The Nazis recruited to win the Cold War - Brian Crim
In May of 1945, the Third Reich
was in chaos.
Adolf Hitler was dead,
German surrender was imminent,
and Allied troops had already begun
divvying up German territory.
But high-ranking Nazi engineer
Wernher von Braun wasn’t worried.
In fact, he approached
the US government directly—
informing them of his location
and waiting calmly for their arrival.
As the brain behind the world’s first
long-range ballistic missile,
von Braun knew his expertise made him
a highly valuable military asset.
And sure enough, his so-called captors
gave him a decidedly warm welcome.
Von Braun wasn't the only Nazi scientist
receiving this treatment.
While World War II was almost over,
a new war was brewing.
And the US was eager to recruit
the smartest minds in Germany
before the Soviets got the chance.
This became known as Operation Paperclip—
a clandestine campaign that brought
over 1,500 German scientists to the US
between 1945 and 1962.
The program was named for the paperclips
attached to the files of early recruits—
indicating that incriminating information
like Nazi affiliations
or suspected war crimes
could be disregarded.
Von Braun, for example,
had overseen an SS project
that relied on forced labor from thousands
of concentration camp prisoners.
While von Braun approached
the US directly,
other scientists had to be
identified and located.
One important asset in this effort
was a Nazi-compiled list
of Germany’s top scientists,
which someone had unsuccessfully tried
to dispose of by flushing down a toilet.
But the US was just one player
in this scramble.
The Soviets were also competing
to seize German brainpower,
resorting to bribery
and forced relocation.
The French and British lacked the money
to lure the best German brains,
but that didn't stop them from kidnapping
the occasional scientist.
They also stole patents and dismantled
factories to learn what they could.
The US approach, however, featured
a different and particularly tempting
brand of coercion:
the promise to relocate entire German
families and grant them citizenship.
This controversial offer
was one of the reasons
Paperclip was initially shrouded
in secrecy.
But the project became difficult to hide
when Germans started popping up
all over the US.
The military tried to get
ahead of any controversy
by revealing the operation to the press
in late 1946.
But the news immediately attracted
criticism from many prominent voices,
including Albert Einstein,
Eleanor Roosevelt, and the NAACP,
as well as many veteran’s organizations.
These parties opposed granting
German scientists citizenship
while millions of displaced persons,
including survivors of Nazi atrocities,
had no chance of coming to America.
Most Americans were also against employing
former Nazis
in sensitive national security positions.
But as the Cold War ramped up,
the military argument for keeping these
scientists out of Soviet hands
overpowered popular objections.
With his Nazi past largely hidden
from the public,
von Braun became one of the US’s
most important engineers
at the height of the Space Race.
In 1958, his team responded
to the Soviet launch of Sputnik
with the US’s own successful
satellite launch.
And in the 60s, he was the chief architect
of Saturn V,
the rocket that brought Americans
to the moon.
Other Paperclip recruits contributed
to the development of chemical weapons
such as Agent Orange,
pharmaceutical research,
and the development of modern airplanes.
These contributions helped the US
government present Paperclip as a success.
But, in hindsight, it’s hard to gauge
how helpful the program really was.
While von Braun saved the US years
of rocketry experimentation,
there's no reason to think American
scientists couldn't have developed
the same technology without him.
Furthermore, very few Paperclippers
were as exceptional as von Braun.
Many were average scientists
who either completed their contracts
and returned to Germany,
or took jobs alongside Americans
with equivalent expertise.
But ultimately,
the issue of Paperclip’s success
is just one of many questions raised
by its contentious approach
to science, ethics, and national security.
Can scientists working on military
technology be apolitical,
or are they responsible
for their creations?
Can pressing political and military
concerns justify overlooking war crimes?
In many ways, von Braun’s obituary
sums up the operation’s murkiness:
“A kind of Faustian shadow may be
discerned in [...] the fascinating career
of Wernher von Braun:
a man so possessed
of [...] intellectual hunger,
that any accommodation may be justified.”
