“You write the cable and I’ll sign it,” Staver remembered Colonel Holmes having said. In Paris, Staver sat down and wrote a cable that would have a huge impact on the future of the Nazi scientist program. “Have in custody over 400 top research development personnel of Peenemünde. Developed V-2,” Staver wrote. “The thinking of the scientific directors of this group is 25 years ahead of U.S.… Later version of this rocket should permit launching from Europe to U.S.” Given the enormity of this idea in 1945, that a rocket could one day actually fly from one continent to another, Staver pushed: “Immediate action recommended to prevent loss of whole or part of this group to other interested parties. Urgently request reply as early as possible.”
The cable was sent to Colonel Trichel’s office at the Pentagon, and Major Staver returned to Nordhausen. The documents were loaded up and driven to Paris under armed guard. From there, they were shipped to the Foreign Documents Evaluation Center at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland. Special Mission V-2 was declared a success. The U.S. Army Ordnance, Rocket Branch, now had one hundred rockets and fourteen tons of technical documents in its possession. But Staver did not view Special Mission V-2 as entirely complete. He still had his sights set on the rocket scientists themselves.
With the arrival of the Soviets into Nordhausen less than forty-eight hours away, Staver got the approval he’d been waiting for from SHAEF headquarters. He went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, picked up von Braun, and returned to Nordhausen. The clock was ticking. Staver needed von Braun’s help getting every last rocket scientist out of the Harz before the Soviets arrived.
“We landed running,” remembered Staver’s team member Dr. Richard Porter. Back at Nordhausen, the men got to work locating the scientists who were still living in the area. Staver had a stack of note cards with the names and addresses of the V-2 engineers. He instructed every available U.S. soldier he could find to round up anything with wheels—trucks, motorcycles, and donkey carts—and sent soldiers fanning out across the Harz. Scientists and their families were given an offer. They could be transported out of what would soon become the Russian zone, or they could stay.
Arthur Rudolph’s wife was in Stepferhausen, eighty-five miles south of Nordhausen, when a U.S. soldier arrived. “A black GI drove into town in a truck looking for me,” remembered Martha Rudolph. “He had a list of names and mine was on it. He told me that if I wanted to leave to get ready. He would be back in 30 minutes to pick me up. My friends all said, ‘Go, go—the Russians are coming. Why would you want to stay here?’ So I packed up what I could and left on the truck when the GI came back.” The Rudolphs’ daughter, Marianne, accompanied her to the train station.
The scene at the station was surreal, recalling the horrific transport of prisoners during the war but with the roles reversed, fate and outcome turned upside down. Over one thousand Germans—scientists and their families—stood on the platforms, waiting to fit themselves into boxcars and passenger cars. The train’s engine had yet to be attached, and there was no announcement explaining the delay. Tension escalated, but the crowd remained calm until a mob of displaced persons flooded the station. Word had leaked out that German scientists were being evacuated out of Nordhausen in advance of the Red Army’s arrival. Suddenly, many other locals wanted out of the Harz, too. The Red Army had a terrible reputation. There were stories of entire units arriving in towns drunk and seeking revenge. At the railroad station, U.S. soldiers were called to the scene. Using the threat of weapons, they prevented any displaced person who was not a scientist or an engineer from boarding the boxcars and passenger cars.
At the eleventh hour, Major Staver and Dr. Porter learned of one last potential disaster that needed to be dealt with. Right before boarding the train, General Dornberger confessed to having hidden his own stash of papers, an ace in the hole had Dornberger been double-crossed by von Braun and left out of the American deal. General Dornberger told Major Staver that he had buried five large boxes in a field in the spa town of Bad Sachsa. The boxes, which were made of wood and lined in metal, contained critical information about the V-2 rocket that would compromise the U.S. Army if it fell into Russian hands. In a last-ditch effort to find Dornberger’s secret stash, Staver and Porter set out on a final mission.
The men drove sixty miles to the headquarters of the 332nd Engineering Regiment at Kassel, where they borrowed shovels, pickaxes, three men, and a mine detector. Back in a large field in Bad Sachsa, they searched the ground as if looking for a buried mine. Finally, they located Dornberger’s metal-lined cases, which contained 250 pounds of drawings and documents. The stash was loaded onto a truck and driven to an army facility in the American zone.