Wernher von Braun Archives - Walled In Berlin

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Operation Osoaviakhim – German Scientists in USSR

Monday, May 27th, 2019

Operation Osoaviakhim was the Soviet counterpart of Operation Paperclip. Both missions were designed to scoop up German scientific know-how following WWII. In October 1946, the Soviets ordered at gun point selected German rocket scientists onto 92 trains bound for the USSR. The men were to assist with their missile production and design.

Soviet Scientists move to Occupied Germany

Following WWII, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin moved hundreds of Soviet rocket specialists to soviet-occupied Germany to work side by side with their German colleagues in order to gain experience in rocket development. Rocket science was virtually nonexistent in the USSR at the time. Soon, Soviet authorities became uncomfortable, however, with the idea that the Germans might find out too much about the status of Soviet efforts. Their second concern was that the Western allies might accuse them of noncompliance with the Allied Control Council agreements. Therefore, the Soviet and the German rocket scientists were relocated to Russia.

Operation Osoaviakhim

Relocation of rocket scientists and their equipment took place simultaneously across the Soviet occupation zone. Personnel to be moved included 2,200 specialists in aviation, nuclear technology, rocketry, electronics, radar technology and chemistry. Counting family members, the total number of people expatriated ranged between 6,000 and 7,000. Close to 100 special trains stood ready in various locations. In the early morning hours, soldiers ordered the selected specialists out of their beds and onto trains to the USSR. Wives of the scientists could choose to stay in Germany, providing their husbands agreed. Unmarried couples were allowed to choose to travel together rather than being separated. Soldiers loaded furniture and personal belongings onto separate trains.

Helmut Groettrup heads German Scientists in Russia

Helmut Groettrup, a German physicist and rocket scientist, was at the top of the Soviet list to be relocated. He had been one of the managers of Wernher von Braun’s V-2 rocket program. Groettrup gladly agreed to work for the Soviets because he hoped to become the leader of the Soviet program and did not want to have to play second fiddle to Wernher von Braun on the American team. Initially, the Soviet government settled Groettrup and his cohorts in mansions and vacation homes outside Moscow. However, the condition of the research facilities they were to work in was deplorable. Due to lack of storage space, the scientific equipment that had been confiscated and shipped from Germany was left lying beside the railway lines and quickly turned to scrap metal. Numerous documents and blueprints from the German facility were also lost in transit. Over time, the scientists were moved to different locations. Groettrup remained in charge of the more than 170 Germans from 1946 to 1953.

Operation Osoaviakhim was the Soviet counterpart of Operation Paperclip. Both missions were designed to scoop up German scientific know-how following WWII. www.walled-in-berlin.com

End of Operation Osoaviakhim

Beginning in the mid-1948, the group of German scientists was no longer actively involved in the development of next generation rockets. They were still receiving assignments but were no longer privy to the “big picture.” By the end of 1950, most of the Germans were sent back to Germany. Groettup remained in Russia until 1953.

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.

Tags: Allied Control Council, German rocket scientists, Helmut Groettrup, Joseph Stalin, Operation Osoaviakhim, Operation Paperclip, Wernher von Braun, World War II
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Operation Paperclip – German Scientists in USA

Monday, May 13th, 2019

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.

Tags: "Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, Annie Jacobsen, John Gimbel, Operation Osoaviakhim, Operation Overcast, Operation Paperclip, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Osenberg List, Wernher von Braun
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Wernher von Braun – the Real Rocket Man

Monday, April 29th, 2019

Donald Trump has called North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “Little Rocket Man”. However, the real Rocket Man was Wernher von Braun (1912–1977). Having been one Germany’s most important rocket developers, von Braun was put to work in the U.S. rocket development program in the aftermath of World War II.

Wernher von Braun – Early Years

Von Braun came from an affluent upper-class family. Although interested in astronomy and space since youth, Wernher von Braun did not do well in school. As a matter of fact, physics and mathematics were his least favorite subjects. But by the time he was thirteen and got his hands on a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenraeumen – “The Rocket to Interplanetary Space” by a Hermann Oberth, he changed his attitude in a flash. He found the book so interesting that he decided to conquer math and quickly made it to the top of his class. While studying at the Berlin Institute of Technology, von Braun joined the German Society for Space Travel. In 1932, he graduated with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and entered the University of Berlin. There, he went to work for the German Army to develop ballistic missiles together with Walter R. Dornberger. In 1934, he received a Ph.D. in physics.

Wernher von Braun During the Nazi Years

By 1934, Wernher von Braun’s group had successfully launched two rockets that rose vertically to more than 1.5 miles. Adolph Hitler was in power by then and anxious to advance German rocket development. When the test facilities near Berlin became too small, a larger one was built in Peenemuende on the Baltic Sea. Dornberger became the new facility’s military commander, von Braun its technical director. By 1944, the level of technology of the rockets and missiles being tested at Peenemuende was years ahead of that in other countries. The team developed the long-range ballistic missile A-4 (later called V-2) and the supersonic anti-aircraft missile “Wasserfall.”

How Wernher von Braun Came to the United States

At the end of World War II, Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union scooped up top German researchers as part of Operation Paperclip . Wernher von Braun, his younger brother Magnus, Dornberger and the rest of the German V-2 rocket team surrendered to U.S. troops along with blueprints and test vehicles. Thereafter, the U.S. government installed 1,600 top German scientist, engineers and technicians at Fort Bliss, Texas. Most of these scientists had been former members – some even former leaders – of the Nazi Party. That made Wernher von Braun a controversial figure. His Nazi war efforts make him a villain; his efforts of getting man to the moon a hero.

Wernher von Braun was one of the most important German rocket developers. Following WWII, he was put to work in the U.S. rocket development program. www.walled-in-berlin.com

Wernher von Braun Propels Americans to the Moon

For the next fifteen years, von Braun worked with the U.S. Army in the development of ballistic missiles. In 1950, his team was moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama to build the Jupiter ballistic missile. In 1960, the center transferred from the Army to the newly established NASA. Von Braun became the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The V–2 rocket remained the forerunner of those used in space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. The Saturn V rocket, which eventually supported the Apollo space program and human exploration of the moon, was also the brainchild of Wernher von Braun’s rocket team.

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.

Tags: Apollo space program, Fort Bliss, Hermann Oberth, Jupiter ballistic missile, Kim Jong-Un, long-range ballistic missile A4 (V-2), Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, Peenemuende, Saturn V rocket, Walter R. Dornberger, Wernher von Braun
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