Operation Paperclip
In the chaos following WWII, many of Germany’s remaining resources were divvied up among allied forces. Some of the greatest spoils were the Third Reich’s scientific minds. The minds that made their programs in aerospace and rocketry the best in the world. The United States secretly decided that the value of these former Nazis’ forbidden knowledge outweighed their crimes, and the government formed a covert organization called Operation Paperclip to allow them to work without the knowledge of the American public.
The race with the Soviet Union
One of the most well-known recruits was Werner von Braun, the technical director at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Germany who was instrumental in developing the lethal V-2 rocket that devastated England during the war. Von Braun and other rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees” to assist the U.S. Army with rocket experimentation. Von Braun later became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which eventually propelled two dozen American astronauts to the Moon.
Wernher Von Braun: From rocket builder for Hitler to Apollo hero
If it wasn’t for the help of these German scientist’s the Soviet Union would have beaten us to the moon. America benefited, in the end, using these high ranking Nazi leaders for their own gain. Apollo 11 was mankind’s greatest achievement, but at what cost, Werner von Braun was a man in Hitler and Himmler’s inner circle. Crazy psychopaths who murder millions of innocent people and now he was put in charge to run the largest Space Program in the world, NASA.
