds, and culminating in the A-4 (V-2), a 50-foot-long, 13-ton projectile which seemed to be the ultimate in artillery weapons. After Germany went to war, they assembled upwards of 200,000 people for their project at the world's most advanced experimental station on the Baltic seacoast, and continued to perfect the A-4 through 65,000 modifications. But the war bedeviled their work. Shortly after the British raid of August 1943, Professor Albert Speer, Reichmininister for Munitions and War Production, met with General Dornberger to prepare for the dispersion of functions throughout the Reich. The main assembly facilities went to a network of tunnels in the Harz Mountains in central Germany near the small town of Nordhausen. On New Year's Day 1944, with the benefit of ten thousand slave laborers and convicts under the control of the S.S., the Central Works produced its first three perfected V-2's. At the end of January 1945, more than four thousand personnel still remained at Peenem¸nde, and due to the approach of the Russians, S.S. General Hans Kammler ordered their evacuation to the Harz Mountains. Kammler, brutal and treacherous, was an engineer who had to his credit the construction of numerous concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and had served as the dedicated tool of Heinrich Himmler to win control of all armaments programs. He was responsible for injecting slave labor into the rocket program; he was instrumental in the arrest of von Braun* for failing to make a clear distinction between space travel and weapons development; and, by virtue of sinister infiltration, he finally gained control of the secret weapons projects. His order to disperse was one of the few that met with the approval of von Braun and his staff; their preference, bolstered by the tales of Russian brutality told by the melancholy parade of refugees, was to surrender when necessary to the British or the Americans. General Dornberger quickly moved his headquarters to the village of Bad Sachsa; Dr. Kurt Debus, director of the test stands, took his team to Cuxhaven on the North Sea; and during February the entire organization moved with its documents and equipment to the cotton-mill town of Bleicherode, twelve miles from Nordhausen. *In March 1944 the Gestapo learned that von Braun had expressed in public a defeatist attitude about Germany's chances in the war, and a desire to design a spaceship rather than a weapon. Voracious in their demand for control of the V-2 program, the S.S. leaders used this information, together with a trumped-up charge that von Braun had Communist leanings, to imprison him for two weeks in a Gestapo cell in Stettin. Under the code-name "Mittlebau Construction Company," the rocket experts made an attempt to install their laboratory equipment and continue their work, but conditions allowed for little more than meetings and discussions. Even those ended on April 1; in response to a rumor that American tanks were in the vicinity, Kammler ordered Dornberger and von Braun to hide the technical data and move with 450 of the best personnel to Bavaria. Von Braun entrusted the documents to an aide, Dieter Huzel, who buried them in an abandoned mine shaft in the mountains. Fearing extinction from the S.S. guards, most of the scientists scattered to nearby villages. Von Braun joined Dornberger at Oberjoch near the Adolf Hitler Pass, and on the rainy afternoon of May 2, the two leaders surrendered with five of their associatesóMagnus von Braun, Hans Lindenberg, Bernhard Tessmann, Dr. Herbert Axster, and Dieter Huzelóto American authorities near Reutte.(20) During the next several weeks, the Americans assembled four hundred Peenem¸nde personnel for interrogation at the beautiful ski resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After a preliminary interview, approximately half of themódesignated by von Braun as of lesser importanceówere released and returned to their homes. The others remained in detention for several months. The AAF officer in command, Lieutenant Colonel John O'Mara, provided them with technical lectures and an excellent library; the captives formed orchestral and theatrical groups for their own amusement; and numerous teams conducted investigations. In view of the conditions, the questioning was necessarily brief and usually disorganized, but the Germans were noticeably eager to discuss their achievements. They spoke not only of the V-2, but of many other projects, some only concepts on the drawing board, others in the test stage. They mentioned the tiny rocket Taifun, only 75 inches long, designed for massive use against aerial targets, and the A9/10, a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile which would reach New York from western France. They talked about their role in the development of the antiaircraft missilesóthe Schmetterling, a subsonic weapon launched by two auxiliary rockets; the Rheintochter, a two-stage missile using solid fuel for the take-off and liquid fuel for flight; and the Enzian, propelled by a 3,530-pound-thrust Walter engine to an operational height of 8 1/2 miles. They described a test in 1942 in which they fired rockets from a U-boat at a depth of 40 feet, and a more recent and very secret project to attack England and the United States with V-2's launched from a floating container behind a submarine. And they told of more wondrous possibilities for the futureóa manned earth satellite, an observation platform in outer space, weather control by a space mirror, and a moon rocket.(21) Meanwhile, Navy Lieutenant Commander Maurice Biot captured the former Peenem¸nde wind tunnel specialists, headed by Dr. Rudolph Hermann, who had moved in early 1944 to the lakeside village of Kochel, twenty-five miles south of Munich. At the Aerodynamics Ballistics Research Station, the staff of two hundred had installed their powerful wind tunnel, capable of testing the flight qualifications of missiles up to 4.4 Mach number (4.4 times the velocity of sound), and made all of the calculations for the V-2 and the Wasserfall. When Biot arrived, he found the installation in as unmolested a state as any in Germany; the scientists had conveniently disobeyed orders from the S.S. to destroy the equipment and documents. 20. Irving, The Mare's Nest, 143-145, 204-206; Ernst Klee and Otto Merk, The Birth of the Missile: The Secrets of Peenem¸nde (New York, 1965), 69, 103, 109; Dieter Huzel, From Peenem¸nde to Canaveral (Englewood Cliffs, 1962), 127-188. 21. Peenem¸nde East: Through the Eyes of 500 Detained at Garmisch, no date, AFM; Huzel, From Peenem¸nde to Canaveral, 189-199. from pages 48 - 50 Colonel Ranger decided to remove sixty specialists and their families to Heidelberg, and helped them resume their research activities in an empty schoolhouse.(34) The officers' uncertainty about the legality of the evacuations was understandable in view of the absence of well-defined policies to govern the first months of the occupation. The Big Three had agreed at Yalta to establish an Allied Control Council to define common policies, and subsequently appointed General Eisenhower, Marshal Zhukov, and Field Marshal Montgomery as members. But at the first meeting of the group on June 5, Zhukov insisted that the council could not function until the armies had retired to their respective zones. In effect, this left the commanders with absolute authority over the areas which they then occupied. Furthermore, the declaration to the German people which emerged from the conference gave implicit approval to the continued acquisition of military materiÈl; it ordered them, among other things, to surrender all research records and equipment to "the Allied representatives, for such purposes and at such times and places as they may prescribe." For the Americans, still at war with Japan, necessity demanded that they seize and utilize all materiel and personnel which might be of future military value.(35) They did so up until the last moment. During the first three days of July, the American forces withdrew to their zone of occupation. The First and Third Armies, as they rolled back along the highways over which they had fought some three months before, transferred several hundred industrial and academic experts to scattered locations in Greater Hessia. The Seventh Army removed twenty-three aircraft engineers from Halle to Darmstadt, and two hundred university professors to Zell-am-See near Salzburg. The advanced guards of the Russian army, according to a prearranged plan, followed the American withdrawal at a distance of three to five kilometers. When the commander of the Soviet 129 Rifle Corps arrived in Merseburg, he learned that the Americans had given permission to Krupp to remove a synthetic fuel plant. He was in time to stop the removal of the equipment, but reported that "all the principal technical staff had been taken away." His experience was general. The Russians found the fertile countryside of Saxony and Thuringia plentiful with crops and cattle, but most of the men who had staffed its universities and industries were gone.(36) 8. The global wits of 1945 quipped that in the final determination of the zones of occupation, England received the industry, Russia the agriculture, and the United States the scenery. The scientific bonanza harbored within the cities and hamlets of the Alps was itself enough to belie this judgment; and the last-minute removals to the American zone made it preposterous. For with no especial concern about politics but with a great sensitivity for spoils, the technical intelligence officers had amassed a scientific treasure, and, in the words of one participant, "put it into good safe American territory for future distribution." On June 28, as if in celebration of the achievement, Ordnance Colonel John A. Keck made the first public disclosure concerning the unique "war booty." At a news conference in Paris, he spoke with pride about the capture and interrogation of twelve hundred "top-line" scientists, and told his audience of some of their most fantastic projects: a "sun-gun" that might harness the sun's rays to demolish nations from a platform 5,100 miles in the sky; a cannon with a 400-foot barrel and a range of 82 miles; an apparatus that would fire rockets from under the sea. After relating that "Hitler almost made it" in his attempt to raise warfare to a new scientific plane, he offered a glance into the future. "These men of extremely practical and keen minds," he reported, were "putting science ahead of nationality and volunteering to move to the United States and Britain to continue their work." Among those present at the news conference was a staff correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, Philip Whitcomb, who was ending six years of continuous on-the-spot reporting of the war. Reflecting on Keck's disclosures, he acknowledged "how vital was the speed with which General Eisenhower drove his armies . . . until they made their most important capture of allónot of forts, guns, and soldiers, but of scientists." Yet as he pondered the broader implications, he deduced that the enemy's industrial potential, lack of remorse, and apparently unending crop of excellent scientists posed a "triple threat" to the peace. He was particularly concerned that the United States had no detailed plan to control scientists, and was convinced from his own experience that the military government was operating on a day-to-day basis. "We are certainly right in taking time to make up our minds," he warned the American people, "but we must not wait too long. While we are busy interrogating our 1,200 classified scientists, as Colonel Keck calls them, another 12,000 may be busily preparing new atomic bombs which can be made in grease-paint factories and which, when they are put into use by 80,000,000 unrepentant Germans, will make the V-2's as out of date as tomahawks."(37) These divergent viewpoints with respect to the enemy scientistsóthe colonel's excitement and the reporter's apprehensionóhad already found expression in Washington. For months the policy-makers had been deliberating about the scientists' future. By the end of June they were close to a decision. 34. Personal letter, August 12, 1960. 35. Foreign Relations, European Advisory Commission; Austria; Germany, 1945, Vol. III (Washington, 1968), 212, 323-330. 36. Foreign Relations, The Conference of Berlin, 1945, Vol. II (Washington, 1960), 907. 37. New York Times, June 29, 1945; Baltimore Sun, June 30, 1945. from pages 191 - 204 1. It is impossible to assess precisely either the extent or the nature of the opposition. There are some suggestive characteristics. It was relatively short-lived, restricted to the year 1947, and in its significant public expression, to the winter and spring of that year. It was widespread in sentiment but limited in impact, partly because many of the organizations made their protests to governmental authorities without publicity. As to its political orientation, it was almost exclusively an outburst of American liberalism. In many ways it was also closely akin to traditional American nativism. It contained more than a hint of war-heightened nationalism; it strongly expressed a fear of disloyalty, and vividly limned the potential threat to the nation; it comprised, in short, an intense opposition to an alien group on the basis of its "un-American" connections. It differed from the earlier reactions in a significant respect: it substituted an anti-Nazi theme for the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-Oriental, and anti-radical themes of the past. Despite the repeated and emphatic official statements that none of the Paperclip personnel were ardent Nazis or alleged war criminals, the critics assumed the Fascist nature of their past behavior and affirmed their guilt. This basic assumption characterized the spirit and molded the pattern of the domestic opposition. In the only expression of national opinion, a Gallup poll of December 11, 1946, the American people disapproved of the general concept of importation. The questionnaire asked: "It has been suggested that we bring over to America one thousand German scientists who used to work for the Nazis and have them work with our own scientists on scientific problems. Do you think this is a good or bad idea?" The respondents considered the proposal a "bad idea" in a ratio of about ten to seven. There was a definite correlation between their replies and educational background. Those who had the greatest amount of formal educationóat least some college trainingófavored the plan by a substantial majority. In contrast, those with an elementary school education, or less, lined up heavily against it. There was also a split along urban-rural lines. Cities with a population over 500,000 were in favor by a great majority; farm areas and towns of under 2,500 people disapproved by a great majority. Two sections of the countryóNew England and the Pacific Coastógave their strong endorsement to the program; the South, which would eventually gain the most benefit from it, registered its disapprobation by a vote of two to one. The opponents in the poll believed that the Germans were still Nazis and could not be trusted; that they might influence our people to think as they did; that they might gain knowledge from us and use it against us someday; and that the nation did not need them. Those in favor said the United States could profit from their ideas and research; that Germans are leaders in science; that such an arrangement would contribute toward better understanding between the two nations; and that it was better to have the scientists here than in Russia. The vast majority of those who said "yes" to importing the Germans also thought the government should make it possible for them to become citizens.(3) Although most Americans apparently disliked the idea of using enemy experts, their antipathy was not active. At the end of December 1946, however, a group of forty distinguished individuals including Charles S. Bolte, Evans Clark, Albert Einstein, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Philip Murray, Richard Neuberger, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Rufus B. von Kleinsmid, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise recorded their "profound concern" in telegrams to President Truman and Secretaries Byrnes and Patterson, the text of which they released to the press: We hold these individuals to be potentially dangerous carriers of racial and religious hatred. Their former eminence as Nazi Party members and supporters raises the issue of their fitness to become American citizens or hold key positions in American industrial, scientific, and educational institutions. If it is deemed imperative to utilize these individuals in this country we earnestly petition you to make sure that they will not be granted permanent residence or citizenship in the United States with the opportunity which that would afford of inculcating those anti-democratic doctrines which seek to undermine and destroy our national unity. Other protests appeared in the liberal press. Joachim Joesten, an experienced writer on foreign affairs and a long-time contributor to the Nation, wrote a February "memo to a would-be war criminal," in which he denounced in bitter terminology the incongruous treatment accorded politicians, military officers, industrialists, and scientists: "If you enjoy mass murder, but also treasure your skin, be a scientist, son. It's the only way, nowadays, of getting away with murder. It isn't safe any longer to be a warmongering politician. If you lose, they'll hang you. If you are a general and lose, they'll shoot you. If you are an industrialist, you'll go to jail. If you are a scientist, you will be honored regardless of who wins. Your enemies will coddle you, and compete for you, no matter how many of their countrymen you may have killed." Some months later in the New Republic, feature writer Seymour Nagan denounced "Project X" as a "great and growing threat to national security" by making our most vital defense secrets available to the eyes and ears of Nazis. Furthermore it had done a disservice by antagonizing American scientists at the very time when the military services were trying to "coax" them into their laboratories. Quoting the opinion of two physicists that the Germans were equivalent to high-class radio hams, or at best to clever military engineers, he relayed their resentment at having to work alongside such people "who they looked down on as scientists and despised as men." In one of the most angry statements, Saul Padover, a former psychological warfare officer who had served in Germany in 1945, deplored the scientists' expedient willingness to serve their conqueror-masters. He had been irked by a New … truncated (26,843 more characters in archive)