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In May 1945, a young German engineer with a broken arm and an SS commission surrendered to American forces in the Bavarian Alps. He had built the most advanced weapon on earth — and he wanted to go to the Moon. The United States recruited German and Austrian specialists across defence research, including men with Nazi affiliations and connections to forced labour.
Recruitment brought a conflict between technical advantage and accountability. Some adverse security records were revised to make prized recruits eligible. The men who had built weapons with slave labour would build the rockets that put Americans on the Moon.
1,600+
German scientists, engineers, and technicians recruited under Operation Paperclip and its successor programmes and related programmes; totals vary with scope and period. Some adverse security reports were revised by the JIOA to circumvent President Truman's explicit ban on Nazi activists.
20,000
Approximate deaths across the wider Mittelbau camp system. At least 10,000 have been attributed to V-2 factory construction and production, exceeding the missile’s combat toll.
67
V-2 rockets launched from White Sands by the Paperclip team — the birth of the U.S. space programme.
SS Major
Sturmbannführer. Personally approved by Heinrich Himmler. Von Braun called it a "formality." The JIOA called it irrelevant.
The Evidence
The Price of the Weapon
Prisoners from Konzentrationslager Dora assembled V-2 rockets inside tunnels beneath the Kohnstein mountain. Conditions were lethal. The wider camp system lost approximately 20,000–25,000 prisoners; at least 10,000 deaths are attributed to outfitting the factory and producing the V-2. Arthur Rudolph, the production manager who oversaw this workforce, later managed the Saturn V programme for NASA.
The Desert Launches
Between 1946 and 1952, von Braun's team launched 67 captured V-2 rockets from White Sands, New Mexico. The rockets took the first photographs of Earth's curvature from space and measured cosmic radiation. One famously flew south instead of north and landed in a cemetery near Juárez, Mexico.
The Payoff
Almost four months after Sputnik, the Army’s Juno I rocket launched Explorer 1 — America's first satellite. The photograph of Pickering, Van Allen, and von Braun holding the satellite model aloft became an icon of the Space Age. The SS major was now an American hero.
From V-2 to Apollo
The First V-2 Hits London
A ballistic missile travelling faster than sound strikes Chiswick, killing three. Over the next seven months, more than 3,000 V-2s will be launched. The weapon caused roughly 5,000 Allied deaths, while at least 10,000 prisoners died in V-2 factory construction and production.
Von Braun Surrenders
Von Braun and a small group enter American custody after Magnus von Braun arranges contact. American teams later gather specialists, recover hidden records, and remove V-2 components.
Truman Signs the Directive
The president authorises Paperclip with one condition: no "active supporters of Nazi militarism." The JIOA responds by rewriting the dossiers. Von Braun's file is changed from "potential security threat" to "not an ardent Nazi."
Sputnik
A Soviet satellite the size of a beach ball crosses the American sky, beeping. American satellite efforts gain urgency. The Army rocket team already has years of missile development behind it.
Apollo 11
Saturn V — designed by von Braun, managed by Rudolph, launched by Debus — carries Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins to the Moon. The successful mission depends on a vast American programme, with the former German team prominent in launch-vehicle development.
Key Figures
Wernher von Braun
SS-Sturmbannführer, inventor of the V-2, and director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. He designed the Saturn V that put men on the Moon. His party membership, SS rank, and connections to slave labour were systematically minimised in his JIOA dossier.
Arthur Rudolph
Production manager at the Mittelwerk, where concentration camp prisoners supplied forced labour for V-2 production. Later became project manager of the Saturn V. In 1984, facing a war crimes investigation, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and left the country.
Were the Stars Worth the Price?
Operation Paperclip traded justice for technological supremacy. The men who built the V-2 with slave labour built the Saturn V with taxpayer dollars. Some security reports were revised, and adverse histories were minimized. The Moon landing did not settle the question of wartime responsibility.
The defenders say there was no alternative — that the Cold War demanded it, that the Soviets would have taken these men, that the cost of losing was greater than the cost of compromise. Critics stress the victims, the altered security assessments, and the delayed scrutiny of wartime conduct.
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Explore postwar recruitment, revised security files, forced labour, and the later careers of the rocket specialists.