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Monday, November 21, 2005

Bittersweet

In August, 1945, President Truman authorised Project Paperclip, a US operation which saw more than 700 Nazi Scientists spirited out of Germany from under the noses of the US's allies. Its aim was simple: "To exploit German scientists for American research and to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union."

Among those extracted, were rocket scientists Wernher von Braun (developer of the V2 rocket, former member of numerous Nazi organisations and an SS officer) and Arthur Rudolph (chief operations director at Nordhausen, where 20,000 slave labourers died producing V-2 missiles).

Project Paperclip’s scientists subsequently went on to provide intelligence for, and work on, numerous US projects including the Nasa moon landings (designing, amongst other things, the Saturn V rocket and the life-support systems), Cruise Missiles, Scramjets and the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

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