Operation Paperclip: The US secretly recruited over 1,600 Nazi scientists after WWII

Operation Paperclip: How America Recruited Nazi Scientists and Hid It From The Public

The United States government made a deliberate choice after World War II that would shape the space race, military technology, and Cold War strategy for decades. They systematically recruited over 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians—many of them active members of the Nazi Party—and brought them to America under a classified program called Operation Paperclip. This wasn't a minor footnote in history. It was an organized effort to erase Nazi records and circumvent explicit presidential orders.

When rumors first circulated in the 1950s and 1960s that America had imported Nazi scientists, the official response was categorical denial. The U.S. government insisted that Paperclip involved only "de-Nazified" scientists with clean records, recruited purely for their technical expertise during the emerging Cold War. President Harry Truman had explicitly ordered that no known Nazis be brought into the country. The program, officials claimed, adhered to his directive completely. Military and intelligence officials went further, suggesting that those raising questions about Nazi recruitment were either misinformed or spreading dangerous conspiracy theories.

The reality emerged slowly through declassified documents and investigative research. The National Archives eventually released records showing that the vetting process was minimal and often deliberately falsified. Scientists had their Nazi Party memberships removed from official files. War crimes were overlooked or redacted. The most prominent example was Wernher von Braun, Nazi Germany's chief rocket scientist, who became the driving force behind the American space program and NASA's director of the Marshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun had held an SS rank and his V-2 rocket program depended on concentration camp slave labor—facts that were omitted from his recruitment file.