The Nazi aerospace exodus: towards a global, transnational history

Abstract

The exodus of Third Reich scientific and engineering personnel after World War II has traditionally been understood through its impact on the Cold War missile and space race. This article assesses the state of scholarship on this topic globally, particularly in aerospace professions, in the process drawing some conclusions on the total numbers, skill composition and Nazi backgrounds of the Germans, the stages of movement, and the technological impact of their movement. Such an assessment not only demonstrates the geographical weaknesses in existing knowledge, notably in the scholarship on Britain, France and much of the Third World, but it also points us towards a global, transnational history of the phenomenon, as cross-border flows of people, information, and technology grew beyond the bounds of the victorious powers’ national programs for exploiting German knowledge.

Keywords:

• Nazi
• aerospace
• specialists
• Paperclip
• Osoaviakhim
• Germany

Notes

1. Two overviews reflect the flourishing of scholarship on the Soviet and American programs in the 1990s: Judt and Ciesla, Technology Transfer; Neufeld, ‘Overcast, Paperclip’ (from a book originally published in German in 2001). In Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, it was argued that the V-2 ballistic missile program was so expensive it was actually detrimental to the German war effort; the net effect of technological superiority was to place a heavy burden on the war economy for minimal military results. Krige, ‘Building the Arsenal,’ notes that the USA took similar interest in only one Japanese area of scientific/technological research, biological warfare, but to my knowledge no Japanese researchers came to the USA for any length of time.

2. McGovern, Crossbow and Overcast; Bar-Zohar, The Hunt for German Scientists (originally published in French in 1965); Lasby, Project Paperclip; Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team. Lasby was the only one who attempted a general history of Paperclip. After 40 years it remains the best survey, despite being very out-of-date owing to the declassification of records in the 1980s.

3. Hunt, ‘U.S. Coverup;’ Hunt, Secret Agenda; Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy; Simpson, Blowback. A scholarly treatment of Paperclip in the context of the Western occupation zones of Germany came out at the same time: Gimbel, Science, Technology and Reparations. I have not cited the extensive journal literature here as it would take up too much space. However, for a demolition of Hunt and Bower’s core thesis that Paperclip imported individuals with significant Nazi records illegally and against presidential orders, see Gimbel, ‘German Scientists.’

4. Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team, 318–43; Villain, ‘France’ 119–61; Teyssier and Hautefeuille, ‘Recherche scientifique;’ Huwart, Du V2 à Veronique.

5. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo; Siddiqi, ‘Germans in Russia;’ Siddiqi, The Red Rocket’s Glare; Uhl, Stalins V-2; Albrecht, Heinemann-Grüder and Wellman, Die Spezialisten; Mick, Forschen für Stalin; Sobolew, Deutsche Spuren (originally published in Russian). On the general level, the fundamental work is that of Mick, which builds on and confirms through basic archival research the earlier conclusions of Albrecht, Heinemann-Grüder and Wellman.

6. Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung.

7. The word ‘transnational’ has become faddish in the history discipline, so much so that it has become difficult to distinguish it from ‘international.’ A useful survey is Van der Vleuten’s, ‘Toward a Transnational History.’

8. Hunt, Secret Agenda, 6–7; Lasby, Project Paperclip, 76–187; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 15–17, 28–33, 42–65, 80–5.

9. The literature on post-1945 German experts in Britain is extremely thin. Glatt, ‘Reparations,’ examines primarily civil personnel as part of the larger question of reparations. See esp. 244–8, and chap. 9, and for the origins of the Darwin Panel, 882–4. Mick, Forschen für Stalin, also discusses the British programs briefly in comparison with the Soviet, notably 66–8, 72–4, 76–9. Historians of British Cold War armaments and aerospace industries have taken little interest in Germans in the UK: Edgerton, Warfare State; Twigge, The Early Development; Bud and Gummett, Cold War, Hot Science. One article in the latter contains virtually the only references to the influence of Germans in the UK: Nahum, ‘The Royal Aircraft Establishment,’ 29–55, esp. 36–8 and 50–1.

10. The only general articles on France that I have found are Ludmann-Obier, ‘Un aspect de la chasse,’; and the popular piece by Nouzille with Huwart, ‘Comment la France,’ 122–(?) (copy incomplete). One unique French institution, which eventually became a bi-national German–French one, is the Institut Saint-Louis. A group of Luftwaffe ballisticians evacuated from Berlin to southwest Germany were moved to Saint Louis, near the meeting point of France, Germany and Switzerland outside the city of Basel. The Germans lived on the German side of the border and were bused to France. Their research shifted towards army ground warfare over time. Baumann, ‘Die Gründung,’ 237–55, also published in French in a slightly different version, Baumann, ‘“Was die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse”’.

11. The sources of this table come from most of the works cited above. I will only mention here the names called out explicitly in the table: Ciesla and Trischler, ‘Legitimation Through Use;’ Hunt, Secret Agenda, 176; Mick, Forschen für Stalin; Ludmann-Obier, ‘un aspect’; Nouzille with Huwart, ‘Comment la France’; Villain, ‘France and the Peenemünde;’ Scranton, ‘Le management du projet’ (provided as an English draft); Baumann, ‘Die Gründung’; Glatt, ‘Reparations’; Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung; Jones, ‘The Employment of German Scientists;’ Margolian, Unauthorized Entry; Ebert, Kaiser, and Peters, Willy Messerschmitt (originally published in German); Horeis, Rolf Engel; http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/Aircraft/Marut1.html (accessed 7 September 2010).

12. Citing a book by Thomas Stamm, Mick does note that between 1949 and 1966, about ‘1800 deutsche Wissenschaftler und 4200 Techniker’ emigrated to the USA, presumably including those coming under Paperclip and successor programs: Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 316. I would assume that the former category includes the Diploma and Doctor Engineers (Dipl. Ing. and Dr. Ing.), and that the less educated practical engineers (Ing. often a two-year certificate) are under the latter category with skilled technicians.

13. These records are in National Archives College Park, Record Group 330 (Joint Chiefs of Staff), Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (hereinafter JIOA), Foreign Scientist Case Files (hereinafter FSCF). I did the first nine, and Kristina Maimer, an intern with me in summer 2009, carried out the tedious job of classifying 225 files. In order to ensure a fully random sample, we analyzed every file beginning in Box 1 (name file Aakula) all the way to Demant in box 29. Of the 128 who immigrated under these programs, 87 could be classified as aerospace specialists, or 68%, based on their previous occupation or their destination agency or company in the USA. In fact the percentage is almost certainly a bit higher, as some went to Army or Navy units that are not obviously aerospace in core function (such as the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, NJ), but may well have been involved in aviation or missile applications.

14. Hunt, Secret Agenda, 176, based on JIOA administrative records, which as usual she poorly footnotes, making the original documents very difficult to trace. On pp. 199–200 she claims from JIOA records that 109 came in 1958, and 158 in 1959–60 under Paperclip/DEFSIP alone, not counting Project 63 and National Interest cases. In our survey we found no arrivals later than December 1957, other than one case in 1963 which appears to have been outside of the systematic program. Hunt asserts that many dossiers were destroyed or removed by the FBI in the wake of the 1964 discovery that the former Director of the JIOA was a Soviet spy (p. 200), so it may be that the value of my sample is limited to pre-1958 arrivals. Hunt carried out the pioneering work on the long afterlife of Paperclip, which she tells notably in chaps 11 and 12, but a reexamination of the program in the 1950s and 1960s is long overdue.

15. Huwart, Du V2 à Veronique.

16. Glatt, ‘Reparations,’ 244–8, and chap. 9; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 66–8, 72–4, 76–9. Bower’s Paperclip Conspiracy discusses Britain extensively, but primarily its wartime and post-war technical evaluation of German technology and relations with the Americans. The book is useless as a history of British policy, is riddled with errors and sensationalism, and is driven by an uncritical belief in German technical superiority. Its primary virtue in the 1980s was digging up scandals long buried in classification, as is true of Hunt’s work (and he profited from her pioneering Freedom of Information Act actions in the USA).

17. See Jones, ‘The Employment of German Scientists,’ and Margolian, Unauthorized Entry, cited above. Glatt, ‘Reparations,’ 894, mentions British Darwin Panel allocations of Germans to Australia of 44, India 24, ‘Canada about six and Pakistan probably only two.’ Whether they all actually arrived in those countries is unclear. See also Koerner, ‘Technology Transfer.’

18. Mick, Forschen für Stalin, chaps 2 and 3; Albrecht, Heinemann-Grüder and Wellman, Die Spezialisten; Uhl, Stalins V-2, chaps 3 and 4; Siddiqi, ‘Germans in Russia;’ Neufeld, ‘Overcast, Paperclip, Osoaviakhim.’

19. Neufeld, Von Braun, 209–11, 216–17.

20. Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung, 139–48, 166–79; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 79.

21. There is little on this Messerschmitt group other than an uncritical overview in a biography plus passing mention in other works. See Ebert, Kaiser, and Peters, Willy Messerschmitt, 320–59; Lehmann, Die Bundesrepublik, 133–7; Nordeen and Nicolle, Phoenix, 178–9.

22. Nordeen and Nicolle, Phoenix, 177–80; Bar-Zohar, The Hunt, chap. 13 (‘Nasser employs some Germans’); Heinz Horeis, Rolf Engel, 84–90.

23. Ciesla, ‘Die Transferfalle; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 302–10.

24. Estimate by Ciesla given in Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 302. For a wider view of the importance of the returned specialists in all fields to the GDR economy, see Augustine, Red Prometheus.

25. I did find one case in my sample of Foreign Scientist Case Files of someone who had been in the German rocket group in the USSR and ended up in the USA: National Archives College Park, RG 330, JIOA, FSCF, Box 26, file COERMANN, Rolf. He apparently was able to evince a convincing anti-Communist record.

26. Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 80, 175–6, 178, 206, 212; Ebert, Kaiser, and Peters, Willy Messerschmitt, 353–7.

27. Hunt, Secret Agenda, 182–3, 194, 200–1.

28. Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung, 123–6.

29. Based on ‘Basic Personnel Record’ forms filled out at Fort Strong in Boston harbor after arrival, dates 19 November 1945 to 15 February 1946, in National Archives College Park, RG165, E.179, Box 703, file ‘Boston.’ I only took notes on members of the von Braun group, but there are also some from Army Air Forces Germans heading to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, in the folder. See Neufeld, Von Braun, 216–7, for a discussion of aspects of this data.

30. National Archives College Park, RG 330, JIOA, FSCF, Boxes 1–29. A larger number of specialists had been in the DAF (German Labor Front) and the NSV (National Socialist People’s Welfare), but I am not counting these cases, as these were the type of organizations that were difficult to avoid in a totalitarian society. Membership in the party of course does not necessarily mean true belief, as the majority certainly joined out of opportunism, but it is the most useful marker, after the SS and SA, of Nazi commitment.

31. If the USA perhaps ended up getting disproportionately more specialists with dubious records than anyone else, it was likely a side-effect of skimming off the best technical group overall. The highly qualified aerospace specialists were predominantly young men between the ages of 22 and 45 from educated, middle and upper-middle-class backgrounds (Bildungsbürgertum), a demographic group inclined to National Socialism. As one of the requirements of ascent in industry and government under Hitler was often membership in the party or other Nazi organizations, opportunism was an even more important factor. For scholarly assessments of the war crimes connected to von Braun group and the aerospace doctors, see Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich, and Neufeld, ‘Wernher von Braun;’ Mackowski, Testing the Limits. Unfortunately, the latter, useful book is marred by a naïve acceptance of Strughold’s rationalizations of his behavior in Nazi Germany, making it the mirror-image opposite of the scandal-mongering approach of Bower’s Paperclip Conspiracy and Hunt’s Secret Agenda, where the crimes connected to the von Braun group and the aerospace doctors are prominently featured.

32. Twigge, Early Development, 186–7; Glatt, ‘Reparations,’ 247–8, 961; Huwart, Du V2 à Veronique, 121–33.

33. Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung, 194–205; Nordeen and Nicolle, Phoenix, 178–9; Horeis, Rolf Engel, 84–90.

34. Nahum, ‘The Royal Aircraft Establishment,’ 36–8, 50–1; Glatt, ‘Reparations,’ 244–6, 299; Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, 164–8.

35. Stanley, Rüstungsmodernisierung, 166–79; Wagner, Kurt Tank, 250–7.

36. Wagner, Kurt Tank, 258–65; http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/History/Aircraft/Marut1.html, and http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/IAF/Aircraft/Polly-Marut.html (accessed 7 September 2010).

37. Lukasiewicz, ‘Canada’s Encounter.’

38. Mick, Forschen für Stalin, esp. 137–48, and 179–209 for analysis of the problems. See also Sobolew, Deutsche Spuren, 128–47.

39. See sources above, note 3.

40. Scranton, ‘Le management du projet;’ Scranton, ‘L’introduction des moteurs;’ and Scranton, ‘Managing Uncertainty.’ Hermione Giffard advises me that the British and Americans (who largely started by copying British designs) had less interest in German jet engine work because their own designs were already advanced. She recently completed a doctoral dissertation: Giffard, ‘The Development.’

41. From my sample of 128 specialists who immigrated 56 or 58 (two are marked Army but appear more likely that they are Air Force) were sponsored by the USAAF/USAF, or about 45% (see above note 8). Ciesla, ‘German High Velocity,’ earlier calculated about 40% Air Force up to the early 1950s.

42. Meier, German Development, esp. chap. 8 by Ciesla and Krag, ‘Transfer of German High-Speed.’ Meier’s book originally appeared in German in 2006. Hallion, ‘Lippisch, Gluhareff and Jones,’ discusses early US research.

43. Mackowski, Testing the Limits; Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, chap. XI; Hunt, Secret Agenda, chap. 5. Another luminary was pioneering swept-wing theorist Adolf Busemann, who uniquely ended up at NACA’s Langley Laboratory in Hampton, Virginia: National Archives College Park, RG 330, JIOA, FSCF, Box 24, file BUSEMANN, Adolf.

44. The National Air and Space Museum does own a Messerschmitt-designed Ha 200, a gift of the Egyptian air force.

45. DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance.

46. Sobolew, Deutsche Spuren, 201, 208, 222–4.

47. Wegener, Peenemünde Wind Tunnels, chaps 7–10.

48. There were attempts to return the test section to Germany in the late 1990s, which the Air Force finally denied. Initiatives by myself and John Anderson to collect it for the National Air and Space Museum were also rebuffed. In fall 2011 we inspected the test section again, where it is now in a case in a display area outside Tunnel 9 (because of facility access restrictions, it is not straightforward to view it). In view of its current good preservation and past history, we have refrained from further attempts at this time to ask the Air Force for its transfer to the Smithsonian.

49. Hans Holzer/DM e-mails to Michael Neufeld, 9–10 January 2012.

50. Krige, American Hegemony. I owe to John Krige further stimulus to thought regarding transnational movements of scientists and engineers thanks to two articles he provided me: Krige, ‘Building the Arsenal,’ (cited above, note 1) and Krige, ‘American Science in the Global Cold War’ (draft).