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Operation Paperclip was an OSS, Office of Strategic Services, program which brought over 1,500 Germans to the United States after World War II.
The OSS was in a race with the Russians at the end of the world to reap the cream of the Nazi scientific corps and utilize them. The OSS was the precursor to the CIA.
President Truman formally signed the authorization for Paperclip in August 1945, but the race for the Nazi braintrust had started even before the war ended.
Truman’s order prohibited any person who had been an “active supporter of Nazi militarism”. This exclusion was often ignored. After all, the most valued scientists came out of the Nazi missile program.
There were also scientists who’d worked in the Nazi chemical weapons program. There was Operation Alsos which focused on Nazi nuclear scientists and Operation TICOM which went after German cryptologists.
Werner Von Braun is one of the more famous of these scientists. He worked on the V-2 program and then the United States rocket program, especially the Apollo program. He’d been a member of the Nazi Party and the SS.
