Operation Osoavikhim Case Study

“Convinced that German scientists could help America’s postwar efforts, President Harry Truman agreed in September 1946 to authorize “Project Paperclip,” a program to bring selected German scientists to work on America’s behalf during to “Clod War””(Laura Knight-Jadczyk). President Truman brought German scientists over to had start Project MKULTRA.

Scientists from Germany were making huge progress on the topic of nuclear fission. Fortunately, many of these scientists escaped the authoritarian Germany. These refugees, including Albert Einstein warned the United States about the German’s nuclear weapons capability. Consequently, the United States created the Manhattan Project in 1942 under fears of a nuclear attack by the Germans.

The U.S. could not let the Germans create weapons of mass destruction before ourselves due to the fact that Germany was already trying to take over all of Europe. In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt made the Advisory Committees for Uranium. This committee would research uranium for it potential use as a weapon. The finding of the committee caused the U.S. Government to fund the research by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard at Columbia University. They would be working on separation of radioactive isotopes (this was better known as uranium enrichment) and nuclear chain reactions. The committee's name was changed in 1940 to become National Defense Research Committee and again in 1941 to the Office of Scientific Research and Development. On this year 1941 the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor causing the President to declare the U.S. to enter WWII fighting the Germans in Europe and the Japanese in the pacific for their attack on Pearl Harbor. The Army Corps of Engineers would join and play an important role in the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1942, with the approval from President Roosevelt. The Office of Scientific Research and Development founded the Manhattan Engineer District in 1942 in New York City with Colonel Leslie R. Groves of the United States Army becoming the lead of

Served as the Levant analyst on the Joint Operation Center (JOC) Current Intelligence Team (CIT) during the Iraq crisis. Tasked with standing up a 24 hour intelligence section on the watch floor to provide intelligence support to the JOC watch staff and joint planning group (JPG). My daily duties were to provide the most up to date information for the daily intelligence summary, commanders read book, and preparation of the daily situational awareness brief for directorate and CG. As a trusted analyst I individually managed, addressed, and answered five requests for information directly from the 2-star Commanding General (CG) without requiring follow ups. Additionally, I supported the joint planning efforts by answering 12 additional requests

After the Second World War, the Soviet Union had completely fallen apart with nearly 27 million Soviets dead and as many as 1,700 of its cities destroyed (Siddiqi 23). Its entire economy, including its previously booming industry, was in a massive crisis leaving no funding for studies as seemingly immaterial as rocketry. Though it lacked funding from the federal government, Soviet engineers understood the future necessity for rocket technology and were still determined to learn how to recreate and improve upon the rocket designs created by Nazi Germany. Some of the greatest technological advances made by the Third Reich prior to its defeat were in nuclear weaponry and the creation of the the A-4 rocket (also known as the V-4 or Vengence-4). Developed in the world’s largest rocket research facility to date, the rocket was first tested in 1942 and had the capability to be launched up to 205 miles and reach heights close to 60 miles (nearly out of the Earth’s atmosphere) causing severe destruction to it’s unsuspecting target (Anatoly). Both the Soviet Union and the United States understood the great potential that this technology held and would do anything in their power to obtain it.

The big project that the nazis did was called the “Uranium Project”. It was ran by two German scientist named Otto Hahn, and Fritz Strassmann. They were mixing two chemicals called uranium and neutrons. The outcome of mixing the two chemicals was brainium. It is half the size of uranium but a dedler one. Another person that led the uranium project was army physicist Kurt Diebner. He helped find out that if you slow down and control the explosive it will explode bigger. Chemist Gerhard Schrader was believed to be the first to create a nerve gas. He is also known as “Father of the nerve agent.” He was the man who created the gas called tuban which was used in gas

There were many atomic spies at the time and germany attempted to steal technology from the manhattan project there were also many espionage surrounding the project to attempt to steal.

At the end of World War Two in Europe 1945, aerospace engineer, Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, was sent from OKB-16, a sharashka in Kazan to Germany. Korolev was to examine missile and rocket plans by Wernher Von Braun, an aerospace engineer in Nazi Germany. Von Braun had fled Germany at the end of the war, leaving behind extensive

Though von Braun’s actions during WWII are seen are horrible, it is not purely because his actions aided killing thousands of civilians, but because his country was an Axis power and he was working against the Americans. Objectively, von Braun and the other engineers were patriots and wanted to help their country win the war. Many, many Americans also helped to kill innocent people and were never punished. The Allies killed hundreds of thousands of German civilians during the war and nobody was ever held accountable for killing them. Both Americans and Germans killed innocent people, but the former were called heroes, and the latter were called villains. Justice would only be served if everyone who killed civilians during war was punished. This means that justice would never be served because the U.S government would never punish people who helped them win the war, no matter how many innocent people those people

Interestingly, the initiation of the Manhattan project can be attributed to two United States immigrants. Just after World War II had begun, Albert Einstein, who had fled Nazi Germany, and Enrico Fermi, who had fled from Italy, had come together and decided that the president must be warned of the fact that Germany had the power to create an atomic weapon. At first, Roosevelt did not see the importance of this project, and only allotted $6,000 for research. However, when the war with the Axis powers grew, fear also grew, and the budget for the Manhattan project was ultimately enlarged to $2 billion dollars. Eventually, Roosevelt established the Advisory Committee on Uranium and the National Defense Research Committee. At

First, Von Braun was the most important source of information on rocketry in the U.S. after World War Two. Why? Well, he had experience in launching rockets. Years after world war 2, von Braun helped the Army develop ballistic missiles. In 1960, he helped build Saturn rockets and he became the chief designer of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the superbooster that would propel astronauts to the Moon. Von Braun engineered the surrender of five hundred of his top rocket scientists to the Americans. His rocket team and himself went to Fort Bliss, Texas. There they worked on rockets for the Army. As a student at the Berlin Institute of Technology, he

Towards the end of World War II Operation Varsity took place at Wessel, Germany which involved more than 16,000 paratroopers and several thousands of aircraft. The goal of this operation was to help secure multiple locations along the Northern portion of the Rhine River to allow the Allied forces to secure a foothold in Western Germany and then peruse Northern Germany. Operation Varsity was designed to assist the surface river assault troops cross the river with minimal impact on ground troops.

On the cold and misty morning of October 3rd, 1942 Wernher Von Braun and his team at the remote baltic island of Peenemunde stood around a launch console from their safety bunker looking upon the apex of their years of engineering. For years the team at Peenemunde, under the direct orders of the Führer himself labored building the most technologically advanced weapon system ever devised, in an operation rivaling the scale of the Manhattan project. For years the RAF under the command of “Bomber" Harris

Before World War II a German engineer, Wernher von Braun, had begun working on rocket designs that eventually led to the development and launch of over 3000

Von Braun the leader of the scientists had discussed with the other chief designers about the possibility of surrendering to the Americans. Cadbury states that the German scientists decided that the best solution would be to go to the Americans because they had the capabilities of creating a functional space program (14). In order to achieve this they would have to be very careful not to get caught because if they were it would be considered treason and they would be executed by the government. A few months before the war ended the entire V2 experimental team and their research made the move from Peenemünde to Mittelwerk which was the production base for the V2 missile which was made with slave labor. At Mittelwerk the German scientists were “guarded” by the SS who had orders to shoot them rather than let them fall into enemy hands. The German scientists meanwhile made plans for their getaway by buying an abandoned mine in order to store the years of research that they had gained and also turned their guards away from their mission and had them become regular soldiers and surrender to the Americans alongside them. The U.S army and the Soviet intelligence agency NKVD had been tracking the rocketeers and had been trying to recruit them. On the second of May the German scientists finally encountered the Americans and they were all taken by the American Army into