Operation Paperclip was a program carried out by US Army CIC agents that brought over 1600 German engineers and scientists to the United States. Some of them were leaders of the NAZI party and many others had been members.

The reason this program was launched was to augment technical skills needed to compete with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. This dark period of the 20th Century began immediately after WWII. Moscow and Washington DC grabbed as many German scientists as they could after the German surrender.

The Nazis had been working on developing the atomic bomb. By some accounts they were almost ready to deploy one when the Allies invaded fortress Europe. With the help of these scientists the United States built, tested and deployed 2 to targets in Japan. An indication of how close they were; the German surrender was in May of 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in August of the same year.

If we think a bit more about Germany before the rise of the Third Reich we note the Weimar Renaissance. From the end of WWI until the 1933 Germany culture flourished. Science and the arts were on a rampage. Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and Max Born were winning prizes. There were political theorists and esoteric groups. The Nazis took control of all that “dangerous” thinking and bent it to their purposes.