Plans to capture Nazi Germany’s technological secrets began even before the war was over. U.S. military and intelligence officials sought better ammunition for ending the war with Japan; they wanted to ensure that Germany could not rearm itself; and they began to prepare for a war against the Soviet Union—a “Cold War” that lasted 45 years. Annie Jacobsen notes that

“long before official Paperclip policies were set, members of the scientific teams were making unauthorized promises and cutting deals with German scientists whose names had appeared on war crimes ‘wanted’ lists.”  (Operation Paperclip, 2014)

In December 1944, four months before Germany surrendered, Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles urged President Roosevelt, to approve a plan allowing 350 Nazi industrialists, intelligence officers, and scientists to be given permission to enter the U.S. with their wealth deposited in an American bank. FDR swiftly turned the proposal down, stating,

“I do not believe that we should offer any guarantees of protection in the post-hostilities period to Germans… We may expect that the number of Germans who are anxious to save their skins and property will rapidly increase. Among them may be some who should properly be tried for war crimes, or at least arrested for active participation in Nazi activities…I am not prepared to authorize the giving of guarantees.” (Linda Hunt. Secret Agenda, 1991)

However, intelligence officials of the OSS and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were undeterred by the veto of the President of the U.S. They were obsessed with acquiring detailed information about Germany’s advanced militarily technology and secret weapons — such as, chemical weapons, rockets, stealth bombers, aircraft designs, electronics, and medicines. They were also eager to learn about Nazi counterintelligence and interrogation techniques. They persuaded President Harry Truman to authorize Operation Paperclip (Aug. 1945) — but defied his order which expressly excluded 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 or militarism.” It bears repeating that U.S. intelligence officials who authorized U.S. entry to scientists under Paperclip defied President Truman’s order and imported Nazis who had been classified by the State Department as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces.”

The Paperclip recruits sought by Bill Donovan, Allen Dulles, and the military chiefs of staff, were doctors and chemists who debased civilized medicine conducting heinous human experiments at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, at Dachau, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald, where they tested the effectiveness of warfare technology in extreme weather conditions; conducted murderous high altitude and freezing experiments; and tested the lethality of various chemicals, gases, infectious diseases, radiation. They also conducted surgical abominations. These chemists developed deadly nerve gases and chemical and biological weapons. Those weapons had been produced by slave laborers selected from concentration camp prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war — who were worked to death.

I.G. Farben Nazi researchers were recruited under Paperclip
Nothing better illustrates the dominant influence of Nazi medical research objectives and methods than the reliance of CIA- sponsored researchers on the expertise of I.G. Farben Nazi researchers. In her ground breaking book, Secret Agenda, (1991) Linda Hunt points out that:

“The intelligence agencies’ key sources of information on anything related to chemical warfare were German or Austrian scientists who had worked for I. G. Farben-the company involved in manufacturing the Zyklon B gas used in concentration camps—many of who were either in jail or under investigation by Nuremberg prosecutors.” 

For example, Walter Reppe had been the chief chemist for I. G. Farben at Ludwigshafen who was jailed at Nuremberg… On September 14, 1948, Reppe and two of his former I. G. Farben associates were released into Army custody to work on… acetylene derivatives. … A year earlier U.S. Department of Commerce representative Robert Fry had told the State Department that even though Reppe was “very much a Nazi,” he wanted to bring him to America under Paperclip.”

Another CIA source of information about “truth drugs” was Dr. Karl Tauboeck, I. G. Farben’s leading wartime expert on sterilization drugs.

“After 1942 he devoted his time to research on the plant caladium seguenum, which the SS planned to use to sterilize mental patients and Jews. Tauboeck testified at Nuremberg that he had recognized the criminal nature of the research and had not pursued it further. Others had…Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Karl Brandt admitted that the plant was grown in a hothouse at Dachau and sterilization experiments were conducted on concentration camp prisoners.”  (Hunt, Secret Agenda)

Heinous experiments: from Dachau to CIA’s nefarious experiments with LSD & torture Some of Hitler’s most sinister accomplices became the architects of the covert, government-sponsored unconscionable human experiments that followed the blueprint of those conducted at Dachau, Auschwitz, and other death camps.  

Jacobsen’s book focuses on 22 high level scientists of whom at least 11 were doctors of medicine; 8 had worked side by side with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, or Hermann Goring; 15 were dedicated members of the Nazi Party; 10 also joined the ultra-violent, Nazi paramilitary SS squad; two wore the Golden Party Badge presented by Hitler; six stood trial at Nuremberg, a seventh was mysteriously released; an eighth was tried in Dachau for war crimes; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery, but was granted clemency and hired by the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Many if not most of the Nazi recruits were initially judged by Departments of State and Justice Officials as posing a threat to U.S. security. (See Jacobsen’s Rogue’s Gallery)