Operation Paperclip was a covert post-WWII military mission that started during the final stages of World War II. In fall of 1944, even before the German surrender in 1945, U.S. and British intelligence decided to harvest Hitler’s top scientific brains to gain advantage over the Soviets. That meant bringing top Nazi doctors, physicists, chemists, engineers and technicians to the United States. The group included Wernher von Braun, whose team went on to design the rockets that took man to the moon.

Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim

During Operation Paperclip, more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, technicians and their families were relocated from Germany to America. However, the Western Allies were not the only ones who scoured Germany for its technological and scientific know-how. In 1946, the Soviet Union forcibly recruited more than 2,200 German specialists and their families during Operation Osoaviakhim.

Scientists, engineers and technicians relocated from Germany to America under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Intellectual Reparations

In the aftermath of World War II, Operation Paperclip imported Germany’s top scientists as part of intellectual reparations owed to the United States and Great Britain in the form of patents and industrial expertise. In his book, Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, John Gimbel estimates that the intellectual reparations taken amounted to $10 billion.

Operation Paperclip Recruitment

Originally known as Operation Overcast, U.S. Army officers dubbed the mission Operation Paperclip because of the paperclip they attached to the folders of the experts they wanted to relocate to America. Once the men were located, Army Intelligence verified their political and ideological reliability and paid the evacuees a collective settlement of 69.5 million Reichsmarks. That was in 1948. In the same year, a currency reform introduced the Deutsche Mark as the new currency of western Germany, which severely devalued the settlement.

How the U.S. Army decided who to recruit

In 1943, Adolf Hitler had recalled scientists, engineers and technicians from combat duty and reassigned them to research units to assist in the war effort. Werner Osenberg, a scientist in Hitler’s Defense Research Association, compiled a list of the Third Reich’s top scientific minds to be reassigned. That list became known as the Osenberg List. In March 1945, a Polish laboratory technician at Bonn University found pieces of the list stuffed into a toilet. It reached Great Britain and subsequently U.S. Intelligence. It was the Osenberg List that served the United States as the basis for its recruitment efforts.

Annie Jacobsen’s 2014 book “Operation Paperclip”

The full scope of Operation Paperclip remained largely hidden from the public until 2014, when Annie Jacobsen, an American investigative journalist, told the story in her book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. Jacobsen offers a detailed chronology of events and profiles 89 individuals relocated from Germany to America. Since most of the recruits were former members, some even former leaders, of the Nazi Party the U.S. went through great length to hide their pasts. Defenders of Operation Paperclip argue that the balance of power could have easily shifted to the Soviet Union during the Cold War if these Nazi scientists had not been brought to the United States. Opponents point to the ethical problems with whitewashing horrible war crimes that allowed perpetrators to get away without punishment or accountability.

For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic or current events, people, places or food.

Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.