The idea of an underground presidential bunker was first conceived by U.S. Army military intelligence (G-2) during postwar examination of the underground bunker complexes of the Third Reich. The survival of so many of the Nazi high command in Berlin was predicated on the underground engineering skills of a few top Nazi scientists, including Franz Xaver Dorsch, Walter Schieber, and Georg Rickhey, all three of whom were hired by the U.S. Army to work on secret U.S. underground engineering projects after the war, as part of Operation Paperclip.
