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Conspiracy file · 1946

Operation Paperclip

The secret U.S. program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers and technicians to America after World War II, Nazi party members among them. It built the rockets that went to the Moon, and its paper trail feeds the theory that much more than rocketry came over too.

Also known as Operation Overcast · Project Paperclip · JIOA

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

The story

As Germany collapsed in 1945, the Allies raced each other for its scientists. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff set up Operation Overcast in July 1945, with a Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency to run it; the name changed to Paperclip after the paper clips attached to the files of the experts the Army wanted. A secret directive approved the program in September 1946.

The best known recruit was Wernher von Braun, whose V-2 rockets had been built with concentration-camp labor. His team moved from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Huntsville, Alabama, and in 1960 he became the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Others worked on jet engines, medicine, and chemical and biological weapons. Officials were supposed to exclude active Nazis and war criminals; journalists later showed that dossiers were rewritten to get around the rule, and some cases surfaced decades later, like rocket engineer Arthur Rudolph, who left the U.S. in 1984 rather than face a case over slave labor at the Mittelwerk factory.

The Soviet Union ran its own version, moving more than 2,000 German specialists east in a single night in October 1946. Paperclip itself was not a mind-control program, but it brought over doctors and chemists whose wartime work included experiments on prisoners, and it opened the files of Nazi research to U.S. agencies. That is where the MK-ULTRA story usually begins.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Operation Paperclip

On the record

  1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff created Operation Overcast on July 20, 1945; it was renamed Paperclip that November.
  2. A secret directive of September 3, 1946, approved the program and expanded it to 1,000 specialists.
  3. More than 1,600 German and Austrian specialists came to the U.S. under Paperclip and related programs between 1945 and 1959.
  4. Wernher von Braun's team arrived in 1945, moved to Huntsville in 1950 and built the Saturn V that carried Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
  5. Arthur Rudolph, a Saturn V manager, gave up his U.S. citizenship and left for West Germany in 1984 after Justice Department investigators confronted him over forced labor at the Mittelwerk V-2 factory.
  6. Hubertus Strughold, called the father of space medicine, was linked to wartime human experiments; the Space Medicine Association retired the award named for him in 2013.
  7. On October 22, 1946, the Soviet Union moved more than 2,000 German specialists and their families east in Operation Osoaviakhim.

The theory

  • Paperclip imported Nazi interrogation and mind-control research, which grew into BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and MK-ULTRA (a line drawn by Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip, 2014, among others).
  • Former Nazis effectively ran parts of NASA and the U.S. weapons program, and covered up their pasts with official help.
  • Paperclip doctors carried on human experiments in the U.S. (the Walter Schreiber case, exposed in 1951, is the usual example).
  • Some versions say the Nazi occult and UFO programs came over too, from Die Glocke to the flying saucer (Igor Witkowski, 2000; Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point, 2001).

Timeline

  1. 1945Operation Overcast begins (July 20); von Braun's team arrives (September); renamed Paperclip (November)
  2. 1946A secret directive approves Paperclip (September 3); the Soviets launch Operation Osoaviakhim (October 22)
  3. 1947The Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg convicts Nazi physicians for human experiments
  4. 1950Von Braun's team moves to Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville
  5. 1953The CIA launches MK-ULTRA
  6. 1960Von Braun becomes the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
  7. 1969A Saturn V carries Apollo 11 to the Moon
  8. 1984Arthur Rudolph leaves the U.S. under investigation
  9. 2014Annie Jacobsen's Operation Paperclip

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From MK-ULTRA · Pages 1-2

Not Just Rocket Science

The pamphlet starts where the MK-ULTRA story usually starts: with the German scientists the U.S. brought home after the war. Rockets were the headline; the quieter files covered chemistry, medicine and experiments on prisoners.

Not Just Rocket Science, 1 of 3 Not Just Rocket Science, 2 of 3
Not Just Rocket Science, 3 of 3
  1. The program began as Operation Overcast in July 1945 and was renamed Paperclip that November; the secret directive approving it came in September 1946. More than 1,600 specialists came over by 1959.
  2. Wartime German research did include drugs for interrogation: at Dachau, SS doctors tested mescaline on prisoners, and a U.S. Naval Technical Mission documented the work in 1945. How much it shaped U.S. programs is still argued.

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