Research undertaken by the ACS uncovered the fact that much pressure was exerted in an attempt to ensure that Operation Paperclip succeeded.
Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
Research undertaken by the ACS uncovered the fact that much pressure was exerted in an attempt to ensure that Operation Paperclip succeeded. For example, an April 27, 1948, memorandum from the director of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, Navy Captain Bosquet N. Wev, to the Pentagon’s director of intelligence states: “Security investigations conducted by the military have disclosed the fact that the majority of German scientists were members of either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates. These investigations disclose further that with a very few exceptions, such membership was due to exigencies which influenced the lives of every citizen of Germany at that time.”
Wev was critical of overscrupulous investigations by the Department of Justice and other agencies as reflecting security concerns no longer relevant with the defeat of Germany and “biased considerations” about the nature of his recruits’ fascist allegiances. The possibility of scientists being won to the Soviet side in the Cold War was, according to Captain Wev, the highest consideration.
In a March 1948 letter to the State Department, Wev assessed the prevailing view in the government: “Responsible officials … have expressed opinions to the effect that, in so far as German scientists are concerned, Nazism no longer should be a serious consideration from a viewpoint of national security when the far greater threat of Communism is now jeopardizing the entire world. I strongly concur in this opinion and consider it a most sound and practical view, which must certainly be taken if we are to face the situation confronting us with even an iota of realism. To continue to treat Nazi affiliations as significant considerations has been phrased as ‘beating a dead Nazi horse.’”
The committee then turned its attention to two controversial figures in this particularly notorious saga. The first was Hubertus Strughold. Born in Germany in 1898, Strughold obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1922, an M.D. in sensory physiology in 1923, and between 1929 and 1935 served as director of the Aeromedical Research Institute in Berlin. In 1947, as a result of Operation Paperclip’s actions, Strughold joined the staff of the Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas, and in 1949, he was named head of the then-newly formed Department of Space Medicine at the school—where, according to documentation uncovered by the ACHRE, he conducted research into “effects of high speed”; “lack of oxygen”; “decompression”; “effects of ultraviolet rays”; “space cabin simulator for testing humans”; “weightlessness”; and “visual disturbances.”
Strughold was naturalized as an American citizen in 1956 and, four years later, became chair of the Advanced Studies Group, Aerospace Medical Center at Brooks Air Force Base. Strughold—whose awards and honors included the USAF Exceptional Civilian Service Award and the Theodore C. Lyster Award of the Aerospace Medical Association—retired in 1968. As the advisory committee staff stated: “Perhaps the most prominent of the Paperclip physicians was Hubertus Strughold, called ‘the father of space medicine’ and for whom the Aeromedical Library at the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine was named in 1977.
During the War, he was director of the Luftwaffe’s aeromedical institute; a Strughold staff member was acquitted at Nuremberg on the grounds that the physician’s Dachau laboratory was not the site of nefarious experiments. “Strughold had a long career at the SAM, including the recruitment of other Paperclip scientists in Germany. His background was the subject of public controversy in the United States. He denied involvements with Nazi experiments and told reporters in this country that his life had been in danger from the Nazis.
A citizen for 30 years before his death in 1986, his many honors included an American Award from the Daughters of the American Revolution. “An April 1947 intelligence report on Strughold states: ‘[H]is successful career under Hitler would seem to indicate that he must be in full accord with Nazism.’ However, Strughold’s colleagues in Germany and those with whom he had worked briefly in the United States on fellowships described him as politically indifferent or anti-Nazi. “In his application to reside in this country, he declared: ‘Further, the United States is the only country of liberty which is able to maintain this liberty and the thousand-year-old culture and western civilization, and it is my intention to support the United States in this task, which is in danger now, with all my scientific abilities and experience.’ “
In a 1952 civil service form, Strughold was asked if he had ever been a member of a fascist organization. His answer: ‘Not in my opinion.’ His references therein included the Surgeon General of the Air Force, the director of research at the Lovelace Foundation in New Mexico, and a colleague from the Mayo Clinic. In September 1948, Strughold was granted a security clearance from the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency director, Captain Wev, who in the previous March had written to the Department of State protesting the difficulty of completing immigration procedures for Paperclip recruits.”
The second character of controversy was one who, incredibly, rose to a position of major significance within NASA. Wernher von Braun was born in Wirsitz, Germany, on March 23, 1912, and earned his bachelor’s degree at the age of twenty from the University of Berlin, where he also received his doctorate in physics in 1934. Between 1932 and 1937, von Braun was employed by the German Ordnance Department and became technical director of the Peenemuende Rocket Center in 1937, where the V-2 rocket was developed.
Von Braun came to the United States in September 1945 under contract with the Army Ordnance Corps as part of Operation Paperclip and worked on high-altitude firings of captured V-2 rockets at the White Sands Proving Ground until he became project director of the Ordnance Research and Development Division Sub-Office at Fort Bliss, Texas. On October 28, 1949, the secretary of the Army approved the transfer of the Fort Bliss group to Redstone Arsenal, and after his arrival in Huntsville in April 1950, von Braun was appointed director of development operations.