In September of 1982, Marianne Rudolph, the daughter of Arthur Rudolph, received an unexpected telephone call at her home in San Jose, California. It was the Department of Justice calling. They explained that they had been trying to reach her father, Arthur Rudolph, who apparently lived nearby, but that they had been unable to do so. Marianne Rudolph, who worked as an artist for NASA, told the caller that her parents were vacationing in Germany and would be back at the end of the month.
The day after the Rudolphs returned, Arthur Rudolph received a registered letter in the mail from the Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations. The letter stated that questions had been raised regarding Arthur Rudolph’s activities during the Second World War. Rudolph was asked to meet with DOJ officials at the San Jose Hyatt on October 13 and to bring any documents with him that he owned covering the period between 1933 and 1945. During this first meeting, which included Arthur Rudolph, OSI director Allan A. Ryan Jr., Deputy Director Neal M. Sher, and trial attorney Eli Rosenbaum, the interview lasted five hours. There were two central questions the lawyers wanted answered: Owing to what set of principles had Rudolph decided to join the Nazi Party, which he did in 1933, and what exactly did he know about the Nordhausen executions, specifically about the prisoners who had been hanged from a crane? DOJ lawyers Allen, Sher, and Rosenbaum had documents with them including the previously sealed testimony from the 1947 Dora-Nordhausen trial. These documents included pretrial investigative material regarding former Paperclip specialist Georg Rickhey. Among the documents was the interview that Rudolph gave, on June 2, 1947, to Major Eugene Smith of the U.S. Army Air Force. In that testimony, Rudolph had first said that he never saw any prisoners beaten or hanged. Later in the interview with Major Smith, Rudolph changed his story to say that he had been forced to watch the hangings but had nothing to do with them.
During the San Jose Hyatt interview in 1982, the three Justice Department lawyers presented Rudolph with the drawing made by his former Nordhausen colleagues from Fort Bliss, the rocket engineers Günther Haukohl, Rudolph Schlidt, Hans Palaoro, and Erich Ball. This drawing illustrated the layout inside the tunnels and had been used as evidence in the Dora-Nordhausen trial. The Justice Department lawyers pointed out to Rudolph that there was a clear dotted line, labeled “Path of Overhead Crane Trolly [sic] On Which Men Were Hung.” The dotted line ran right by Rudolph’s office, which suggested that it would have been impossible for Rudolph not to have seen the hangings. The lawyers asked why he had lied. They also asked Rudolph about testimony from the 1947 Dora-Nordhausen trial that revealed that, at the Mittelwerk tunnel complex, he received daily “prisoner strength reports which showed the number of prisoners available for work, the number of ‘new arrivals,’ and the number of people lost through sickness or death.’ ” They said that, clearly, Rudolph knew people were being worked to death and were being replaced by fresh bodies from the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp.
Back in Washington, D.C., the Justice Department put together its case. Four months later, on February 4, 1983, a second meeting took place at the San Jose Hyatt, and, shortly thereafter, Rudolph received a letter from the Justice Department in the mail. “Certain preliminary decisions have now been made,” wrote Neal Sher. “I would be prepared to discuss these decisions, as well as the evidence amassed to date, with an attorney authorized to represent your interest.”
The government stated intentions to pursue its case against Arthur Rudolph “showing that Mr. Rudolph enforced the slave labor system at Mittelbau [Mittelwerk] and aided in the transmission of sabotage reports to the SS.” Arthur Rudolph had two choices, the Justice Department said. He could hire a lawyer and prepare to stand trial, or, alternatively, he could renounce his U.S. citizenship and leave the country at once.
Thirty-eight years after coming to America as part of Operation Paperclip, Arthur Rudolph left the United States, on March 27, 1984. Neal Sher met Arthur Rudolph at the San Francisco International Airport and made sure he got on the airplane.