Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

by Annie Jacobsen

On the morning of September 12, 1945, Wernher von Braun, Dr. Eberhard Rees, and five midlevel V-2 rocket engineers left their U.S. Army–sponsored housing, in the town of Witzenhausen, for the last time. The men climbed into two army jeeps, headed for France. The Germans knew they were heading to the United States to work. They were not aware that their driver, First Lieutenant Morris Sipser, spoke German. As First Lieutenant Sipser drove the group to their destination in Paris, he listened to von Braun crack crass anti-American jokes. The jeep crossed over the Saar River into France, and Sipser overheard von Braun say to his colleagues, “Well, take a good look at Germany, fellows. You may not see it for a long time to come.” In Washington, Operation Overcast had been approved as a “temporary” program, but von Braun, ever the visionary, had the foresight to see that many of the rocketeers and engineers were heading to America to stay. “We felt no moral scruples about the possible future use of our brainchild,” von Braun later told New Yorker magazine writer Daniel Lang. “We were interested solely in exploring outer space. It was simply a question with us of how the golden cow could be milked most successfully.”