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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wernher von Braun | 6/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:12:35.863675+00:00 | kb-cron |
I myself and everybody you see here decided to go west. And I think our decision was not one of expediency, but a moral decision. We knew that we had created a new means of warfare, and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through, and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured. The American high command was well aware of how important their catch was: von Braun had been at the top of the Black List, the code name for the list of German scientists and engineers targeted for immediate interrogation by U.S. military experts. On 9 June 1945, two days before the originally scheduled handover of the Nordhausen and Bleicherode area in Thuringia to the Soviets, U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver, Chief of the Jet Propulsion Section of the Research and Intelligence Branch of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in London, and Lieutenant Colonel R. L. Williams took von Braun and his department chiefs by Jeep from Garmisch to Munich, from where they were flown to Nordhausen. In the following days, a larger group of rocket engineers, among them Helmut Gröttrup, was evacuated from Bleicherode 40 miles (64 km) southwest to Witzenhausen, a small town in the American Zone. According to Dornberger, there the Soviets tried to kidnap von Braun at night using English [sic] uniforms: Americans recognized this and did not let them in. Von Braun was briefly detained at the "Dustbin" interrogation center at Kransberg Castle, where the elite of Nazi Germany's economic, scientific, and technological sectors were debriefed by U.S. and British intelligence officials. Initially, he was recruited to the U.S. under a program called Operation Overcast, subsequently known as Operation Paperclip. There is evidence, however, that British intelligence and scientists were the first to interview him in depth, eager to gain information that they knew U.S. officials would deny them. The team included the young L.S. Snell, then the leading British rocket engineer, later chief designer of Rolls-Royce Limited and inventor of the Concorde's engines. The specific information the British gleaned remained top secret, both from the Americans and from the other allies.
== American career ==
=== U.S. Army career ===
On 20 June 1945, U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr. approved the transfer of von Braun and his specialists to the United States as one of his last acts in office. This was announced to the public on 1 October 1945. In September 1945, von Braun and other members of the Peenemünde team signed a work contract with the United States Army Ordnance Corps. On 20 September 1945, the first seven technicians arrived in the United States at New Castle Army Air Field, just south of Wilmington, Delaware. They were then flown to Boston, Massachusetts, and taken by boat to the Army Intelligence Service post at Fort Strong in Boston Harbor. Later, with the exception of von Braun, the men were transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to sort out the Peenemünde documents, enabling the scientists to continue their rocketry experiments.