In May 1945, as Germany collapsed, American intelligence officers began a secret program to recruit Nazi scientists for U.S. weapons programs. They called it Operation Paperclip. Over the next decade, more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought to the United States—including dozens who were complicit in war crimes.
The most famous recruit was Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket engineer who developed the V-2 ballistic missile. The V-2 was built by slave laborers from concentration camps—20,000 died building von Braun's rockets. Von Braun joined the SS in 1940 and visited concentration camps to select workers. He became the father of the American space program, designing the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo to the moon.
Kurt Blome was a Nazi biological weapons expert who experimented on concentration camp prisoners. He was brought to the U.S. under Paperclip and worked at Camp Detrick, the Army's biological warfare center.
Arthur Rudolph was operations director at the Mittelwerk underground factory where V-2s were built by slave labor. He became an American citizen and directed the Saturn V program alongside von Braun. In 1984, the Department of Justice discovered his war crimes and stripped him of citizenship; he fled to Germany.
The Paperclip recruits were given new identities, fake employment histories, and sanitized biographies. The State Department and CIA actively concealed their Nazi pasts from immigration officials. When J. Edgar Hoover's FBI discovered the program in 1947, the CIA classified it above Top Secret.
The justification was Cold War necessity—the Soviet Union was recruiting German scientists too, in Operation Osoaviakhim. But the moral cost was immense. Men responsible for thousands of deaths became honored American citizens, their pasts buried in classified files that are still being released today.
The most famous recruit was Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket engineer who developed the V-2 ballistic missile. The V-2 was built by slave laborers from concentration camps—20,000 died building von Braun's rockets. Von Braun joined the SS in 1940 and visited concentration camps to select workers. He became the father of the American space program, designing the Saturn V rocket that took Apollo to the moon.
Kurt Blome was a Nazi biological weapons expert who experimented on concentration camp prisoners. He was brought to the U.S. under Paperclip and worked at Camp Detrick, the Army's biological warfare center.
Arthur Rudolph was operations director at the Mittelwerk underground factory where V-2s were built by slave labor. He became an American citizen and directed the Saturn V program alongside von Braun. In 1984, the Department of Justice discovered his war crimes and stripped him of citizenship; he fled to Germany.
The Paperclip recruits were given new identities, fake employment histories, and sanitized biographies. The State Department and CIA actively concealed their Nazi pasts from immigration officials. When J. Edgar Hoover's FBI discovered the program in 1947, the CIA classified it above Top Secret.
The justification was Cold War necessity—the Soviet Union was recruiting German scientists too, in Operation Osoaviakhim. But the moral cost was immense. Men responsible for thousands of deaths became honored American citizens, their pasts buried in classified files that are still being released today.