For various press events, the army provided photographs of some of the more wholesome-looking German scientists—definitely no one with a dueling scar. There were pictures of white-haired men playing chess, window-shopping outside a Dayton, Ohio, toy store, smoking cigarettes, and sunning themselves on army grounds. To be invited to the open house, a reporter had to agree in advance to clear his or her story with army censors before going to press. The military placed its own article in the Stars and Stripes purporting to tell the official story: None of the Germans had ever been Nazis; the men were under strict supervision here in the United States; they were all outstanding scientists and technicians “vital to national security”; they were moral family men.
The news stories about the scientists at Wright Field generated a flurry of response, including newspaper editorials and letters to congressmen. A Gallup Poll the following week revealed that most Americans believed that bringing one thousand more German scientists to America was a “bad idea.” Journalist and foreign affairs correspondent Joachim Joesten was outraged by the very idea of Paperclip, writing in the Nation, “If you enjoy mass murder, but also treasure your skin, be a scientist, son. It’s the only way, nowadays, of getting away with murder.” Rabbi Steven S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, penned a scathing letter to Secretary of War Patterson that was made public. “As long as we reward former servants of Hitler, while leaving his victims in D. P. [displaced-persons] camps, we cannot even pretend that we are making any real effort to achieve the aims we fought for.” Eleanor Roosevelt became personally involved in protesting Operation Paperclip, organizing a conference at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel with Albert Einstein as honored guest. The former First Lady urged the United States government to suspend visas for all Germans for twelve years. When professors at Syracuse University learned that a new colleague, Dr. Heinz Fischer, an expert in infrared technology and a former member of the Nazi Party, had been sent by the army to work in one of their university laboratories under a secret military contract, they wrote an editorial for the New York Times. “We object not because they are citizens of an enemy nation, but because they were and probably still are Nazis.”
The Society for the Prevention of World War III—a group of several thousand writers, artists, scholars, and journalists—did not mince words in their December journal. The group had been set up during the war to advocate for harsh punitive measures against a nation they perceived as inherently aggressive and militaristic, and against individuals they believed had substantially profited from the Nazi regime. “These German ‘experts’ performed wonders for the German war effort. Can one forget their gas chambers, their skill in cremation, their meticulous methods used to extract gold from the teeth of their victims, their wizardry in looting and thieving?” The society, which counted William L. Shirer and Darryl Zanuck among its members, urged all fellow Americans to contact the War Department and demand that Hitler’s scientists be sent home.
One engineer at Wright Field actually was about to be sent home. But tunnel engineer Georg Rickhey’s downfall came not because of the demands made by the public but because of the actions by a fellow German.
In the fall of 1946, of the 233 Nazi scientists in America, 140 were at Wright Field. With that many single men living together in isolation, the Hilltop became divided into social cliques. The Nazi businessman Albert Patin continued to serve as Colonel Putt’s ears and eyes among the Germans, reporting to Putt about the Germans’ needs and complaints. In this arrangement Patin wielded power at the Hilltop. With the arrival of former Mittelwerk general manager Georg Rickhey, in the summer of 1946, Albert Patin saw a business opportunity. Rickhey was a former employee of the Speer ministry. He served as the general manager of the Mittelwerk slave labor facility in Nordhausen where the V-2 rockets were built. Colonel Beasley of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey had evacuated Rickhey to London, and after that work was completed, Rickhey was hired to work at Wright Field. When asked by military intelligence officers what his job was, Rickhey said, “Giving my knowledge and experience in regard to planning, construction and operating underground factories.”