Tuesday, 23 March 2021 proved invaluable to America’s emerging 34:09 Volume 34 Number 9 military-industrial complex. The program Published by WWII History Round Table known as Project Paperclip concluded in Written by Brian Crim and Drs. Harris & Simer September 1947, but its successor programs www.mn-ww2roundtable.org continued for decades. Between 1945 and Welcome to the second March 1962, approximately fifteen hundred German session of the Dr. Harold C. Deutsch and Austrian scientists and technicians, along World War II History Round Table. with their families, came to the U.S. for long- Tonight’s speaker is Brian Crim, author of term “exploitation” and eventually Our Germans. He will discuss the postwar employment in the military services, civilian transfer of German scientists and technology agencies, and related defense industries. that advanced the U.S. weapons of war and Ninety percent of the so-called eventually led to our advances in the Space “Paperclippers” remained in the U.S. Race of the 1960s. permanently. The dark side of science and technology, One thing both proponents and critics of developing innovative and devastating tools Project Paperclip could agree upon was of destruction in World War I (poison gas, Wernher von Braun’s transactional submarines, tanks, radios, aircraft, and worldview. Whether he wore an SS uniform strategic bombing, …), was vastly exceeded or bore NASA credentials, von Braun’s in World War II. The stunning development agenda was transparent when it came to of nuclear weapons most particularly stands developing rockets: “We felt no moral out. The Third Reich was the greatest scruples about the possible future use of our innovator in a large number of modern brainchild. We were interested solely in weapons (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, exploring space. It was simply a question with and jet aircraft). Both the Soviet Union and us of how the golden cow could be milked the United States made capturing and most successfully.” The emerging U.S. exploiting the German scientists and National Security State showered the rocket engineers responsible for such advanced team with the unlimited resources the Third weapons a major priority as the European war Reich could never sustain during total war. ended. The advent of the Cold War lent Fortunately, for von Braun, the U.S. military impetus to the rival powers capturing as many was willing to overlook NaZi connections for specialists as they could. While NaZi war results. The US was actively preparing for the criminals would face judgement after the war, next war and seemed perfectly willing to NaZi scientists, however compromised, were promote the captured Germans over the made treasured citiZens of the United States. American scientists who had just delivered The story of Wernher von Braun and his victory. rocket team’s harrowing escape from the The decade between the end of collapsing Third Reich into the warm Paperclip’s acquisition phase in September embrace of a former enemy is one of the more 1947 and the launching of Sputnik in October exciting and significant moments from the 1957 seemed to vindicate the German final days of World War II. As the Red Army scientists program. The contentious approached the Peenemünde complex on the immigration issue and parade of embarrassing Baltic coast, the SS, who assumed control of revelations related to Paperclip dissipated in the V-2 program in late 1944, evacuated the wake of increased Soviet aggressiveness personnel and material into the interior of the in Europe, the testing of a Soviet bomb, and, country. Fearing the SS would rather liquidate most significantly, the surprise invasion of him and his elite team of scientists and South Korea in June 1950. As the National technicians than allow them to fall into enemy Security State mushroomed, exemplified by hands, von Braun and his inner circle the return of limitless defense spending, the disappeared into the Bavarian countryside and cadre of German scientists working across the patiently awaited contact with American spectrum of scientific endeavor assumed troops. It was the beginning of a long and enormously influential positions in both the fruitful relationship. private and public sectors. Now citiZens of their adoptive country, the Paperclippers More than the freighters full of equipment skillfully negotiated the confines of the and caches of documents recovered from National Security State armed with security caves and hastily abandoned warehouses, the clearances, civil service contracts, and highly “German brains” who designed and built the paid positions in the burgeoning defense V-2 rocket along with dozens of other weapons in various stages of development industries. If you are a veteran, or know a veteran, of one of these campaigns – contact Don Patton at cell 612-867-5144 or [email protected] The Round Tablette 23 March 2021 — 2 Von Braun’s rocket team is certainly Post-9/11 Roundtable (zoom) – 26 Apr. 2021 – emblematic of this trend, but hundreds of All: – [email protected] Twin Cities Civil War Round Table – 18 May 2021 – other Paperclippers capitaliZed on their The State of Civil War Roundtables - www.tccwrt.com unprecedented access courtesy of forgiving - [email protected] and generous clients. No longer “Prisoners of St. Croix Valley Civil War Round Table - TBD - 715- Peace” living in a state of glorified military 386-1268 - [email protected] custody, the Paperclippers spent the first Military History Book Club, Har Mar Barnes & Noble - TBD - [email protected] decade of the Cold War overseeing advanced Civil War Symposium -3 Apr. 2021 - research and development projects and [email protected] cultivating the role of the scientist as Minnesota Military Museum, Camp Ripley, 15000 advocate, a position many found familiar after Hwy 115, Little Falls, MN 56345 - 320-616-6050 - performing similar functions in the Third http://www.mnmilitarymuseum.org/ Minnesota Air Guard Museum - 612-713-2523 - Reich. Von Braun’s obsession with space www.mnangmuseum.org exploration required accommodation with 8th AF Historical Society of MN, KC Hall both the Wehrmacht and later the U.S. Army. Bloomington, Wednesdays at 1130 - Von Braun excelled at promoting himself, his https://www.8thmn.org. team, and a space program capable of both Friends of Ft. Snelling - www.fortsnelling.org World Without Genocide - 651-695-7621 - expanding humanity’s horiZons and http://www.worldwithoutgenocide.org/ guaranteeing American military supremacy Fagen Fighters WWII Museum, Granite Falls, MN - over a technologically advanced foe. Air show - 2022 - 320-564-6644 - The justification of US National Security http://www.fagenfighterswwiimuseum.org. Wings of the North Airshow - Eden Prairie – 24-25 facilitating a blind eye towards research July2021 - 952-746-6100 - www.wotn.org “tainted” by having taken place in an Winston Churchill Book Club - atmosphere of war crimes is a sensitive issue [email protected] in the present day. Some scientists the US Alliance Francaise 612-332-0436 - www.afmsp.org worked with, like Imperial Japan’s Lt. Honor Flight - Jerry Kyser - 651-338-2717 - [email protected] General Shirō Ishii the notorious leader of CAF - Commemorative Air Force - 651-455-6942 - Unit 731 in China, clearly had blood on their www.cafmn.org hands. The V-2 scientists, while not directly Selim Center for Life Long Learning, UST, operating NaZi concentration camps like KZ- https://www.stthomas.edu/selimcenter/ Dora, nonetheless are tainted by association Western Naval Historical Association [email protected] with NaZi forced labor camps. Conversely are MacArthur Memorial, Norfolk VA, the scientists of the Manhattan Project http://www.macarthurmemorial.gov correctly viewed as accessories to mass National World War II Memorial, Washington DC, murder? The moral conundrums of these http://www.wwiimemorialfriends.org events lack clear resolution. We need volunteers to drive our veterans Further Readings: to and from meetings. Please contact Don Brian Crim, Our Germans: Project Paperclip and Patton at cell 612-867-5144 or the National Security State, Johns HopKins [email protected] University Press, 2018. Round Table Schedule 2021 Douglas M. O’Reagan, Taking Nazi Technology: 13Apr The Tragedy of Poland: Nazis; Soviets Allied Exploitation of German Science After the Second World War, Johns HopKins University 11 May The “Mighty Eighth” and Victory in Press, 2019. Europe Monique Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart The Round Table is a 501.c.3 non-profit. of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past During We would greatly appreciate your the Civil Rights Era, Yale University Press, 2015. supporting the HCDWW2RT. Wayne Biddle, Dark Side of the Moon: Wernher von Braun, the Third Reich, and the Space Race, W.W. Norton & Company, 2009. Michael Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Vintage BooKs, 2007. Michael B. Petersen, Missiles for the Fatherland: Peenemünde, National Socialism, and the V-2 Missile, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hans H. Amtmann, The Vanishing Paperclips: 104 German Rocket Scientists at Ft. Bliss America's Aerospace Secret, a Personal Account, Boylston, Massachusetts: Monogram Aviation Publications, 1988. Jim EcKles, Pocketful Of Rockets: History And Stories Behind White Sands Missile Range, 2013. Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi First rank, from left to right, General Von Braun, with his arm in a Scientists to America, Little, Brown, 2014. Dr Walter Dornberger (partially cast, Walter Dornberger (on hidden), General Friedrich the left) and Bernhard Announcements: Olbricht (with Knight's Cross), Tessmann (on the right) Vietnam War Roundtable – Fall of Saigon (zoom) – Major Heinz Brandt, and Wernher surrendered to the Americans May 2021 – von Braun, Peenemünde, March May 3, 1945 1941 World War I Roundtable (zoom) – 14 Apr. 2021 – See our programs on YouTube at http://youtube.com/ww2hrt. .