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CASE #6DFVI0 · 3 entities · 3 connections
Operation Paperclip
The U.S. secretly recruited over 1,600 Nazi scientists after WWII — some with real SS ties — and built its space program around them.
Operation Paperclip was a real, declassified U.S. intelligence program that brought more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians — including confirmed former Nazi Party and SS members — to the United States after World War II, laying groundwork for the American space and missile programs.
✓documented
Quick facts
- →Officers reviewing scientists' files literally clipped a paperclip to any dossier containing disqualifying Nazi Party or SS material — which gave the program its name.
- →Wernher von Braun, the program's most famous recruit, later became a central figure in NASA's Apollo program.
- →Recruited scientists' Nazi-era records were often deliberately rewritten or sanitized to get around a presidential order barring "active Nazi supporters."
- →The program ran from 1945 to 1959 and eventually brought in scientists connected to slave-labor rocket production at Mittelwerk.
Entities on file
NASA (organization)
Conducted the Apollo program, including six crewed Moon landings between 1969 and 1972.
Also appears in: Moon landing hoax
→ conducted → Apollo 11✓documented
Wernher von Braun (person)
Lead German rocket scientist recruited under Operation Paperclip; later NASA's chief architect for the Saturn V rocket.
→ became chief rocket architect for → NASA✓documented
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Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (organization)
U.S. agency that ran Operation Paperclip's recruitment efforts.
→ recruited → Wernher von Braun✓documented
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