Operation Paperclip: Nazis Deeply Embedded in American Institutions

Operation Paperclip: Nazis Deeply Embedded in American Institutions

When the European Theater of World War Two came to a close, there was a mad rush by the Allied Powers and Russia to secure Germany. It wasn't to establish territory in Berlin, as that would be meted out later through diplomatic treaties. Nor was it to capture the leading Nazis before they fled. Instead, it was an exceptional effort to find the smartest Nazis, from physicists, doctors, engineers, and psychologists, and keep them safe by transferring them to America.

That's right, the number one priority of the Office of Strategic Services (precursor of the CIA) was to find leading Nazis in their fields, and bring them to America so they could continue their research.

NationalArchives.gov hosts a list of important people in German science and industry who were smuggled out of the country in this manner, an astounding compilation of case files over 1500 names long, though the Archives admit themselves that the list is incomplete, not including preeminent names such as Wernher von Braun.

Although perhaps he is on the list under a fake identity. Harry Truman formally signed off on Operation Paperclip with the caveat that anyone found to have been a "member of the Nazi Party, and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism" to be excluded. This presented a problem because it would exclude many top names. Additionally, the OSS had already been active with Operation Paperclip for over 3 months before Truman gave the order, and many Nazi party members had already entered the country. So the OSS resorted to whitewashing the histories of Nazis or sometimes even creating entirely new identities.

The thousands of Nazis entering the country were then entrenched deep within the military-industrial complex, in institutions such as NASA, the OSS, and Raytheon. An incomplete list of key figures with important post-war works can be found here.

Some interesting profiles not uncovered until recently include Reinhard Gehlen, a Major General in the German Wehrmacht, close confidant of Hitler, and head of the German Army Intelligence on the Eastern Front. After the war, he was given funds to set up the Gehlen organization, an intelligence group in the United States zone of Germany, and had a complex relationship with Army Intelligence and the CIA. Gehlen and his associates had a lot of contacts in the Soviet Bloc. Documents show that the CIA was for years reluctant to accept full responsibility for the Gehlen organization but ultimately embraced it, though it would prove to be a source of many leaks to Eastern Bloc intelligence. Dozens of primary documents on the Gehlen organization can be found here, for those interested.

There was Krunoslav Draganovic, a Franciscan priest who actively served the Nazis in Croatia, where they were responsible for over 350,000 deaths, and himself facilitated the escape of numerous Croatian war criminals through the assets of the clergy. After the war, he was hired as a US Spy.

Kurt Blome was the director of the Nazi Biological Warfare program. He oversaw Nerve Gas experimentation on prisoners at Auschwitz. He was hired by the US Army Chemical Corps in 1951 to work on chemical warfare research.

The OSS argued that it was important to prevent these same scientists and men of industry from Russia or Great Britain. But embedding 1,500 Nazis deep within the structures of intelligence, military research, and the medical field has certainly had an effect on the motives and actions of these institutions that go beyond just their early histories.

Continue to Part II, where I address the most shocking parts of the Operation.

Posted by Tim Silver at http://www.thepeopleshistory.net/2013/06/operation-paperclip-nazis-deeply.html