Operation Paperclip was an OSS, Office of Strategic Services, program which brought over 1,500 Germans to the United States after World War II.
The OSS was in a race with the Russians at the end of the world to reap the cream of the Nazi scientific corps and utilize them. The OSS was the precursor to the CIA.
President Truman formally signed the authorization for Paperclip in August 1945, but the race for the Nazi braintrust had started even before the war ended.
Truman’s order prohibited any person who had been an “active supporter of Nazi militarism”. This exclusion was often ignored. After all, the most valued scientists came out of the Nazi missile program.
There were also scientists who’d worked in the Nazi chemical weapons program. There was Operation Alsos which focused on Nazi nuclear scientists and Operation TICOM which went after German cryptologists.
Werner Von Braun is one of the more famous of these scientists. He worked on the V-2 program and then the United States rocket program, especially the Apollo program. He’d been a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.
Also part of Operation Paperclip, was the recruitment of Japanese scientists and doctors from the infamous Unit 731. That is the subject of a different slideshare.
It is estimated that Paperclip scientists ended up contributing over 10 billion worth in patents and industrial processes, as well as critical help to our space program.
Do the ends justify the means? Besides wanting the expertise, and denying it to the Russians, another aspect of Paperclip was to remove these scientists from post-war Germany so they couldn’t contribute to their own country.
What if there were more to Operation Paperclip than we know? Parts of it are still classified to this day. While Von Braun and others worked at Fort Bliss, what if some were sent to Area 51 to study a rather unique problem?
In the first book in the Area 51 series, one of those scientists from Operation Paperclip plays a key role. Area 51
Area 51- Book One Since before the dawning of modern man, an alien mothership and nine abandoned flying saucers have been hidden away in Area 51, a top-secret military base in the Nevada desert. There, scientists have studied the crafts, hoping to unlock the secrets of the alien technology and, perhaps, the origins of life on Earth. But now a deranged general wants to activate the mothership’s interstellar drive—and the consequences could prove catastrophic for humankind. Dr. Hans Von Seeckt—an elderly scientist, ex- Nazi, and original member of the Area 51 research team—joins up with the president’s science adviser, Dr. Lisa Duncan, and Special Forces officer Mike Turcotte to put a stop to the planned test flight and tell the public the truth about Area 51. Meanwhile, a brilliant archaeologist, Professor Nabinger, discovers a message on runes found in ancient Egypt that could change everything we think we know about human evolution and the role that alien visitation may have played in it.
A free slideshow on this topic and many others about interesting history, survival, writing and other topics is on my web site at www.bobmayer.com/workshops
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