Operation Paperclip: The History of the Secret Program to Bring Nazi Scientists to America During and After World War II by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2016-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: The Soviet Union’s Acquisition Efforts

Due to the speed and force of the final American drive into Germany, U.S. soldiers occupied many areas designated as Soviet zones at Yalta. Some of the soldiers and commanders expressed disgust at abandoning this territory to the Soviets after fighting to secure it, but the Western Allies adhered to the letter, if not the spirit, of their agreements. Nevertheless, the Americans removed as much scientific material (and as many scientists) as possible from these zones during their brief occupation.

The Soviets' own scientific teams often found the regions picked bare of technological prizes once the Americans vacated them, but the USSR did not come away empty-handed. The Soviets, in fact, carried out a similar stripping of American sectors in reverse when they took Berlin. The Kaiser Wilhelm Society Institute for Physics, its director Peter Adolf Thiessen, and a number of its scientists fell into Soviet hands. The Red Army's scientific teams, equivalent to the western T-Forces, also managed to secure many chemical, biochemical, and silicate research labs plus their personnel in the Berlin area.

The bribes brought by these teams added a bizarre touch to the proceedings: “The dismantlers showed up at the institutes with vodka and lard: vodka for the local military commandants, whose cooperation was necessary for quickly transporting the labs, lard for the German scientists, to convince them that the Soviets were serious about taking care of them.” (Naimark, 1995, 209).

The Soviets, knowing that the Americans would permit the German scientists to leave if they wished to, attempted to take advantage of the much more liberal U.S. attitude towards the Third Reich's inventors and engineers. During the interrogation of these individuals at sites in Germany and in Paris during summer 1945, the various Allies naturally had the right to send their own representatives to the interviews, so the Soviet interrogators approached the German scientists with smoothly plausible claims, offering them considerable rewards and promising they could conduct their research in Germany.

Von Braun and most of the other scientists politely declined these offers, knowing them to be outright lies and fearing what the Soviets would do if they voluntarily joined those of their peers already captured by the Red Army. Helmut Gröttrup, however, naively believed the Soviets' blandishments, and the Americans, in keeping with their general policy, allowed him to leave. As soon as Gröttrup reached the Soviet-controlled area of Germany, however, he found himself bundled onto a train with his wife and other high-value scientists and their families. Under guard, the Germans traveled to remote sites in Siberia, where they spent years imprisoned (albeit well-fed and kept relatively comfortable). Von Braun noted that the Russians “let them see nothing, touch nothing on the production end, learn nothing from developing experience, just had them write reports until they were drained dry. Then the Russians went on by themselves.” (Spangenburg, 2008, 79).

The Soviets also bagged the famous Gustav Hertz, taking him and the entire Siemens laboratory to Moscow. General A.P. Zaveniagin headed the collection

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