Operation Paperclip
Page 60
“One seldom recognizes when the Devil”: O’Donnell, “The Devil’s Architect,” SM45. The fate of Wilhelm Beiglböck is worth noting. He was the Nazi doctor who performed seawater experiments at Dachau, and he removed a piece of Karl Höllenrainer’s liver without anesthesia. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in Landsberg Prison, he was granted clemency by U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy in 1951. Within a year, Beiglböck was back practicing medicine, at a hospital in Buxtehude, Germany, thanks to a former SS colleague, August Dietrich “Dieter” Allers, who ran the hospital. Beiglböck published medical papers and enjoyed prominence in the German medical community until 1962, when he traveled to his native Vienna to give a lecture. In Austria, there were open war crimes charges against Beiglböck, and he was arrested. Back in Germany, and likely as a result of attention from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, Dieter Allers was arrested around the same time. With no job to return to at the hospital, Beiglböck committed suicide on November 22, 1963. He was fifty-eight years old. He left all of his money to Die Stille Hilfe, or Silent Help, a clandestine society that Allers ran. It provided aid to fugitive SS members (Weindling, 309, 315).
Chapter Twenty-Three: What Lasts?
“I do not reproach”: Michel, 98.
Rudolph relates: Ordway and Sharpe, 70–71, 77–79; Neufeld, Von Braun, 471.
Rosenbaum later recalled: Feigin, 2.
Arthur Rudolph’s activities: Feigin, 300–342.
One of Rudolph’s leading proponents: Hunt, photographic insert opposite page 149.
“not a single document”: Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, 186–87, 227.
“There is little doubt”: Telephone interview with Michael Neufeld, April 3, 2013. Neufeld adds that in the summer of 1990, while researching The Rocket and the Reich, he came across a document in a German archive showing that Arthur Rudolph had been a staunch advocate of slave labor even before the creation of the Mittelwerk. On April 12, 1943, “Rudolph took a tour of the Heinkel aircraft plant and returned to Peenemünde excited about the use of slave labor,” says Neufeld, notably because it offered partnership with the SS and “greater protection for secrecy.”
a bill for $239,680: Hunt’s book, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945–1990, was preceded by a book by British journalist Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists, for which Bower accessed unreported stories from both American and British archives. Both books helped me tremendously in my understanding of Operation Paperclip.
Dr. Strughold had been listed: New York Times, “Portrait of Nazi Prompts Protest,” October 26, 1993.
“[t]he notion that”: Breitman, Goda, Naftali, and Wolfe, 7.
“there was no compelling reason”: Ibid.
chairman of the advisory committee: Letter to Congressman Tom Landon from James W. Nance, the White House, Washington, D.C., April 13, 1982 (FOIA).
Grünenthal was a safe haven for many Nazis: Roger Williams and Jonathan Stone, “The Nazis and Thalidomide: The Worst Drug Scandal of all Time,” Newsweek, September 10, 2012.
“given with complete safety”: Statistics about the release of the drug are available on the company’s website: http://www.contergan.grunenthal.info.
group of Nazi-era documents: Daniel Foggo, “Thalidomide ‘Was Created by the Nazis,’ ” Times (London), February 8, 2009.
Dr. Johnson points out: Correspondence with Dr. Martin Johnson, May 15, 2012; June 1, 2012; October 25, 2012.
“The patents suggest that thalidomide”: Andrew Levy, “Nazis Developed Thalidomide and Tested It on Concentration Camp Prisoners, Author Claims,” Daily Mail, February 8, 2009.
“the spring of 1943 Kuhn asked”: Nachrichten aus der Chemie, May 2006, 514; the revelatory information is also contained in the 2007 edition of the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, in the entry for Richard Kuhn.
the many documents pertaining: Author’s note: Pursuant to my FOIA denial and subsequent appeal, these records are awaiting review and possible release. However, the incumbent president has privilege over their release, per Executive Order 13489.
“Ambros came to the United States in 1967”: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Ambros, Convicted Nazi War Criminal, Abandons Plans to Visit U.S.,” May 3, 1971.
“The sensational value”: Daily Mail, “Mengele’s Food Coupons Found: Bizarre Insight into the Lives of Nazi Death Doctors Unearthed in Auschwitz House,” March 23, 2010.
“an expressive entrepreneurial figure”: Quoted at the Wollheim Memorial, Fritz Bauer Institute, http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/home.
page-one story: Lucette Lagnado, “Space Medicine Group Jousts over Fate of Strughold Prize,” Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2012.
came across evidence: Telephone interview with Hans-Walter Schmuhl. Schmuhl was in the archive of the Max-Planck Institute in or around 2008, researching Dr. Nachtsheim, when he came across the Strughold information. There is an even earlier reference about exactly this matter in Ute Deichmann, Biologists Under Hitler (237). I cite Schmuhl, as it was the public release of his information that led to a policy change.
Campbell blames the Internet: Interview and correspondence with Dr. Mark Campbell, February 4, 2013, and March 30, 2013.
“Why defend him?”: Lagnado, “Space Medicine Group Jousts.”
“Simple as it is, Kurt Debus is an honored American”: Telephone interview with Steve Griffin, February 8, 2012.
classify the list: Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel, APO 124-A. U.S. Army. List of Personnel Involved in Medical Research and Mercy Killings, n.d. (FOIA).
obituary in 1999: Nick Ravo, “Dr. Theodor H. Benzinger, 94, Inventor of the Ear Thermometer,” New York Times, October 30, 1999.
lifelong scientific pursuit: Telephone interview with Rolf Benzinger, February 19, 2013.
“This lasts,” he said: Interview with Gerhard Maschkowski, June 2, 2012, California.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Prologue
Part I Chapter 1 The War and the Weapons
Chapter 2 Destruction
Chapter 3 The Hunters and the Hunted
Chapter 4 Liberation
Chapter 5 The Captured and Their Interrogators
Part II Chapter 6 Harnessing the Chariot of Destruction
Chapter 7 Hitler’s Doctors
Chapter 8 Black, White, and Gray
Chapter 9 Hitler’s Chemists
Chapter 10 Hired or Hanged
Part III Chapter 11 The Ticking Clock
Chapter 12 Total War of Apocalyptic Proportions
Chapter 13 Science at Any Price
Chapter 14 Strange Judgment
Part IV Chapter 15 Chemical Menace
Chapter 16 Headless Monster
Chapter 17 Hall of Mirrors
Chapter 18 Downfall
Chapter 19 Truth Serum
Part V Chapter 20 In the Dark Shadows
Chapter 21 Limelight
Chapter 22 Legacy
Chapter 23 What Lasts?
Photos
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Principal Characters
Author Interviews and Bibliography
Also by Annie Jacobsen
Notes
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Anne M. Jacobsen
Cover design by Ben Wiseman
Author photograph by Hilary Jones
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group
All r
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