Walther Riedel was an engineer with the V-weapons design bureau and part of the von Braun rocket team. His Army interrogator classified him as an “ardent Nazi,” but after Riedel threatened his handler that he would go work for the Russians he was hired and brought to America. Paperclip contract: U.S. Army, Texas. (NARA)
Emil Salmon, aircraft engineer and SS officer, was implicated in the burning down of a synagogue during the war. “This Command is cognizant of Mr. Salmon’s Nazi activities and certain allegations made by some of his associates in Europe,” wrote the U.S. Army Air Forces, but they found Salmon’s expertise “difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate.” Paperclip contract: U.S. Army Air Forces, Ohio.
Harry Armstrong set up the U.S. Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center in Germany and hired fifty-eight Nazi doctors to continue work they had been doing for the Reich. The Center violated the Potsdam Accord and was shut down after two years. Thirty-four Nazi doctors followed Armstrong to the U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine in Texas. (U.S. Air Force)
Charles E. Loucks holding an incendiary bomb. Loucks oversaw the Paperclip scientists working on chemical weapons at Edgewood Arsenal. After being transferred to U.S. Occupied Germany, Loucks created an off-book working group on sarin production and invited Hitler’s former chemists and Himmler’s right-hand man to weekly roundtable discussions at his home. (Papers of Charles E. Loucks, U.S. Army Military History Institute)
Donald L. Putt, accomplished test pilot and engineer, was one of the first wartime officers to arrive at Hermann G?ring’s secret aeronautical research center at V?lkenrode. Amazed by what he saw, Putt recruited dozens of Nazi scientists and engineers for Operation Paperclip and oversaw their work at Wright Field. (U.S. Air Force)
John Dolibois, a young U.S. Army officer and fluent German speaker, worked for military intelligence (G-2). He interrogated the major war criminals of the Nazi Party at the “Ashcan” internment facility in Luxembourg. (Collection of John Dolibois)
Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, and his entourage during a tour of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Himmler’s SS oversaw a vast network of state-sponsored slavery across Nazi-occupied Europe through an innocuous sounding division called the SS Business Administration Main Office. Reich slaves produced armaments, including the V-2 rocket. (USHMM)
Albert Speer (left), Adolf Hitler, and a cameraman in Paris. As minister of Armaments and War Production, Speer was responsible for all warfare-related science and technology for the Third Reich, starting in February 1942. (NARA)
As the Third Reich crumbled, Nazis stashed huge troves of scientific treasure, secret documents, and gold in salt mines across Germany. The 90th Infantry Division discovered this enormous cache of Reichsbank money and SS documents in Merkers, Germany. (NARA)
American liberators stand at the entrance of the Nordhausen underground tunnel complex where V-2 slave laborers assembled rockets. (U.S. Air Force)
In this rare photograph, IG Farben employees are seen fencing for sport at the corporation’s Auschwitz facility and within sight of the three large chimneys of the death camp’s crematoria. The sign behind the fencers reads, “Company Sporting Club, IG Auschwitz.” Farben’s plant was also called Auschwitz III or Buna-Monowitz. (Fritz Bauer Institute)
Otto Ambros laughing with his attorney during the Nuremberg trial against IG Farben executives. Ambros served as Manager of IG Auschwitz and also managed the Reich’s Dyhernfurth poison gas facility in Silesia. (NARA)
In this previously unreleased photograph, Nazi doctors and scientists working for the U.S. Army Air Forces in Heidelberg gather with American officers for a group photograph circa 1946, prior to the arrest of five doctors on war crimes charges. Bottom row: at far left is Dr. Siegfried Ruff (arrested), at center is Richard Kuhn, third from right is Dr. Hubertus Strughold; Second row: third from left is Konrad Sch?fer (arrested); Top row: third from left is Dr. Theodor Benzinger (arrested), far right (in tie) is Hermann Becker-Freyseng (arrested). (U.S.A.F School of Aerospace Medicine)
Dr. Kurt Blome consulting with his lawyer at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial. Dr. Konrad Sch?fer sits behind Blome. (NARA)
At the Nuremberg doctors’ trial, defendant Dr. Kurt Blome frowns (at center). Behind him are (left to right) doctors Hermann Becker-Freyseng, Georg Weltz, Konrad Sch?fer, Waldemar Hoven, Wilhelm Beiglb?ck. To Blome’s right is Karl Gebhardt, the SS doctor who performed experiments on Janina Iwanska and was hanged. (NARA)
Dr. Wilhelm Beiglb?ck oversaw the salt water experiments at Dachau and removed a piece of prisoner Karl H?llenrainer’s liver without anesthesia. During the trial, H?llenrainer, one of the only experiment survivors, tried to stab Beiglb?ck. (NARA)