![Operation Paperclip was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) project that sought to bring German scientists to the United States after the end of World War II in 1945. Carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (a subcommittee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces), Operation Paperclip was a success, as the picture above, taken at Fort Bliss in Texas in 1946, attests. The men in this photo, many of whom are smiling, constitute some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the time in the fields of aeronautics, rocketry, medicine, electronics and physics. All of them were recruited by the United States to continue their research in America and many of them went on to become leading figures in NASA and other government research and development institutions. No. 73, Dr Wernher Von Braun, was considered the leading rocket engineer at NASA in the twentieth century. No. 32, Dr Arthur Rudolph, built NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket. No. 3, Dr Kurt Debus was the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Another scientist brought over by Operation Paperclip though not in this photo, Hubertus Strughold, designed NASA’s on-board life support systems and was instrumental in developing the pressure-suits worn by early American astronauts.
What is the problem with all this? Most of these men were Nazis. Many held rank in the SS. A BBC article from 2005 (http://tinyurl.com/bqedov9) outlines this fact well:
Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18 November, the first Germans reached America.
There was, though, one major problem. Truman had expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism” would be excluded.
Under this criterion even von Braun himself, the man who masterminded the Moon shots, would have been ineligible to serve the US. A member of numerous Nazi organisations, he also held rank in the SS … Von Braun’s associates included Arthur Rudolph, chief operations director at Nordhausen [a rocket production facility], where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles … described as “100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type” [;] Kurt Debus, rocket launch specialist, another SS officer.
All of these men were cleared to work for the US, their alleged crimes covered up and their backgrounds bleached by a military which saw winning the Cold War, and not upholding justice, as its first priority.
-Andrew Walker, writing for the BBC
The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency just went to work and rewrote the past for most of these men so they could start over again in America, effectively wiping out their history of Nazism in the process. There is a deeply troubling ethical question here. Let’s frame it. When he was head of Nazi Germany’s Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Dr Hubertus Strughold is alleged to have been involved in experiments on inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, experiments where the inmates were tortured and killed by being immersed in water, placed in pressure chambers, forced to drink sea water and exposed to freezing temperatures. Dr Hubertus Strughold was later, as Walker reports, called ‘the father of space medicine’, and not only designed NASA’s on-board life support systems but also the pressure suit for early American astronauts as already noted. There is thus a troubling correlation between Dr Strughold’s wartime research and his later work for NASA. In his experiments on concentration camp victims Dr Strughold appears to have been investigating the effects that the extreme conditions (pressure, temperature, weightlessness &c.) of the zero-gravity space environment would have on humans. The research yielded by these unconscionable human experiments is therefore arguably the early groundwork for the later medical and scientific work that saw Strughold design NASA’s astronaut suits and life support systems. How can we relate to a scientist and a science that delivered progress and advances, yet did so through unethical, inhumane, indeed evil, means? Condemn both, certainly, and consider disposing of his science. Yet how do you dispose of his science, really? The astronauts at the international space station right now as well as the structure they are floating around in are part of Strughold’s legacy. They prove that his legacy will continue and that his science has passed into the epistemé, not for better, but for benefit and ethical worst.
America won the space race, but the history of Operation Paperclip reveals that this victory was won with blood thought. How much of our scientific progress is, or has been, achieved with blood thought, blood sacrifice of humans, animals or the environment? Argue with anyone who tries to tell you that science is neutral and objective, that it has no bias, or that ethics are of no concern in progressive scientific research if the research yields quantifiable advances and results. Tell them they are wrong. All too often we allow ourselves to see the advance of science as an impersonal phenomenon, as a machine or automaton marching forwards into the grey distance without any emotive or political directive. Operation Paperclip reminds us that this is not the case, that science is human, all too human.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lun63lnlQ01qz6ehvo1_r1_500.jpg)
Operation Paperclip was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) project that sought to bring German scientists to the United States after the end of World War II in 1945. Carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (a subcommittee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States Armed Forces), Operation Paperclip was a success, as the picture above, taken at Fort Bliss in Texas in 1946, attests. The men in this photo, many of whom are smiling, constitute some of the most brilliant scientific minds of the time in the fields of aeronautics, rocketry, medicine, electronics and physics. All of them were recruited by the United States to continue their research in America and many of them went on to become leading figures in NASA and other government research and development institutions. No. 73, Dr Wernher Von Braun, was considered the leading rocket engineer at NASA in the twentieth century. No. 32, Dr Arthur Rudolph, built NASA’s Saturn V moon rocket. No. 3, Dr Kurt Debus was the first director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Another scientist brought over by Operation Paperclip though not in this photo, Hubertus Strughold, designed NASA’s on-board life support systems and was instrumental in developing the pressure-suits worn by early American astronauts.
What is the problem with all this? Most of these men were Nazis. Many held rank in the SS. A BBC article from 2005 (http://tinyurl.com/bqedov9) outlines this fact well:
Events moved rapidly. President Truman authorised Paperclip in August 1945 and, on 18 November, the first Germans reached America.
There was, though, one major problem. Truman had expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism militarism” would be excluded.
Under this criterion even von Braun himself, the man who masterminded the Moon shots, would have been ineligible to serve the US. A member of numerous Nazi organisations, he also held rank in the SS … Von Braun’s associates included Arthur Rudolph, chief operations director at Nordhausen [a rocket production facility], where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles … described as “100 per cent Nazi, dangerous type” [;] Kurt Debus, rocket launch specialist, another SS officer.
All of these men were cleared to work for the US, their alleged crimes covered up and their backgrounds bleached by a military which saw winning the Cold War, and not upholding justice, as its first priority.
-Andrew Walker, writing for the BBC
The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency just went to work and rewrote the past for most of these men so they could start over again in America, effectively wiping out their history of Nazism in the process. There is a deeply troubling ethical question here. Let’s frame it. When he was head of Nazi Germany’s Air Force Institute for Aviation Medicine, Dr Hubertus Strughold is alleged to have been involved in experiments on inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, experiments where the inmates were tortured and killed by being immersed in water, placed in pressure chambers, forced to drink sea water and exposed to freezing temperatures. Dr Hubertus Strughold was later, as Walker reports, called ‘the father of space medicine’, and not only designed NASA’s on-board life support systems but also the pressure suit for early American astronauts as already noted. There is thus a troubling correlation between Dr Strughold’s wartime research and his later work for NASA. In his experiments on concentration camp victims Dr Strughold appears to have been investigating the effects that the extreme conditions (pressure, temperature, weightlessness &c.) of the zero-gravity space environment would have on humans. The research yielded by these unconscionable human experiments is therefore arguably the early groundwork for the later medical and scientific work that saw Strughold design NASA’s astronaut suits and life support systems. How can we relate to a scientist and a science that delivered progress and advances, yet did so through unethical, inhumane, indeed evil, means? Condemn both, certainly, and consider disposing of his science. Yet how do you dispose of his science, really? The astronauts at the international space station right now as well as the structure they are floating around in are part of Strughold’s legacy. They prove that his legacy will continue and that his science has passed into the epistemé, not for better, but for benefit and ethical worst.
America won the space race, but the history of Operation Paperclip reveals that this victory was won with blood thought. How much of our scientific progress is, or has been, achieved with blood thought, blood sacrifice of humans, animals or the environment? Argue with anyone who tries to tell you that science is neutral and objective, that it has no bias, or that ethics are of no concern in progressive scientific research if the research yields quantifiable advances and results. Tell them they are wrong. All too often we allow ourselves to see the advance of science as an impersonal phenomenon, as a machine or automaton marching forwards into the grey distance without any emotive or political directive. Operation Paperclip reminds us that this is not the case, that science is human, all too human.
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