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

by Annie Jacobsen

It was June 27, 1947, and Karl Höllenrainer stood trembling in the hushed courtroom. Small in stature, dark-haired, and nervous, he was a broken man. “Now, witness,” asked U.S. Prosecutor Alexander G. Hardy, “for what reason were you arrested by the Gestapo on May 29, 1944?” “Because I am a Gypsy of mixed blood,” Höllenrainer said. Höllenrainer’s crime was that he had fallen in love with and married a German girl, a violation of the infamous Nuremberg law that prohibited a non-Aryan from marrying or having sexual relations with a German citizen. After being arrested, Höllenrainer was sent to three different concentration camps, first Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, and finally Dachau, where he was selected to take part in the seawater experiments being performed by Luftwaffe. At Dachau, Höllenrainer was deprived of food, forced to drink chemically processed seawater, and then monitored for signs of liver failure and madness. One experiment among the many stood out in his memory. Without using anesthesia, a Luftwaffe doctor had removed a piece of Karl Höllenrainer’s liver in order to analyze it.