Operation Paperclip
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“[W]e accept you”: Beasley, 80.
He had promised Rickhey: RG 330 Georg Rickhey, Letter to Mr. Peter Beasley, April 6, 1948.
daily six-mile drive: Sereny, 547.
he had been shaving: Ibid., 555.
soldiers with antitank guns: Ibid.
arrested and taken away: Schmidt, Justice, 130; also in the castle, and dually listed on Speer’s arrest report, was Speer’s good friend and Hitler’s personal doctor, Karl Brandt.
American officials had known: Sereny, 547–49.
in discussions with American officials: Ibid., 556. Sereny notes that in Spandau, Speer made no mention of his arrest or his first interrogations.
Nitze recalled years later: Ibid., 549. Speer’s secretary, Annemarie Kempf, recalled May 12, 1945, as the date that the American officials arrived at the castle.
“He said he couldn’t comment”: Ibid., 551.
the prisoner announced: Longerich, 1; After the Battle 14 (August 15, 1976): 35.
“Police Chief of Nazi Europe”: The Time cover image was drawn by Boris Artzybasheff.
papers that identified him: Longerich, 2.
blue-tipped object: Ibid., 3.
jerked his head back: Ibid.
“[T]his evil thing”: Quoted in Winston G. Ramsey, “Himmler’s Suicide,” in After the Battle 14 (August 15, 1976), 35. The officer assisting Dr. Wells was Major Norman Whittaker.
Of the 18.2 million: Kershaw, 379.
50 million people: A definitive figure is impossible to pin down. This one comes from the Eleanor Roosevelt papers project, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.—available online: http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/.
“The question who is a Nazi”: Ziemke, 380.
Chapter Six: Harnessing the Chariot of Destruction
“The scale on which science”: Bower, 102. Farren was director of Farnborough, a research facility of the Royal Aircraft Establishment.
“German science must be curbed”: Lasby 32, 63; O’Mara, “Long-Range Policy on German Scientific and Technological Research, AIF.”
a directive known as JCS 1076: RG 164, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs; Valero, 3.
scientists were now being held: Secondary sources vary on this number. I use Lasby’s figures; telephone interview with Clarence Lasby, March 23, 2013.
General Eisenhower sought clarification: RG 331 AC/SG-2 to Chief, MIS, May 16, 1945, Subj: “Long-Range Policy on German Scientific and Technological Research”; Lasby, 75–76.
a “matter of urgency”: Quoted in Lasby, 63–64.
Wolfe flew to SHAEF headquarters: General Wolfe also served on a classified study regarding secret German weapons that was being conducted by the Foreign Economic Administration (FEA). In this capacity, General Wolfe was to determine if the Nazis had shipped wonder weapons out of Germany before the end of the war, with the purpose of later selling them on the black market—similar to stolen artwork and Nazi gold. The results were inconclusive, but it gave General Wolfe a broader vision of the kinds of secret weapons projects the Nazis had been working on, and their value.
hardly a good time: Lasby, 65, 106.
“Besieged by the countless demands”: Lasby, 65.
RG 169. Memo, Major K. B. Wolfe to War-Navy Ad Hoc Interdepartmental Committee to Handle FEA Projects, May 14, 1945.
“V-2 had exploded overhead”: McGovern, 99. Cites his own interview with Major Staver.
learning everything he could: Ibid., 99–106.
U.S. Army calculations: History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, “Letter and Report from Staver to Colonel S. B. Ritchie,” May 23, 1946.
Ask Rees, Fleischer said: McGovern, 163.
interviewed by Staver: History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, “Letter and Report from Staver to Colonel S. B. Ritchie,” May 23, 1946.
rough treatment: RG 330 Walther Riedel, JIOA Form No. 4, Security Report by Sponsoring Agency.
“short trips around the moon”: Ibid.: McGovern, 166–67.
Riedel insisted: RG 330 Walther Riedel, JIOA Form No. 2, Basic Personnel Record. The five Nazi organizations were: NSDAP, NSKK (Motor Corps) NSV (Welfare), DAF (Labor Front), NSBDT (technicians), RLB (air raid defense).
This territory included: McGovern, 151. Even though the land had been conquered by American forces, it was agreed, per Yalta, that the Soviets would control it. The Russians lost seventeen million people fighting the Nazis and wanted reparations to represent losses. This piece of land was 400 miles long and 120 miles wide in some places.
Dr. H. P. Robertson told Major Staver: Papers of Dr. Howard P. Robertson, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California; Telephone interview with Clarence Lasby, March 23, 2013; Lasby, 108.
“hostile to the Allied cause”: Papers of Dr. Howard P. Robertson, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
Dr. Robertson was a mathematical physicist: Ibid.
in defiance of the Nazi Party: Albert Einstein biography online at Nobel Prize.org.
“Von Ploetz said”: McGovern, 168.
Neither Huzel nor Tessmann had shared: In his book, Huzel says that he told von Braun about Fleischer. Every other account says that he did not.
“100% Nazi,” a “dangerous type”: RG 330 Arthur Rudolph, JIOA Form No. 4, Security Report by Sponsoring Agency.
Denazification was an Allied strategy… through tribunals: Thomas Adam, ed., Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, O–Z (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 275.
The Green Archer: Franklin, 98–99.
Staver was making headway: McGovern, 163–76.
Inn of the Three Lime Trees: McGovern, 169.
“in almost inaudible”: Ibid.
hitch a ride: Ibid.; the colleague was Major William Bromley.
Urgently request reply: History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, “Letter and Report from Staver to Colonel S. B. Ritchie,” May 23, 1946.
Major Staver returned: McGovern, 175.
“ ‘Go, go—the Russians are coming’ ”: Franklin, 98–99.
Over one thousand Germans: McGovern, 183.
“I wanted to blow up”: Ibid., 185. The agreement required captured facilities to be “held intact and in good condition at the disposal of Allied representatives for such purposes as they may prescribe.”
Institute Rabe: Chertok, 345–48.
set up in a two-story schoolhouse: McGovern, 195.
Dr. Herbert Wagner and four: RG 330 Herbert A. Wagner, “Certificate from Sponsoring Department German (or Austrian) Scientist or Important Technician.” Wagner had been kept in the same facility as von Braun and Dornberger in the Bavarian Alps.
nemesis of the U.S. Navy: “Paperclip, Part I,” Office of Naval Intelligence Review, February 1949, 22–23.
surrendered itself: On May 8, Lieutenant Commander Johann Heinrich Fehler received a message that had been broadcast through the Japanese cipher ordering the U-234 to return to Bergen, Norway, or to continue on to Japan. Fehler chose to continue on to Japan. A few hours later, his chief radioman picked up news from Reuters that the Japanese government had severed all ties with Germany and was arresting any German citizens who were in Japan. On May 15, the USS Sutton intercepted the U-234 and turned her over to U.S. Coast Guardsmen, who escorted the vessel to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
“said to contain”: William M. Blair, “Big U-Boat Arrives with High General,” New York Times, May 19, 1945.
Additionally, there were drawings and plans: William Broad, “Captured Cargo, Captivating Mystery,” New York Times, December 31, 1995.
one of the most qualified: Scalia, 144–45.
intelligence report: RG 330 Herbert Wagner, “Certificate from Sponsoring Department German (or Austrian) Scientist or Important Technician.”
Sturmabteilung: RG 65 Herbert Wagner, Federal Bureau of Investigation, File No. 106-131, June 1, 1948; Hunt, 7.
laws of the occupying forces: Bower, 120.
giving classified lectures: Scalia, 42–43.
“These men are enemies”: Maxwell AFB History office document. Memo, Patterson to Secy, General Staff, May 28, 1945, Subj: “German Scientists.”
Patterson suggested: History of AAF Participation in Project Paperclip, 9028; SWNCC was created in December 1944 to address political-military issues in U.S.-occupied Germany.
Chapter Seven: Hitler’s Doctors
Nazi Party–sponsored medical journal: Weindling, 23; Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Dr. Hubertus Strughold file, No. 828/73.
Eighth Air Force: Bullard and Glasgow, 47–48. Also known by its famous moniker, the Mighty Eighth. By the time Armstrong took over as its chief surgeon in 1944, the Mighty Eighth had 190,000 personnel, 300 of whom were flight surgeons. They were the command that conducted round-the-clock bombing against Nazi-occupied Europe.
twenty-two-pound armored jacket: USAF Biography of Major General (Dr.) Malcolm C. Grow. It also protected soldiers against a .45-caliber round fired at point-blank range.
hatched during a meeting: Bullard and Glasgow, 54.
new research laboratory: Benford, “Report from Heidelberg,” 9. The actual quote is “bring back from Germany everything of aero medical interest to the Army Air Forces and all information of importance to medical science in general.”
list of 115 individuals: Weindling, 80.
“became quite good friends”: Bullard and Glasgow, 52.
Aviation Medical Research Institute: Benford, “Report from Heidelberg,” 6. The institute’s name, Luftfahrtmedizinische Forschungsinstitut, has been translated from the German in many different ways. The name as stated in the original report: Aviation Medical Research Institute of the Reich Air Ministry in Berlin.
specialist named Ulrich Luft: Bullard and Glasgow, 55–56.
Luft told Harry Armstrong: Mackowski, 111.
first documentary evidence: Life, “Life Behind the Picture: The Liberation of Buchenwald,” May 7, 1945.
(UNWCC): Complete History of the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Development of the Laws of War. Compiled by the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Published for the UNWCC by His Majesty’s Stationery Office (London, 1948).
become a central player: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series 1, Nuremberg Materials, 1939–1947. Subseries A, Trial Documents, 1942–1947.
saw the liberated: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Box 2, Letter to Mrs. Alexander in Newtonville, Mass, n.d.
brought doctors and nurses: Smith, 215; an estimated 75 percent of the former prisoners were still at Dachau.
medical crimes were suspected: Weindling, 77.
Fate and circumstance: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 7, Subseries A, Personal Life, 1883–1985.
pull toward medicine: Ibid.; Schmidt, Justice, 24.
first woman awarded a PhD: That is, since the institution opened its doors in 1685; his mother received her PhD in 1903; Schmidt, Justice, 23.
intellectual-bohemian splendor: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 7, Subseries A, Personal Life, 1883–1985.
would become his mentor: Weindling, 74; Schmidt, Justice, 30. In his notes, Schmidt states that Kleist has only recently become the focus of debate (301n).
Gustav Alexander was killed: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 7, Subseries A, Personal Life, 1883–1985.
Schmidt, Justice, 40; on page 48, Schmidt writes, “According to a government census from July 1933, the German Reich had a total of 51527 doctors (4395 female doctors), of whom 5557 (10.9 per cent) were identified as Jewish. The figure was probably higher because hundreds of Jews had already emigrated by the time of the census. The Reich Representation of the German Jews estimated a total of 9000 ‘non-Aryan’ doctors; about 17 per cent of all German doctors were therefore considered to be Jews. Compared to the number of Jews in the German population as a whole, which amounted to little more than 1 per cent in 1933, the Jews had acquired disproportionate representation in the medical and legal professions, in banking and the arts.”
“succumbed to the swastika”: Schmidt, Justice, 44. Prof. Kleist warned Dr. Alexander not to come back to Germany.
“Our very existences”: Schmidt, Justice, 55.
In China, Dr. Alexander: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 7, Subseries A, Personal Life, 1883–1985.
“Have no false hopes”: Schmidt, Justice, 55.
“The ship traveled up”: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Subseries B, 14-3, Letters, Theo Alexander Worcester, January 21, 1934.
to thrive in America: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 7, Subseries A, Personal Life, 1883–1985.
joined the fight: Ibid. In 1938, Dr. Alexander had signed up to fight the Nazis on the front lines as part of the Army Reserve Medical Corps, but he was rejected because he was overweight. After war was declared, he signed a waiver that allowed him to join.
who might be guilty: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series 1, Nuremberg Materials, 1939–1947, Subseries A, Trial Documents, 1942–1947.
Institute for Aviation Medicine: Eckart, 111. The institute he was in charge of in Munich had previously been named the Physiological Institute in Munich, Department of Aviation Physiology.
In their first interview Weltz: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 3–12.
“unfreeze a man”: Ibid., 5–7, 67.
“startling and useful discovery”: Ibid., 4.
groundbreaking research: Ibid., 11.
had solved an age-old riddle: Ibid., 8. The exact translation of Weltz’s goal was: “Is it possible to revive a man who is apparently dead from chilling… and after what interval of time can this still be done?”
this very technique: Ibid.
“adult pigs”: Ibid., 9.
“Weltz explicitly stated”: Ibid., 11–12.
dirty wooden tubs: Ibid., 9.
“were being concealed”: Ibid., 8.
“German science presents”: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, Series II, Box 2, Letter to Mrs. Alexander in Newtonville, Mass, n.d.
Untermenschen: Herausgegeben vom Reichsführer-SS und SS-Hauptamt. Berlin 1942 (Berlin Do 56/685), per Dr. Jens Westemeier.
Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring: Correspondence with John Dolibois, 2012–2013; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Holocaust Encyclopedia, The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933–1939. The Holocaust Encyclopedia is an online resource of the USHMM that provides text, historical photographs, maps, audio clips, and other artifacts related to the Holocaust, in fourteen languages.
requested that Kleist be fired: Schmidt, Justice, 95.
“It sometimes seems as if”: Alexander Papers, Harvard Law School Library, letter dated December 31, 1946. Dr. Alexander cited The Tales of Hoffmann by example. There, the evil Dr. Coppélius, posing as the Sandman, enters the bedrooms of sleeping children at night and cuts out their eyes. “Some new evidence has come in where two doctors in Berlin, one a man and the other a woman, collected eyes of different colour,” Alexander wrote in another letter to his wife, Phyllis. “It seems that the concentration camps were combed for people who had slightly differently coloured eyes. That means people whose one eye had a slightly different colour than the other. Who ever was unlucky enough to possess such a pair of slightly unequal eyes had them cut out and was killed, the eyes being sent to Berlin.”
“On my way to Göttingen”: Alexander, CIOS Report 24: “Exposure to Cold,” 13.
To his mind, the experiments: Ibid., 8, 13.
Dr. Alexander told Dr. Strughold: Ibid., 13.
The conference: Bundesarchiv Ludwigsburg, Dr. Hubertus Strughold file, 828/73.
Rascher: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 13–68; Technic
al Report No. 331-45, “German Aviation Medical Research at the Dachau Concentration Camp,” 77–92.
Did Strughold approve: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 13, 14.
received further extraordinary, related news: Ibid., 17–18.
“a car showed up”: Telephone interview with Hugh Iltis, January 24, 2012.
most important collection: Ibid.
broke the original seals: Weindling, 76.
“The idea to start the experiments”: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 20.
Dr. Ruff had been in charge: Ibid., 17; HLSL Item No. 28; HLSL Item No. 995.
photographs: Author viewed copies at Dachau concentration camp memorial site archive and library.
“Strughold at least must have”: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 17.
“were still being covered up by” him: Ibid., 17, 65–66.
“too soft”: Ibid., 41.
prisoner-witnesses who offered testimony: Ibid., 42–44.
Alexander first returned to Dachau: Ibid., 43. The men worked with Häusermann in the Dachau disinfectant plant, where cadavers were taken after they were autopsied.
“shipwreck experiments”: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 10, Appendix I.
Father Michalowski described: HLSL Item No. 2585.
help of Hugh Iltis: Telephone interview with Hugh Iltis, January 24, 2012.
“Auschwitz is in every way”: Alexander, “Exposure to Cold,” 33.
private screening at the Air Ministry: Ibid., 66.
named Dr. Theodor Benzinger: Ibid., 66; HLSL Item No. 1320.
Winfield wrote: Winfield, “Preliminary Report,” 4–5; Strughold promised Winfield that his work was “largely academic,” which Winfield conceded was “somewhat contradictory,” given the work Strughold published, particularly high-altitude studies, which required that research be conducted in the field.
“[T]he heartbeat may continue”: Lovelace, 65.
high-altitude specialist who ran: Benford, “Report from Heidelberg,” 6.
“studies in reversible and irreversible deaths”: Lovelace, 67.
efforts to make salt water drinkable: HLSL Item No. 83.