Operation Paperclip

[dduckwessel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

 

Perhaps it's not new news but I was surprised to learn that a large number of Nazi scientists, doctors and engineers, etc. had been recruited by then President Truman (not so surprising!!) to work for the U.S. right after the Allied victory.

 

http://finemoviesonline.net/watch-movies-online/documentary/the-cia-and-the-nazis/

 

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_mj12_17.htm

 

There's also a movie:

http://www.imdb.com/video/demo_reel/vi1062051097/

 

Has anyone else heard of this and seen the recent t.v. documentary where von Braun supposedly claims to have gotten their scientific knowledge from aliens :blink:

[CraigD]

Perhaps it's not new news but I was surprised to learn that a large number of Nazi scientists, doctors and engineers, etc. had been recruited by then President Truman (not so surprising!!) to work for the U.S. right after the Allied victory.

It’s not news to me, but I’m a child of the Apollo years, growing up immersed in the history and minutia of rocket and spaceflight technology, idolizing rocket scientists and astronauts. While astronauts like Neil Armstrong were household names to me, as I got older and began to gain a better sense of history, Goddard, Von Braun, and a larger cast of fellow scientists and engineers came to be key personalities in my understanding of the technology that so enthused me, and, it seemed, at least half of my peers. My peers and I were only vaguely aware of a connection between our heroes (such as Wernher Von Braun, who appeared regularly on the popular TV show The Wonderful World of Disney) and the Nazi villains of WWII we knew mostly from war movies and sanitized histories. I believe history proves our impression accurate, showing von Braun and most of his fellow scientists and engineers to be ultimately peace-loving people caught up in the circumstances of their times and places of birth.

 

A good place to start when thinking of the history of rocketry is in 1927, in suburban Berlin, with a club in of what these days we’d call fannish geeks named Verein für Raumschiffahrt, (in English, roughly, “society for space ship navigation”). Here we have essentially a bunch (perhaps 500 by 1932, including a teenage von Braun of more and less well-educated enthusiasts, engineers, and scientists, the best arguably Herman Oberth), inspired by the science fiction books of Jules Verne, the movies of Fritz Lang, and the technical papers of Robert Goddard, building and test flying a series of small rockets with the ultimate goal of flying humans to the Moon and other planets and stars. Despite their large membership, they’re constantly scrounging for funds, so like Goddard in the US, jump to take them from wherever they’re offered, which is in large by the military. The club disintegrates in 1932, with its best and brightest, such as Klaus Ridel and von Braun, snatched up by the growing German military.

 

Then WWII happens, and things get complicated and nasty. 1944 sees von Braun in Gestapo prison, allegedly for “greater interest in developing the V-2 for space travel rather than as a weapon”, but more likely out of worries he was planning to escape and defect to the Allies. About a year later, as the German military collapsed and retreated in the face of the Allies, along with his brother, he does, surrendering to the US Army private in the Bavarian Alps town of Oberammergau, and quickly being folded into US plans for snatching up all the German scientists possible, codename Operation Paperclip.

 

Has anyone else heard of this and seen the recent t.v. documentary where von Braun supposedly claims to have gotten their scientific knowledge from aliens :blink:

I’ve seen and read a lot of stories like this, most silly, ill-informed aliens conspiracy crap. With a bit of research, though, some factual seeds can be sifted out.

 

The best place to start this story, I think, is in 1974. Von Braun, dying of pancreatic cancer, meets then Fairchild Aerospace executive Carol Rosin, and in conversations over the next couple of years, discusses with her his hopes and fears for the future of spaceflight technology. His hopes are the same as when he was a teenager: human space travel (the beginnings of which he’d already lived to see, Apollo having landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon in 1969, and a parade of others since). His fears are about the same as they were under the Nazis: That space technology was, and would increasingly, be used for terrible weapons to oppression humankind.

 

One theme in their discussions is von Braun’s fear that governments may justify the militarization of space with hoax claims – complete with fake flying saucers and alien bodies – of defending against extraterrestrials invasion. Another is that governments are lying about their development of “defensive” space weapons, because space weapons can’t possibly defend against small, secretly delivered nuclear (“suitcase nukes”) or biological weapons. Another is that the spaceflight technology most promising in flying humans to Mars and beyond, especially beam powered propulsion, is languishing for lack of funding and interest, because the militaries have no need to do more than they already can with ballistic missiles an Earth-orbiting satellites.

 

Von Braun was famous. Among his many oft-repeated quotes (click this for more) is:

“Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.”

Put all this together and filter through the UFO conspiracy theory worldview, and I think you get speculation and implied claims like

More importantly, von Braun told Dr. Rosin in 1974 that we already had the technology to build anti gravity vehicles and entire transportation systems which did not require so-called ‘fossil’ fuels but instead used “beams” of energy, thereby eliminating all pollution from these sources permanently. Perhaps Dr. von Braun had seen anti gravity vehicles with his own eyes in Germany before the end of the war, as wel l as their continued development at other secret technology sites afterwards

(from UNCENSORED magazine’s 2010 article WERNER VON BRAUN AND THE HOAXED ALIEN INVASION FROM SPACE

 

From my perspective, von Braun and other spaceflight scientists and engineers developed their technology the slow, hard way: through application of basic physical principles and experimentation. Most, I think, believe there are other intelligent beings on other planets enough like us to have meaningful interactions with us., and a few that such beings are aware of us, and may even have observed or visited us. The idea that we were given this technology by ETs, though, appears to me to be believed only by people who don’t understand it, and are disbelieving that any human could without extraterrestrial (or supernatural) help.

 

:) Ad astra :)

[earthist]

CraigD, what a fabulous response! I, too, am a child of the Von Braun years, but I had forgotten or did not know some of this info.

 

The below is a novel and therefor, fiction, but there's enough truth (names have been changed, but the facts are pretty real) that the original poster (and anyone else interested) should find it worth reading:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(novel)

[dduckwessel]

Thank you CraigD, lots of very interesting information I did not know about.

 

It seems there's some discrepancy as to von Braun's claims to have been jailed by the Gestapo? I did find this however:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

 

Amongst his comments about his NSDAP membership von Braun has said:

 

I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time (1937) I was already technical director of the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde ... My refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. Therefore, I decided to join. My membership in the party did not involve any political activities ... in Spring 1940, one SS-Standartenführer (SS Colonel) Müller ... looked me up in my office at Peenemünde and told me that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had sent him with the order to urge me to join the SS. I called immediately on my military superior ... Major-General W. Dornberger. He informed me that ... if I wanted to continue our mutual work, I had no alternative but to join.[19]

 

 

That claim has been often disputed because in 1940, the Waffen-SS had shown no interest in Peenemünde yet.[20] Also, the assertion that persons in von Braun's position were pressured to join the Nazi party, let alone the SS, has been disputed.[21] When shown a picture of him behind Himmler, Braun claimed to have worn the SS uniform only that one time,[citation needed] but in 2002 a former SS officer at Peenemünde told the BBC that von Braun had regularly worn the SS uniform to official meetings; it should be noted that this was mandatory.[22] He began as an Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) and was promoted three times by Himmler, the last time in June 1943 to SS-Sturmbannführer (Wehrmacht Major). Von Braun claimed this was a technical promotion received each year regularly by mail.[22]"

 

Pity all the average Joe's out there - would most assuredly have been held accountable for the smallest infraction but I guess if you're a rocket scientist you can get away with a lot!!

 

And I wonder too, von Braun seemed to have considerable clout (Director at NASA!!). If indeed he did have the ability to build anti-gravity vehicles then I'm sure he could have found more than enough private investors around!!

 

It all sounds a little political to me.

[Racoon]

Read Jim Marr's "Rise of the Fourth Reich"

 

Lots of Nazi scientists defected or escaped. - via the 'Rat Lines' .. U.S. or Argentina

 

Not only did these Nazis escape, but found high positions in U.S. Governement, Education, and Influence.

 

However, people here will dismiss any form of Conspiracy. even though it plainly exists in documents made public.

[dduckwessel]

Interesting Racoon...

 

I did hear about many of them escaping to Argentina but I was really surprised to see how many were hired by the U.S.

immediately following the war. If the general populace had got wind of it (and the fact their taxes were footing the bill), a few heads would have rolled...including Truman's.

 

I'm looking forward to reading 'The Rise of the Third Reich' :)