Operation Paperclip - A Fourth Reich?

By the end of 1945 Germany was well defeated and newly installed US President Harry Truman knew only too well that the next war would be with communist Russia.
As the Red Army and the US troops converged on Berlin, it became clear that whoever controlled the military secrets and scientific might of the fallen Nazi state would be starting the forthcoming conflict from the box seat.
The US took steps to discover who and where the leading Nazi scientists were. Some had been brutally oppressed during the Third Reich, and were forced to work menial jobs rather than further their scientific research.
These men were obviously acceptable to the US, and could easily be allowed into the country without public outcry.
The others were more complicated.
Many of the leading minds in German science were committed and active Nazis who had leant vital support to the evil empire.
Initially the American focus was on rocket technology, specifically understanding the V2 rockets that had spearheaded the technological advances made by the Nazi regime.
The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency quickly set about creating a system for bringing these gifted technicians to the US, codenamed Operation Overcast.
CIA spies began to compile a black list of key scientists they needed to interrogate, starting with the father of the V2, Wernher von Braun.
With the Russians within touching distance of his rocket lab in Peenemünde, Von Braun, fearing persecution in Siberian PoW camps, handed his legacy to the advancing Americans.
Von Braun would go on to become a central figure in the space race, helping the US defeat Moscow and conquer the moon before their Soviet rivals.
As the Cold War deepened, Operation Overcast became Operation Paperclip when it was finally given official approval by Truman in 1946.
Paperclip was a systematic programme to recruit any scientists and technicians that might be of use to the US. But not all of the ex-Nazis would be as welcome in the land of the free as Von Braun.
Men like Walter Schreiber, who had authorised experiments on holocaust victims, were chased out of the country in the 50s as the press began to expose the nastier side of the relocation programme.
Undoubtedly, Operation Paperclip was a success in terms of the military advances, code-breaking achievements and general scientific excellence the 1,600 men and women who were recruited went on to contribute.
However, as time has passed and more details of the dark side of this research have emerged, the moral and ethical implications, as well as some of the practical applications of these advances have spawned several conspiracy theories.

Many of the men recruited from Germany to work in the US were complicit in murder and torture.
The fear from conspiracy theorists, is that this background of evil may have crept into their work in the US, leaving behind a legacy of Nazism that could come back to haunt the world.
Programmes carried out by Nazi scientists included the controversial MK Ultra mind control programme, which sought to influence the very thought processes of its subjects.
It fitted perfectly with Hitler's concept of a global war of the mind, in which people could be brainwashed into following an ideology, regardless of their own beliefs.
Some of the men brought to the US to carry out projects like MK Ultra were convicted war criminals, who had experience of the foul human experiments carried out inside Dachau.
Kurt Blome, who stood trial before the Nuremberg tribunal, would surely have been executed by the court had the US not saved him to assist with the development of their own biological and chemical warfare programmes.
He admitted experimenting with plague vaccines on concentration camp inmates, but still went on to work on top secret US projects before finally being arrested, tried and convicted for war crimes in France.
MK Ultra was by no means the only controversial scheme devised by the brilliant, but brutal Nazi scientists.
An offshoot of MK Ultra, Operation Midnight Climax, saw Paperclip scientists experimenting on punters who had been lured to CIA safehouses by prostitutes working for the US government.
The unsuspecting clients were given covert druggings to help analysts explore the effects of LSD on the human mind.
Experiments like these, displaying the callousness and lack of humanity that characterised the Nazi scientific research, have led conspiracy theorists to speculate that other covert projects may have gone much further in the scope of their cruelty.
For many theorists Paperclip represents the gateway, the starting point for fascist domination of the upper echelons of the US establishment and the military-industrial complex.
Paperclip has become linked to conspiracy theories on everything from the Illuminati to the Freemasons, from MK Ultra to UFO cover-ups.
The lasting effect of Operation Paperclip in the minds of many conspiracy theorists is the concept that the evil Nazi regime lives on through the work of these men, laying dormant in secret societies and sects waiting for a ripe time to enslave humanity.

- Many of the men brought over to the US were die hard Nazis who were incapable of changing their repulsive political and racial views.

- The fact that monsters like Blome were spared punishment for their crimes and given asylum in the US points to the depth of human suffering and immorality that the CIA was prepared to put up with in order to unlock the secrets of the Third Reich's scientific advances.

- The scale of the project, bringing over 1,600 Nazi scientists, spies, engineers and code breakers across the Atlantic, is a strong indication that Paperclip must have had a deep impact on the political ideology of the technological elite.

- Some of the Paperclip recruits went on to national fame, particularly Wernher Von Braun, who became head of NASA and even featured on a documentary about space travel for Disney. Their prominence indicates the clear influence they held in key areas of the US military-industrial complex.

- The US government has released hundreds of documents revealing the scale and depth of both Operation Paperclip itself and the experiments carried out by those who came to America through it.

- That morally questionable research projects like MK Ultra existed is well documented. However, there is no suggestion of any element of racial profiling or Nazi ideology influencing the choice of subjects in any way.

- While men like Von Braun were accepted and celebrated for their achievements, they were never able to influence the political sphere. Moreover, the vast majority of Germans in the US were shunned, avoided and even attacked by yanks angry after the losses they suffered in World War II. Being a former Nazi was hardly a brilliant position from which to seek career advancement.

- Ex-Nazis were utilised rather than trusted by the Americans. Every project was supervised by the CIA, with US intelligence agents closely monitoring progress and methods. At no stage were the Paperclip recruits allowed enough of a free reign to follow any sort of fascist agenda.

- When incontrovertible evidence of war crimes was produced by one of America's allies, as France did with Blome, the US did send the scientist back for trial, though not before they had pumped him for information about his Nazi research projects.

It is clear that the US deliberately ignored the gruesome pasts of some of the Nazi scientists they employed. Operation Paperclip was an ethically bankrupt concept, allowing war criminals and former fascists freedom and prosperity in exchange for the secrets they had learned working for the Führer. Strategically, however, it was crucial to America's victory in the cold war and subsequent rise to superpower hegemony. Have these men influenced the prevailing political, social and economic climate of their adopted nation? No. Are they, their offspring, and a loyal band of committed laying low in secret societies ready to grab power in the future? Surely not. These men were not ideologues like Bormann and Goebbels, they were scientists and engineers whose life was their work. Many were simply happy to be operating in stability and calm. Though it was morally reprehensible, there is no evidence that Operation Paperclip was the precursor for a covert Nazification of the US.