Norman JW Goda on Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National

Brian E. Crim. Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National Security State. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. 264 pp. $39.95, cloth, ISBN 978-1-4214-2439-2.

Reviewed by Norman J.W. Goda

Published on H-Diplo (April, 2018)

Commissioned by Seth Ofenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)

In the 1980s, particularly following the reve‐ everything from Allied knowledge of the Holo‐ lation that US Army Counter-Intelligence em‐ caust to postwar escapes of SS ofcers to the intel‐ ployed the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, a ligence use of Gestapo fgures to the integration of small library of books appeared concerning the East European Nazi collaborators into American US use of German war criminals following World society. The scholarship has ofered new informa‐ War II. Since the documentation was based on tion but it also ofers more nuanced explanations Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and for US policies. In the frst place, US government thus was fairly limited, and since the authors agencies were hardly monolithic, as they tended were by and large journalists, the various works to disagree vehemently on the liabilities inherent tended to adopt explanations that focused on US in hiring former Nazis on moral and practical cynicism for the employment of former Nazis, grounds. Moreover, the responses tended to be and one that was in keeping with the Cold War improvisational steps by unprepared US agencies historical revisionism of the 1960s. World War II to address real or perceived Soviet challenges, of‐ was over, and anyone who was anticommunist ten with mixed results and, on plenty of occa‐ was useful, be they Wehrmacht generals, former sions, buyer’s remorse.[2] SS or Gestapo ofcers, or German rocket scien‐ The title of Brian E. Crim’s book on Operation tists. This, in turn, needlessly heightened US ten‐ Paperclip is based on a Bob Hope joke following sions with the Soviet Union. The overall theme of the Soviet launch of Sputnik in October 1957. the 1980s exposés also suggested that the US gov‐ “Their German rocket scientists,” Hope quipped, ernment adopted a monolithically conspiratorial were “better than our German rocket scientists” mindset. Moral outrage is thus a staple of this (p. 3). In retelling the story, Crim reminds us that work as well.[1] the US program to ofer contracts, and eventually The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 citizenship, to some fve hundred German scien‐ triggered, over the last twenty years, the release tists and engineers was never much of a secret of millions of formerly classifed pages from the and thus hardly a conspiracy. The army issued US Army, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Feder‐ press releases in 1946 and by the 1950s Wernher al Bureau of Investigation (FBI), State Depart‐ von Braun, the chief rocket scientist to arrive ment, and other US government agencies. In the from the German V-2 program, was a household interim, important scholarship has emerged on name thanks to Hollywood’s interest in space. H-Net Reviews

More important though, Crim uses declassifed where the main US objective should be to keep military intelligence, FBI, and State Department the scientists from becoming a renewed menace records to show that the arrival of German scien‐ to world peace. Even the Germans’ scientifc and tists from 1945 to 1947 was not universally ap‐ engineering accomplishments struck FIAT as proved by US government agencies. It caused bit‐ structural rather than truly innovative. Mean‐ ter inter- and intra-agency rifts. Thus Paperclip is while Walter Jessel, a Jewish Ofce of Strategic not only a story of Nazi engineers plying their Services (OSS) ofcer who had fed Germany in trade in the US after the German collapse but also 1938, was vetting von Braun’s rocket team.[3] De‐ a story concerning the contested character of the scribing them as “all unrepentant Nazis” (p. 37), emerging national security state. Jessel also resented their opportunism and the Michael J. Neufeld (Von Braun: Dreamer of care with which they had coordinated their dis‐ Space, Engineer of War [2008]) and Michael B. Pe‐ course before meeting the Americans. The Soviet tersen (Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, threat to Western civilization was imminent, they National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile [2009]) insisted, but the technical details of their miracle have already written excellent studies demon‐ weapons would have to wait until their personal strating the relationship between the Nazi state situations were resolved. In the months ahead, and Germany’s rocket teams at the German re‐ the army’s counter-intelligence corps (CIC) in Eu‐ search facility at Peenemünde. The other sciences rope and the FBI, which studied the reliability of in Nazi Germany had a similar rapport: hardly aliens desirous of US citizenship, did thorough the oft-cited, apolitical “Faustian bargain” where‐ checks on the scientists and engineers and were by the technician plies his trade while somehow similarly concerned about the reliability of Ger‐ overlooking the excesses of a criminal regime. man scientists. German rocket scientists and fight engineers All of which puts the behavior of the Joint In‐ were Nazi Party members, sometimes SS mem‐ telligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), a mixed civil- bers, and always members of various Nazi scien‐ military group headed by army personnel which tifc and technical unions. They knew of and bene‐ conducted the defnitive security screening, in fted from the lethal use of slave labor at the sharper relief than in earlier studies. Despite all Nordhausen and Mittelbau-Dora camps that made of the red fags from other investigators, the Pen‐ mass underground production of rockets possible. tagon developed a singular way of reckoning with Arthur Rudolf, the engineer who directed V-2 pro‐ the German past in the service of national securi‐ duction at Nordhausen, instigated and augmented ty. JIOA assessments ignored most derogatory in‐ the use of slave labor. Other Nazi scientists were formation in scientists’ and engineers’ dossiers deeply involved in medical experiments with con‐ while minimizing the meaning of Nazi Party or af‐ centration camp inmates concerning human tol‐ fliate memberships, which were written of as erance to cold and altitude. obligatory. Even Arthur Rudolf, who joined the One of Crim’s nice expositions is the ambiva‐ Nazi Party in 1931, was “not an ardent Nazi” by lence of early US intelligence assessments regard‐ this JIOA standard (p. 46), and Emil Salmon, who ing the character and acumen of Nazi scientists. helped to destroy a synagogue during Kristall‐ The army’s technical feld intelligence agency nacht, in this renewed evaluation, might not have (FIAT) in 1945 worked with the memory of Ger‐ been involved in the Kristallnacht pogrom after many having evaded the 1919 armament clauses all. and with the understanding that under the Nazis, Yet even in the JIOA, there was a fy in the German science had been sullied to the point ointment, namely, Samuel Klaus of the State De‐

2 H-Net Reviews partment. Crim devotes signifcant space to Klaus, unique scientifc brilliance, the importance of who was a key fgure in Operation Safehaven, the missile technology, and the supposedly apolitical US efort to locate and freeze hidden German as‐ nature of science. As the FBI closely followed their sets in neutral states. He was also a security political sympathies and internal rivalries, the maven whom Crim uses to represent the difcul‐ army’s German rocket team tested missiles in ties of the American transition between enemies. Texas and New Mexico before moving to While serving in the JIOA, Klaus doggedly held to Huntsville in 1950. Sputnik in 1957 seemed to vin‐ earlier FIAT assessments concerning the Ger‐ dicate von Braun’s complaints concerning limited mans. The State Department, Klaus reminded the budgets and his touting of intercontinental ballis‐ military ofcers, was responsible for issuing visas, tic missiles. President Dwight Eisenhower’s cre‐ and the Paperclip scientists and engineers were ation of NASA in 1958, however, tethered the Ger‐ potentially dangerous enemy aliens who could man team to a civilian agency and limited their travel the country, make observations, then re‐ reach to launch systems. turn to Germany with valuable intelligence, if not For the most part, Paperclip scientists man‐ for a resurgent Germany then possibly for the So‐ aged to outrun their Nazi pasts even during the viet Union. If what they had to ofer was worth West German trials concerning the Dora camp in the trouble, he argued, then the security risk the late 1960s. The one German scientist to truly should be minimized by having them work in answer was Rudolf, whose past was discovered by conditions of military custody. At the very least, the Justice Department’s Ofce of Special Investi‐ Klaus argued, the security checks concerning gations, itself created in 1979 as part of an aug‐ their backgrounds should be far more thorough mented American Holocaust consciousness.[4] As than the JIOA allowed. For the Pentagon, Klaus’s Crim notes, Rudolf returned to West Germany in caution was dangerous obstruction. US Army 1984, surrendering his US citizenship when he got Counter-Intelligence followed and reported the there, but keeping his US Social Security pay‐ Soviet interest in German scientists, their ofers of ments as part of his arrangement with US authori‐ comfortable conditions despite past Nazi aflia‐ ties. State Department records further reveal that tions, and their abduction of German scientists Helmut Kohl’s government in Bonn was furious when these incentives did not work. Thus Klaus with the Americans for dumping Rudolf in West was pilloried in the JIOA as “little Jew” who was Germany in this way. Aside from an abuse of the “beating a dead Nazi horse” (pp. 86, 106). In the US passport system (Rudolf had no passport be‐ end, the Pentagon won. Klaus was removed from fore leaving for West Germany and then surren‐ the JIOA in spring 1947, and in 1950 he was inves‐ dered it on arrival), the Rudolf afair ran counter tigated during the McCarthy hearings. Fortunately to Kohl’s policy of winnowing the explosive politi‐ for Klaus, Crim notes, he had kept detailed notes cal nature of the Nazi past.[5] To mollify its West to outfank his congressional detractors. German allies, the State Department wanted to The Pentagon worked hard to ensure that undo the process that had expelled Rudolf. The public opposition to Paperclip was limited, de‐ Justice Department refused. As for the Pentagon— spite continued opposition by disparate parties, nearly four decades after Operation Paperclip including Albert Einstein, Jewish groups, and was inaugurated—it now remained silent. American scientists and engineers, who saw US Crim’s account is more analytical than ency‐ citizenship for former Nazis as an afront, and clopedic, and it focuses on the rocket scientists who had their own fight heroes in Robert God‐ more than specialists in other scientifc areas. It dard and others. Army publications emphasized may disappoint those interested in a full account‐ the Germans’ careful security screening, their

3 H-Net Reviews ing for all German scientists entering the United Memory since the 1970s (New York: Oxford Uni‐ States, what they had done under the Nazis, and versity Press, 2016). what they contributed while they were in the US. [5]. Select Documents Released under The But it is a very fne account concerning the inter‐ Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Govern‐ nal dynamics of the Paperclip program, providing ment Disclosure Acts Relating to Nazi War Crimes, a more nuanced evaluation than has hitherto Record Group 59, National Archives and Records been available. Administration, College Park, MD. Notes [1]. See, for example, Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Efects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988); and more specifc to this review, Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1987); and Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Sci‐ entists, and Project Paperclip (New York: St. Mar‐ tin’s Press, 1991). [2]. See Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Impe‐ rial Government Records Interagency Working Group, Final Report to the United States Congress, April 2007, https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Mili‐ tary_Law/pdf/NaziWarCrimes_Japanese- Records.pdf. Initial scholarship includes Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, and Robert Wolfe, US Intelligence and the Nazis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Based on newly released records is also a recent journalistic assessment of Paperclip. See Annie Ja‐ cobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelli‐ gence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014). [3]. See also Walter Jessel, Class of ’31: A Ger‐ man-Jewish Émigré’s Journey across Defeated Germany, edited with introduction by Brian E. Crim (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2017). [4]. See most recently Deborah E. Lipstadt, Holocaust: An American Understanding (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016); and Jacob S. Eder, Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Germany and American Holocaust

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Citation: Norman J.W. Goda. Review of Crim, Brian E. Our Germans: Project Paperclip and the National Security State. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. April, 2018.

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